Mid-week update

The FEHBlog is heading off to the airport for a quick trip to Connecticut. He ran across an interesting website called drugchannels.net and suggests that readers review the site's articles on the cost of oncology drugs in outpatient hospital vs. outpatient doctors office settings and rising generic drug costs.

Government Health IT repohttp://www.govhealthit.com/news/policy-team-urging-hhs-ditch-hipaa-access-report-idearts that the Office of National HIT Coordinator's Policy Committee voted today to urge HHS to "pare back a proposal that would let patients get access reports showing which health organization staff examined their information in an [electronic health record] EHR" as technologically impractical That's good news because as the federal exchange debacle illustrates adding complexities to information technology systems can backfire on the users.

Kaiser Health News reports here on a colloquy about the new mental health parity rule that will apply to the FEHBP in 2015. In the FEHBlog's view, the final rule tweaks the interim final rule that has been in effect since 2011. He doesn't see big coverage changes resulting from the final rule which makes sense because the interim rule was quite comprehensive.