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Welcome to this weekend Health IT News, where we look at as many stories as we can in 20 minutes or less that will impact health it. I am broadcasting on a weekend. I'm outdoors on a deck, and you're gonna hear lots of animals in the background, so, . Hopefully you'll enjoy the outdoors as much as I do doing this show.

It's Tuesday Newsday, and here's what we have on tap. We have a lot of stories. Kaiser named their first Chief, chief Digital Officer Cerner, is collaborating with Amazon. C m s has made some, uh, moves. Uh, Microsoft and others have come together, uh, to talk about their . Desire to share data. We have about 10, 11 stories here.

Let's see how many we get to. My name is Bill Russell, recovering Healthcare, c e o, and creator of this week in Health. It a set of podcasts and videos dedicated to developing the next generation of health IT leaders. This podcast is sponsored by health lyrics. Professional athletes have coaches for every aspect of their life to improve performance.

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Kaiser Permanente names First Chief Digital Officer. This is from Healthcare. Healthcare IT News, Pratt Vena. Comes from the consumer world. Currently serving as chief product and experience officer at the Home Depot and has worked at Staples, I assume in a executive role. Kaiser Permanente has created a new organizational role aimed at driving innovation in the enterprise, digital stra in in its enterprise digital strategy.

It'll be filled by Pratt and he will be tasked to work across all of Kaiser. Uh, let's see, as the Chief Digital Officer, Kaiser Foundation, health Plan, and Hospitals, bena reports to Dick Daniels, the c i o, and has accountability to Bernard Tyson, the c e o. His job will be to lead cross-functional teams across Kaiser, working to develop new technologies and processes for Kaiser's workforce and transform the way its 12 million members, patients, and customers experience.

Its online, mobile, and digital tools. Vena, who will begin on August 12th currently serves as the chief product officer. Uh, chief Product and Experience Officer for the Home Depot, where he charged strategy for improved customer experience across the corporation. He previously held leadership roles at Staples and Informed Clinical Sciences Corporation.

Uh, so what, you know, what the trend continues. Healthcare is going outside. To, to capture this experience and, and experience is the right word to capture people who understand creating experiences, uh, around a product or around a service and healthcare needs. This healthcare is, uh, uh, doing this over and over again, going outside, bringing these people in.

Uh, we have, uh, many examples from Disney, from Amazon, and now from the Home Depot, uh, and others. This is a good trend. This is, uh, exciting. I hope we continue to get really good around that consumer experience and get better at it. Uh, so congratulations to Pratt and best of luck, uh, in this exciting new role.

Second item, make public standard charges on the internet in a machine readable file that includes additional information such as common billing and accounting code used by the hospital, such as, uh, your c p s code, uh, and a description of the item in service. This provides common framework for comparing standard charges from hospital to hospital.

Number three, make payers. Make public payer specific negotiated charges for common shoppable services in a man manner that is consumer friendly. Shoppable is defined as shoppable services are services that can be scheduled by a healthcare consumer in advance. Examples of shoppable services include x-rays, outpatient visits, imaging lab visits, uh, and bundle services like cesarean delivery, including pre and post delivery care.

Uh, consumer friendly is designed as, uh, let's see, a means the hospital charge information must be made public in a prominent location online. Or in written form upon request. That's ugly. Let me read that again. That can't be right. Consumer friendly means the hospital charge information must be made public in a prominent location online or in a written form upon request.

I hope that it's not either or on that, uh, that is easily accessible without barriers and searchable. It also means the service descriptions are in plain language, and, uh, shopable service charges are displayed and grouped with charges for any ancillary service. The hospital customarily provides. With primarily shoppable services.

And let's see, what does SEMA Irma say? Well, she said a lot of things. Let's just take this one thing. So all Americans have the right to know the price of their he healthcare upfront. Hard to argue with that. It really is hard to argue with that. Uh, all Americans have the right to know the price of their health.

Here front. Uh, let's jump over to Kaiser Health. So, Kaiser Health News, uh, did a follow up. They did a story on what they, they did here, and they asked three questions. Will consumer use it? Uh, will it save money? And will it become law? Uh, will it, will consumers use it? Experts point to, uh, consumer behavior in New Hampshire, which posts price information by insurer online.

