By Matthew Holt

After the hotties from Rocketboom, now politics has a daily quickie from another cutie called Lindsay Campbell (the site Moblogic.tv is run by CBS rather than some indie company), but this episode, Who the Health Cares?, points out very sensibly that the Democrats in Congress aren’t really interested in health reform the way that Clinton and Obama say they are.

Lindsay thinks that all the Dems should sign onto the Conyers single payer bill….

By Paul Levy

A suggestion from e-Patient Dave after his treatment at our hospital last year prompted us to start offering Carepages to our patients. The idea is to make it easy for people to create and update a private and personalized web page where they can share their latest news with friends and family and receive messages of support. There is no charge to the patient for this service.
Similar services had been available to patients if they made an effort to find them, but Dave was right to suggest that we offer it directly. For some reason, we were a bit behind the times on this matter, and I am glad he pointed it out to us.
Proving again that patients really have good ideas about how to make life better for patients. Duh!

 

While we’re on the theme of the health care jungle, here’s one more for you. This young lion and his buddy spent the night feasting on this buffalo.

By THCB STAFF

Highly Credible Poll of the Day: Seven percent of Americans marry for health insurance. 

WSJ Health Blog:  In wake of celebrity snooping cases UCLA officials say "new system will make employees list their connection to the patient
and will warn them if they’re entering “an especially protected chart."

Calif. Gov will try to push through health care plan in Sacramento after defeat last year. Schwarzenegger to AP: "We’ll try again. We will continue on, keeping
the stakeholders together, fine-tuning it and seeing if we can improve
on it since we have the time now, then be back again. We feel very
confident."

Relatives of U.S. victims testify to Congress in tainted heparin case.

FDA: Contamination "probably intentional."

National Review: "incident exposes the ugly little secret about drug importation as a
means to lower the cost of medicine. Substandard and counterfeit drugs
proliferate in many countries in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere."

Surrendered to the void: LSD inventor Albert Hoffman dead at the age of 102. 

NIH Joins Newly Formed International Cancer Genome Consortium

Washington Post: Two Research Teams Reverse Congenital Blindness Using Genetically Altered Viruses

Seattle Times: Targeted Genetics Introduces Gene Therapy

Washington Post: Mining Cancer with Nano Gold in Maryland

MedPage: Pretty Pictures – French Develop Next-Gen, Graphical Medical Communications System

Open Call to MedBloggers- Join Blogging Against Disablism Day May 1st

Healthcare stocks. What’s the prognosis?

People trust health insurance companies to hold their health spending information more than they trust banks, according to a survey from Medavante.

In Cure the Confusion: The Consumer Experience of Online Healthcare, Medavante found that consumers perceived that health plans have less bias than financial institutions. Yet, 80 million Americans bank online.

Still, trust in online banking is eroding. Earlier this month, Bankrate’s survey asserted that Americans are very concerned about identity theft. This is beginning to impact their online behavior with banks.

This is a new finding. Other data sources assert that consumers lack trust in health plans when it comes to data. Forrester’s recent research discovered that consumers don’t necessarily trust health plans to keep personal health information private.Furthermore, Bruce Temkin’s excellent Customer Experience Index work at Forrester found that health plans rank in last place in customer experiences. With the growing role consumers are playing in personal health financing, banks are launching an initiative to play a major role in managing personal health information. The Medical Banking Project (MBP) was founded in 2001 as a rallying point for financial services institutions who were carving out a role in health care. Since then, the MBP has grown its membership and mission beyond driving paper out of health care. Its sights are set on "medical banking convergence:" the integration of medical information with health financial data.

But will consumers slow this convergence given their potential concerns about banks managing health information found by Medavante?

Jane’s Hot Points: It is possible that consumer trust has eroded in banks’ handling of personal information given more press and concern about identity theft, privacy gaffes, and potentially, the impact of the sub-prime mortgage crisis on the consumer psyche. At the same time, Medavante’s poll shows that consumers may have more trust in health plans — which would be big news for the industry.