New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is touting the state’s new Maternal and Infant Health Innovation Authority as the first government agency dedicated exclusively to improving the health of mothers and their babies, reports POLITICO’s Daniel Han.

Murphy, a Democrat, signed legislation on Monday creating the authority, to be based in Trenton.

“It will be not just a New Jersey resource, not just a national resource. It will be a global gold standard resource,” Murphy said.

How so? According to the legislation, the center will be a “central hub” to coordinate with all levels of government and private organizations on ways to boost infant and maternal health.

The center will also provide perinatal, infant care, and related health services to Trenton residents. First Lady Tammy Murphy said it would “transform the maternal and infant health landscape” in the city.

The authority will take on “efforts and strategies to reduce maternal mortality, morbidity, and racial and ethnic disparities in the State,” according to the legislation.

The backstory: The center’s creation stems from a 2021 maternal health report that recommended establishing a center to focus on “innovation and research in maternal and infant health through partnerships with the state’s academic, funder, business and faith communities.”

New Jersey is ranked 29th in the nation for maternal mortality, according to America’s Health Rankings.

The bill includes $2.2 million for the authority, with another $50 million coming from other state budget lines and federal grants.

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HHS has its first-ever mascot for the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps — Lt. Cmdr. Abigail, a labrador retriever. She’ll give therapeutic care to patients and Public Health Service officers.

She won’t be getting a salary though. That’s ruf.

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Today on our Pulse Check podcast, host Alice Miranda Ollstein talks with Kelly Hooper about what’s behind the spike in overdose deaths involving both cocaine and opioids over the past decade.

Doctors are writing longer notes about their visits with patients, but are spending less time doing so, according to the research arm of electronic health records firm Epic.

Epic contends that could be a good thing, considering physicians’ well-documented annoyance with spending so much time on paperwork.

Epic credits a 2021 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services change to its billing procedures aimed at reducing documentation burdens.

The firm’s review of 1.7 billion clinical notes between May 2020 and April 2023 found their length had increased 8 percent over that time, even as doctors spent 11 percent less time writing each one — just under five minutes from about five and a half minutes on average initially.

Speedier writing was widespread — nearly 90 percent of providers cut their average note-writing time.

That “could help providers free up time for patient care or reduce work after hours,” the researchers wrote.

A provision in a pandemic preparedness bill moving through Congress would pilot a program to make data on disease outbreaks available to the public in “near-real time.”

The provision is in the version of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Response Act that the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved Thursday.

Why it matters: The Covid pandemic exposed the outdated surveillance systems that often left officials behind the disease curve and limited their ability to make informed decisions.

The CDC’s fledgling Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics also hopes to build on disease-monitoring systems pioneered during the pandemic.

What the pilot would do:

— Mandate that the Health and Human Services Department look into technology to facilitate “fast bulk exchange of data”

— Create an open source website with deidentified, aggregate data on disease outbreaks

— Require HHS to establish a national public health data board that would include the Veterans Affairs secretary, the national coordinator for health information technology, the FDA commissioner and industry stakeholders.

Industry take: “Bureaucrats in D.C. need to share information back to providers just as much as providers and states need to report the information up,” the Health Innovation Alliance, an industry group whose steering committee including CVS Health, McKesson and Amazon, said in a statement. “The changes approved … will make that exchange of vital information a reality.”

Even so: The House version of the bill approved by the Energy and Commerce Committee doesn’t include the pilot project.