If you’re thinking of attending Health 2.0 San Diego on March 3-4, there is still time to sign up for a pass, although like last time we are closing in on a sellout well in advance of the conference. Come see how Web 2.0 technologies are transforming the relationship between healthcare providers and consumers and meet many of the faces at the forefront of this process.
Featuring speakers from Kaiser Permanente, HealthGrades, Wired, Carepages, top design firm IDEO, the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Silverlink, and many others. As well as demos by promising startups including MedEncentive, Xoova, Sprigley, and many more. Panels include: The User-Experience with Health 2.0, Connecting Consumers and Providers, Designing Health 2.0, Connecting with Health Organizations and Health 2.0 The Future User Experience. Learn more at the Health 2.0 site
TECH: Best headline ever?
Experts: Internet Helpful, But Not a Replacement for Doctors
One wag who sent me this noted that it was not very likely that doctors would think that they were replaceable by the Internet, or any one else for that matter. He suggested that a survey of wives or husbands might find that they didn’t think that they could be replaced either….
HEALTH PLANS/HOSPITALS: Not a smart move
There’s been a lot of discussion about a potential health care score a la FICO score. The right way to do this would be some way to reward providers/plans whomever for doing whatever it takes to improve a population’s overall health. Plans/providers which improve a risk adjusted set of health outcomes would do well, and those that didn’t would not.
The wrong way would be to use the score to discriminate against sick people–by refusing them service before they have to chance to run up a bill they can’t pay.
Guess which appears to be being developed by Healthcare Analytics, a company that has as investors Fair Issac–the company behind the FICO credit rating–and long time problematic for-profit hospital operator Tenet?
Now of course they may not be developing anything of the sort. Maybe it’s just a tool to help hospitals figure out what proportion of their bills are likely to get paid. But in that case why raise $30m in VC?
But you want to know how this will be perceived by the public? Try reading the 2000+ comments on this posting since last Friday! You can guess the reaction without reading the comments.
Healthcare Analytics had better get out there talking about what it’s really doing very quickly, or a whole lot of other people will be filling in the gaps for it. You might have noticed that the country’s mood right now is not very friendly towards corporate greed and bad behavior–and that will get worse as the coming recession deepens.
QUALITY: Last name nepotism? DrGreene on the NY Times
So Indu & I invite Alan Greene and Sarah Greene out to dinner in Utah few months ago. Alan is famed pediatrician from drgreene.com. Sarah runs the NY Times Health page. And now Alan has his own column on parenting on NY Times.com. And both their last names are Greene! A coincidence? I think not!
(Actually I think it’s great to have such innovation on the NYT, but this was too hard to resist!)
POLITICS: Another Zogby poll that’s wrong (but understandably so)
Americans have been lying to pollsters for years, and here’s another example
Question: The candidates for president have each proposed changes to the healthcare system in America. Generally speaking, on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being not at all well, and 5 being very well, how well do you understand the details and differences of the various healthcare proposals put forth by the current presidential candidates?
1. Not at all well: 34%2. Not very well: 21%3. Neutral: 25%4. Well: 13%5. Very well: 6%6. Not sure: 1%
So discounting for the bullshit inflation factor of about 75% that means less than 5% of Americans understand all the candidates proposals—and not that many people read Bob L’s blog. And no I don’t count myself in that 5%. I have no idea what Romney’s health care plan is, ditto most of the rest of the Republicans other than Giuliani’s and he’s probably off back to fake homeland security consulting after Tuesday in Florida. And the Democrats can’t really make their minds up either. On the other hand I’m not sure I count the candidates in that 5% either!
The poll is from a website called PresidentialRx from a group at Vanderbilt Univ with a bunch of middle of the road healthcare worthies on board attempting to explain the health care policies of the candidates to the unwashed masses. There’s another one from HealthCentral run by our bud Craig Stoltz which we featured on THCB the other day which has really cool graphics. (And Susan Blumenthal has done yeoman’s work getting all the details down on her HuffPo blog)
But don’t forget kids, chances of anything actually happening in the next Administration that resembles anything much of the actual plans of any candidate as now described? — low
HEALTH2.0: iMedix gets big nod…
iMedix, a really new start-up that combines search and community messaging in health care won “best start-up” in The Crunchies. The Crunchies is the latest Web 2.0 awards show run by a combo of Web 2.0 tech blogs including TechCrunch, Read/Write Web and a couple of others. I’m not exactly a big fan of award shows—there’s this thing called the market which tends to be a more important judge—but it’s nice to see health care getting some notice from the ubber-tech crowd.
