Last year was a banner year for digital health, as the market saw significant growth in funding, bigger deals and new investors entering the space. So what’s in store for 2013? According to a survey of nearly 140 digital health entrepreneurs and over 50 health care information technology venture investors, conducted by my venture capital firm InterWest Partners, we are in for another exciting ride this year. In the survey, we asked which sectors will see the most love from investors in 2013; which companies (if any) will see a $1 billion valuation; where they are having trouble recruiting; and which digital health entrepreneur would win “Survivor: HCIT Island” The answers? Well, it all depends who you ask.
The IPAB Bomb
How’s this for a bitter pill?
For Republicans looking for cures for Medicare spending growth, one of the best places to look is one of their least favorites: in the legislative pharmacopeia that is Obamacare.
There are many things opponents of President Obama’s health reform law detest, and topping the list is the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB.
Before we get to the reasons why, it is good to remember that, as sketched into the law, the singular goal of the IPAB is — guess what? — to control Medicare spending growth.
Nothing actually happens under the provision unless (i.e., until) the $525 billion per year program exceeds growth targets, and the earliest any IPAB-directed actions could take effect is 2015. But if everything really is on the table as both sides work to avoid the next in a series of fiscal embarrassments, why not a major dose of economic medicine — properly defined and administered — that is already written into law and embraced by the president?
The biggest obstacle for Republicans is political or, more precisely, optical. Although IPAB’s stated goal is to contain Medicare spending growth, the provision is the embodiment of everything Republicans do not like, not just about Obamacare, but about “Big Government” generally. IPAB is a Board! — sufficient criticism for many — of 15 “bureaucrats” who will operate beyond the reach of Congress or the public. They will make arbitrary decisions about what Medicare will or will not pay for. They will use payment to come between you and your doctor. They will take away your health care!
Maybe so. The IPAB as drafted today is a black box, not a blueprint, a plan to make plans to save money, later. And for critics, black boxes are whatever they want them to be: death panels in drag, roulette wheels for rationing care, medical-industrial phantasmagoria straight out of Kafka and Huxley. Even among health industry supporters of Obamacare — patient advocacy groups, insurers, the major provider and drug lobbies — the IPAB is worrisome because it is all cost-containment mission and few particulars. If done right, it could save not only billions of dollars but thousands of lives from needless and dangerous medical interventions; if done wrong, it could mean arbitrary intrusions into medical care and a death knell for whole spheres of medical innovation.
The need for clarity today about how the IPAB will work years from now is one more reason the White House and Congress can and should mobilize — in the service of deficit reduction — the biggest potential mechanism for Medicare cost containment already written into law. Federal budget negotiators need the vehicle; those rushing to implement Obamacare need to flesh out how the IPAB will work; and those investing — or afraid to invest — in medical innovations need to know what impact IPAB will have on the future of Medicare.
Killed by The New York Times?
Readers know that I am skeptical of medical practices that defy logic, or as we say in the business, evidence. Among the most controversial issues that beguile all of us (patients and docs) is this business about the PSA test.
A loyal reader sent me a doctor-written column with the provocative headline “My Patient, Killed by The New York Times.”
First, keep in mind that the website that posted this, Mediaite, is all about the media covering (really fawning and dishing) itself. The purpose of this story, with its provocative headline, sad outcome, and mea culpa tone, is to generate “buzz.”
Then understand that this is a story of one patient who made an informed decision to forego PSA testing, based on the fact that he was an intelligent person without symptoms who’d read the literature (or at least responsible press coverage of said evidence). He did not want to open the Pandora’s Box (literally: crapshoot) that is PSA screening.
Yes, he wound up with advanced prostate cancer and subsequently died. Had he had his prostate removed or radiation to ablate his cancer, and wound up with horrible side effects (impotence, incontinence) would he value the trade-off?
I offer you the counter-anecdote of Ted, who in a discussion with me, insisted that he get a PSA test because his heroes Joe Torre and Norman Schwarzkopf told him to. When it came back at 4.10 ng/dL (threshold 4.00), he went for biopsy (what else to do?) which showed low grade, gland-confined prostate cancer. Fearful of the “C” word, he couldn’t live with the idea of doing nothing (“watchful waiting”) about his cancer. So he chose external beam radiation, with the hope that it would be less damaging than radical surgery.
The Four Things You Should Absolutely, Positively Do For Somebody at Risk of Developing Alzheimer’s
Do they need a PET scan to confirm the presence or absence of amyloid plaque?
More importantly, would doing such PET scans make meaningful impacts on patients’ health?
