The anonymous eDoc had this to say about Merrill Goozner's report that Obama may be considering Emory's Ken Thorpe as a replacement for Tom Daschle: 

"As a member of the Emory community, I know Ken Thorpe as a mover and a shaker in the area of public health with strong ties to the CDC (his office is literally next door to the CDC). He has Washington experience as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Policy during the early years of the Clinton administration, and has testified before Congress a number of times on public health issues. There is no stronger advocate for public health and preventative care than Thorpe."

Another anonymous reader e-mailed us this note :       

Bloomberg carries the suggestion from Peter Pitts & others that Mark McClellan might be a good  HHS replacement for Daschle. This would be a  disaster and I hope the Obama team in its haste doesn't go for it.  I think Peter is pimping for a new job (he worked for Mark at FDA as did I).  Recall that he is thought to be the conduit to the White House through his brother (then Press Secy) on Bush's attempt to appease the religious right by having FDA withhold approval of Plan B, the morning after pill.  Whether or not he was the conduit for the political ploy, he presided for a time over the corrupt process and shd be forever barred from gov't service. Further, I considered him then and now a political dilettante. A stint at Treasury under Clinton, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers under Bush, then FDA Cmr for a short short, and then on to CMS.   I cannot think of a single accomplishment of his in any of these posts."

Practice Fusion CMO Robert Rowley responded to critics' questions about his firm's ad-supported EMR, which he described in a post last week on THCb. ("Freenomics and Healthcare IT")

"We must recognize that the ad-server platform (which is what generates the revenues that allow the free-to-physicians EMR to be supported) is content-agnostic. It is merely a way of delivering focused messages to a targeted audience. The question of who “should” deliver ads has been discussed in this thread, and the ethical discussion of this is a good one to engage in. I tend to be a pragmatist here, and ask the question “who has stepped up to the table and supported this platform?” To date, commercial vendors, including service-partners (like billing services, transcription services, document scanning services, etc.), have come forward. The result? Thousands of physicians, previously priced out of the EMR market, have begun to adopt EMRs in their practices. This is a good thing."

Richard Reece MD was one of many who wrote in to comment on Monte Uyemura's controversial post challenging industry orthodoxies ("Mythology and Health Reform")

"The good doctor says the "solution" for our ills is “an army of primary care physicians,” Not a myth-filled system brimming with half-baked and half-assed rules and conditions. I agree, but how do we recruit this army, from where and whence will it come,And what will be the incentives, and who will be willing to pay the right sum,  To compensate for the current shortage of desperately needed primary clinicians."

Michael Millenson had this response to Bob Wachter's post ("Dr. Who?"), dealing with  a recent study that found many hospitalized patients don't know the names of the doctors who treat them.

"Interestingly, the very first patient "bill of rights" involved the issue of doctor's names. No, not the "bill of rights" with the evil health plans, but, back in the 1970s, where the threat of federal legislation was needed for hospitals to finally draw up a patient bill of rights. Among the entitlements: being given the name of the doctor(s) treating you.. "