Weekend update

Congress

Weekend update

David Ermer–Congress, COVID-19, HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, Rx coverage–

Happy Mother’s Day.

Just like last week, the Senate will be in session this week while the House continues to fully hunker down. The Hill discusses five factors influencing when the House will return to Capitol Hill. It’s funny that the article does not list the Presidential election as a sixth factor. (Even the FEHBlog is entitled to have an occasional “DJT” moment. Lo siento.)

The FEHBlog forgot last Thursday to provide a link to the Senate Health Education Labor and Pension Committees “shark tank” on new tests for COVID-19. Here you go. This Committee will be holding a hearing on how to pull out of the great hunkering down on Tuesday.

For the past two months, the FEHBlog has been tracking a simplified infection fatality rate (IFR) for COVID-19 based on the CDC’s statistics. The FEHBlog is not an epidimeologist but he figured things would be looking up if the rate plateaued. The FEHBlog’s statistics do show the IFR increase slowing down over the past month. In any event, here’s a new Health Affairs article on the COVID-19 IFR for your information.

CIGNA’s PBM Express Scripts has created a program called ParachuteRX which offers reasonably priced prescription drugs to the uninsured. Cool.

The FEHBlog has been a fan of genetics-based personalized medicine. It therefore was sobering for the FEHBlog to read in the Wall Street Journal that the popular focus on personalized medicine has detracted from public health efforts. The article explains that

the first national initiative launched to try to treat today’s severely ill patients is the National Covid-19 Convalescent Plasma Project. The project originated with a small nucleus of people who, it turns out, have been prominent critics of personalized medicine over the years, including Arturo Casadevall of Johns Hopkins University, Michael Joyner of the Mayo Clinic and Nigel Paneth of Michigan State University.

The idea of using antibody-rich plasma from recovered patients to try to neutralize a virus in those who are ill was first used more than 100 years ago. The project is designed to buy time and save lives until a vaccine can be developed and deployed or more targeted therapies can be identified and tested. It also offers a real-world test case for ideas that had largely been confined to academic journals and debates between scientists.

Indeed the FEHBlog learned in the Great Influenza book that small scale efforts to use this antibody approach found success in the 1918-19 pandemic. It’s encouraging to read that a large scale effort is underway now. In the aftermath of the great hunkering down, a Goldilocks compromise must be reached between personalized medicine and public health efforts.

Finally, Health IT Security does a good job putting the government’s COVID-19 related flexibilities with regard to enforcing the HIPAA Privacy Rule into focus.

Midweek update

David Ermer–Congress, COVID-19–

Fierce Healthcare and Healthcare Dive report on CVS Health’s positive first quarter 2020 results. According to Fierce Healthcare,

[CVS Health] CEO Larry Merlo said that utilization of telehealth and virtual visits through its MinuteClinic locations was up 600% compared to the first quarter of 2019, while home delivery of prescriptions was up 1000%.

In addition, he said, the company is seeing a fourfold increase in the number of customers adding other items from the front of their stores to home pharmacy deliveries. CVS is also seeing increased engagement with customers and members through its app, Merlo said.

Healthcare Dive adds

Though coronavirus had “minimal impact on the quarter,” CVS does expect a “big impact in April,” CFO Eva Boratto told investors on a Wednesday morning call. Consumers increasingly stayed at home in April, resulting in a sharp reduction in foot traffic to stores, and filed fewer prescriptions due to fewer doctor visits, according to CVS’ preliminary results from the month. Those headwinds could persist throughout the second quarter.

Interesting links —

  • The Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Roundtable on COVID-19 policy was held today. Among the speaker was the FEHBlog’s favorite health policy expert Avik Roy whose testimony reads in pertinent part as follows:

[T]raffic fatalities is a good mental framework for thinking about how to live with COVID-19. Instead of abolishing cars, we enforce traffic laws and speed limits, and prohibit drunk driving. We set a minimum standard for car safety. But, most of all, we expect individual drivers to be responsible for their own conduct.
Something similar can work for COVID-19. Businesses can deep-clean their surfaces and provide hand sanitizer and masks to their workers and customers. People can wash their hands regularly, and minimize close contact with strangers. This is, in fact, what East Asian countries did after the original SARS outbreak in 2003, and it enabled them to gradually return to normal life, despite the absence of a vaccine or effective treatments.

