Health Headlines for Thursday, March 29
New Medicare Rule Promises Needless Suffering for Pain Patients
Reason
The CDC’s controversial but officially optional opioid prescription guidelines, which encourage doctors to be as stingy as possible with pain medication, seem to be getting more mandatory every day.
New York PDMP Achieves Healthcare Interoperability with 25 States
EHR Intelligence
New York’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) has achieved healthcare interoperability with PDMPs in 25 other states and Washington DC, according to a recent announcement from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
NY budget likely spares public from most of Cuomo’s proposed tax increases
Syracuse Post Standard
Budget negotiators in Albany have nixed most of the $1 billion in new taxes and fees proposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo as part of a plan to deal with the state’s budget deficit.
UnitedHealth CEO: Tech will rein in health-sector costs — and maybe growth, too
Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal
Health care is one of the nation’s fastest-growing industries, but UnitedHealth CEO Dave Wichmann said he sees the potential for a slowdown eventually, as technology gets a grip on rising costs.
NYS DFS Issues Sweeping New FAQs Affecting Scope of Its Cybersecurity Regulations
New York Law Journal
The cybersecurity regulations from the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) that went into effect on March 1, 2017 have had wide-reaching effects in the financial services industry and beyond.
Hopes are high for Amazon’s entry into health care—as long as they don’t ‘pull a Facebook’
CNBC
Amazon can reinvent the drug supply chain and infuse transparency into the health-care system, but it needs to be careful with patient data, panelists said at CNBC’s “Healthy Returns” conference.