Next up at the Ix conference, Medicare Health Support got three cheerleaders telling us that they’re doing very, very well (Sandy Foote ex CMS, George Bennet from Health Dialog, Michael Montijo from American Healthways. There;s lots and lots of details about how to do this, and there are lots of problems to be overcome. But it works. I wont go into the details as I’ve written plenty about it a while back. And my sense is that the lack of DM is so apparent in the wider health system that basically any intervention which concentrates on educating and informing people about their health works.

I want to know whether it will work when we look to crank down beyond the 5% savings that Medicare Health Support committed to making today. Usually the rule is that Medicare overpays the private sector for what it does. But perhaps we’ll never find out.

Meanwhile, Ted Eytan, who’s the MD who runs Group Health Cooperative in Seattle’s Informatics group just won the first annual award for really making a big difference in information therapy (not sure what the award really is called but that’s what it’s about). No question that GHC is a leader, and kudos to Ted for making it so! (Ted is also the sponsor of a secret blog which will appeal to you process types)