March 26: HHS Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan is likely to face some intense criticism when he visits the House Budget Committee to defend the administration’s 2020 budget blueprint. The administration is proposing a 12% cut in HHS’ overall budget, including $1.5 trillion to Medicaid from 2020 through 2029. The administration also wants to turn Medicaid into a block grant, which Democrats warned against when Hargan’s boss Alex Azar testified earlier this month: “Congress has already rejected attempts to block-grant Medicaid, so it’s deeply troubling to see this administration double down,” said Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.).
March 26: The HITECH Act, the law that propelled healthcare into the digital age, is 10 years old, but the industry still struggles to share data from one care setting to another and to give patients unfettered access to their records. The 21st Century Cures Act of 2016 mandated that the CMS and ONC accelerate interoperability and prevent data-blocking. The agencies took significant steps in February to address those requirements by releasing two proposed rules aimed at giving patients more access to data. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee meets to assess how well the agencies are doing in implementing the law.
March 26: Did you know? 30 million Americans have diabetes, which is about 9.4% of the U.S. population. Roughly 1 in 4 adults has the disease. Close to 84 million Americans have prediabetes and 9 in 10 adults in that category don’t even know it. For every $7 spent on healthcare, $1 goes toward treating diabetes and its complications. “Diabetes Alert Day is a one-day ‘wake-up call’ that focuses on the seriousness of diabetes,” according to the National Institutes of Health.
March 27-28: A who’s who of policy wonks headline the 2019 Health Datapalooza in Washington, D.C. They include HHS Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan; FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner of Food and Drugs Dr. Amy Abernethy; Dr. Donald Rucker, head of ONC; and several CMS officials. Industry leaders including Allscripts CEO Paul Black and Microsoft Corporate Vice President Peter Lee are also slated to speak.
