Grants of $9m issued in US to treat opioid addiction via telemedicine
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced $9m in grants to improve opioid-addiction treatment in primary care. The funding will be used to provide training via Project Echo in Oklahoma, Colorado, and Pennsylvania. Project Echo was originally developed at the University of New Mexico to monitor and treat Hepatitis C in rural areas, but in this case, the principles will be applied to train rural doctors using telemedicine to enhance opioid-addiction treatment. Much has been made of the so-called 'opioid epidemic' in the US: over 50% of opioid overdose deaths in the US are linked to a prescription painkiller, and the condition is estimated to afflict around 2.1 million Americans.

Telemedicine at heart of HHS’s anti-opioid grants

TELEMEDICINE TO FIGHT OPIOID ADDICTION: HHS announced at this weekend’s National Governors Association meeting $9 million in grants to improve opioid-addiction treatment in primary care practices. Each of the recipients in Oklahoma, Colorado and Pennsylvania will use Project ECHO, the University of New Mexico pioneered effort to provide urban specialist to train rural primary care doctors, or some other form of teleconsultation to improve opioid-addiction treatment.

— Project ECHO was developed to help rural New Mexican providers effectively treat and monitor Hepatitis C in a state with few specialists, but the principles have been applied to other diseases. The grant money announced at the NGA meeting will apply Project ECHO to 28 counties in Oklahoma, 24 in Colorado and 23 rural Pennsylvania counties to extend opioid-abuse training there. More on the grants here: http://goo.gl/xgkkBH

PDUFA AND eHEALTH GO TOGETHER LIKE PB&J: “Patient-reported data, real-world evidence and combination drug and device products are all set to get more attention and resources from the FDA under the next iteration of its Prescription Drug User Fee program,” Pro’s Sarah Karlin-Smith reports. Among the 230 full-time staff the FDA expects to add with the user fee money are experts on using patient-reported outcomes data to develop and review drugs. The FDA will also expand use of its Sentinel System, which pulls data from EHRs and other sources, to better monitor drug safety. Congress must reauthorize the FDA user fee legislation before Sept. 30, 2017. Pros get the full story from Sarah: https://goo.gl/lVR0mW

eHealth tweet of the day: Timothy B. Lee @binarybits: Don’t catch em all please. https://twitter.com/binarybits/status/754068581931941888

(This tweet is really about the picture, which is a sign at Children’s National Medical Center asking patrons not to search for Pokemon within the hospital).

Welcome to Monday Morning eHealth where your three-member team is not traveling to Cleveland and Philly. That’s OK. The last time your author was in Cleveland it was early April -- and it snowed. Yes, at the peak of Cherry Blossom season here, it was snowing there. Perhaps the weather will be better in July. Send along your RNC convention week news tips to [email protected] and connect with us on Twitter @ David_Pittman, @ arthurallen202, @ DariusTahir @ POLITICOPro, @ Morning_eHealth.

PDMP BATTLES STAY ACTIVE: Organizations seeking to fight prescription drug abuse are rallying around a Senate bill that would require prescribers to check their state’s prescription drug monitoring databases before issuing opioids. The Prescription Drug Monitoring Actfrom Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Joe Manchin and Angus King would also require states to notify practitioners when the PDMP shows that a patient exhibits patterns indicative of opioid misuse. A similar requirement was dropped from the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act passed and sent to the president last week.

— Gary Mendell, the founder and CEO of Shatterproof: “While nearly every state has a PDMP, only eight require their use. When PDMP use is not mandatory, research shows that prescribers rarely check the database. PDMPs cannot be an effective tool to fight addiction if they are not used as a resource.”

