It turns out that this is National Childhood Immunization Week and a wide array of Health and Human Services officials are voicing their support for those immunizations.  The FEHBlog heard a helpful discussion on childhood immunizations on today’s Econtalk episode.  Here’s an except:

Emily Oster, a Brown University economics professor:  I think that sometimes in these debates about vaccines you get the feeling that people think the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] is just standing on one side, being like, ‘Oh, it’s fine. Trust us. We’re experts.’ And then the anti-vaccination side can seem more evidence-based, because they are saying, ‘Well, look at these papers. Look at this evidence that we have come up with.’ And I think, you know, that’s not right. The conclusions that the CDC is drawing, and these American Academy of Pediatrics is drawing from, these are really carefully researched. This is a thousand pages which reflects, you know, reviews of thousands and thousands for studies by many, many, many people over a period of many years. And, the conclusion is vaccines are safe and effective. But, it’s not just something people are saying. It is something we have evidence for.

Here’s a related Business Insider article on the ongoing measles outbreak which has reached 704 cases nationwide.

Employee Benefit News identifies a handful of employee wellness program engagement strategies, which make sense to the FEHBlog.

mHealthIntelligence discusses an American College of Physicians (“ACP”) survey on adoption of telehealth by internists.

According to the ACP, survey respondents cited the typical barriers to implementation – reimbursement, licensing and regulations – but they also worried that the technology would be more cumbersome and time-consuming than helpful, and they worried that their patients would not have access to the technology they’d need. 

For its part, the ACP is looking to meet that challenge. The organization plans on making available “practical resources specific to an internal medicine practice,” including guidance on reimbursement, use cases, regulatory guidelines and advice on workflow changes. 

“We hope these resources can help close the gap between physician use of telehealth and patients’ desire for flexibility and access to their physicians,” Tabassum Salam, MD, FACP, the ACP’s vice president for medical education, said in the press release.

Agreed.

Following up on a post about the Association Health Plan (“AHP”) litigation last week. the National of Association of Plan Advisors reports that the U.S. Labor Department (“DOL”) has appealed the adverse ruling against AHPs to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Further, DOL confirmed in a press release issued today that

the Department will not pursue enforcement actions against parties for potential violations stemming from actions taken before the district court’s decision in good faith reliance on the AHP rule’s validity, as long as parties meet their responsibilities to association members and their participants and beneficiaries to pay health benefit claims as promised. Nor will the Department take action against existing AHPs for continuing to provide benefits to members who enrolled in good faith reliance on the AHP rule’s validity before the district court’s order, through the remainder of the applicable plan year or contract term.