Author Archives

Matthew Holt

Healthcare Unbound, and HHS Genomics Workshop

Jul 3, 2008

By Matthew Holt

There’s lots of activity coming up next week. Matthew Holt will be at a star-studded workshop about personal genomics put on by HHS in Washington DC Monday afternoon. Details are here and if you can’t get there you can see the webcast.

Meanwhile, the Healthcare Unbound Conference is having a session on Monday afternoon in San Francisco about Health 2.0. David Kibbe is the moderator, and our very own Indu Subaiya is on the panel with Adam Bosworth (ex-Google, now with Keas) and Cris Ross from CVS MinuteClinic.

MARKETPLACE: Patient safety barbecue

Jul 3, 2008• 1

LeapforPatientSafety.org is hosting a patient safety barbecue in Aiken South Carolina July 4 to commemorate Patient Safety Day. The organization also has an online petition requesting increased protection for physicians who complain to hospital administrators regarding poor quality patient care.

Mitigating interference between electronic medical devices

Jul 3, 2008• 1

By John Halamka

Last week, JAMA published an article about the risks of active and passive radio frequency identification to other hospital equipment.

The Associated Press and ABC News issued major stories about it.

Although the study focused on RFID tags, the issue is more generic. Electronic Magnetic Interference (EMI) is generated by many devices including cell phones, laptops, and microwave ovens. Such devices emit RF energy which may interfere with the operation of sensitive electronic components used in medical equipment. The interference may be frequency related (signal jamming) or cause the device to fail because a chip or wire is exposed to too much energy from an emitting device. The very best defense is to have adequate shielding for medical equipment. It’s inconceivable that hospitals can keep patient care areas free of RF emitters. Thus, it is important for hospital clinical engineering departments to be vigilant in identifying potentially unsafe devices.

AMA and AHIP go head to head with TV ads

Jul 2, 2008• 3

By Sarah Arnquist

The American Medical Association this week began a television ad campaign, lambasting Republican Senators who failed to prevent the July 1 automatic 10.6 percent Medicare physician fee cut.

In the one-minute ad, AMA President Nancy Nielsen says, "A group of Senators decided it was more important to protect the health insurers than seniors."

Just as Robert Laszewski predicted here last week, the doctors are coming out in full lobbying force.

But wait. The Association of Health Insurance Plans is also running ads filled with nice looking seniors saying that to protect seniors Congress must protect the Medicare Advantage program.

Who is a senior taking 10 prescription medications for six chronic diseases with a calendar full of doctor’s appointments to believe?

Here are the ads.

We need to make some changes to change health care

Jul 2, 2008• 5

By Charlie Baker

Charlie Baker is the president and CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc., a nonprofit health plan that covers more than 1 million New Englanders. Baker blogs regularly at Let’s Talk Health Care.

One of the reasons the operating model in health care doesn’t change much over time is pretty simple: most of the people who think about it, write about it, work in it and study it have trouble seeing the model any differently than they see it today. I was struck, therefore, by Hebrew Senior Life’s Len Fishman the other day when he and I served on a panel at the 30th annual meeting of the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium. We were told to discuss health care 30 years from now — me from the plan perspective, and Len from the long term care perspective. I went pretty far out there in my remarks, imagining, among other things, a world in which there were no health plans at all(!). Len did too. His presentation on the future of long term care could not have looked more different than what we have today. He literally re-imagined the whole thing. It was startling — and refreshing.

This question — is the future just like the past, or something different — was raised again for me earlier this week when Brian Rosman — a good guy with whom I almost never agree — posted a blog on the Health Care for All Web site that basically said that more publicly available information on health care cost and quality could/might/will lead to higher costs and higher prices, because no one really cares about costs, and if they do, they’ll flock to higher cost options, because they’ll think they’re better than lower cost ones.

Consumer genetic movement: Cease and desist? How about understand and resist!

