Category: Patient Care

Photograph from above of a health care provider taking a patient's blood pressure.

Diving Deeper into Amazon Alexa’s HIPAA Compliance

Adriana Krasniansky 1 Comment

By Adriana Krasniansky

Earlier this year, consumer technology company Amazon made waves in health care when it announced that its Alexa Skills Kit, a suite of tools for building voice programs, would be HIPAA compliant. Using the Alexa Skills Kit, companies could build voice experiences for Amazon Echo devices that communicate personal health information with patients. 

Amazon initially limited access to its HIPAA-updated voice platform to six health care companies, ranging from pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to hospitals. However, Amazon plans to expand access and has identified health care as a top focus area. Given Thursday’s announcement of new Alexa-enabled wearables (earbuds, glasses, a biometric ring)—likely indicators of upcoming personal health applications—let’s dive deeper into Alexa’s HIPAA compliance and its implications for the health care industry.
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Photograph of protestor holding a hot pink sign that reads "I Stand with Planned Parenthood"

Trump’s Title X Gag Rule: An Ethical Conundrum for Planned Parenthood

Beatrice Brown Leave a comment

By Beatrice Brown

On August 19, Planned Parenthood announced that they would be leaving the Title X family planning program due to the Trump Administration’s new prohibition that restricts those who receive Title X funds from providing or referring patients for abortion. This restriction on Title X funding has unsurprisingly been met with a lot of criticism, namely, that it interferes with a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. This can be seen as a partial victory for those who have been attempting to defund Planned Parenthood for years, an organization that, despite others’ characterizations, is fundamentally committed to providing all women access to quality health care and is not solely an abortion provider.

As a result of this gag rule, Planned Parenthood has faced a huge ethical dilemma: Do they continue to accept Title X funding to assist low-income women with everyday health care, such as yearly routine wellness visits, or do they reject this funding and both 1) take a stand on a woman’s constitutional right to abortion and 2) continue to provide a service (or retain the right to refer patients to a service) that is crucial to women’s health? Planned Parenthood has chosen the latter, and I think that Planned Parenthood’s difficult choice is justified.

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Photograph of a doctor holding a headset sitting in front of a laptop

Navigating Sensitive Hospital Conversations in the Age of Telemedicine

Adriana Krasniansky Leave a comment

By Adriana Krasniansky

On March 5, 2019, a terminally ill patient from Fremont, California, learned that he was expected to die within several days. The doctor who delivered the news did so via a robotic video teleconferencing device. 

Ernest Quintana, a 79-year-old patient with a previously-diagnosed terminal lung condition, was taken to the Kaiser Permanente Fremont Medical Center emergency room after reporting shortness of breath. His 16-year-old granddaughter, Annalisia Wilharm, was with him when a nurse stopped by and said that a doctor would visit shortly to deliver Mr. Quintana’s results. 

The video below, recorded by Ms. Wilharm, shows Mr. Quintana’s consultation with a critical care doctor through an Ava Robotics telepresence device—in which the doctor explains Mr. Quintana’s rapidly worsening condition and suggests transitioning to comfort care. Ms. Wilharm and her family chose to share the video with local media and on Facebook, inciting a debate around the legal and ethical challenges of using telemedicine in critical care conversations. 

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A yellow dentist chair, in an empty dental office.

Barriers to Dental Care Abound for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities

Alexandra Slessarev Leave a comment

In early May, a New York Times article profiled the N.Y.U. College of Dentistry’s Oral Health Center for People with Disabilities. As the Times article describes, the new facility establishes an important point of service for people with developmental disabilities in New York City. It also creates a much-needed pipeline for dentists skilled in treating this special population. Read More

hand of a doctor holding a stethoscope

Patient Safety: The Urgent Need for Global Information Sharing and Learning

John Tingle Leave a comment

Patient harm is the 14th leading contributor to the global disease burden, according to a new report by WHO, OECD, and the World Bank.

In resource-constrained health care environments, it is important not to reinvent the wheel and waste money when existing, proven patient safety solutions already exist in other countries. Global patient safety knowledge sharing, and learning helps all countries, regardless of income level and this needs to be encouraged. Read More

Two senior women jogging in a park

What Should We Ask About Age-Based Criteria in Healthcare?

Govind Persad Leave a comment

In the American health care system, age shapes patients’ options. Most people over age 65 are eligible for Medicare, which is inaccessible to almost everyone under 65.

But many providers limit older patients’ access to certain interventions—like in-vitro fertilization or organ transplants. Some clinical research studies also exclude older patients, while others stratify populations by age. And insurers in the Affordable Care Act’s individual marketplaces can legally charge older patients up to three times as much as younger patients, which has motivated calls to let people below 65 buy into the Medicare program (although these proposals use age 55 as an eligibility criterion). Many of these uses of age have generated debate in the past, and are likely to continue to generate debate in the future. Read More

hand reaching for blue pills

Author Q&A: Reducing High-Dose Opioid Prescribing

Temple University Center for Public Health Law Research Leave a comment
Sara Heins, PhD
Sara Heins, PhD, Associate Policy Researcher, RAND Corporation

From 1999 to 2017, almost 218,000 people died in the United States from overdoses related to prescription opioids. Overdose deaths involving prescription opioids were five times higher in 2017 than in 1999, according to the CDC.

Previous research has indicated that patients who receive higher doses of prescription opioids have an increased risk of overdose and mortality. In response, several states have established Morphine Equivalent Daily Dose (MEDD) thresholds that convert opioid prescriptions to their equivalent dose in morphine and divides the total prescription by the number of days the prescription is intended to last, allowing for comparison among different opioid formulations and strengths. MEDD policies set thresholds for prescribers, which may only be exceeded in limited circumstances, such as when being prescribed to certain patient groups or as short-courses.

Sara Heins, PhD, an associate policy researcher at RAND Corporation, used policy surveillance to track MEDD policies through June 1, 2017 (data are available on LawAtlas.org). She published an article in Pain Medicine on March 13 that describes U.S. MEDD policies.

We asked Dr. Heins a few questions about her work and this recent publication. Read More

Learning from Patient Deaths in the NHS

John Tingle Leave a comment

The independent regulator of health and social care in England, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has just published a report on how the National Health Service (NHS) is progressing in the first year of implementing national guidance on learning from deaths.

The report follows on from another published in 2016 which detailed major failings and concerns about the way the NHS investigate and learn from the deaths of patients in their care. The 2019 report contains several case studies which detail experiences of implementing the national guidance. Read More

Healthcare professional walking down a hospital hallway

An Urgent Need to Improve Mental Health Care in the National Health Service

John Tingle Leave a comment

Mental Health Care in the National Health Service in England has always existed in the shadow of physical care in terms of funding and NHS-government health policy priorities.

Many in the past have termed it the “Cinderella” part of the NHS. This neglect has been chronicled in numerous reports over the years pointing to many problems which include chronic under funding, poor patient safety, abuses of patient rights, poor complaint handling, unnecessary restrictive care regimes, poor patient, health carer communication, and poor patient satisfaction. Read More