{"id":20155,"date":"2020-08-17T09:00:21","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T09:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imatsolutions.com\/?p=20155"},"modified":"2025-11-04T11:50:51","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T11:50:51","slug":"health-data-news-roundup-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imatsolutions.com\/index.php\/2020\/08\/health-data-news-roundup-80\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Data News Roundup: Patient Matching Bill; HHS Funding for HIEs; and Virtual Medicare Advantage Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Welcome to the Health Data Weekly News Roundup from IMAT Solutions. As the power of data continues to grow in the healthcare arena, today\u2019s care organizations need to be on the forefront of all news and trends to help ensure that their data analytics efforts deliver accountable and informed care. Each week, we will provide you with the actionable news you need to meet these goals.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/ehrintelligence.com\/news\/sens.-introduce-bill-to-enhance-patient-matching-contact-tracing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Sens. Introduce Bill to Enhance Patient Matching, Contact Tracing<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nUS Senators Maggie Hassan, D-New Hampshire, and Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, <a href=\"https:\/\/ehrintelligence.com\/news\/sens.-introduce-bill-to-enhance-patient-matching-contact-tracing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">introduced<\/a> bipartisan legislation to allow HIEs to utilize the US Postal Service (USPS) tool to enhance patient matching and standardize patient data formatting in EHR systems.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.beckershospitalreview.com\/ehrs\/hhs-awarding-2-5m-to-hies-to-strengthen-infrastructure-support-public-health-agencies.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">HHS Awarding $2.5M to HIEs to Strengthen Infrastructure, Support Public Health Agencies<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nLast week, HHS <a href=\"https:\/\/www.beckershospitalreview.com\/ehrs\/hhs-awarding-2-5m-to-hies-to-strengthen-infrastructure-support-public-health-agencies.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">announced<\/a> a new $2.5 million funding opportunity intended to improve electronic health information data exchange among health information exchanges and state and local public health agencies.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/healthpayerintelligence.com\/news\/covid-19-waivers-improved-medicare-advantage-telehealth-access\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">COVID-19 Waivers Improved Medicare Advantage Telehealth Access<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nMedicare Advantage plans and other stakeholders reported that CMS waivers successfully enabled Medicare and Medicare Advantage telehealth access during the coronavirus pandemic, but several barriers remain, <a href=\"https:\/\/healthpayerintelligence.com\/news\/covid-19-waivers-improved-medicare-advantage-telehealth-access\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">according<\/a> to a recent study.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/healthpayerintelligence.com\/news\/dawn-of-the-virtual-medicare-advantage-plan-from-alignment-health\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dawn of the Virtual Medicare Advantage Plan from Alignment Health<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nAs part of its product and footprint expansion in 2021, Alignment Healthcare (\u201cAlignment\u201d) plans to launch a virtual Medicare Advantage plan, the payer <a href=\"https:\/\/healthpayerintelligence.com\/news\/dawn-of-the-virtual-medicare-advantage-plan-from-alignment-health\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">recently announced.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/healthpayerintelligence.com\/news\/mo-passes-medicaid-expansion-second-state-to-expand-amid-covid-19\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">MO Passes Medicaid Expansion, Second State to Expand Amid COVID-19<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nMissouri <a href=\"https:\/\/healthpayerintelligence.com\/news\/mo-passes-medicaid-expansion-second-state-to-expand-amid-covid-19\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">will move forward<\/a> with its Medicaid expansion amendment, as 53 percent of the nearly 1.3 million voters approved the measure.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/healthpayerintelligence.com\/features\/navigating-medigap-plans-how-payers-can-lead-the-way\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Navigating Medigap Plans: How Payers Can Lead the Way<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nPayers can play a key role in helping consumers understand their Medigap benefits and policy options through greater benefit and price transparency, according to this recent <a href=\"https:\/\/healthpayerintelligence.com\/features\/navigating-medigap-plans-how-payers-can-lead-the-way\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Health Payer Intelligence <\/em>article.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/ehrintelligence.com\/news\/directtrust-forms-consensus-body-to-enhance-interoperability\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">DirectTrust Forms Consensus Body to Enhance Interoperability<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nDirectTrust <a href=\"https:\/\/ehrintelligence.com\/news\/directtrust-forms-consensus-body-to-enhance-interoperability\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">announced the creation<\/a> of a consensus body to pursue the development of an implementation guide that utilizes the Direct Standard to increase interoperability between Admission, Discharge, Transfer (ADT) notifications.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><strong>Don\u2019t miss out on the opportunity to maximize your data for the best performance outcomes!<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.surveymonkey.com\/r\/HealthDataConfidence\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Take the DCI Survey<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to the Health Data Weekly News Roundup from IMAT Solutions. As the power of data continues to grow in the healthcare arena, today\u2019s care organizations need to be on the forefront of all news and trends to help ensure that their data analytics efforts deliver accountable and informed care. Each week, we will provide you with the actionable news you need to meet these goals. Sens. Introduce Bill to Enhance Patient Matching, Contact Tracing&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":20158,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[265],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imatsolutions.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20155"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imatsolutions.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imatsolutions.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imatsolutions.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imatsolutions.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20155"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/imatsolutions.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20160,"href":"https:\/\/imatsolutions.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20155\/revisions\/20160"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imatsolutions.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imatsolutions.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imatsolutions.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imatsolutions.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}