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CONUSMERS/INDUSTRY: Consumer health care conference in SF coming up next week

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Next week I’ll be at some of the Consumer Directed Health Care Conference in SF. It’s a weird match of the business guys trying to extort the last dollar out of the HDHP/CDHP buzzword before it dies its inevitable death, the wing-nuts promoting it who still can’t do basic math, and the real long term players, mostly on the IT side, who are trying to figure out how to put customer service and patient self-involvement into the care process. Sadly all too few of the latter, and none of the Information Therapy crowd who actually know something about it.

I’ve already interviewed Grace-Marie Turner about this, (no prizes for guessing which category she fits into) they have everyone’s favorite (lack of) market-theorist Reggie Herzlinger (although earlier than I like to get out of bed, so I’ll probably skip it) and even Newt is making an appearance.

It’s kind of funny that Grace-Marie and Sally Pipes are on suggesting in a only slightly loaded way that a Consumer Driven Health Care System will Succeed and a Government Run/Single Payor System will Fail and there is no one from the other side to respond. Couldn’t they afford Uwe? Was Jamie Robinson busy? David Himmelstein unavoidably detained by the FBI? Alain Enthoven couldn’t make the drive up from Stanford? Ian Morrison booked elsewhere. Couldn’t find my phone number on my web site? (UPDATE: apparently they talked to Brian Klepper, found out he wasn’t a fan and never called back).

Don’t worry, they did find one blogger’s number—Dmitriy Kruglyak of The Medical Blog Network is giving a talk on Blogs & Open Media: A New Force in Consumer-Driven Healthcare. I don’t know what he’s going to say, but the title looks good and correct.

However, given that this is a conference about making health care an easy experience for the consumer, you’d think that they would have paid a little attention to “their” consumers the attendees. So you want to see Reggie’s talk on the first day? Go to this screen — look at the far right and tell me what time Reggie’s on in the 8.30 to 12 range. Meanwhile go to any session and hit the “session description” button. It launches a word document no less, which for most browsers spells trouble. And on the three that I’ve opened at random there’s no more info than is in the session description on the main page.

OK. Let me stop griping about user interfaces, remind you that good customer service, patient-centered care and high deductible health plans are not necessarily causally or even collinearly related, go the conference and report back.

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14 replies »

  2. I would like to learn more about how insurance companies can decide not to insure people based on pre existing conditions. The reason people need to continue their insurance in many cases is because of the pre-existing condition. If a person leaves a company and goes on Cobra and then needs to enroll in private insurance how can they get coverage for a pre-existing condition

  4. only friends spend this much energy flogging each other, Dimitriy 😉
    want to catch your session, but will be giving grand rounds at PAMF…

  7. Working on it?! I hope so. Everyone else (Enthoven, Himmelstein, Fuchs, Haase et al) sorts out the theory in advance of making policy/crap up as they go along.
    Reggie has had enough time to do so, but I’m still waiting. Go argue with my assessment here if you don’t think so.

  9. Trap–hmm…that’s OK then. Have an opponent on once last year, and we’re done with debate. Where’s O’Reilly/Colbert when you need him.
    I do understand that the CDHP crowd has no clear intellectual assessment of what needs to be done…..everything is a “partial solution” and all their best ideas come from managed care land!

  12. Re: “It’s kind of funny that Grace-Marie and Sally Pipes are on suggesting in a only slightly loaded way that a Consumer Driven Health Care System will Succeed and a Government Run/Single Payor System will Fail and there is no one from the other side to respond. Couldn’t they afford Uwe?”
    Cute, Matthew. But Uwe is sooo last year. I guess you missed the Fall 2005 Conference, because Professor Reinhardt was, in fact, invited and did, in fact, represent the single-payer side in a debate with John C. Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
    Do you ever get frustrated at how much you misunderstand the CDHC crowd? Because you do often.

  14. Gee, Matthew; you’re going into this with such an open mind that I am sure your report back will be Spot-On. Kudos for your willingness to entertain opposing viewpoints!!
    Try not to spit at Professor Herzlinger if you see her.