Stay in the know with Becker's Hospital Review's weekly news roundup of the nation's biggest healthcare stories. Here's what you need to know this week.
1. Senate approves bipartisan 'doc fix' bill
The U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan "doc fix" bill in a vote of 92-8 on Tuesday, repealing the sustainable growth rate formula and ending Congress' annual ritual of passing short-term patches to stall Medicare reimbursement cuts to physicians. The U.S. House passed the legislation, H.R. 2, in March with a vote of 392-37. The bill is now on its way to President Barack Obama's desk, and he has already indicated he will sign the legislation into law. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) crafted the legislation, which is expected to cost more than $210 billion over 10 years with about $73 billion of that cost offset with spending cuts or new revenue.
2. U.S. healthcare costs to soar to $3.2 trillion this year
U.S. healthcare spending is projected to reach $3.2 trillion in 2015, which comes out to $10,000 of healthcare costs per person. If this trend sticks, costs will reach $7.2 trillion by 2020. The rise in costs is largely driven by the aging population.
3. IBM launches platform sharing, analyzing health data: Watson Health Cloud
IBM established a dedicated health unit that will be headquartered in the Boston area, IBM Watson Health, which is anchored by the Watson Health Cloud. The HIPAA-enabled Watson Health Cloud platform will provide secure access to individualized insights and a more complete portrait of the numerous factors affecting people's health. It allows personal health data to be anonymized, shared and combined with a dynamic and constantly growing aggregated view of clinical, research and social health data. IBM is entering into partnerships with Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic to help optimize consumer and medical devices for data collection, analysis and feedback. IBM is additionally acquiring Explorys and Phytel to improve its healthcare analytics capabilities.
4. First year of Pioneer Program shows reduction in Medicare spending
The Pioneer accountable care organization program produced moderate Medicare savings, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine. ACOs with higher baseline spending and those serving high-spending areas shared in greater savings than organizations with a lower baseline and those serving low-spending areas, according to the report. Three years ago, 32 organizations joined the Pioneer Program, which allowed participants to share in Medicare savings if the organizations generated a sufficient reduction in spending for an attributed group of patients and met quality benchmarks. Pioneer ACOs share in both savings risk, so if spending exceeded benchmarks, the organizations incurred losses.
5. ONC loosens patient engagement requirements for MU Stage 3
The ONC incorporated wording into the meaningful use stage 3 proposed rule that lessens the requirements for patient engagement. The changes to the rule's wording in the patient engagement objective eases the burden placed on providers for patients to view, download or transmit their health information. Healthcare organizations are still required to provide access to view, download or transmit information to at least 50 percent of patients, but the patient engagement requirement for stage 3 has been changed to require only that one patient view, download or transmit his or her information.
6. Indiana HIV outbreak cases top 100
Indiana state officials announced the intravenous prescription-drug related outbreak of HIV in southeastern Indiana reach 106 cases. The outbreak — concentrated in Scott County — is the biggest HIV outbreak the state has ever seen. A short-term state-authorized needle exchange program, authorized by Gov. Mike Pence, began April 11 in Scott County to combat the outbreak. The program expires April 25, but it may be extended if the need arises.
7. Ophthalmologist associated with NJ senator arrested on Medicare fraud charges
Florida ophthalmologist Salomon E. Melgen, MD, was arrested by federal authorities and charged with 46 counts of healthcare fraud, according to the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Melgen faces bribery charges with New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez (D), to which both men pleaded not guilty. Among the fraud charges Dr. Melgen is facing are allegations that he submitted false claims to Medicare between 2004 and 2013. The indictment filed by federal prosecutors describes Dr. Melgen's practices as a "high-volume operation" and outlines patient files that include false patient information and fraudulent billing submissions for more than two dozen patients.
8. Kaiser Permanente to build IT campus in Georgia, create 900 jobs
The Georgia Department of Economic Development announced Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente plans to build a Kaiser Permanente IT campus in Atlanta. In total, the new 157,000 campus is expected to create approximately 900 IT jobs by 2019. There are more than 200 health IT companies throughout Georgia, which is becoming "the country's health IT capital."
9. Epic waives record sharing fee
Verona, Wis.-based Epic is no longer charging a fee to exchange patient records with providers using a different EHR vendor. Eric Helsher, vice president of client success at Epic, said the company has been considering waiving the fee for several years. The waived fee went into effect April 1. Epic also brought approximately 2,700 employees to HIMSS15 this week in Chicago. Cerner, on the other hand, brought 377.
Like Epic, athenahealth will also waive the data exchange fees for its clients, offering CommonWell's services to its 62,000 clients for free.
10. Star ratings go live on Hospital Compare: How many hospitals got 5 stars?
CMS' Hospital Compare website added star ratings of hospitals for potential patients to view, effective Thursday. The star ratings are based on HCAHPS scores. CMS added the star ratings to "make is easier for consumers to use the information on the Compare Web sites and spotlight excellence in healthcare quality," according to the HCAHPS website. Each hospital will have 12 star ratings — one for each of the 11 publicly reported HCAHPS measures, and one as the summary HCAHPS Summary Star Rating. The Summary Star Rating combines the 11 HCAHPS star ratings into one comprehensive metric. The largest proportion of hospitals (40 percent) received three stars, 34 percent received four stars, 15 percent received two stars, 7 percent received five stars and 3 percent received 1 star.
11. Epic, eClinicalWorks interoperable on Carequality framework
Epic and eClinicalWorks users can now exchange data on the Carequality framework from Healtheway. Epic and Westborough, Mass.-based eClinicalWorks together serve more than 1,000 hospitals and 40,000 clinics. The interoperation is being piloted with Entira Family Clinics, which uses eClinicalWorks EHR, and HealthEast Hospital, which uses Epic, both located in St. Paul, Minn. Carequality is an industry coalition to advance interoperability, and currently includes 70 organizations. It is operated by McLean, Va.-based Healtheway.