Talking the talk, if not walking the walk

AUG. 20-23: The industry may not have yet achieved broad interoperability, but it’s not for lack of talking about it. Data exchange will be one of the topics discussed at the annual Public Health Informatics Conference, hosted by the National Association of County and City Health Officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At one of the sessions, conference-goers will talk to a representative from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology about the Trusted Exchange Framework, through which the office intends to boost data-sharing among health information exchanges. Conference-goers might also discuss the recent move by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Salesforce to encourage open standards and open-source tools to achieve interoperability and “frictionless data exchange.”

AUG. 21: The government has a problem with Medicaid fraud. Improper Medicaid payments in fiscal 2017 hit $37 billion, more than 6% of the program’s total outlay of $596 billion, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Earlier this summer, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee met to discuss the problems facing Medicaid. Now, the committee will meet again, this time to talk about how the CMS is working to solve them.

AUG. 21: Premier, the group purchasing organization and consultancy, is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter and full-year financial and operating results for the periods ended June 30, before the market opens.

AUG. 22: The CMS is hosting a listening session about proposed changes to the 2019 physician fee schedule. The key theme will be “burden”—and reducing it. To do that, the agency wants to help clinicians participate in the Quality Payment Program and to make evaluation and management payment less onerous. At the session, CMS representatives will discuss both goals, along with making progress in virtual care, which stands to give physicians greater reimbursement if the proposed rule goes through.