Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Google Fields Questions From Senators Over Its Acquisition Of Millions Of Patients' Health Records
Reuters: U.S. Lawmakers Question Google About Collection Of Health Records
U.S. Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren along with fellow Senators Richard Blumenthal and Bill Cassidy wrote a letter to Alphabet's Google on Wednesday to raise questions about its access to the health records of tens of millions of Americans. Warren and Blumenthal, who are Democrats, along with Cassidy, a Republican, were focused on a business partnership that Google formed with Ascension Health. (11/20)
Vox: Google’s Ascension Deal Gave The Company Access To Millions Of Medical Records. Here Are The Pros And Cons.
Google has been venturing into new areas of business and recently made huge news when it got access to the health records of millions of Americans through a partnership with the Ascension hospital network. Both companies insist their goal is “to provide better care to patients,” but the program, code-named Nightingale, is already creating major privacy concerns. Just 48 hours after it was announced, federal regulators from the Department of Health and Human Services announced an investigation into whether the partnership violates HIPPA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. (Paunescu, 11/19)
And in other news from the intersection of health and technology —
Kaiser Health News: No Safety Switch: How Lax Oversight Of Electronic Health Records Puts Patients At Risk
In fall 2009, several dozen of the best minds in health information technology huddled at a hotel outside Washington, D.C., to discuss potential dangers of an Obama White House plan to spend billions of tax dollars computerizing medical records. The health data geeks trusted that transitioning from paper to electronic records would cut down on medical errors, help identify new cures for disease and give patients an easy way to track their health care histories. (Schulte and Fry, 11/21)
Modern Healthcare: Physicians Score EHRs An 'F' On Usability, Study Finds
Electronic health record systems score in the bottom 9th percentile of technologies when evaluated for usability, according to a recent study published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings. That's a problem, because physicians who rate their EHR experience poorly are more likely to report symptoms of burnout, study authors wrote. (Cohen, 11/18)
