The telehealth reseacher lobbyists love to hate

Ateev Mehrotra/Kayana Szymczak for STAT

If you follow telehealth policy discussions in Washington, you've probably probably seen physician and academic Ateev Mehrotra testify at almost every Congressional hearing on virtual care — and that began long before the pandemic, as he's been digging into the cost, quality and access implications of telehealth for much of his career. As I write in my latest profile, Mehrotra is broadly supportive of virtual care, but he's also urging Congress to think deeply about the tradeoffs it brings, including, in some instances, driving up costs and the volume of visits. But how did he arrive at this philosophy, one that's frustrated telehealth lobbyists and Congressional advocates for years? Read the story to find out.

Though I didn't note it in the story, Mehrotra is hardly the only researcher tackling these questions, though he does seem to be a leader and mentor to others in the field. RAND analyst Lori Usher-Pines has co-authored dozens of his papers beginning in 2010; she even got into telehealth research after working with Mehrotra on another analysis of patients' acute care preferences, she told me. "I figured the best way to grow as a health services researcher and have an impact was to keep working with him on whatever he did next. Telehealth was next."

"Ateev is really motivated about not only doing the science but using it to inform and influence policy," said Haiden Huskamp, another frequent co-author at Harvard.

Washington

AliveCor gets FDA nod for portable 12-lead, AI-powered ECG device

The heart monitoring company that's spent years fighting Apple over the technology embedded in consumer smart watches is now hoping to crack into professional health care with a new 12-lead electrocardiogram device that has scored clearance from the Food and Drug Administration, reports Mario Aguilar, who's been following the Apple-AliveCor battle for years. The Kardia 12L ECG System is a hand-held ECG device, and AliveCor, its manufacturer, also got clearance for software that can detect conditions such as arrhythmias by analyzing ECGs. Read more from Mario.

HHS finalizes info blocking penalties for providers

The ban on information blocking has been almost a decade in the making. But the federal government has finally cemented a key part of its strategy for ensuring that patients' health data is easier to access: financial disincentives for clinicians, hospitals and accountable care organizations that interfere with the transfer of health data. This final rule, released Monday and taking effect in a month, builds on the previous rule establishing disincentives for health IT vendors. Read more here, and let me know if you think these measures will move the needle.

Judge rules in favor of hospital lobby in privacy lawsuit

Elsewhere, Washington's effort to rein in the technology used on hospitals' websites has hit a roadblock: A federal judge has sided with the American Hospital Association in its lawsuit against the Health and Human Services Department charging that it doesn't have the authority to restrict the use of analytics trackers on hospitals' public-facing websites, including pixels. Patient privacy advocates have warned that using website trackers risks revealing sensitive medical information, like appointments, medical conditions and medication, with third-parties. Hospitals have argued that these trackers are critical parts of their web strategies. Read more.

Cybersecurity

Change to notify patients private info was compromised

Payment processing company and UnitedHealth Group property Change Healthcare is starting to notify a "substantial proportion" of Americans that their private information such as Social Security Numbers and medical diagnoses were compromised in the February cyberattack, Brittany Trang reports. It's been months since the attack, but providers are still dealing with the fallout — and some of Change's systems haven't yet been restored. More from Brittany.

lizzy's device digest

Will Zepbound hamper CPAP sales?

This week, devices reporter Lizzy Lawrence teamed up with our national biotech reporter Elaine Chen to investigate whether Eli Lilly's obesity drug Zepbound could help sleep apnea patients enough to impact CPAP sales. But industry experts are divided. "It's probably a little bit early to speculate [about] the demise of CPAP, but I feel like over the next several years it's going to be a therapy that's on the decline," Mizuho Securities health care analyst Jared Holz told them. Read more.

How Kaiser Permanente tracks and weeds out risky medical devices

This week Lizzy chatted with Liz Paxton, who runs a Kaiser Permanente implant registry that covers more than 12 million health plan members across 40 hospitals, on the surveillance system she launched more than two decades ago to track knee and hip replacement outcomes, and which she has since expanded to other clinical areas. In an interview, Paxton tells Lizzy that the registry began on paper before its health record system was fully online.

Today, Kaiser tracks patients, their implants, and health outcomes, which include re-operation. "Because we have an integrated system, we can identify any time the patient comes into the health system and has an interaction," Paxton said. "On an annual basis, we look at device performance. But if one of our physicians comes to us and says they think there's a problem with a device, we look into it immediately. The physicians are really good signal detectors. Every single time a physician has come to us and said, 'I think there's a problem with this device,' they're absolutely correct," she said. Read more from that conversation.

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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.