Author Archives

Simon Nath

Why I Left My Pharma-Sponsored Academic Research Gig

Apr 18, 2016• 5

By BRAD FLANSBAUM

flying cadeucii Not long back, I departed a pharma-sponsored research project. I based my decision to leave in something I occasioned over a decade ago. I thought it was time to share the episode and the lessons learned given the attention being paid to physician conflict of interest nowadays (as well as the annual Open Payments review and dispute period approaching).

When I finished training, very few docs practiced hospital medicine—or even knew what the term hospitalist meant. Several forward-thinking medical centers hitched their wagons to the hospitalist model, as did some astute information technology and staffing companies.

However, few healthcare players embraced the hospitalist movement in a serious fashion like the pharmaceutical industry. They realized hospitalists prescribed a narrow band of products, in big lots, within a centralized location. The higher ups in the pharma sector saw the benefits in directing reps our way.

The Joint Commission Pain Standards: Five Misconceptions

Apr 18, 2016• 5

By DAVID W BAKER, MD

Baker_David_275 In the environment of today’s prescription opioid epidemic, everyone is looking for someone to blame. Often, The Joint Commission’s pain standards take that blame. We are encouraging our critics to look at our exact standards, along with the historical context of our standards, to fully understand what our accredited organizations are required to do with regard to pain.

The Joint Commission first established standards for pain assessment and treatment in 2001 in response to the national outcry about the widespread problem of undertreatment of pain. The Joint Commission’s current standards require that organizations establish policies regarding pain assessment and treatment and conduct educational efforts to ensure compliance. The standards DO NOT require the use of drugs to manage a patient’s pain; and when a drug is appropriate, the standards do not specify which drug should be prescribed.

Our foundational standards are quite simple. They are:

The hospital educates all licensed independent practitioners on assessing and managing pain.

The hospital respects the patient’s right to pain management.

The hospital assesses and manages the patient’s pain.

Requirements for what should be addressed in organizations’ policies include:

The Pharma = Evil Narrative

Apr 15, 2016• 12

By DAVID SHAYWITZ, MD

flying cadeucii “People hate pharma,” my Forbes colleague Matthew Herper observed recently–and at times I can understand why. There’s not much to admire about executives like Martin Shkreli, or businesses like Valeant.

But I’ve started to worry that the “pharma = evil” narrative has become so ingrained that it’s taking on a life of its own, as readers instinctively anticipate this storyline, and journalists reflexively provide it. Coverage of a recently announced innovative training collaboration between Johns Hopkins and MedImmune (a subsidiary of AstraZeneca ), for instance, focused primarily on potential conflicts of interest.

(Disclosure/reminder: I work at DNAnexus, a health data management company in Silicon Valley and Boston; our partners include universities, government agencies and private companies.)

This narrow view, however, not only fails to capture the urgent need for effective, new therapies, it overlooks entirely the vital role played by companies in translating fragile but promising scientific ideas into robust medicines for patients.

Check Your 2015 Open Payments Data

Apr 15, 2016

By SHANTANU AGARWAL, MD

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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ continues to publish data from applicable manufacturers and group purchasing organizations (GPOs) about payments they make to physicians and teaching hospitals on its website. We’re pleased that the public has searched Open Payments data more than 6.3 million times. Doctors, teaching hospitals and others receiving payments or other transfers of value that are sent to us from reporting entities, should take steps to ensure that this information about you, your related research, ownership, and other financial concerns are accurate.

Doctors and teaching hospitals have the chance to review and dispute the information shared about them before we post the new and updated Open Payments data on June 30, 2016. The data we post on June 30^th is now available for review through May 15, 2016. Since April 1, this is the only chance for these health care providers to dispute inaccurate or incomplete data before we post it. After that they only have until the end of the year that this financial data is published to review and dispute any payment records and how it was attributed from GPOs, drug and device manufacturers.

Any doctor or teaching hospital that wants to look at the financial information reported on them by manufacturers and GPOs can register on the Open Payments website to create an account or log if they already have an account. Visit our website for instructions and quick tips.

Stephen Curry’s Health Care Plan

Apr 14, 2016• 8

By CHARLES GROSS

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The 3 point shot has revolutionized basketball and turned the NBA upside down. The smartphone has revolutionized health care and turned the doctor-patient relationship upside down.

Let’s examine those two statements.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Martin Johnson describes the dramatic changes that the creation of the 3 point shot has created. The prior era in was dominated by a dominating big man- Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlin, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. As Johnson writes, “This made intuitive sense: The better a team is at protecting its basket, the better its defense should be.”

Suddenly, the rules changed and the 3 point shot was created.

With new rules, new values.

With new rules, new math, new economics for the NBA.

What had been valuable- the dominant big center to defend the basket- is no longer as valuable.

What had not been as valuable- a small, quick, long distance shooting guard, and those best suited to defend against them- now are a valued resource.

The evidence of this ‘transformative innovation’ is everywhere; from Stephen Curry, a small nimble, excellent shooting guard, winning the NBA MVP award to the NBA finals between the Cavaliers and the Warriors- where the defense is as fierce at the 3 point line as it is right under the basket.

So the new rule establishing the 3 point line has turned the game inside out, shifting the focus from the ‘big man’ to a new type of player – as John Hollinger, the Memphis Grizzlies vice president of basketball operations, states in the Journal, “It has completely changed the way players are valued on the market. Now we put a premium on length and basketball IQ.”

