There are good surprises and bad surprises. When you put on a coat that you haven’t worn in a while and find cash in the pocket, that’s good. When you have a medical issue and realize the health care system is just as non-patient-focused as you complain about in your day job, that shouldn’t be a surprise but it is, and it is a bad one. When kids are sick or injured, parents know that mental distraction is the best thing. Our go-to was Star Wars movies. Nothing like a little inspirational Yoda dialogue to get you through a tough time. But when you’re not a kid, what do you do? You just blatantly revert to being a kid who needs their Mommy and Muppets. It works, and it will even work to understand what is going on in the health information space, which we explain below in the One Thoughtful Paragraph.
This is not the news that will help you get through an illness or injury, so only continue to read if you’re feeling happy and well:
- The White House AI Council met this week to say nothing about anything three months after President Biden’s AI Executive Order.
- Telehealth services, which everyone seems to agree is a useful and convenient way to get health care to people, is still not a major component of our health care system. So, naturally, Congress wrote a note to HHS, because legislating is hard. At least there is a new rule that will allow some providers to treat patients with opioid use disorder through telehealth.
- CMS invited vendors and other interested parties to provide feedback on draft electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) specifications through its eCQM issue tracker. The agency is seeking comment on Hospital and Critical Access Hospital eCQMs and Eligible Clinician eCQMs.
If you are of a certain age, you remember being delightfully surprised to see Kermit the Frog riding a bicycle or playing a banjo. It was great fun and one of those moments where you were impressed by a leap forward in human ingenuity. It is a different time now, so these sorts of Rated-G delights aren’t really a thing. But people still try: This week, a Digital Health Caucus launched in the U.S. House of Representatives – spurred on by the Consumer Technology Association. We also just noticed that the weird, new health care agency – the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) — announced a promising-sounding project that will pay organizations to fix preventable health care problems. Naturally, it is called the “Heroes” program. These little surprising rays of hope may not be the equivalent of Frank Oz-inspired puppets (he did Yoda, Ms. Piggy, Fozzie the Bear), but it is like we took the song “Movin’ Right Along” to heart: “Opportunity knocks, let’s reach out and grab it.”