Those are the questions that a Medicare expert panel recently considered, and their impression, after carefully reviewing lots of high-quality research, is that we don’t yet have evidence supporting the benefit of using the PET scans. Unsurprisingly, some experts disagree, including a working group convened by the Alzheimer’s Association. This group of experts reviewed the evidence and common clinical scenarios, and concluded that in certain select situations, use of the PET scan would be appropriate. (See their guidelines here.)
As someone who evaluates many memory complaints, I’m certainly interested in Medicare’s inquiry, and in whether they’ll decide to cover the scan. (The NYT’s New Old Age Blog has a nice summary of the debate; a good read if you haven’t seen it yet, esp the comments.)
Also, I blogged last fall about how I thought the new scan could and wouldn’t help clinicians like myself evaluating cognitive complaints, especially in those who likely have early dementia. In particular, I commented on the difficult period of uncertainty that we often go through, as we wait to see if subtle problems progress or not.
Would the PET scan meaningfully help with that period of uncertainty? Hard to say, and it hasn’t yet been tested. I myself think that this period of uncertainty can be pretty hard on families, but measuring this burden is tricky. (Much easier to measure hospitalizations and utilization!)
I also suspect that it’ll be hard to prove benefit from “knowing earlier,” in large part because our healthcare system is currently so poorly equipped to meaningfully help people with a new dementia diagnosis.
Which brings me to the part of this story that has me annoyed.
A Call for Apps at the HDI Forum IV: Health Datapalooza
We are excited to announce that the Health Data Initiative (HDI) Forum IV: Health Datapalooza will be held on June 3 and 4, 2013 at the OMNI Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. Last year, HDI had over 1,400 of the world’s leaders in health care featuring speakers and attendees in data science, software development, management, policy and technology.
The event will highlight the latest trends in efforts to liberate health data and effectively use it, through keynote presentations, code-a-thons, interactive panels and an “Apps Expo.” The “Apps Expo” is an exciting opportunity to collaborate with innovative developers and designers who are changing the health care landscape.
HDI IV is looking for great apps that are dedicated to meaningful use of health care data. The apps’ developers and data experts will interact with attendees who are looking for new tools to grow their business. If you’re interested in featuring your product in the “Apps Expo” or if you would like to present or exhibit at Healthdatapalooza please submit your idea here. Apps will be judged on the following criteria:
My Patient’s Keeper
Six years ago, my husband saved my life.
I had a severe allergic reaction to a medicine in the hospital in the middle of the night; he ran for the nurse. As for me, despite being a doctor myself, I couldn’t even breathe, let alone call for help. And so, even before and certainly since, I advise my patients not to be alone in the hospital if they can help it. I don’t even think anyone should be alone for office visits. There is too much opportunity to misunderstand the doctor, forget to ask the right questions, or misremember the answers.
National organizations like the American Cancer Society give the same advice: when possible, bring a friend.
As a patient safety researcher and an advocate for high quality healthcare, however, I find giving this advice distasteful. Is a permanent sidekick really the best we can do to keep patients safe? What about those who are already vulnerable because they don’t have such a superhero in their lives, or that superhero just has to punch in at some inflexible job?
Let’s take another look at the circumstances that ended up with my husband shouting, panic-stricken, in the hallway. The medicine I was given is known to cause severe allergic reactions. It is so well-established, in fact, that the standard protocol for giving this medication is to give a small test dose first. It was the test dose that nearly did me in. The hospital followed standard procedure by giving me the test dose. But they chose to do it at midnight, when the hospital is staffed by a skeleton crew, even though the medicine wasn’t urgent. Strike one for safety.Continue reading…
Progress Note: So, It Turns Out Starting a Business Is Really, Really Hard…
I am not sure if my lack of blogging is a good sign or a bad one. It’s been a week and a half since I started my new practice and I finally am getting this chance to come up for air. It’s been an über hectic and very draining time, but I am happy to report that the end of the week was significantly better than the beginning.
Here are some things I am learning.
1. Starting a business is really, really hard
I did my best to make my business as simple as possible, mainly because I understand my own deficiencies when it comes to business-related activities. Of course, being in a leadership role of a practice for the past 16 years helps me understand incredibly confusing concepts like accounts receivable, budgets, paying bills, and avoiding going to jail for spending all the collections on lottery tickets and reporting it as “research.” I purposefully designed the business to require as little accounting as possible, and in general I think I accomplished that. People come in to see me, pay me by swiping their card on the nifty card-reader on my iPhone, and I email them the receipt. That’s not the hard part (aside from people touching the “skip signature” button with their hand while they are signing).
