The NewYork-Presbyterian David H. Koch Center opened on April 30, 2018, and is home to a wide range of ambulatory care services, including outpatient surgery, interventional radiology, diagnostic imaging, and infusion services, as well as an Integrative Health program that will open in June. Five floors will be transformed into the new NewYork-Presbyterian Alexandra Cohen Hospital for Women and Newborns, offering best-in-class maternal and neonatal care beginning in 2020.

This week’s LEAD spotlight is Dr. Michael Gao, a hospitalist in the Department of Medicine at NYP Weill Cornell and Silverman Fellow in Healthcare Innovation at NYP Transformation. His capstone project is the development and implementation of Qventus, a virtual decision management platform that uses artificial intelligence to convert millions of electronic datapoints into actionable patient-level insights. This enables the patient’s care team to resolve bottlenecks before they occur, thus improving patient flow and reducing length of stay.

• The physician training content will be reviewed by the Clinical Leadership Groups (CLGs) and led by peers in each individual specialty to ensure a high-yield experience.
• Physicians with prior Epic experience will be able to test out of some training.
• Additional optimization training sessions will also occur after go-live to ensure optimal use of our new EMR.

A first-generation college graduate and pediatric resident at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center discusses the importance of mentorship and empowering minorities to pursue academic medicine.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed its annual inpatient hospital rule. In addition to setting inpatient payment rates for FY 2019, the rule includes provisions related to price transparency, including a requirement for hospitals to post their standard charges for the public. Additionally, the rule would make changes to the meaningful use program. These include efforts to better emphasize measures that require the exchange of health information between providers and patients, and give providers incentives to make it easier for patients to obtain their medical records electronically. The meaningful use program would also be re-named to "promoting interoperability". Comments on the proposed rule are due by June 25th.

New York Governor Cuomo announced a series of initiatives aimed at addressing maternal mortality in the state. New York is currently ranked 30th nationwide in maternal mortality. The package of programs includes a task force to address disparate racial outcomes, a summit on best practices, and a pilot to expand Medicaid coverage for doulas. The design of the doula pilot program will be finalized by the New York State Health Department by June 6th, 2018, and will begin immediately thereafter, according to the Governor.

The Senate Health Committee unanimously voted to send a bipartisan opioid bill to the chamber's floor. The bill, called the Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018, includes measures attempting to make it easier to prescribe smaller packs of opioids for limited durations, and spur the development of nonaddictive painkillers. It would also reauthorize grant funding to the states for an additional three years and prioritize giving the money to states and Indian tribes facing the highest rates of overdose deaths. The House Energy and Commerce Health subcommittee is also in the process of advancing over 30 opioid bills.