On tap this week: HIMSS 2024 in Orlando

While I'm not onsite at HIMSS, I'm following the health IT convention from afar, so please keep me apprised of on-the-ground happenings! News from Orlando was light Monday, but I'm expecting more of the usual flurry of product announcements and research milestones: Notably, Google Cloud unveiled several new generative AI tools for health; Wolters Kluwer Health launched a new clinical decision support tool for large organizations that taps into an LLM trained on UpToDate, its flagship medical resource; and DocuSign and health information exchange Velatura are piloting a simplified patient consent process.

And though the news drop was not tied to HIMSS, health record company Epic's reported decision to join the Mac App Store is sure to come up at the conference, which draws tens of thousands of health IT professionals each year.

hospitals

How are those inbox fees working out?

Last week we linked to a STAT First Opinion piece arguing that charging patients for the time doctors spend responding to certain medical queries tends to benefit major health systems, not individual providers. KFF is also out with a fascinating deep dive into that practice, which has been facilitated since 2020 by new billing codes for emails requiring more than 5 minutes of doctors' time.

Screenshot 2024-03-11 at 5.31.13 PM

Among findings: Less than 20 percent of email claims required the patient to pay anything, and commercially insured patients with cost-sharing arrangements who did have to pay something out of pocket typically paid about $25. And about a third of messaging claims within private health plans came from family medicine practitioners, and another third from internal medicine. The analysis is based on Health Care Cost Institute claims data from 2020 and 2021.

cybersecurity

Medicare launches new loan program for providers affected by Change attack

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to give physician groups, hospitals and other provider organizations advance payments in an attempt to mitigate the impact of a cyberattack on Change Healthcare payment processing services, reports my colleague Brittany Trang, who's been hot on the Change beat for weeks. Unsurprisingly, interest groups including the American Hospital Association applauded the news.

UnitedHealth Group, which owns Change, has its own loan program for providers exclusively paid through that platform, but AHA has said it only applied to a small segment of hospitals. And several providers told Brittany their United loan offers made up 1 % or less than what they'd usually get from Change.
Read more from Brittany.

Lizzy's device digest

CooperSurgical fiasco raises questions about IVF fluid

Patients across the country have sued medical supply company CooperSurgical for allegedly destroying their embryos with its IVF fluid. The fluid, known as culture media, is supposed to help embryos develop enough for implantation — but CooperSurgical said in a recent product recall that it may have stunted embryo growth.

It's not clear yet what led to this particular problem, but it highlights another, much larger issue, Lizzy Lawrence reports: IVF doctors often don't know exactly what goes into the culture media, and while the Food and Drug Administration asks manufactures for a list of ingredients before it's sold, it doesn't require them to post it publicly.

"We should be given full information. But unfortunately, this does not happen. They hide behind this proprietary formula," Pasquale Patrizio, a reproductive endocrinologist at the University of Miami, told Lizzy. Read more on this troubling issue.

Stimwave CEO convicted of fraud

A New York jury has convicted the former head of a nerve stimulation device company on two counts of health care fraud, Lizzy writes; Laura Perryman was previously CEO of Stimwave, which sold pain management devices outfitted with dummy pieces of plastic, as Lizzy reported previously. The company changed the device design to align with insurance codes, which led to the inclusion of unnecessary, non-functioning plastic pieces so the company could sell them for more money. Read more on the conviction here, and if you need a refresher, please revisit Lizzy's report last May describing, among other shocking details, Perryman's break-in to Stimwave's Florida offices to steal devices after she was fired.

Speaking of fraud, a nurse practitioner in New Jersey has pleaded guilty to trying to defraud Medicare of $136 million by bribing doctors to prescribe medically unnecessary orthotics and prescription drugs through two telehealth companies and two brace suppliers she owned. It's a little window into what telehealth fraud actually looks like today; telehealth critics have warned that the medium creates a larger opportunity for fraudulent billing, but advocates point out that durable medical equipment fraud has persisted for decades and doesn't require virtual appointments.

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What we're reading

UK researchers warn about biased medical device algorithms, STAT
Headspace CEO Russell Glass to step down, Behavioral Health Business
Dozens of top scientists sign effort to prevent AI bioweapons, NYT

Thanks for reading! More on Thursday - Mohana

Mohana Ravindranath is a Bay Area correspondent covering health tech at STAT and has made it her mission to separate out hype from reality in health care.