Jul 2, 2008• 1

By Scott Shreeve

I have been following health care consumerism for several years now. Particularly, the “Direct Access” or “Direct To Consumer” laboratory testing market. While analytic lab testing has led out in this area, genetic testing has received all the regulatory attention, national press, and policy efforts (GINA).So it is no surprise that consumer genetic movement would be the first legal test of the Health 2.0 movement. As reported by Matthew Holt here on THCB, and a host of national outlets (Wired has had extensive coverage here, here, and here), there seems to be quite a hornets nest unleashed by our friends at the California and New York Departments of Health who are attempting to prevent consumers from accessing their own genetic information.

Thanks to some transparency efforts of the blogosphere, you can read the actual cease and desist letter written by Karen Nickels, the California Department of Pubic Health Chief of Laboratory Field Services. I actually know Karen Nickels personally. She has been a long time steward of ensuring regulatory exactness of all things laboratory within the State of California for 30+ years. She has a well deserved reputation as one tough cookie for the “precision” with which she carries out her dutiesUltimate Genetic Fighting – Which Genetic Variation Wins?

Docs get mad, 2.0 style, at Sermo

Jul 1, 2008• 8

By Matthew Holt

Sermo Of course, it’s not just cornering a Senator at July 4th picnic that changes policy.
These days there are online communities doing it too. And with increased grumpiness among many doctors, and now the almost-here-rather-than-looming-on-the-horizon cuts in Medicare, you can expect a response online. And here it is: Fed up Sermo docs draft manifesto. Yup, those docs hanging out on Sermo are not just discussing clinical cases, they’re on the verge of getting politically active. As you might expect, they’re pissed off with insurers, the government and lawyers. And who could disagree? (I know, I know it’s more complex than that….)

Never one to miss a trick, Sermo has allowed itself to be used as a vehicle for the open letter that’s going to get much more publicity (and yup, as a doc you have to sign up for Sermo to sign the letter, to verify that you are a doc!). Here’s the site called Doctors Unite.

Every other form of political activism has moved online, so don’t be surprised to see more like this. Of course, if the details get specific, it’s tricky to know whether the coalition of pissed off docs will hang together, and also whether Sermo will become type-cast as representing a particular flavor of doctor (see: Medical Association, American) which may somewhere down the road limit its business initiatives. But for now, it’s fun to see online organization get serious in health care.

Matthew’s top podcasts this year

Jul 1, 2008• 3

By THCB STAFF Ipod

The Health Care Blog is working hard to bring readers more excellent content, but
the downside of that is great posts and podcasts quickly get buried. Here’s a quick list of Matthew’s top podcasts this year.

Adam Bosworth speaks about Google Health, Keas and everything By Matthew Holt

Adam_bosworth

After a long period of time I’ve finally wrestled Adam Bosworth to
the floor and forced the microphone to his mouth. Adam of course is the
software guru (he’s one of the originators of XML) who went to Google
to start Google Health,
and spent much of 2007 talking about how he hoped Google Health would
change health care. He then left Google Health (several months before
it launched in March 2008) and at the very end of 2007 founded Keas. Adam has very strong views on health technology, data, PHRs.
HealthVault & Google Health, and much much more. Listen to the podcast.

Cisco’s Frances Dare talks about Congressional action on health IT By Matthew Holt

Frances_dare_2 Frances Dare has seen the painfully
slow developments in many aspects of health IT since the 1990s, and has
an experienced view of what’s coming along at what pace. These days
Frances is a Director at Cisco focusing on health care, and more
recently she’s taken an active role in Cisco’s health care lobbying
efforts on Capitol Hill. Here’s the podcast.

Interview with Trizetto & Eliza By Matthew Holt

I spoke this morning with Gene Drabinksi, who runs the CareAdvance unit of Trizetto, and Alexandra Drane, President of Eliza. They recently announced a partnership that integrates the care
management aspects of Trizetto’s services with the automated phone
outreach provided by Eliza. It’s another step in the evolution of
phone-based contact and personalization in health care — which, the
careful THCB reader will have noted, I think is an important channel
for delivering and capturing health information. Of particular importance, is making useful that vast glob of data
stored within a health plan by communicating about it with the members.
It’s also always good to hear from some experienced and passionate
players, and Alex and Gene certainly fit that bill. Here’s the podcast.

