TGIF

Tammy Flanagan offers advice on handling the Federal Benefits Open Season via Govexec.com. In this regard, yesterday, the Internal Revenue Service announced that "For taxable years beginning in 2019, the dollar limitation under § 125(i) on voluntary employee salary reductions for contributions to health flexible spending arrangements ["FSA"} is $2,700."  The Affordable Care Act capped the maximum FSA contribution at $2,500 subject to an inflation adjustment. The 2019 inflation adjustment is $50 over the 2018 maximum. According to this OPM website,  OPM will apply this new max to the FSAFeds program which is part of the Federal Benefits Open Season.

November is National Diabetes Awareness Month. Gallup offers a new study on diabetes and obesity rates in our country.

• No states have experienced declines in their diabetes rates since '08-'09
• Obesity has climbed in 34 states over same period while declining in none
• Rising diabetes linked to rising obesity among states.

No bueno, but on the bright side, Modern Healthcare reports that 

CommonWell's new connection to the Carequality framework, which on Friday becomes available to all the groups' participants, promotes interoperability by linking the country's biggest electronic health record vendors, including Epic Systems Corp., Cerner, Athenahealth, Allscripts, and others. Previously, the connection was available on a limited basis.

Members within each of the groups were already linked. But sharing data between the groups—with Cerner on the CommonWell side and Epic on the Carequality side—was more difficult. This new connection changes that, making it easier for providers whose software is enabled by either CommonWell or Carequality to exchange data.

The connection could help lower costs. "We are hopeful that the increased connectivity will give providers the up-to-date patient health data they need to avoid readmission, duplicative and unnecessary tests and lab work, and the costs ultimately associated with those," CommonWell Executive Director Jitin Asnaani said.

The cumulative effect could be large: Together, the two groups' members account for more than 90% of the acute EHR market and almost 60% of the ambulatory EHR market.

Yippee.

Check out this MedPage Today interview with the American Medical Association President Barbara McAneny, M.D.

Q. In your address to the delegates at the AMA interim meeting, you mentioned a patient with prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bones, and said he was doing well on his current drug regimen. That seems like a good example of how far we've come with cancer treatments.

A. He will live for many years. The new drugs are very expensive but they are very good. We just have to make sure they're not priced out of the range of patients who need them, and the easiest way to do that, I believe, is to start looking, with transparency, at what does it cost the manufacturer to research and develop that drug, what does it cost them to create it and make it, how much are they -- what I would consider "wasting" -- on direct-to-consumer advertising, and how much money are the middlemen adding in between when that drug leaves the manufacturer and when it shows up in my office to be delivered to a patient. I've heard estimates as high as half the cost of the drug goes to PBMs and other middlemen. I think we actually need to get to the bottom of it so we're not all guessing as to what those prices are. It would be very nice to actually really know.