Only a small, small percentage took advantage of the online lookup tool, but those who did save money, according to a recent study by Zach Brown and an assistant professor of Economics at the University of Michigan, still the new data set proposed by the Trump administration might simply overwhelm many consumers.

Uh, so will consumers use it. Yeah, they're not using it a lot in New Hampshire. Well, let's talk about that for a second. New Hampshire's a pretty small state, doesn't recommend, doesn't, uh, represent a huge, uh, financial uptake for a startup. And so you don't have a lot of tech players going after this to make this information available in a nice, readable format.

So it's not being used by a ton of people, but those people who are using it are saving money, which would tell me. That the process works, but the access needs to be improved. And whenever you hear that, you should hear great opportunity for a startup organization. Um, so for our tech startup people in the audience, regulatory changes, uh, and uh, people trying to figure out what to do with it.

So there's an opportunity with hospitals. To try to figure out how to be compliant so you can help them. The second thing is there's a, if they make this data set available, there's a huge opportunity to, uh, for someone to grab all that data and make meaning of it for consumers and help them to navigate in a way that they save money, which clearly it does based on this study.

Yes. So will it save money? Will it save money in New Hampshire? It will probably save money across the country, and, uh, if you improve access, it'll save a lot of money. Uh, will it become law? The, uh, Kaiser Health, by the way, answers this question with, will it save money? Maybe not from experts. Will it, uh, will the consumers use it?

Maybe not. And will it become law? Maybe not. So it's a very definitive article from Kaiser Health News on, uh, and, and they're trying to straddle it here. I'm, I'm not trying to straddle it. This is, you know, getting data out into the hands of the users is, uh, uh, you know, is, is a good thing. And, uh, the question is how do you get into their hands in a way that they can use it to reduce the cost of healthcare, if that's your goal.

And when I think about this, I love what team of Irma is doing. I love the push of c m s and, uh, secretary Azar and where they're going. Protect the data has to be at the, at the center of this thing, and it's gonna be the area that people keep pointing to, to try to derail it. Um, you know, but here's, here's my twist for you.

When I talk about protecting the data, uh, a lot of health systems hear that and they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. You need to protect the data. We need to protect the data. Um, I'm saying protect the data from the health systems and the payers and everybody else. As a, as a, as a patient, my data is spewed.

All spew is spewed. Spewed, what is that a word? Spewed all over the world and, and, and literally all over the world. I mean, it's been hacked. It's been taken, it's been taken from Equifax, it's been taken from health systems. I mean, I've gotten the things. I said, Hey, we've been hacked. Would you like your identity protected?

Yeah, I'd love my identity protected, even though now my health record is all over the world. Okay. With that being said, I want to, I want to know . Here are the things I want to know. , I wanna know, uh, you know, where my health record resides, what parts of my health records reside, where, uh, I want the ability to aggregate it.

I wanna find a player who says, Hey, I'll aggregate it for you. And I go, here's the 10 places it is. And they're able to aggregate it. I want the ability to sell that data. I think that makes sense. I should be able to sell that data. And we talked about that with a uh, guest. Uh, couple weeks ago, just, uh, that, uh, there are places where they recognize the value of health data and you can, you can swap your health data for value.

Uh, which is a great thing. So anyway, um, so protect the data. I think CMA, Verma and, uh, that team at c m s needs to spend a little bit more time there. I think directionally this is, this is interesting and I think for our health startup, uh, and even our innovation groups within health hospitals right now, this is, this is just rich.

This is rich for opportunity, uh, and should be, uh, looking at it. So, uh, let's see. Next story. Cerner collaborates with Amazon Web Services on cloud innovation machine learning. Uh, let's see. Not gonna share much with this. Let's see. With, uh, with a new agreement, which names a w s as its preferred cloud provider, Cerner, c e o, Brent Schaeffer says the company will be able to develop more agile and scalable tools for its clients.

Cerner has announced a collaboration with giant Amazon Web Services with the aim of accelerating healthcare innovation. As part of the agreement, Cerner is naming a w s as its preferred cloud provider. Uh, that's probably really enough on this story. So what. You know, from a Cerner perspective, this is a pre-announcement.

