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Why Didn’t ICD-10 Implementation Bring Down Europe’s Health System?

We’re seeing a lot of pushback against ICD-10 implementation, with the American Medical Association’s “vigorous opposition” at the extreme. Gloom and doom types equate to potential IT disaster to Y2K. Ever since watching T. Bedirhan Üstün, M.D. — curator of the International Classification of Diseases, the master coding set from which ICD-10 is derived – present at the American Health Information Managers (AHIMA) annual meeting last October, a question’s been gnawing at me:

If flipping the switch on ICD-10 come Oct. 1, 2013 will be such a disaster as groups like the AMA claim it will be, then why didn’t it bring down the European and Asian health systems that implemented their own flavors of ICD-10 years ago?

The reporter in me – especially when hearing people couch ICD-10 in terms like “unfunded mandate” and “sky-is-falling” hyperbole – suspects it’s all about politics. During the course of debate in these times, it seems as if people on both the left and right resort to browbeating rhetoric faster than I’ve ever seen in my life. And why not? Reciting the catchphrase du jour requires far less reasoning than a well-constructed, original thought.

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Recession Drives Lower Health Spending

The Great Recession has achieved what 20 years of policy machinations in Washington could not. For the second straight year, the world’s most expensive health-care system did not gobble up a greater share of the nation’s economy. In fact, health care grew at a slightly slower pace.

Health spending rose just 3.9 percent to $2.59 trillion in 2010, only one-tenth of a percentage point faster than the previous year. That was slightly below the 4.2 percent nominal growth in gross domestic product (GDP), which means health care stayed at 17.9 of the total economy, no different than the prior year.

This represents the third straight year of markedly slower growth in health-care spending, compared to the prior decade. Health care was 13.8 percent of GDP in 2000 and 12.5 percent in 1990.

The lingering effects of the U.S. economic slowdown were largely responsible for a slower growth of health-care consumption, economists at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said. Cash-strapped consumers postponed elective surgeries, put off doctor visits and switched to generic drugs to hold down out-of-pocket costs, which grew just 1.8 percent in 2010.

The economic downturn “caused many people to lose employer-sponsored health insurance and people cut back on their use of care,” said Anne B. Martin, an economist at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

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What Doctors Can Learn from the New England Patriots

As the new year starts, I’m eager for a fresh start and working on improving myself both physically and emotionally. I’m also eager for the NFL playoffs and seeing how my favorite team, the New England Patriots, fares under the leadership of Coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. Doctors and health care can learn much from their examples.

Over the past decade, the New England Patriots have been dominant appearing in 40 percent of the Super Bowls played and winning 3 out of 4. Nothing prior to 2000, would have suggested this superior performance with playoff appearances only six times from 1985 to 2000 and two Super Bowl appearances, both losses.  Their new head coach Bill Belichick hired in 2000 had a losing record in his prior stint at Cleveland. Their current quarterback Tom Brady was drafted in the second to last round.

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The Do’s and Don’ts of Hospital Health IT

Last year I started a series of “Do’s and Don’ts” in hospital tech by focusing on wireless technologies. Folks asked a lot of questions about do’s and don’ts in other tech areas so here’s a list of more tips and tricks:

  • Do start implementing cloud-based services. Don’t think, though, that just because you are implementing cloud services that you will have less infrastructure or related work to do. Cloud services, especially in the SaaS realm, are “application-centric” solutions and as such the infrastructure requirements remain pretty substantial – especially the sophistication of the network infrastructure.
  • Do consider programmable and app-driven content management and document management systems as a core for their electronic health records instead of special-purpose EHR systems written decades ago. Don’t install new EHRs that don’t have robust document management capabilities. Do consider EHRs that can be easily integrated with document and content management systems like SharePoint or Alfresco.
  • Do go after virtualization for almost all apps – as soon as possible, make it so that no applications are sitting in physical servers. Don’t invest more in any apps that cannot easily be virtualized.

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What if They Had Had to Pay?

A true story, with changes made to protect privacy.  An 89-year-old man with dementia, a heart condition, and other serious medical conditions fell in his Arizona apartment and broke his hip.  His children, wanting the best possible care, arranged for him to be air-lifted to New York.  There, the orthopaedic surgeon advised them that the chance of their father surviving hip surgery was very low, but he would do as the family wished.  The man’s three children could not agree.  Two would have avoided the surgery, but a third felt very strongly that everything that could be done for the father should be done.  The other siblings, out of guilt and respect for the third, acceded.  The surgery took place, and the father spent three days in the ICU before his heart gave out.

Here’s the terrible and hard-hearted question I pose:  If the costs of this procedure and hospitalization had not been covered by Medicare, would the man’s children have proceeded along the chosen path?  I am guessing not.  I don’t know the total bill incurred, but it was certainly in the range of tens of thousands of dollars.

In the US, we don’t have a good societal process for making these decisions.  In the United Kingdom, though, they do, as reported by Bob Wachter in a recent blog post.  Here are some excerpts:

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Is Epidemiology Worthless?

Epidemiology has lots of critics. In this article, for example, it is called “lying on a grand scale.” Every critique I have read has ignored history. Epidemiologists have been right about two major issues: 1. Heavy smoking causes lung cancer. 2. Folate deficiency causes birth defects. In both cases, the first evidence was epidemiological. Another example is John Snow’s conclusion about the value of clean water. In my experience, epidemiologists often overstate the strength of their evidence (as do most of us) but overstatement is quite different from having nothing worth saying.