Well done to Iri, Amir and the team back in Israel.
Code Blue! Republicans leaning left on healthcare! Craig Stoltz
Craig Stoltz is a web consultant working in the health
2.0 space. He has previously served as health editor for the Washington Post and editorial director of Revolution Health. He blogs at Web 2.0 … Oh really? I recently had a hand in a project, called the Healthcare08
PoliGraph
, which seeks to find meaningful
distinctions among the presidential
candidates’ healthcare policies. This was tougher than it sounds.
This being the primary season, each party’s contenders are pretty
much sticking with the approved script. The Democrats are trying to outbid each
other for cradle-to-grave healthcare for all humans treading on U.S. soil. The
Republicans are quietly uttering free-market shibboleths to avoid alienating
their big contributors until the fall, when they’ll probably have to promise to
do something or other.
The PoliGraph project plotted each candidate’s stances on
six healthcare issues on big graphics. We plotted their positions along two
axes: from left (i.e., federalphilic) to right (federalphobic), and from most
important to least important (to the candidate, not us).
By parsing the data carefully, we were able to find some
daylight between candidates, even within each party’s tight ideological clusters.
For instance, for all the fuss over comparing Clinton’s and
Edwards’s personal “mandates” that
people have insurance, when we dug into her plan we found her solutions more inclusive
of market forces than either Edwards’ or Obama’s. (This gets wonkish, but Hillary
gives small businesses incentives to
offer private insurance coverage to employees; Edwards and Obama depend more on mandates and
expanding public programs to fill that gap. Hey, it’s something.)
POLITICS/TECH: Theocratic fascist scumbag rears ugly head in health care
Joe Paduda points us towards the latest adventures of the scummiest holier than thou corrupt theocratic fascist in recent American political history, who’s now raking it in overseeing corruption “prevention” in the implant business. Zimmer has been forced by one of his former colleagues in the US attorney’s office to hire his law firm at a just outrageous rate. Joe raises legitimate points about the culture of pay-offs all round in the implants/devices business which are now infecting the regulators.
But I just can’t get past seeing that man and all the pain he caused, not to mention his shredding of America’s tradition of civil liberties. For more on his raking it in, see earlier THCB explosions. Sometimes I hope there is that afterlife that he preaches about, because if there is I know where Ashcroft is going.
HEALTH PLANS: Brocade CEO goes to jail; what about McGuire?
I don’t understand why the Brocade CEO is convicted of back-dating options for others and sentenced to jail while former United Healthgroup CEO Bill McGuire is somehow able to pay a small-ish fine relative to what he made and apparently will face no charges. I was hoping that someone smarter than me would explain. Then I read this in former Republican Senator David Durenberger’s most excellent newsletter.
BILL MCGUIRE IN LIMBOIf there is such a place, Bill is in it for some time, thanks to U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum who has responsibility for the litigation arising around United Health Group’s stock options back-dating for directors and officers. A few weeks ago a couple of retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justices, whom Rosenbaum appointed to make recommendations relative to Bill McGuire’s alleged back-dating, did the "Minnesota Nice" thing and found a way for Bill and his corporate counsel, David Lubbens, to walk on water without drowning. Return $468 million and $24 million respectively in options without having to acknowledge any responsibility for actions to the public, shareholders, customers and community reputation. Rosenbaum wasn’t satisfied and the case goes on.
So I think I understand…(OK I don’t really). Can someone take a crack at it?
POLITICS: On the vacuousity of the primary season
I am up at Spot-on ranting about how an endless beauty parade among candidates who agree with each other doesn’t help us figure out what we get come election time. Please read it and come back to comment if you like.
