At the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s second roundtable on digital health, Jonathan Bush spoke up for the people who were not in the room. He and several of 10 panelists explained that the culture of “wanton, random, soul-crushing regulation” was scaring many entrepreneurs and millions of VC dollars away from healthcare.
He had two asks of the committee during the hearing. One was to change enough laws to fix the business model of healthcare.
“You guys have made things that work in every other industry illegal in healthcare,” he said. “You can be drunk and in the wrong country and you can get your bank balance reconciled because the bank that needed the info can pay the other bank $3 to get it. If that happened between a doc and hospital, it’s prison time for that crime of supply-chain partnership.”
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
His second ask was about the incredibly discouraging effect of the reversals CMS has made lately around the deadlines for new rules. He had two specific examples.
“We put in 200,000 hours to make sure that every one of our 52,000 docs would be ICD-10 compliant, and on April Fools Day we got a letter that said, ‘Nope just kidding,'” he said. “So we’re a public company and we’re annoyed, but those kids! They had worked weekends and had pizza parties, and for nothing.”
He said the same thing happened when athenahealth got permission from OIG to pay for exchanges of healthcare data between doctors.
“We spent three years repricing our EMR so doctors could be paid by the order and then one year later, after you said yes, you said, ‘No, you can’t.'”
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
Bush gave Anne Wojcicki, CEO & Co-Founder of 23andMe and another panelist, credit for slogging through battles with the FDA.
“What I’m thinking about is all the entrepreneurs who will not do it,” he said. “These people here today are a small part of the potential energy in healthcare. It is the disruptors that you need to let in.”
