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Andrew Bindman, MD, will take the helm at the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Under the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services, AHRQ is charged with finding ways to improve healthcare by making it more accessible, affordable, equitable – and safer.

Microsoft purchased 10 million long oligonucleotides – DNA or RNA molecules used for genetic testing and research – from San Francisco startup Twist Bioscience, and is using them to encode digital data.

Michael Middleton, MD, credits online patient portals with helping him grow his Orlando, Florida-based pediatric practice more than three-fold in two-and-a-half years – while keeping staff cost increases at 20 percent.

A group of Republican senators who have been looking to "reboot" meaningful us since 2013 released new draft legislation this week they say aims to make the incentive program work better for providers and taxpayers. U.S. Senators John Thune, R-South Dakota, Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, Mike Enzi, R-Wyoming, Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, Richard Burr, R-North Carolina and Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana – all of whom voted against the 2009 ARRA law that helped establish meaningful use through the HITECH Act – wrote this week to HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell and CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt, looking for feedback on the bill. [Also: Republican senators want to ‘reboot’ MU] The draft legislation would shorten the reporting period for eligible physicians and hospitals from 365 days to 90 days, which would give providers more time to implement EHR systems, relax the all-or-nothing nature of the current program requirement, and extend the ability for eligible providers and hospitals to apply for a hardship exemption from the meaningful use requirements. "These policies seek to provide CMS with the tools and guidance necessary to advance the use of EHRs as part of utilizing health IT to the benefit of patients in a manner that protects the significant taxpayer investment in our nation’s health care system," the legislators write. Thune, Alexander, Enzi, Roberts, and Burr are original members of the Senate’s health IT working group, known as Re-examining the Strategies Needed to Successfully Adopt Health IT, or REBOOT. Back in 2013, they published a white paper outlining their complaints about lack of momentum toward interoperability, patient privacy concerns, EHRs' potential to enable fraud and abuse and other concerns about federal health IT policy. [Also: EHRA critiques GOP's MU 'reboot' plan] "We received critical feedback in response to our 2013 report which has informed our work on these issues," the senators wrote to Burwell and Slavitt this week. "We also engaged with stakeholders including health IT developers, providers, and patient-focused organizations to assess their experiences with the meaningful use program, as well as their concerns with the state of health IT, specifically EHRs, over the years. "In response to this feedback we have identified a few key policy changes outlined in the enclosed draft legislation, and we respectfully request feedback as part of our continued constructive dialogue on these issues."

The American Dental Association unwittingly sent malware-infected USB thumb drives to dental offices nationwide, the ADA confirmed today.

Four years after what Black Book calls the "replacement frenzy," a recent survey from the market research firm indicates that 87 percent of financially struggling hospitals now regret changing their EHR systems. Among the difficulties the survey highlighted were higher than expected costs, layoffs, declining inpatient revenues, disenfranchised clinicians and doubts over the benefits of switching systems. The survey, which polled 1,204 hospital executives and 2,133 IT staff users, found that 14 percent of all hospitals that replaced their original EHR since 2011 were losing inpatient revenue at a pace that wouldn't support the total cost of their replacement EHR. "It was a risky decision as hospitals were facing the fact that they would not be back to their pre-EHR implementation patient volumes, inpatient or ambulatory, for at least another five years," said Doug Brown, managing partner of Black Book, in a statement. [Also: 'Dissatisfaction' leading to EHR replacement trend] "No other industry spends so much per unit of IT on the part of the business that is shrinking the fastest and holds little growth as did inpatient revenues," he said. Other key findings Black Book gleaned from its survey: 62 percent of non-managerial IT staff says was a significantly negative impact on healthcare delivery directly attributable to the EHR replacement initiative; 90 percent of nurses indicated the EHR process changes diminished their ability to deliver hands-on care at the same effectiveness, yet only 5 percent of hospital leaders indicated EHR replacement had impacted care in a negative way. "In our experience polling, most executives will not admit they were oversold or that their IT decisions had adverse bearing on patient care," Brown noted. Black Book also found that hospital EHR replacements cost jobs, and levels of interoperability decreased. Also, EHR sales people exaggerated the automatic buy-in of physicians and other clinicians, according to Black Book findings.

Population health IT developer Caradigm named its new CEO on Thursday, promoting its chief technology officer Neal Singh to the executive role.

