Research NewsletterIssue: ORN-2021-46

Save the Date

NAI-NJIT Chapter Workshop

Sustainable Societies: Global Healthcare

Innovations to Global Solutions

In Conjunction with

President’s Forum

and

NJIT 2022 Research Institutes, Centers and Laboratories Showcase

February 21, 2022; 9.30 AM – 2.00 PM; Ballroom, Campus Center, NJIT

House Passes Build Back Better Act: Following weeks and months of negotiation, as well as last night’s record-breaking “filibuster” by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the House passed the Build Back Better Act (BBBA) by a vote of 220-213. After analyzing the bill, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said it would increase the deficit by more than $367 billion over 10 years. However, that estimate does not include the revenue that could be generated by increasing IRS enforcement, which the CBO suggested would be about $207 billion. This “scoring” of the legislation was a key request of several House moderates as they weighed whether they would support the bill. Among many provisions, the $1.75 trillion bill includes:

• Free universal pre-school programs for all three- and four-year olds
• Four weeks of paid family and medical leave
• Extends the expanded Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit
• Increases the maximum Pell grants by $550 and expands access to DACA recipients
• A combined $300 billion for home and community based services, as well as construction of new housing
• Workforce development and supply chain investments
• Provides State ad Local Tax deduction (SALT) relief
• Allows Medicare to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs, establishes a $35 out-of-pocket maximum for insulin, and creates a new $2,000 out-of-pocket limit for seniors’ expenses in Medicare Part D
• Extends the expanded Affordable Care Act Premium Tax Credit
• Permanently extends the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
• Expands Medicaid coverage to cover hearing services
• Provides support for environmental and climate justice policies
• Provides $21.5 billion for grants and loans in electric vehicle investments, as well as approximately $300 billion in clean energy tax credits

Public Health Admins Are Prioritizing Interoperability with EHR Modernization: Federal public health administrators are emphasizing interoperability as government agencies continue to implement electronic health records (EHRs) across federal public health agencies.   A litany of officials from government organizations including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense joined a panel discussion Thursday talking about the health IT goals between federal organizations and the ongoing effort to implement EHRs into their daily business processes. EHRs are digital copies of patient health records that turn a patient’s medical history into a single, shareable file to reduce the administrative and cost burdens and optimize clinicians’ ability to deliver positive health care outcomes.

A major goal of the current efforts to modernize and implement EHRs across several federal agencies hinge on sophisticated data collection and cross-department sharing capabilities, with a focus on helping patients access their records. As more vendors develop their own applications to access and transfer EHRs, compatibility issues between interfaces make it challenging to share patient data. Standardization of these platforms would facilitate patient data sharing between health care providers. 

Rolling out EHR platforms stands as a major challenge that involves the deployment of new software and training of the existing workforce. Agencies like the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs Department have struggled to implement new EHR systems, spending billions amid scheduling delays and numerous implementation issues. More information is posted on the NextGov website.

Biden’s Management Agenda Highlights Need for High-Tech Federal Workforce: The Biden administration’s governing ethos for the next three to seven years will focus on the federal workforce, improvements to citizen services and better management of government time and resources, all of which will include a technology component, according to the White House.

The Office of Management and Budget released a document Wednesday evening outlining the broad vision of the President’s Management Agenda, which sets up the guiding principles by which the Biden administration will operate. More information is posted on the NextGov website.

Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Oracle to Bid on Pentagon’s Next Multibillion-Dollar Cloud Contract: Four companies are poised to compete for the Defense Department’s multibillion-dollar Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, or JWCC contract. The department confirmed on Friday that it has issued formal solicitations to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google and Oracle for enterprisewide commercial cloud services—marking a clear pivot from its previously stated plans. 

“Point of Clarification: just because a particular [cloud service provider] receives a solicitation does not mean it will receive an award,” Pentagon Spokesperson Russ Goemaere told Nextgov in an email.  This announcement is the latest update in the DOD’s years-long and heavily litigated process to implement enterprisewide cloud capabilities. In 2017, the department first conceptualized the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract to offer one common and connected information technology option across all classification levels and for all personnel. That procurement was held up in lawsuits and protests for years and officially awarded to Microsoft twice. The Pentagon canceled JEDI and announced JWCC as its replacement in July, amid a protest from AWS over issues with the evaluation process and more. More information is posted on the NextGov website.

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