  • As the FEHBlog aims to be a voice of calm and reason in the FEHBlog storm he notes that PsychHub has created a COVID-19 Mental Resource Hub and that the Atlantic has debunked, to his satisfaction, an unsubstantiated claim that the COVID-19 virus has mutated.
  • The CARES Act created a Pandemic Response Accountability Committee which has its own website. The site’s purpose is “to foster greater accountability and transparency in the use of these [CARES Act relief] funds” totaling $2.3 trillion.

Tuesday Tidbits

David Ermer–Congress, COVID-19, Medicare–

Theme for Cinco de Mayo — Ball of confusion that’s what the world is today. The Temptations (1970)

The American Hospital Association reported today that hospitals are losing $50.7 billion monthly from March through June due of course to the COVID-19 emergency. That’s a lot more than the $175 billion that Congress has appropriated so far for grants to hospitals and other healthcare providers. The FEHBlog doubts that most hospitals have strong balance sheets. No wonder health plans are stepping up to offer support as noted on Sunday.

Healthcare Dive discusses a study that reminds us about the large extent to which private payers including FEHB plans subsidize hospitals and other providers due to the insufficient payments from Medicare. “It’s unlikely Washington would take concrete measures to shrink hospitals’ toplines during the pandemic.”

Fierce Healthcare informs us that after reaching out to 500,000 Medicare Advantage members Humana has decided to waive Medicare Advantage member cost sharing for primary and behavioral healthcare this year whether the care is delivered in office or virtually. “William Shrank, M.D., chief medical officer at Humana, told FierceHealthcare that the insurer is tracking member behavior in this area and has gathered plenty of anecdotal evidence that patients are deferring potentially necessary care due to the pandemic.”

Catalyst for Health Reform has created a new state by state report card on healthcare price transparency laws. “Sixteen states [including the FEHBlog’s home state of Maryland] received passing grades this year, up from only seven when CPR last graded states in 2017.”

Lincoln Memorial

May the Fourth be with you

David Ermer–Congress, COVID-19–

The FEHBlog saw that line several times today. It’s cute.

Healthcare Dive reports that the Department of Health and Human Services decided last Friday to divvy up $22 billion of CARES Act funding by send $12 billion to hospitals in COVID-19 hot spots and another $10 billion to rural hospitals. The American Hospital Association is happy.

RevCycle Intelligence informs us that “Outpatient visits for more than 50,000 providers declined by nearly 60 percent in mid-March when COVID-19 cases started to rise exponentially, researchers from Harvard University recently reported in a Commonwealth Fund study. The volumes have remained low through mid-April.” Here are a couple more tidbits from the study:

  • The decline in visits was generally larger among surgical and procedural specialties and smaller in other specialties such as adult primary care, obstetrics/gynecology, oncology, and behavioral health.
  • As the number of in-person visits dropped, telehealth visits increased. But the increase in telehealth visits only partially offset the drop in in-person visits.
  • Nearly 30 percent of all visits at these ambulatory practices are now provided via telemedicine.
  • The decline in visits was largest among school-age children and older adults.

Health Payer Intelligence informs us that America’s Health Insurance Plans and AHIP member medical directors have proposed a course for health plans to follow while we come out of the great hunkering down. That course includes continuing expansive coverage of COVID-19 testing and care, promoting telehealth, and engaging members, particularly those in need.

In that regard, Medical Economics provides physicians with advice on best practices for billing health plans for telemedicine services during the COVID-19 emergency. The advice strikes the FEHBlog as a bit complicated. It’s therefore not surprising to the FEHBlog that, according to an mHealth Intelligence report, members of Congress “Reps. Kim Schrier (D-WA) and Phil Rose (R-TN), say they want private payers to operate under the same rules as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which last month established telehealth payment and coverage parity for the duration of the emergency.” The two representatives have introduced a bill for this purpose H.R. 6644).

Weekend Update

David Ermer–Congress, COVID-19, OPM, SCOTUS–

The Senate, but not the House of Representatives, returns to Capitol Hill tomorrow. On Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is holding a roundtable discussion about how new COVID-19 information should drive policy. On Thursday, the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee is holding a “Shark Tank” about new tests for COVID-19.