Interview with Kerry Hicks, HealthGrades CEO By Matthew Holt

HealthGrades has been busy. The publicly traded, pure-play provider
ratings company is changing the way it offers ratings, it’s publishing
a book, and it’s starting to rate drugs. It’s not alone. Last week,
Consumer Reports announced it also is getting into the business of
rating hospitals and using a model developed in conjunction with the
Dartmouth crowd. Plus, there’s the CMS effort. Given the way that
ratings are evolving and HealthGrades’ partnership with Google, (more
to come on Google from me separately soon) last week was a great time
to talk with HealthGrades Chairman & CEO Kerry Hicks. (Sadly it was before the Consumer Reports announcement but fascinating nonetheless). Listen to the podcast.

Kaiser tiptoes into HealthVault & tells THCB about it By Matthew Holt

Kaiser Permanente signed an extensive pilot with Microsoft, allowing
its 159,000 employees to copy their online health records into
HealthVault. This is a big coup for Microsoft and a fairly ambitious
move for KP which to this point hasn’t said much publicly about the
data transferability it was going to provide for its members. This is a
clear signal. Assuming that the pilot is a success, presumably all
Kaiser members using My Health Manager (over 2 million now and heading
to 3 million at years end) will soon be able to move their data to
HealthVault. We are potentially seeing the first real example of mass
scale data interoperability onto a platform not connected to a health
care organization. And obviously, Google is playing in this same space
too. Kaiser gave me a pre-release interview with with Peter Neupert, Corporate VP of Microsoft Health Solutions Group and Anne-Lisa Silvestre, VP of Online Services at KP. Listen to the Podcast.

The Long Baby Boom By Matthew Holt

I had a great chat with health care futurist Jeff Goldsmith
about his new book, the Long Baby Boom. We discussed the policy and
cultural issues of retirement, Medicare, Social Security, immigration,
end-of-life care and meaning… Listen to the podcast.

Caring.com & Trusera — two Health 2.0 newbies talk By Matthew Holt

Two of the more interesting newcomers in the Health 2.0 scene
gathered around the electronic water cooler, which is THCB’s podcast
series, to talk about what they’re up to and why they are worth looking
at. Andy Cohen is CEO of Caring.com and Keith Schorsch
is CEO of Trusera. Some of you may have seen Keith at the March 2008
Health 2.0 Conference. Andy is providing content checklists and much
more for those who have sick or frail parents, which will be most of
us. Keith is providing a sophisticated place for story telling and
information exchange for those facing serious health conditions. Both
have serious ambitions. Interesting stuff — listen to the podcast.

Google Health and the PHR: Do Consumers Care?

Jul 1, 2008• 28

By Keith Schorsch Keith_2

Google Health’s unveiling last week and Microsoft’s HealthVault launch last October
are important milestones in the evolution of Health 2.0. Both of these heavyweights have the resources and potential to improve the health consumer’s customer experience. I have followed the active (and important) conversations about privacy concerns, HIPAA, and Google Health’s terms of service, which are well represented by Erik Schonfeld’s post on Techcrunch and Larry Dignan’s post on ZDnet. And I read with interest Google’s rapid response offered by Google Senior Product Counsel Mark Yang.

What’s missing from all of these conversations is the elephant in the room: Do consumers really care about having online personal health records?

Dispatch from India: Private sector responding to new health care consumers

Jul 1, 2008• 5

By Jay Srinivasan

Editor’s note: The current issue of Health Affairs released next week
focuses on health care in India and China.

As with most parameters within the Indian economy these days, the health care industry is huge but that doesn’t tell you much.

The fact is that health care in India is a broken system whose fault lines are fast being papered over by the rapidity of change, influx of big capital, drive of entrepreneurship and the relative ease of staking positions and targeting opportunity in an economy on fire. Combine that with the government’s involuntary relinquishing of idealistic heights due to resource constraints and its abysmal record and you get an industry that is overwhelmingly in the hands of the private sector. Maybe the private sector can redeem the industry after six decades with little to show by the government.