Month: November 2010

Are prescription drugs going the way of Napster, YouTube and iTunes?

Nov 30, 2010• 2

By DAVID E. WILLIAMS

The distribution of prescription pharmaceuticals is beginning to take on some of the characteristics of online videos and music. Traditionally, access to prescriptions works as follows:

Patient has a problem
Patients sees his/her physician
Physician diagnoses problem and writes prescription
Patient takes prescription to traditional pharmacy or PBM-owned mail order company
Pharmacy fills prescription with a drug manufactured by an FDA-regulated brand name or generic pharmaceutical company
Patient takes medication
If patient needs more medication after initial prescription and refills are exhausted, patient requests renewal from physician and repeats steps 4 to 7

But steps 2 through 7 are breaking down. Instead of seeing their physicians, increasing numbers of patients are either going directly online to order from pharmacies or are borrowing pills from friends and family who’ve received prescriptions. According to MedPage Today (Adults Commonly Share Prescription Drugs with Friends and Family) almost 30 percent of adults reported sharing prescription medications with others. Younger people are the most likely to share.

Meanwhile, shady web-based pharmacies that don’t require prescriptions and often sell counterfeit drugs are becoming increasingly sophisticated and impressive. MarketMonitor estimates that about 1000 shady pharmacy sites generate an average of 100,000 hits per day each and that such pharmacies spend about $25 million per year on search advertising. An acquaintance who works in the pharmaceutical security business told me that these pharmacies aren’t what they used to be. In fact they are adopting marketing and customer service best practices that are used by legitimate vendors. Rather than going for a quick score, the web-based companies are looking for repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals by providing products that work, offering easy-to-navigate websites and low prices.

The preview of the Health 2.0 Accelerator Apps Network is now available on video

Nov 29, 2010• 1

At the Fall 2010 Health 2.0 Conference
seven companies demonstrate composite applications
to connect and support patients, caregivers and providers.

San Francisco, November 10, 2010 – The preview of the Health 2.0 Accelerator Apps Network is now available on video – showing 7 interoperating health sites and composite applications – at http://www.health2con.com/2010/11/11/health-2-0-accelerator-group/.

The Health 2.0 Accelerator Apps Network is a growing ecosystem of web applications and services that work together – collaborating 2, 3, 4 and more at a time, serving as platforms for other apps and as interoperable bridges between apps – all to connect and support patients, caregivers and providers. This year's preview was presented at the Fall 2010 Health 2.0 Conference, during the "Tools and Unplatforms Part II: the Emerging Consumer-Centric Ecosystem" session, (www.health2con.com) moderated by Matthew Holt, Co-Founder of Health 2.0. Following the presentation, the Health 2.0 Accelerator companies discussed the process of working together to build these connected and composite applications and how others can join the network.

In his role as Lead Architect of the Health 2.0 Accelerator, Erick Von Schweber explained the architecture and standards the group is using to enable these powerful but relatively easy to implement integrations. Enhanced Medical Decisions facilitated data interoperability by retrofitting deidentified free text medical records with the addition of interoperable codes, transforming misspelled drugs to NDC medication codes and user entered symptom descriptions to ICD-9 condition codes and thus supporting action on standard data forms.

The Cost of Success

Nov 29, 2010• 6

By ROB LAMBERTS, MD

For those of you who didn’t know, I entered the National Novel Writing Month “contest” (which has no winners). I got to the goal of 50,000 words yesterday.

One of the main questions that is asked in my novel (which may or may not ever see the light of day) is this: What would happen if a wonderful cure came along that would take away most, if not all sickness? Remember, it is fiction.

The answer is, of course: utter chaos and collapse of our system.

Our system is designed to deal with sickness. It is designed to fix problems. If a wonder-drug came along, here’s what I think would happen:

Pharmaceutical companies and hospitals would have to oppose it, as they would suffer financial ruin if people became healthy.
Doctors, especially those focused on chronic illness or treatment of serious problems, would take a huge cut in pay.
A huge number of healthy people would enter the workforce, disrupting an already fragile economy.

Human stupidity, of course, would remain. There would be some work for those in the medical profession, but only a fraction of what is there now.

SF 2010: Keynote Address from Jeff Goldsmith

Nov 29, 2010

By Bianca Grogan

Jeff Goldsmith, President, Health Futures, Inc., gave a keynote address at the Health 2.0 Fall Conference in San Francisco, CA on October 7-8, 2010. Since the 1970s he’s worked in academia, in government, advised virtually every major health care delivery, insurance and supplier organization, been a national advisor to Ernst & Young, and is on the Board of Health Affairs. On the main stage Jeff spoke about transforming our health care system and the problems and challenges that we face.

The Ryan/Rivlin Plan

Nov 29, 2010

By JOHN GOODMAN, PhD

Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), have proposed an entitlement spending reform plan that is striking both for its boldness and its left-right-coming-together origins. There are a number of interesting parts, but I want to focus on the three most important:

Medicare would, for the first time, be transformed into rational insurance. Beginning in 2013, all enrollees would be protected by a $6,000 cap on out-of-pocket expenses; in return they would pay for more small expenses on their own.
After a decade, people newly eligible for Medicare would receive a voucher to purchase private insurance instead. The value of the voucher would grow at the rate of growth of GDP plus 1% (note: for the past four decades, health care spending per capita nationwide has been growing at about GDP growth plus 2%).
Medicaid would be turned into annual block grants to the states. The value of the block grants would also grow at GDP growth plus 1%.

Bottom line verdict: This is a good proposal that deserves serious attention. To guarantee its success, however, more needs to be done to (1) allow the private sector to control costs through economic incentives, competition and entrepreneurship and (2) allow young people to save for the growing share of expenses they will be expected to bear.