We have no idea what they're gonna do within a w s, it's just directionally they're, they're, they've named a w s as their preferred cloud provider. This is interesting in that Cerner has been a hosting provider for a long time for its clients and, um, you know, have they been good at it? Have they not been good at it?

It's really up for debate. Uh, but the, the reality is a w s is better at it. Uh, better at it. They have more services and more, uh, things that they can provide within their cloud environment. Uh, so the question becomes what parts of a w s is, uh, Cerner gonna tap into, and what will it mean for their clients?

Uh, it's really too early to say at this point, if this is, again, great directionally, but from Amazon's perspective. Major win, huge win. Uh, depending on what Cerner decides to do on the platform, uh, this really could be a really huge win. Uh, you're just gonna have to stay tuned to see, uh, which direction this goes.

Uh, you know, let's stay with these guys. So Microsoft, Amazon, and other tech giants. Forge ahead on healthcare data Sharing Pledge. This is a GeekWire article. Uh, Amazon, Google, I b M, Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce. If you're wondering, they signed a joint letter. Think about that. They signed a joint letter.

Uh, and, uh, here's essentially what the, the tech giants have much to gain from opening up healthcare data as proof of this. The joint statement was proceeded by news that, uh, it's the Cerner news about a w Ss, uh, Microsoft has been competing fiercely convinced developers in the healthcare industry to build on its platform.

The company built. On Azure a p I for fire, which is a set of standards that codify how healthcare data should be structured. Last month, Microsoft hosted a developer's conference focused specifically on fire, and others have progress. Google's launched its beta version of Cloud Healthcare A P i.

Salesforce continues to grow its health cloud offering, and Oracle is leveraging FHIR to bring in clinical trials and other stuff. Uh, So they, you know, this is the second year in a row, they're saying, Hey, we are committed to, uh, to making value of this data. You, uh, so the question, so what on this is Amazon, Google, I b M, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.

How often do these companies agree and collaborate? The answer to that is almost zero. Um, . So why are they doing it? They need access to the data and they haven't been able to get it. That's the reason this data is a gold mine. Um, and so they are sort of coming together saying, let's get this, let's move this industry along.

Let's move this data and make it available. Um, the, the announcement really means, uh, almost next to nothing other than, uh, they . Are saying they are committed to the things that the government is committed to, which is getting that data out there, making it, uh, available, and then making meaning of that data, uh, for the user community.

But the only reason Amazon, Google, I b m, Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce do anything is to make money. So we'll have to see how they plan to, uh, monetize the value of that, but tucked into this story. Is, uh, this little snippet, and I love this little snippet 'cause it goes to what we were talking about.

In addition to the pledge, a coalition of big tech companies and healthcare industry names, including Apple, Humana, and the state of Washington today announced . That they would be testing new standards that give patients access to their claims data. The idea is to let people access their past healthcare information on an app of their choice, which they can use to inform the new providers or make decisions related to insurance coverage.

And this gets back to what we were talking about earlier. This is a good example of, you know, addressing the problem and the challenge that, uh, that exists and, uh, creating value for the, uh, for the consumers. Let's see. I, you know, I, I don't know how many more of these stories I'm gonna get to. Let's see, uh, Ascension, how Ascension got a hundred thousand additional visits this year with the help of online scheduling.

I. and, uh, you know, I just highlight that to say, uh, online scheduling platforms are very valuable. Uh, you know, this week in health it let's talk Health It. These are very, very valuable. They fill, uh, an open role, uh, unopened positions. Uh, they make it easier for people to, uh, schedule and reschedule visits.

And, uh, obviously the larger your health system, the more, uh, value you're gonna get out of a system like that. Uh, the next story I was gonna take a look at, Kaiser Health News has a story. Jenny, uh, Uh, Jenny Gold, uh, N B C News covered it. First kidney failure, then $540,000, uh, bill for dialysis. I point out that story and I brought that story in because, uh, you know, again, uh, this is an election cycle.

We're gonna see a lot of these stories, depending on which side you're for. You're gonna, you know, drum up these kinds of stories. This story lends itself to, uh, Medicare for all. It's, you know, and let's get the cost, uh, covered and look how horrible our health system is that we would generate this kind of bill.

