We’d like to welcome aboard THCB ‘s latest sponsor, Cisco’s Community for Connected Health. Connected Health’s core focus is to provide value to caregivers, end-users, CIOs and other IT professionals through education, interaction and access to Cisco healthcare and technology experts. Find out more at the Community for Connected Health web site.
Up at The Sentinel Effect.
I have another of my occasional pieces up at the Guardian’s Comment is Free site, trying to make sense of American health care for an international audience. I take aim at how the cautious nature of the main Democratic front-runners health care proposals doesn’t match their fiery rhetoric — Comment is free: The cautious approach.
Even though Iraq seems to have sucked all the oxygen out of American
political life at the moment – even Cindy Sheehan has given up and gone
home – healthcare does remain the largest domestic issue.Several weeks have passed since the Democratic candidates for
president had a debate about healthcare. It’s interesting that despite
an attempt by probable Republican candidate Fred Thompson to take on
documentary filmmaker Michael Moore over the topic, none of the front
runners on the Republican side have made much mention of healthcare at
all. This is doubly curious as one of them, former Massachusetts
Governor Mitt Romney, left office having at least partially helped
make his state the most advanced healthcare reform " laboratory" of
them all. But apparently among the conservatives and evangelicals who
dominate the Republican primaries, the issue of universal healthcare is
not seen as a great vote-getter – a worldview the Republicans might
come to regret. Continue.
In response to our post announcing Health 2.0 San Francisco, Matt Guldin writes:
Regardless of whether or not we go to a single-payer system, move to a
consumer-directed health care world, or stay pretty much status quo,
the administrative and clinical tools & infrastructure that are
being generated as part of "Health 2.0" will be here to stay.
Chad Markson liked the podcast interview with AthenaHealth CEO Jonathan Bush. He had this to say:
"This guy is a rock star – just what are industry needs. What a great
interview – took a while to get going but what a great exchange. I
think Bush nailed the current market dynamics. Will be interesting to
see how things play out."
NDDB responds to this week’s post on the physician rating site’s
spat with Revolution Health:
“Please don’t play this off as a competition squabble. Like
I said, NDDB is not the only site out there, RateMDs and many others are as
well, and I think they all do a great job. I’ve not seen one I had a problem
with. They do what they say they are doing, they don’t make outrageous claims,
and they don’t claim to be "revolutionary," even though some of them
could.”
Thomas Goetz, the author of the New York Times op-ed on WorldVista, had
a reaction to yesterday’s "Put this one down in the somewhat bizarre
category" critiquing his piece on the open source system. He writes:
“Sounds like you didn’t quite read the piece – the whole
point is that WorldVista has been certified as ready for the market, meaning
it’s available now. Not sure why you think a 2 year old story disproves that…”
To which Matthew responds:
“Yeah but … WorldVista isn’t ready for prime-time for a physician’s office.
There isn’t really a support network to put it in place, and as I mentioned the
office-ready version isn’t — unless it snuck by me somehow. AND the biggest cost of the ambulatory EMR is
not the software, it’s getting it up and running. Which is harder with these
open source models.I am with you in spirit (honestly! whatever my other commenters think). I
just think we need to pay and force doctors to use the EMR. Telling them to get
on VistA isn’t going to do it."
In response to the debate set off by Healthcare Partners of Southern California’s recent decision to
publish prices for certain procedures, frequent contributor Dr. Eric Novack writes in to say:
Many physicians have recoiled against the idea of insurance companies
publishing contracted rates for services. I disagree. As I believe I stated at THCB previously, once
all rates are truly transparent, a remarkable thing will happen: Doctors no
longer need to be a part of insurance plans. They can just publish their own
rates, eliminate much of their billing staff, and go simply assist patients in
filing claims when the dollars amount is high enough to warrant it.And the
total cost of healthcare would decrease.
Lastly, in response to an earlier post on the Edwards plan,
Ryan writes: “Americans pay more per person for healthcare than socialized
countries. Sadly, many of our increased costs are because the rest of the world
is socialized.”