THREE NEXT GEN ACOs DEPART: Medicare’s Next Generation ACOs were billed as a boon to telemedicine’s potential in the program when they launched early this year. The Next Gen ACOs were free to use the technology without the Medicare’s usual rural constraints. But Modern Healthcare is reporting that three of the initial 21 have already withdrawn, including Heritage California ACO in Northridge, Calif., River Health ACO in Harrisburg, Pa., and WakeMed Key Community Care in Raleigh, N.C. Two of the three cited financial reasons for the exit, while a third didn’t provide a reason. Their story: http://goo.gl/xfMTMc

Impact on telemedicine: In a January interview with POLITICO, River Health said it intended to use telemedicine in urban nursing homes, finding initial success in reducing hospital readmissions during pilots in 2013 and 2014. WakeMed told us they were in the early stages of planning their telemedicine use, while Heritage didn’t get back to us with an answer. Our story on how the Next Gen ACOs planned to use telemedicine: http://politico.pro/2a26p9Y

GROWTH IN COMPUTER WORKERS AT HOSPITALS: The number of computer and math science workers employed by hospitals grew nearly 18 percent from 2010 to 2014, according to a MedPAC analysis of Labor Department statistics. The reason? “Efforts to implement electronic health record systems,” MedPAC stated in a report. Physicians and surgeons were the only group of employees with a larger percentage of growth over that period in which hospital jobs grew 1.7 percent. The number of lower-level nurses fell 30 percent. The full report: http://goo.gl/CsDFFK

BREAKING DOWN HEALTH IT POLICY: Our friends at Health IT Now have drafted a convenient summary of this month’s proposed physician fee schedule from CMS in case you didn’t read the 856-page proposal. That’s here: http://goo.gl/KwB1jg. They also give a two-pager on the House’s 2017 Labor-HHS spending bill which passed out of committee last week. Find that here: http://goo.gl/7VYSwY

OCR ON THE PROWL AGAIN: The Oregon Health & Science University will pay $2.7 million and carry out a “rigorous three-year corrective action plan” following two health information breaches in 2013. The first came from a stolen laptop. The second resulted from use of a cloud storage service without a business associate agreement. More info: http://goo.gl/OflcPu. Readers will note this is the latest from a very active HHS Office for Civil Rights.

MORE HEALTH IT BILLS IN THE SENATE: Before Congress left town for an extra-long recess, Minnesota Sen. Al Franken introduced the Connecting Rural Americans to Care Act, which would create an interagency task force on rural health IT. His bill would also tackle the FCC’s Healthcare Connect Fund by increasing the discount for broadband adoption from 65 percent to 85 percent and streamlining the application process. A one-pager on the bill: https://goo.gl/YUaZOd The full text: http://goo.gl/zQwlWM

Related: The Senate Rural Health Caucus, of which Franken is a member, sent a letter to Sec. Sylvia Mathews Burwell last week asking HHS to task the National Quality Forum with convening a Rural Measure Applications Partnership to develop metrics that are more reflective of rural providers.

POLITICO AT THE RNC: POLITICO AT THE RNC: Join POLITICO for our Nightly Lounge at the POLITICO Hub in Cleveland for cocktails, convention conversation, and live viewing of the convention speeches. POLITICO Hub - 925 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Learn more about our featured nightly programming: http://politi.co/29lvLAK

UPDATE YOUR ROLODEX: Sylvan Waller was named chief medical officer at MDLive effectively immediately. She was previously founder and chief executive of Alii Healthcare.

WHAT WE’RE CLICKING:

Eric Topol opines on the digitized patient: https://goo.gl/fdqjtm

Finding the hidden ROI in EHR implementation: http://goo.gl/fHW1tg

Research says mobile health apps are largely unusable: http://goo.gl/ZYkPxm

Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush calls ONC’s EHR comparison systems a “parking meter comparison tool”: http://goo.gl/pDjP9y

Study finds travel savings for VA because of telemedicine: http://goo.gl/onIW6E

Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Arthur Allen ([email protected], @ArthurAllen202), David Pittman ([email protected], @David_Pittman) and Darius Tahir ([email protected], (@DariusTahir).

Follow us on Twitter Mohana Ravindranath @ravindranize



Darius Tahir @dariustahir