How Does This Plan Compare with the Affordable Care Act (ACA)? Given that Ryan has been previously attacked by Paul Krugman and others on the left because of his ideas about voucherizing Medicare, a natural question arises. How does the Ryan/Rivlin slowdown in Medicare spending compare to the health reform bill Congress passed last spring — a bill supported by some of the very people attacking Ryan?

Is This Normal?

Nov 29, 2010• 12

By PAUL LEVY

This is a story about consumer choice using publicly available information. Unfortunately, it is also about the power of suggestion as used by an incumbent provider organization.

The friend who sent me this note is a research fellow at one of the Boston teaching hospitals, so I guess he is more likely than most to do the kind of research he summarizes. Most people would have taken the referral advice offered without question. If they ever did ask to see a different doctor, most would never get past the “need” for asking for “special permission.”

Hi Paul,

I had a strange encounter, and I was wondering if you could tell me if this is normal.

A few months ago my primary care physician recommended I see dermatology for my eczema. His clinic recommended the names of two dermatologists within the same health care system. I looked up both dermatologist on healthgrades.com and found that their patients had given them luke-warm reviews. (There were many reviews, so this wasn’t a sampling problem). Also, I have been reading the medical literature about eczema, and knew there were a lot of recent advances, so I wanted somebody who had published and was familiar with the research.

I found another dermatologist, Dr. Caroline Kim. Her patients loved her (according to healthgrades.com), she had published articles in dermatology research (from scholar.google.com), and she trained at top institutions: Harvard Medical School and MGH. I made an appointment with her.

“Don’t Litigate, Innovate.”

Nov 29, 2010

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI

What if a Republican governor and a Republican legislature had the ability to implement their version of health insurance reform and the federal government would have to pay for it? It’s a great idea. And I’m thrilled to say that a bi-partisan bill has already been introduced in the Senate by Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Scott Brown, R-Mass., that would help facilitate exactly this end.

First, let’s review section 1332 of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to realize how states are already — at least eventually — given the ability to innovate in this manner. Here is a simplified summary:

A state may apply to the Health and Human Services secretary for a waiver of all or any requirements with respect to the insurance exchanges, mandates, and subsidies with respect to health insurance coverage within that state for plan years beginning on or after January 1, 2017.
The secretary has to provide for an alternative means by which the aggregate amount of the tax credits and subsidies, which would have been paid on behalf of participants in the exchanges, would instead be paid to the state for purposes of implementing their own version of the law.
The secretary may grant a request for a waiver only if the secretary determines that the state plan will provide coverage that is at least as comprehensive as the coverage defined under the new law and offered through similar exchanges established by the states.

Healthcare Messages Over the Internet: The Direct Project

Nov 29, 2010• 7

By BRIAN AHIER, RICH ELMORE and DAVID C. KIBBE, MD

The Direct Project announced today the completion of its open-source connectivity-enabling software and the start of a series of pilots that will be demonstrating directed secure messaging for healthcare stakeholders over the internet. The Direct Project specifies a simple, secure, scalable, standards-based way for participants to send authenticated, encrypted health information directly to known, trusted recipients over the Internet.

Also announced:

A new name – the Direct Project was previously known as NHIN Direct
An NHIN University course, The Direct Project – Where We Are Today, to be presented by Arien Malec, November 29 at 1 PM ET, sponsored by the National eHealth Collaborative
An extensive list of HIT vendors (20+) that have announced plans to leverage the Direct Project for message transport in connection with their solutions and services
Presentations at the HIT Standards Committee on Tuesday November 30 where three or more vendors will be announcing their support for the Direct Project.
A thorough documentation library including a Direct Project Overview
Best practice guidance for directed messaging based on the policy work of the Privacy and Security Tiger team
A new web site at DirectProject.org
A new hashtag #directproject for following the Direct Project on twitter.

The Direct Project is the collaborative and voluntary work of a group of healthcare stakeholders representing more than 50 provider, state, HIE and HIT vendor organizations. Over 200 participants have contributed to the project. It’s rapid progress, transparency, and community consensus approach have established it as a model of how to drive innovation at a national level.

What is The Direct Project?

Today, communication of health information among providers and patients is most often achieved by sending paper through the mail or via fax. The Direct Project seeks to benefit patients and providers by improving the transport of health information, making it faster, more secure, and less expensive. The Direct Project will facilitate “direct” communication patterns with an eye toward approaching more advanced levels of interoperability than simple paper can provide.

The Bond Markets and Health Care Financing

Nov 28, 2010• 1

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI

When will the Congress and the White House finally make the hard decisions in order come to grips with the federal deficit problem?

When will we finally deal with real health care reform and get the entitlements, and with them the private health care cost issue, under control?

My focus on trying to answer those questions has always centered on what’s going on in the health insurance market: When will costs simply become untenable and therefore force real change?

Watching “Meet the Press” a few weeks ago, it occurred to me I may have been missing the catalyst for real health care change.

Engage with Grace at Thanksgiving

Nov 26, 2010

Since 2008 THCB has featured Engage with Grace at Thanksgving. We invite everyone to post this to their blog or Facebook page, and to link here with their status update. You can download a “blog ready” html version of this piece in .txt format to drop into your blog software by right-clicking and choosing”save link as” here. This post was written by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team.

For three years running now bloggers have participated in what we’ve called a “blog rally” to promote Engage With Grace – a movement aimed at making sure all of us understand, communicate, and have honored our end-of-life wishes.

The rally is timed to coincide with a weekend when most of us are with the very people with whom we should be having these unbelievably important conversations – our closest friends and family.

At the heart of Engage with Grace are five questions designed to get the conversation about end-of-life started. We’ve included them at the end of this post. They’re not easy questions, but they are important.