And this is horrible, by the way, um, to have a $540,000, uh, dialysis bill, uh, storage's worth taking a look at. Uh, definitely something this health system needs to, uh, address and get, uh, Get in line, uh, on, so N B C News, Jenny Gold, uh, Kaiser Health News, also c v s Health launches, social determinants, uh, provider network.

I think, uh, again, also this is interesting. Uh, the reason I brought this in is I think it's, uh, interesting to have a, uh, platform where you can pull all this data into. I also think it's interesting that c v s is the one that's, uh, providing this, uh, this platform. I think it's called, uh, . Is it called Unite Us?

I think it's called Unite Us. And it's about, uh, a new platform as part of the company's a hundred million dollar effort for building healthier communities, uh, which is funded by C V Ss as well as C v s Health and Aetna Foundations. Out of about 6,000 walking, uh, waking hours in a year, most people only spend a handful in a doctor's office or hospital, says Karen Lynch, executive vice president of c v s Health, president of Aetna.

Yet spend, uh, a vast majority of their time in their community. So it's collecting, uh, the social determinants data, data, uh, putting it all in a place which hopefully then, uh, care providers can access it. And, uh, And, uh, use it to, uh, inform their patients on their different options. So, c v s Health launches, social Determinants Provider Network, uh, Bruce json, uh, Forbes article Worth, uh, taking a look at diagnostic Pill Samples bacteria while traveling inside the gut.

Uh, this is Tuft Tufts University Med Gadget. Uh, story, uh, or study, I don't remember which it is. Uh, the reason I pulled this up, Is, uh, I think we're gonna have more and more ways that we're gonna be collecting data as a health IT organization, and we're gonna need to find ways to collect that data, uh, to move that data into, uh, the workflow and make it available to the, uh, clinicians.

This's just another example of, uh, I guess technically this is IoT, a pill as an IoT device, uh, going in and taking samples and, uh, reporting back. Very interesting. Uh, let's take a look at this. I mean, we've talked about Amazon a bunch, but this one's interesting. Surescripts ups, its Battle with Amazon PillPack.

We are turning the matter over to the F B I. Amazon owned PillPack found a way to access its patient's prescription information via a third party called Remy Health. Surescripts, which contracts with Remy said this represents an unauthorized access to its network. Uh, Surescripts is the largest e-prescribing company in the United States.

Amazon threatened to Sue Surescripts, in turn, Surescripts claimed fraud and sued it in return. Uh, this is, uh, Chris Christina Farr, uh, C N B C, uh, news story. And, uh, you know, Surescripts has all that data and they're saying that's, uh, our data and our proprietary data. And, uh, Remy. Which has, has paid for access, is somehow sharing it to Amazon, which I'm sure violates their contract in some way, shape, or form.

And now, uh, Amazon is, uh, uh, you know, they're, they're gonna be fighting over that data. Uh, who loses this? Patience, patience, losing this . That's always, always the case. Um, . Because I, I, you know, I, again, I think we should be able to secure it. I don't think Surescripts should have, uh, control of my script data.

I don't think, uh, Amazon should have control of my script data. I think I should have control of my script data, and both of them should tell me what value they add to me. Surescripts could say, Hey, I make your, uh, data available to all the, uh, physicians across the country. And I go, Hey, that has value.

I'll give my data to Surescripts. And, uh, Amazon might say, Hey, I've, you know, I add value by fill in the blank. And I say, that adds value. But I, I really believe that the, uh, consumer should, uh, control that I'm looking to, uh, secretaries are, and, um, uh, administrator Verma to, uh, move that forward. And, uh, I dunno, I hit about seven or eight of the stories I wanted to hit more.

Uh, I hope that, uh, brings you up to, up to date on some of the things that are happening in the industry and gives you an idea of, uh, where they might go. So, uh, that's all for this week. Every Friday, check out our interviews with industry influencers. Uh, keep the comments coming. Bill it this week in health it.com.

Uh, good, bad or indifferent. It's all very helpful. Tha uh, this shows production of this week in health It. For more great content, you can check out our website. At this week, health.com or the YouTube channel at this week, health.com. And uh, click on the video link. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.