Federal News Network reports that George Nesterczuk who was President Trump’s first nominee to be OPM Director, has become a senior advisor to OPM’s current acting Director Michael Rigas. In 2017, Mr. Nesterczuk asked the President to withdraw the nomination in the face of criticism from federal employee unions.

The Wall Street Journal estimates the revenues that major health insurers will receive at some point due to the Supreme Court’s favorable decision in the Affordable Care Act risk corridor case last Monday. The Supreme Court begins its series of May telephonic oral arguments tomorrow.

The Journal further reports

The promise of new payments comes as the health-insurance industry has seen little financial pressure from the pandemic. In earnings calls over the past few weeks, insurers said they’d seen minimal impact on first-quarter results, and they were benefiting from reduced health-care costs due to the widespread cancellation of elective procedures and patients steering clear of routine care.

But the insurers said they could see costs ramp back up later in the year. Overall, several big companies including UnitedHealth Group Inc., Anthem Inc. and Humana left their financial guidance on earnings for 2020 in place despite the coronavirus impact.

A WSJ article posted today adds that

With fewer claims to pay out, some health insurers are using their improved balance sheets to help struggling providers secure loans, pay claims earlier and, in some cases, underwrite patients’ outstanding bills. And they have good reason to ensure providers survive the pandemic: “There is a risk that there is a smaller provider network after this,” said Brad Ellis, a senior director at Fitch Ratings. “So health insurers are trying to maintain the network.”

Well done.

Monday Musings

David Ermer–Congress, COVID-19, Electronic health records, SCOTUS–

Here’s a musing for you. The FEHBlog expects that everyone is familiar with the spiritual titled “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.” Well after reviewing lots of news, the FEHBlog to paraphrase this spiritual sometimes feels like the only person in America who believes that the U.S. healthcare system can pull us through this pandemic.

The House and Senate announced today that each body of Congress will be returning to Capitol Hill next Monday May 4. Welcome back.

In a decision sure to delight health insurers that took the initial plunge with the ACA marketplaces back in 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today in a virtually unanimous opinion that the U.S. owes many of those insurers a total of roughly $12.3 billion for unappropriated yet mandated risk corridor payments. The only dissenter was Justice Alito who agreed that the government owed the money but questioned whether there was a private right of action under the ACA to sue the government for the money. It’s not a crazy thought because the government is generally protected against lawsuits by a doctrine known as sovereign immunity.

The FEHBlog thought that this would be a good opportunity to update readers on the major commercial COVID-19 testing sites:

Castlight offers a COVID 19 testing directory which organizations can link to their own websites.

Verily Health, which is an affiliate of Alphabet/Google, has “launched COVID-19 Pathfinder— a new set of tools that provide on-demand access to COVID-19 information directly from a hospital or health system website.” Cool.

In a bit of good news for HHS, Fierce Healthcare reports that the EPIC, the electronic health record (“EHR”) giant, has switched from “fiercely” opposing to supporting the HHS EHR interoperability rules. “Epic controls more than a quarter of the hospital EHR market, according to KLAS Research, and, among hospitals with 500 or more beds, Epic has a 58% market share.”

Weekend Update

David Ermer–Congress, COVID-19, OPM–

Congress remains on a social distancing work period away from Capitol Hill for another week. Fierce Healthcare reports on the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association’s recommendations for the next COVID-19 relief bill which include COBRA/TCC subsidies (as in the 2009 Great Recession), expand tax credits for ACA marketplace plans and eliminate surprise billing through a national benchmark model. Hopefully this will be an appropriate time to adopt such a surprise billing solution that would not increase costs.

In the wake of President Trump signing the COVID-19 relief act no. 3.5 last Friday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced today that it will be re-evaluating how it spends the expanded pool of relief funding for hospitals and other healthcare providers created by that law.

The FEHBlog looks forward to listening to the NCQA’s virtual Quality Talks 2020 program on Tuesday. He will provide some highlights in Tuesday’s post.

