Just in case you don’t have time to read the 219 page proposal, here are 6 key take aways from the new hospital price transparency rule. It will be interesting to watch how both health systems and consumers respond to the changes.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/cms-finalizes-hospital-price-transparency-rule-6-things-to-know.html

Interesting read after our Founder just gave two presentations on the future of healthcare and how “traditional healthcare” will be transformed over the next decade. New healthcare entrants including 84% of Fortune 50 companies have their sights set on the $3.5 trillion healthcare industry (18% of GDP). Venture Capital funding has doubled over the past 2 years, and AI investment is seeing an annual growth rate of 40%. Data surpassed O&G as the most valuable asset in our economy 2 years ago, and healthcare is the next big market for these tech giants. With the integration of EMR’s, health systems are very capable of capturing a significant amount of data.

But our current state of utilizing that data to its full potential is lacking, and that’s the market these tech giants want to capture. Traditional healthcare providers still own the data, but at what price or for what competitive advantages will they gladly share their assets? We have already seen traditional industry lines blurred with retailers partnering with pharmacies and insurers partnering with pharmaceutical manufacturers to leverage patient data to improve outcomes and lower health cost.

In regards to this article there’s also an interesting conversation around the privacy of patient data. As a professional ingrained in the world of HIM there is a clear argument for patient privacy and owning the rights to your health record. On the flip side, we all understand the bureaucracy that would surround gaining individual patient permission and how that would stifle innovation. The article states no HIPPA violations occurred, but there is still a question of ethics. But there is also a question of how much do patients care if data sharing leads to curing cancer. Thoughts?  The race is on. Pay attention.

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-ascension-collecting-private-health-data-wall-street-journal-2019-11?