January-February 2021

By the Numbers
For The Record
Vol. 33 No. 1 P. 34

78.4
A JMIR Medical Informatics study examined whether monetary incentives could influence subjects to illegally obtain health care information and release it to individuals and media outlets. When presented with various scenarios, participants were much more likely to indicate that there is a price that is acceptable for violating HIPAA laws when a personal context is involved. While 45.1% would provide a relative with data on a celebrity for a price of their choosing, this percentage would accept $100,000 from a media outlet for the medical records of a politician in a scenario where the subject’s mother needs a life-saving experimental treatment that isn’t covered by insurance, and 64.6% would give a media outlet the medical records of a famous reality star in exchange for $50,000 to cover the cost of life-saving emergency medical transportation for their best friend.

83
This percentage of consumers who use telehealth services had their most recent telehealth visit paid either completely or partially by insurance, according to Parks Associates research.

$3.8 Million
Wellsheet Inc, which is working to transform the EHR experience and helping health systems enable COVID-19–related workflows, has announced their Series A Funding of this amount.

3
Patients who are concerned that their medical information would be compromised if it was sent electronically between providers are this number of times more likely to withhold information from their physicians than those who don't share the same concern, according to a Journal of General Internal Medicine study.

$500,000
A whistleblower case alleged that Viztek, which was acquired by Konica Minolta, violated the False Claims Act by falsely representing that its EHR met the criteria for certification, allowing it to receive meaningful use incentive payments, according to MedCity News. Konica Minolta will pay this amount to settle the case.

9 out of 10
This number of health care provider organizations successfully met increased telehealth demand during the pandemic, according to the Center for Connected Medicine’s fourth annual “Top of Mind for Top Health Systems” report.

5,680
According to data from FAIR Health's Monthly Telehealth Regional Tracker, telehealth claim lines increased this percentage nationally from 0.15% of medical claim lines in May 2019 to 8.69% in May 2020; however, this is a decrease from 13% in April 2020.