Let’s look at an example. Many people think osteoporosis is due to lack of calcium. Bones are made of calcium, right? The epidemiology of hip fractures is clear. In spite of the conventional idea, the rate of hip fracture has been highest in places where people eat a lot of calcium, such as Sweden, and lowest in places where they eat little, such as Hong Kong. (For example.) In other words, the epidemiology flatly contradicted the conventional idea. This was apparently ignored by nutrition experts (everyone knows correlation does not equal causation) who advised millions of people, especially women, to take calcium supplements  to avoid osteoporosis. Millions of people followed (and follow) that advice.

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The Earbud Epidemic

A new study shows that one in five Americans, 20%, has some form of hearing loss. That is a huge number and much larger than anyone had previously thought. According to the study, in the Annals of Internal Medicine, that means 48 million Americans hear so poorly that they cannot understand a companion in a crowded restaurant. Until this study, estimates had been that the number of Americans with this level of hearing loss was less than half the number found or under 10%.

The study looked at Americans 12 years and older who have had their hearing tested rather than previous studies that relied on self-reported data. This study used the World Health Organization’s definition for hearing loss, which is not being able to hear sounds of 25 decibels or less at the frequencies for speaking. And it found that of those 20%, 13% had hearing loss at that level in both ears. The remainder had it in just one.

The study draws no conclusions about the reasons for this – nor does it state that this is something that has changed over time. It is well known that people’s hearing deteriorates over time and it is also well-known that people can damage their hearing by listening to sounds at inappropriate volume levels for periods of time. That’s why people protect their ears when working with loud machinery, etc.

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Harvard Business School Future of Healthcare Conference

Personalized medicine, iPads, insurance exchanges, non-profit/private partnerships…what will healthcare look like in 2020? The healthcare industry today is under enormous stress. Big Pharma is struggling to fill its pipeline, and the biotech industry has failed to deliver sustainable profits for its investors. Health plans operate under enormous uncertainty as reform hits one political roadblock after another. Hospitals struggle to find profitable business models, while patients struggle to find safe, affordable and high-quality care.

But the future of healthcare remains incredibly promising. Scientific discoveries and business model innovations are shaping the healthcare of tomorrow, today. But what will that future look like? On February 4th, over 600 industry leaders, professionals, and students will gather at Harvard Business School for its 9th Annual Healthcare Conference to answer that very question.  Karen Ignagni, CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and one of Modern Healthcare’s “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare”, will discuss the future of the health insurance industry.  Other keynote speakers include Bill Crounse, Senior Director, Worldwide Health for Microsoft and contributor to Microsoft Healthblog, and Larry Culp, CEO of Danaher, who will discuss broader trends in healthcare IT and innovation.

A variety of topics will be debated during panel sessions where moderators are encouraged to challenge panelists to envision the healthcare business models of tomorrow. In the Biotech & Pharma panel, for example, panelists will discuss the rise of tailored therapeutics―Dr. Stephen Spielberg, Deputy Commissioner of the FDA, will provide his perspective on the regulation of personalized treatments. The Payor & Provider Panel will explore the shift to an outcomes-based future―Regina Herzlinger, author of “Who Killed Health Care?” and often dubbed the “Godmother” of consumer-driven Healthcare movement, will share her viewpoint.

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Teaching Residents about Costs: The Price is Right


It all started while out to dinner with a couple of my fellow Brigham/Massachusetts General Hospital OB/Gyn residents. We were discussing our favorite old TV shows and one fellow resident’s love of The Price Is Right with Bob Barker. After talking about the game show, a light bulb went off in my head and I thought, “Why can’t we play The Price is Right with hospital charges to our patients?”

With further discussion we realized that none of us knew the hospital charge, or the cost to our patients for routine workups we routinely order in our gynecology clinic. We really had no idea.

After asking around, I realized that I was not alone in my lack of knowledge, or the idea to play The Price is Right with hospital charges. A couple of years prior the Massachusetts General Hospital Internal Medicine residents had played a similar game with the goal to create awareness of the costs associated with routine workups.

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Health Care Social Media – How to Engage Online Without Getting into Trouble

“Why do you rob banks?”

“That’s where the money is.”

The legendary bank robber Willie Sutton, when asked, gave this straightforward response explaining his motivation.  A similar motivation may be ascribed to the early adopters among health care providers who have established beachheads on various social media properties on line.  Why be active in on line social networks?  That’s where the people are: patients, caregivers, potential collaborators and referral sources, like many, many other people, are using social media more and more.  Facebook has become nearly ubiquitous, and its user base is growing not only among the younger set, but also among the older set, who are signing up so they can see pictures of their grandkids.  In today’s wired society, on line social networking is the new word of mouth.  Word-of-mouth referrals, personal recommendations, have always been prized; we have simply moved many of those conversations on line.

Over half of Americans rely on the internet when looking for health care information.  Many on line searches are conducted on behalf of another person.  Most people expect their health care providers to be on line, providing trustworthy information – and the day of the static website has passed.  In addition, a growing subset of the population is comprised of “e-patients” – the “e” stands for educated, engaged and empowered – who seek out health care providers prepared to engage with them both in person and on line.

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