AND NOW … A word from our wonderful sponsors! Just a reminder that it would be impossible for us to publish THCB without the kind assistance of our advertisers. Putting out regular email updates, organizing podcasts, patrolling the bulletin boards for spam and dealing with the inevitable technical issues that arise when you are running a website (dealing with dodgy web hosts, fighting off legions of evil hackers etc. etc. etc.) all require significant time and effort. Not to mention real money. So we’d like to thank our corporate sponsors for their kind support. Particularly platinum sponsor Silverlink, gold sponsor Orion Health, and silver sponsor CDW-Healthcare. If you’d like to help support the site, take a minute to go visit CDW’s online shop and have a look at their cool selection of hand helds, medical monitors and nifty wireless gadgetry designed for the healthcare marketplace.
Aethon (whom I interviewed at HIMSS) make the TUG, an autonomous robot which moves stuff around hospitals. And for children’s hospitals, they’ve made a rather more fun version named JR.Go read the story of how JR came to life at Robots.net
I was sick on Saturday plus had had certain domestic issues arise after telling my fiancee that I was planning on abandoning her for work on a Saturday that was, err, unpaid. So I missed HealthCamp2. But it looked pretty interesting.
Lester Crawford’s incredibly undistinguished tenure at the FDA ended in weird pseudo disgrace. on the other hand these guys think that his fate could have been much worse.
#1 healthcare blogger Amy Tenderich is hopping mad about a diabetic arrested for being hypoglycemic, and she’s rallying the Type 1 diabetics to the cause. Go over and read it — Diabetes Mine: Would You Believe… Doug Burns Going to Trial?. It’s another case of the police being boneheaded and a DA too scared to admit that they’re wrong–presumably in the police associations pocket come reelection time. But to force this to trial? Idiotic.
I have a great friend at college who went hypoglycemic and ended up falling into a river, and nearly drowned — until a medical student figured out what was happening and gave her some coke. I read a book by a Brit called “Metal jam” which showed the experiences of a Type 1 Diabetic going hypo. The rough answer is to figure out what’s up and get them sugar OR insulin (depending on whether they’ve had too much insulin or not enough!) But it’s a very dangerous situation that not enough people know about. Here’s Amy on one nasty time it very nearly happened to her.
And here’s Amy on ways to help Doug. I am very interested to see the power of the social networking in this case. And good luck to Doug.
UPDATE: I guess the Redwood City DA didn’t fancy having Amy sic a few hundred mad diabetics on him, so the charges have been dropped.
Here’s the transcript of the recent podcast with Bob Fisher from Foresight. The original interview is here and a 7 minute cut down version is up on Foresight’s site too.
Matthew Holt: This is Matthew Holt with the Health Care Blog. This morning I’m talking with Bob Fisher. Bob is the founder, president, and CEO of Foresight Corporation, which is an Ohio based technology company that works primarily with health plans. I had the great fortune of being a speaker at Foresight’s recent customer meeting down in lovely Phoenix, Arizona, where I very much enjoyed meeting with Bob and the rest of his crew. It was really quite an interesting meeting because after I did my song and dance about the future of the health care system, the folks there really got into some of the nitty-gritty. It was almost a chance for Bob to pick his customers’ brains, I think, about what they’re seeing. He’s come back with a wide wealth of information, not only about what Foresight’s up to but also what some of America’s leading health plans are up to. So deep in the engine room, as it were. So, Bob, good morning, or I should say good afternoon to you.
Bob Fisher: Good afternoon, Matthew. I appreciate the opportunity.
Matthew: How are you doing? Have you been keeping well since the last time we were together only a few weeks back?
Bob: I came back with a head full of knowledge and a little bit of a tan, and today I have a head cold, but I’ll try and keep it out of the interview.
Matthew: So let’s start at the beginning. Foresight’s a pretty small company. You’ve been around since the very end of last century.
Bob: In 1990.
Matthew: Sorry. 1990? Boy, you’re a bit older than I remember.
Bob: Yeah, 17 years.
Matthew: Seventeen years. Actually you’re almost an old company in technology terms in that case. So, but for the average THCB reader, I suspect that you’re pretty much an unknown quantity. I mentioned you work with health plans. What do you guys do? What are your core missions, core business functions?
Bob: Matt, we work with health care organizations, providers, and especially payers as you mentioned, and we use technology to help them streamline their operations. That is in the areas of claims, payments, eligibility, that sort of thing. We call it transaction lifecycle management. Now, we have a decent chance of actually being known perhaps by some of The Health Care Blog readers because actually most large payers in the US today, including the majority of Blue Cross organizations, are using Foresight technology. They’re using it to reduce the claims rework, to assure accurate and timely payments, to provide any level of management reporting on an ad hoc basis, and to improve provider relations.
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