On Twitter, former National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari, MD, called it the "most substantive change to how healthcare is paid for in a couple of decades." The propsed MACRA rule put forth by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday also holds some pretty big changes for how health IT can be put to work by physicians to drive quality improvement and cost efficiencies. [Also: MACRA proposed rule published by HHS, streamlining federal programs including meaningful use] "By proposing a flexible, rather than a one-size-fits-all program, we are attempting to reflect how doctors and other clinicians deliver care and give them the opportunity to participate in a way that is best for them, their practice and their patients," said Patrick Conway, MD, chief medical officer at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in announcing the rule. "Reducing burden and improving how we measure performance supports clinicians in doing what they do best – caring for their patients." So far, most industry reaction to the notice for proposed rulemaking is positive – recognizing the fact CMS seems to have taken the feedback from more than 6,000 frontline healthcare stakeholders to heart, crafting a rule that's attuned to the needs of physicians. In a statement, HIMSS applauded the "significantly streamlined reporting and the acknowledgement process for MIPS-eligible clinicians" in the new rule. "We are encouraged by CMS's effort to coordinate reporting periods across federal programs and the decision to align with the ONC Interoperability and Certification Programs," HIMSS officials said. "With the first MIPS performance full-year reporting period expected to begin on January 1, 2017, we're further analyzing the MACRA rule to ensure that Medicare providers will be able to meet the proposed requirements." American Medical Association President Steven Stack, MD, meanwhile, said it's "hard to overstate the significance of these proposed regulations for patients and physicians." In particular, he was pleased that CMS has been listening to physicians’ concerns and "has made significant improvements, by recasting the EHR meaningful use program and by reducing quality reporting burdens." American Health Information Management Association CEO Lynne Thomas Gordon released a statement saying AHIMA supports the MIPS progam's "emphasis on interoperability, information exchange and security measures, which we believe are critical to reaching the rule’s stated long-term goal of ‘better care, smarter spending, and healthier people.'" The Premier healthcare alliance was less pleased, however – specifically taking issue with one part of the two-pronged MACRA approach to value-based care: its provisions related to advanced payment models, or APMs. CMS "made a significant mistake in not including any bundled payment or Track 1 Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs as qualifying advanced payment models under MACRA," said Blair Childs, senior vice president of public affairs at Premier Inc. "Rather than rejecting bundled payment programs, we believe CMS should focus on ways to alter the bundled payment programs to demonstrate use of certified EHR technology and align measures with other Advanced APMs. "We also believe CMS seriously erred in excluding Track 1 MSSP ACOs in the APMs for failing to meet the more than 'nominal risk' financial requirement," said Childs. "As we've learned through members in our Population Health Management Collaborative, these programs require providers to not only forego revenue through a lower volume of services, but also investment millions of dollars in redesigning care through new technologies, data analytics, additional staff, etc.," he said. "We think most businessmen would call that more than nominal risk, yet CMS choses to define it as only cases where there is risk to the government." Elsewhere in the Twitterverse, the response was mostly positive – with some skepticism and a bit of I-told-you-so mixed in. And "Meaningful Use" is going "away" by changing its name to "Advancing Care Information" #MACRA #livetweeting as I read the proposed rule — Joy Rios (@askjoyrios) April 28, 2016 or basically what #MU should have been from day 1 @Travis_Broome — Harold Smith III (@haroldsmith3rd) April 28, 2016 1/Bottom Line #MACRA NPRM Game changer. Lots of great changes, 100's of thoughtful details and decisions. Biggest blind spot can be fixed — Farzad Mostashari (@Farzad_MD) April 27, 2016 Really good YouTube "whiteboard" connecting the dots of our MACRA announcement. Plain English. No acronyms. Wow. https://t.co/qLHSpYnWRX — Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) April 27, 2016 A tree died for this #MACRA #MIPS #Medicare pic.twitter.com/YsiSd3R9Mf — Amanda Narod (@AmandaBinDC) April 28, 2016

The analytics software used by the staff at St. Joseph Healthcare in Bangor, Maine, sits on top of the statewide health information exchange, allowing providers to access real-time data from all hospitals connected to the HIE.

A bill to establish the Office of the Chief Information Security Officer within the U.S Department of Health and Human Services was introduced in the House of Representatives this week. On April 26, Energy and Commerce Committee Members Rep. Doris Matsui, D-California, and Rep. Billy Long, R-Missouri, introduced the HHS Data Protection Act to elevate the HHS CISO from its current position under the HHS' chief information officer. "The integration of information technology into nearly every aspect of our daily lives means our security landscape has changed dramatically," said Matsui said in a statement. "As the network of cybercriminals becomes increasingly sophisticated, our operational structures and strategies must evolve accordingly." The bill  builds on the Obama Administration's Cybersecurity National Action Plan, which emphasizes the need for a CSIO to improve cybersecurity. In response to the plan, the Administration created a Federal Chief Information Security Officer position to exclusively focus on Federal cybersecurity operations. The legislation is in part a response to the committee's August 2015 report on the FDA's information security that found "pervasive and persistent deficiencies across HHS and its operating divisions' information security programs" after its internal network was breached. "It's impossible to completely eradicate the threat of cyber-attacks, but the American people deserve to know their sensitive information is being safeguarded with the utmost security," said Long, in a statement. "In light of recent data breaches across America's federal agencies, we have the responsibility to root out vulnerabilities and maximize data protection to give them that peace of mind," he said.