The Government Accountability Office released a report on implementation of the Trump Administration’s June 2018 federal agency reorganization plan. GAO reports favorably on the transition of the background search investigations function from OPM to the Defense Department. Late last month, according to Federal News Network, OPM finalized a Congressionally mandated contract with the National Academy of Public Administration. “[NAPA] will provide Congress a report next March [2021] with its findings [on OPM and its mission], as well as its recommendations for addressing OPM’s challenges. OPM has another six months to respond to NAPA’s report to Congress.”

Thursday Miscellany

David Ermer–Congress, COVID-19, Federal employment benefits, OPM–

The House of Representatives passed COVID-19 relief bill no. 3.5 (H.R. 266) by a vote of 388-5 this afternoon. The bill restores funding for the Small Business Administration’s relief programs and provides $100 billion in funding for healthcare providers.

OPM issued a new COVID-19 letter to FEHBP carriers today. The FEHBlog was pleased to see that OPM is allowing FEHB high deductible plans with health savings accounts to cover telehealth before the “high deductible” as permitted by the CARES Act (COVID-19 relief bill no. 3).

OPM also announced today that “the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) will conduct a nationwide special solicitation to support charities serving and affected by COVID-19. This special solicitation will run through June 30.” Good call. Here’s the link to the campaign.

Also over the past two days, OPM has issued FAQs on resuming normal workforce operations at federal facilities and the Families First Coronavirus Response Act’s (COVID-19 relief bill no. 2) paid sick leave program. Meanwhile the U.S. Department of Labor is up to nearly 90 FAQs on that program which also applies to private sector employers with under 500 employees.

Midweek Update

David Ermer–Congress, COVID-19–

Recycle Intelligence reports that House of Representatives members are returning to Capitol Hill to vote on the fourth (3.5?) COVID-19 relief bill (H.R. 266) tomorrow morning.

Today, the Health and Human Services Department (“HHS”)announced how it plans to divvy up the remaining $70 billion in funding allocated to hospitals and other healthcare providers in the third relief law known as the CARES Act. The last paragraph of the announcement states that

as a condition to receiving general funds, providers must agree not to seek collection of out-of-pocket payments from a presumptive or actual COVID-19 patient that are greater than what the patient would have otherwise been required to pay if the care had been provided by an in-network provider.

If the FEHBlog’s recollection serves him correctly, the earlier version of this statement flatly prohibited surprise billing. This version permits the provider to collect in-network cost sharing from the patient. How will the provider know the amount of in-network cost sharing?, and how will the member and the patient be made aware that the provider is subject to this obligation? In any event, the government has to provide much more guidance on this well meaning initiative.

Speaking of guidance, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did provide guidance to health plans yesterday concerning limits on medical management of COVID-19 testing coverage mandated by the Families First Coronavirus Response Act as amended by the CARES Act. Check it out.

In an interesting development, the day after HHS delayed enforcement of its new electronic health record interoperability rule, the HHS Office of Inspector General proposed a rule to apply civil monetary penalties to electronic health information blocking violations.

Tuesday Tidbits

David Ermer–Congress, COVID-19, Electronic health records–

Today the Senate passed a bill expanding funding for the Small Business Administration’s COVID-19 relief programs ($370 billion), healthcare providers ($75 billion) and COVID-19 testing ($25 billion). The Wall Street Journal further reports that “the bill now goes to the House, which is expected to vote on it Thursday.” The President has tweeted that he will sign it when both Houses of Congress pass it..

Speaking of COVID-19 testing, Labcorp announced today that “it has received an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The EUA permits nasal swab specimens to be collected at home using the Pixel by LabCorp™ COVID-19 test home collection kit if recommended by a healthcare provider after completing a COVID-19 questionnaire.” Furthermore, CVS Health announced today that it has opened another large scale drive up COVID testing site in Dearborn Michigan.

As anticipated the Department of Health and Human Services informed the public today about

a policy of enforcement discretion to allow compliance flexibilities regarding the implementation of the interoperability final rules announced on March 9th in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) public health emergency. ONC, CMS, and OIG will continue to monitor the implementation landscape to determine if further action is needed.

Absent this new policy, the rules would have been fully enforceable on January 1, 2021.

Finally the FEHBlog ran across today this long, handy AHIP prepared list of benefit improvements and related actions that its health plan members have made in response to the COVID-19 emergency. Bravo.