Connected Health Initiative Urges CMS to Support mHealth Innovation in IPPS

As healthcare becomes increasingly virtual, the Connected Health Initiative (CHI) sent a letter to Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and various other agencies to expand mobile health innovation while maintaining confidentiality.

CHI is a coalition that includes a variety of stakeholders, ranging from physician and patient groups to pharmaceutical and software companies and research universities. Its steering committee includes Boston Children's Hospital, HIMSS, Apple, and UnitedHealth Group.

In its letter, CHI expressed support for mobile health innovation, as well as several of the potential changes that CMS has proposed for the Medicare hospital inpatient prospective payment systems (IPPS).

“We believe CMS shares CHI’s vision of a seamless and interoperable healthcare ecosystem that leverages the power of PGHD [patient-generated health data] and can be realized through the trusted framework, and we strongly encourage CMS to ensure that its efforts prioritize data generated by patients outside of the traditional care setting,” said Brian Scarpelli, senior global policy counsel, and Leanna Wade, policy associate, at CHI, who wrote the letter.

In addition to its overall support for the proposed revisions to IPPS, CHI offered comments for CMS to consider before permanently implementing them.

One of CHI's recommendations is to increase collaborative efforts with neighboring agencies that have common interests. For instance, CHI urges CMS to work with other agencies like the Office of the Inspector General to finalize an information blocking rule that clarifies enforcement to prevent confusion and reduce compliance burdens.

CHI also supports CMS' plans to increase flexibility within the Promoting Interoperability scoring process as well as limiting compliance burdens. Specifically, CHI supports various proposed Promoting Interoperability measures that will incentivize the use of remote monitoring and telehealth innovations to address pressing public safety needs, like the opioid crisis in America.

Further, CHI supports the secure exchange of information between healthcare stakeholders, along with limiting burdens. Thus, CHI supports using technical protection methods and multi-step authentication methods to ensure confidentiality.

But CHI also reiterated its lack of confidence that the 2015 ONC CEHRT standards facilitate seamless interoperability.

Finally, CHI urges CMS to align Medicaid policies with Medicare program changes that allow physicians to use telehealth and remote monitoring technologies with more flexibility.

The CHI letter follows new data indicating a potential lag in digital health adoption.

A recent survey of 10,000 clinicians shows that most clinicians believe that remote patient monitoring (RPM) is effective, but the amount who would consider using it is smaller. Only 22 percent of rural and 28 percent of non-rural healthcare professionals currently use RPM tools. Only about half of rural and non-rural clinicians are interested in adopting them in the future.

Further, telehealth use dropped in March for the second month in a row, according to new data from FAIR Health.