Climate Change and the Migration of Infectious Disease

Apr 13, 2016• 3

By WILLIAM B MILLER JR., MD

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Zika is all over the news. Zika is surely dangerous, but it has its limitations and is likely to be well contained. However, its greater significance extends beyond any current spread. Instead, it exemplifies the crucial emerging trend of a novel infectious agent that has swiftly become a global threat.

The common phrase, ‘this time is different’, is almost always wrong. Yet, our modern circumstances are distinctly unlike any previous era. Humans possess a unique ability for rapid travel and we choose to journey with our favorite pets and plants. This unprecedented degree of mobility extends across every planetary habitat. Further yet, it now occurs during a phase of a rapidly shifting climate. Certainly, species migration or global climate change are not new but it is only in this present moment that these factors can amplify through instantaneous global travel in a singular manner.

In fact, the results of this unusual conjunction are already apparent. For example, Zika’s advance across Europe and to the Americas has been extremely rapid. This is such an extraordinary event that at the beginning of this year, the World Health Organization declared Zika a global emergency in recognition of its rapid spread from continent to continent. Its rising incidence mirrors our prior concerns about the global scope of other recent epidemics such as Ebola or SARS.

Are Your Health Cost Savings an Illusion?

Apr 12, 2016• 1

By TOM EMERICK AND DAVID TOOMEY

flying cadeucii The New England Journal of Medicine carried an excellent article by David Casarette, MD, on the topic of health care illusions and medical appropriateness. Click here to read the full article. Hats off to Bob Stauble for a heads up on this article.

Casarette observes that humans have a tendency to see success in what they do, even if in truth there is none. Casarette writes, “Psychologists call this phenomenon, which is based on our tendency to infer causality where none exists, the ‘illusion of control’.” This illusion applies in all walks of life, especially in politics and parenting, and it includes medical care as well.

In medical care, the phenomenon has been referred to as “therapeutic illusion“, and it impacts both doctors and patients. Undoubtedly, therapeutic illusion is why placebos can so effective.

The C Word

Apr 11, 2016• 29

By JEFF GOLDSMITH

flying cadeucii That we are experiencing a “consumer revolution” in healthcare is a durable meme in the media and in policy circles just now. When you hear the word “consumer”, it conjures images of someone with a cart and a credit card happily weaving their way through Best Buy. It is, however, a less than useful way of thinking about the patient’s experience in the health system.

A persistent critique of our country’s high cost health system is that because patients are insulated from the cost of care by health insurance, they freely “consume” it without regard to its value, and are absolved of the need to manage their own health. In effect, this view ascribes our very high health costs to moral failure on the part of patients.

Market-oriented policy advocates believe that if we “empower”patients as consumers by asking them to pay more of the bill, market forces will help us tame the ever rising cost of care. If patients have “skin in the game” when they use the health system and also “transparency” of health providers’ prices and performance, patients can deploy their own dollars more sensibly.

This concept played a major role in the otherwise “progressive” Affordable Care Act. The 13 million people who signed up for coverage this year through the Affordable Care Act’s Health Exchanges opted overwhelmingly for subsidized policies with very high deductibles and out-of-pocket cost limits. The “skin in the game” argument has also heavily influenced corporate health benefits decisions. More than 30 million workers and their families receive high deductible plans through employers.

Keep Calm and Save the NHS

Apr 9, 2016• 1

By SAURABH JHA, MD

Keep Calm and Save the NHS It was Boxing Day weekend. The consultant surgeon summoned the on-call team. “We face a calamity,” he said. The house officer had called in sick. The locum wasn’t going to arrive for another 12 hours. This meant that I, the senior house officer, would have to be the house officer. The registrar would take my place. The consultant, looking tense, would have to be the registrar—i.e. a junior doctor again.

“Junior doctor” is a misnomer because it implies a master and an apprentice. Running the National Health Service (NHS) are apprentices who become Jedis very quickly, and without a Ben Kenobi showing them the ropes.

I’ll never forget my first night on-call in the emergency room (ER). I was one of two junior doctors managing a busy inner city ER in London from midnight to 8 am. Just a year earlier, I was an errant medical student bunking lectures. Now I had to see people with heart attacks, strokes, and broken bones. Seeing the terror on my face, the senior nurse reassured me. “Just look as if you know what you’re doing. We’ll handle the rest.”

Forget Patient-Facing Apps. Yes, You Read That Correctly.

Apr 9, 2016

By ALAN PITT, MD

flying cadeucii Several years ago both Microsoft and Google invested millions of dollars on a flawed assumption: If they built a useful and free healthcare application, people would flock to it. In both cases, the effort failed. At its peak Microsoft HealthVault was only able to enroll a few thousand—largely inactive—users. Google Health was discontinued after a few years.

The problem was (and is) that unlike almost any other business, healthcare is a negative good.

Even if it’s “free,” as was the case with both the Microsoft and Google offerings, most people find tracking their health to be, in some sense, an admission of frailty, imperfection and mortality. Except for occasional blips related more to vanity (weight loss is the prime example), when it comes to our health most of us are in denial. So when people talk about technology for patient engagement, I tend to pause and wonder: Should we be building apps and services just for patients, or for the people who care about them too?