Senate health funding bill coming

SENATE HHS FUNDING BILL COMING: The Senate’s back in session this evening, and that’ll eventually kick off the chamber’s legislative process on voting for the mammoth Labor-HHS-Education (S. 3158 (115)) spending bill. The legislation is likely to attract a slew of amendments related to the family separation crisis and abortion, among other subjects. Any resulting plan would have to be reconciled with that of the fractious House.

PERSONNEL MOVES AT VA, FBI: A few personnel shuffles to keep track of at Veterans Affairs and the FBI:

— VA: Earlier this week, the VA announced a reorganization spearheaded by new secretary Robert Wilkie. Peter O’Rourke, the department’s chief of staff and bete noire of some of the conservative officials agitating against ex-secretary David Shulkin, will become a senior advisor. He’ll be replaced by Pamela Powers, previously Wilkie’s chief of staff in his previous role at the Department of Defense. Chris Syrek will be the deputy chief of staff.
Jacquelyn Hayes-Byrd is now the acting assistant secretary for human resources and administration; she was previous acting chief of staff for the department.

— FBI: The bureau has filled several of its top cybersecurity positions, our colleague Eric Geller reports. Matt Gorham will lead its Cyber Division, while Amy Hess — the previous leader of the FBI’s Louisville division — will lead a branch that oversees the division.

eHealth tweets of the day: Jay Parkinson MD, MPH @jayparkinson “Sherpaa has had some successes & failures, but the amount of time & money wasted on conversations with hospital networks is on another level. Discussions last literally years. Here’s the secret to success in working with them:”

“1. Sell them something for millions that kinda looks like innovation, but will have zero impact on their revenue. That way, they get to buy billboards on the highway to appear patient-centric. 2. Sell them something that will increase their revenue with no increase in quality.”

“Example #1: telehealth platforms. Sold for millions. And literally hundreds of users/crickets. Example #2: Uber rides for doctor visits to increase patient visits.”

“Here’s how this will go for Amazon, BH, JPM:

‘Hi #1 Local Hospital(LH). We’d like to make a deal.’

LH: ‘Cool. We like $!’

ABJ: ‘We’d like to pay less.’

LH: ‘Ok, let’s try it out.’

ABJ: ‘We paid less!’

LH: ‘If you don’t pay us more, we’ll drop you. We heard #2 LH is interested.’”

WEDNESDAY: Your correspondent, like many people, does not enjoy being inflicted by others’ fishing stories, shaggy-dog stories, etc. Generally people’s feats are not as interesting as they believe. Still, your correspondent has a fun one to relate: early this week, his softball team crushed some opponents shorthanded — playing eight players of the 10 one can put on the field at any one time. The secret? One teammate’s mom was flight-delayed and jumped in one short notice. It was all very amusing. Share fun athletic feats at [email protected]. Discuss athleticism socially at @arthurallen202, @dariustahir, @ravindranize, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_eHealth.

TECH ROUNDUP: A whirlwind of funding and client news to update you all:

— Oscar Health: The buzzy health startup — co-founded by Josh Kushner, Jared’s brother — secured a bumper round of $375 million in new investment from Google parent company Alphabet on Tuesday. It’s the second huge round this year for the company sharing a name with your correspondent’s favorite trashcan-dwelling muppet — in March, it raised $165 million. The company intends to expand into Medicare Advantage by 2020, a statement said. Since its inception, it’s struggled to turn a profit, as is often common in Silicon Valley-style startups.

As is typical for this particular startup, the news touched off a spate of speculation and snark. Ace CNBC reporter Christina Farr re-upped an article from earlier this year noting that Oscar and Alphabet’s life sciences division, Verily, might have strategic interests in common — for example, by teaming up to provide population health services.

On the snark end of spectrum, insurance wonk David Anderson and Blue Shield California executive Gary Cohen exchanged some banter about the company. Anderson: “details, details, profits are for old fuddy duddies not disruptive disruptors”

Cohen, in response: “I bet I could lose a lot less money just by doing nothing if Alphabet gave me $375 million. But seriously, folks, I wish I understood Oscar’s business strategy. Just look at how well they’ve done in the CA Exchange market. 1.7% market share as of 3/18.”

The startup’s CEO and co-founder, Mario Schlosser, gave an interview to Wired.

— Sansoro Health: The data integrating startup announced it’d raised $8 million. The company touts its API integration.

— Nevada exchange: Nevada’s Silver State Health Insurance Exchange on Tuesday awarded the state contract to take back control over its technology platform to GetInsured, a Mountain View, Calif., health insurance and technology company that transitioned Idaho off the HealthCare.gov platform and provides e-commerce technology for six other state exchanges.

Nevada, which tried but failed to manage its technology when the exchange debuted in 2014, wanted to run its own platform due to the rising costs of relying on the federal website. The state estimated that running its own platform could save the state as much as $6 million a year. It’ll be shifting to GetInsured’s platform in 2020.

— Healthix switches vendors: Healthix, one of New York’s health information exchanges, is shifting to Verato’s master patient index services.

HHS UPDATE: Some things to keep aware of regarding HHS:

— ACO shakeout: CMS’s recent accountable care organization rule — which is, in part, aimed at making ACOs take on more financial risk — is having ripples in the market. Arizona Care Network is withdrawing from the program, the organization told the Phoenix Business Journal.

— Removal of refugee office directory OK, they say: An HHS spokeswoman defended the removal of a staff directory from the Office of Refugee Resettlement website, our colleague Ted Hesson writes. The spokeswoman said the change was “designed to get individuals with questions to email mailboxes and phone numbers that are regularly monitored.” Watchdogs had claimed the removal violated the Paperwork Reduction Act. The office has had primary responsibility for dealing with children separated from their families as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” border policy.

PRIMARY NIGHT NOTE: One result to note in Tuesday night’s primaries in Minnesota: Jim Hagedorn’s clinching of the nomination in the state’s first district. Hagedorn, as we previously noted, was profiled by the Healthcare Leadershi Council; in the council’s profile, his views on whether to prohibit data blocking — among other health tech policies — are unknown. While the district leans Republican in the typical year, the political prognosticators view the race as a toss-up. An April opinion piece in the Washington Examiner asked whether Hagedorn deserves the dubious honor of “the worst Republican candidate in America,” due to his embrace of conspiracy theories (among other controversial claims) as a blogger.

RESEARCH NOTES: Health Affairs has a call for submissions for an issue on the Military Health System. The journal issued a request for abstracts; one of the topics of interest is “data/information management,” which includes telemedicine and EHRs on the like. The deadline is September 10; more details here.

WHAT WE’RE CLICKING ON:

Xconomy has a preview of Epic’s “unUGM” summit, targeted for providers who want to exchange information with Epic users.

Apple has a team exploring a custom processor for health sensor data, CNBC reports.

Chilmark Research breaks down the new ACO rule.

Health Affairs’ blog discusses the changes in the ACO market.