“The suspense is terrible. I hope it’ll last.” That’s what Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) says in the original Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory movie. It reflects how people seem to be treating the weird election cycle we are in right now. Wanting it to be over but not wanting it to end. But the election suspense will not last, and I am afraid that – just like after a good Halloween haul – we will all feel a little sick when the votes start to come in. It is just uncomfortable to know that half the people you are trick or treating with are going to be really unhappy next week, but you don’t know who is going to be unhappy. The suspense is killing us. In the One Thoughtful Paragraph, you will notice that there are also a number of health policies that are holding us all in suspense.
Some suspenseful health policy news:
- At the HLTH conference, HHS leaders said that they are developing a strategic plan – which includes hiring a chief technology officer, a chief data officer, and a chief AI officer – to start to regulate AI in healthcare and build compliance systems.
- The FDA shared more information about its Digital Health Advisory Committee Meeting on November 20 – 21, including questions concerning premarket performance evaluation, risk management, and post-market performance monitoring.
- HHS proposed updates to HIPAA that focus on improving the cybersecurity of electronic protected health information by strengthening security requirements for HIPAA-regulated organizations. These modifications are currently under review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
Do you know what the most popular Halloween costume was this year? Shrunken Head Bob from the Beetlejuice movie. Back in the politically incorrect days, we used to talk about going to a “shrink” for your mental health problems. Now that therapy is cool and you can get your head shrunk by video or phone, we find out that telehealth services are having a decidedly mixed experience in America. Psychologists are shifting their practices back in-person, citing payment and patient technology issues as main telehealth challenges, a study by the American Psychology Association states. But Teladoc showed strong earnings this quarter, Walgreens expanded its Walgreens Virtual Healthcare services to 30 states, and Talkspace is partnering with Wisdom Health to create a virtual mental health platform targeting 65+ year-olds suffering from loneliness. Just like the election, we seem to be in a suspended state about whether virtual health is good enough to make a bedrock of our health care system or if it is just a nice to have. This uncomfortable moment we are in should end, but it may not. Tim Burton, the disturbed individual who invented the Halloween movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, said (probably in a therapy session): “Every day is Halloween, isn’t it? For some of us.”