The hardest part of starting a business for me is knowing what overhead items are necessary and what are not. Building the office took a month longer than I expected and cost twice as much. Yet I signed “yes” to all of the things that added cost. Some of them were necessary, like doing the things needed to comply with ADA, compliance with electrical code, and having furniture. But where to draw the line? I want the office to send a message of “professional, yet welcoming,” which means it can’t look cheap but doesn’t look posh either. I want the office to be consistent with my logo, a door opening that says “come on in,” and “welcome.” But everything adds cost, and mounting cost is tough when delay in opening means I am earning nothing.
Everyone is willing to give advice, but most of the advice given has little foundation in my reality. People say “it will all work out,” or “you’ll do great,” reassuring me that I don’t have to fret about things. It’s as if I can sit back and relax while things “work out.” The reality is that the reason they will work out is that I will spend most of my waking hours (and some while I’m not awake) working, worrying, thinking about details, and trying to plan for a very uncertain future. Continue reading…
Is the Patient Safety Movement in Critical Condition?
These should be the best of times for the patient safety movement. After all, it was concerns over medical mistakes that launched the transformation of our delivery and payment models, from one focused on volume to one that rewards performance. The new system (currently a work-in-progress) promises to put skin in the patient safety game as never before.
Yet I’ve never been more worried about the safety movement than I am today. My fear is that we will look back on the years between 2000 and 2012 as the Golden Era of Patient Safety, which would be okay if we’d fixed all the problems. But we have not.
A little history will help illuminate my concerns. The modern patient safety movement began with the December 1999 publication of the IOM report on medical errors, which famously documented 44,000-98,000 deaths per year in the U.S. from medical mistakes, the equivalent of a large airplane crash each day. (To illustrate the contrast, we just passed the four-year mark since the last death in a U.S. commercial airline accident.) The IOM report sparked dozens of initiatives designed to improve safety: changes in accreditation standards, new educational requirements, public reporting, promotion of healthcare information technology, and more. It also spawned parallel movements focused on improving quality and patient experience.
As I walk around UCSF Medical Center today, I see an organization transformed by this new focus on improvement. In the patient safety arena, we deeply dissect 2-3 cases per month using a technique called Root Cause Analysis that I first heard about in 1999. The results of these analyses fuel “system changes” – also a foreign concept to clinicians until recently. We document and deliver care via a state-of-the-art computerized system. Our students and residents learn about QI and safety, and most complete a meaningful improvement project during their training. We no longer receive two years’ notice of a Joint Commission accreditation visit; we receive 20 minutes’ notice. While the national evidence of improvement is mixed, our experience at UCSF reassures me: we’ve seen lower infection rates, fewer falls, fewer medication errors, fewer readmissions, better-trained clinicians, and better systems. In short, we have an organization that is much better at getting better than it was a decade ago. Continue reading…
Divided Health Care Nation
Rapid change is engulfing health care across the United States, but the strategic responses of organizations to these changes are sharply divided. In the shift that has been broadly shorthanded “from volume to value,” many organizations across the country are deeply engaged in moving toward “value” by building new partnerships, affiliations, capacities and economic structures, striving to bring better health and health care to more people for less money.
At the same time, some organizations are using the chaos and fluidity of the moment to double down on the old way, aggressively seeking greater volume reimbursed at higher rates. For now, within their regions, some of these organizations appear to be “winning” at the game, building greater market share and margin and increasing their budgets. But is this in fact the wisest strategy to follow in the long run, not only for their institutions but for the good of their missions and the people they serve?
Moving toward Value
Virtually all serious attempts to answer the question, “Why do we pay so much more for health care in the United States?” have pointed to the competition for reimbursements under a commodified, insurance-supported fee-for-service system. If what you pay for is items off of a list, what you will get is lots of items, especially the more profitable ones. That’s how we end up with a system in which waste (stuff we could simply do without) is pegged by repeated studies at one-third or higher.
Let Them Eat Cupcakes
Can the FDA ban cupcakes?
While this may seem like a silly question, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (“CSPI”) has filed a petition with the FDA urging the agency to regulate the amount of sugar (including high fructose corn syrup) in soft drinks. According to the executive director of CSPI, sugar is a “slow-acting but ruthlessly efficient bioweapon” that causes “obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.”
If soft drinks are a problem, surely cupcakes are too. A twelve-ounce can of Coca-Cola contains 39 grams of sugar. A seasonally-appropriate red velvet cupcake from Sprinkles contains 45 grams of sugar—and who can eat just one? National cupcake consumption increased 52% between 2010 and 2011, and U.S. consumers ate over 770 million cupcakes last year. Sugary soft drink consumption, on the other hand, is down 23% since 1998 and 37% since 2000.
While the FDA can’t regulate sugar as a bioweapon, it probably could regulate sugar as a food additive.
Under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, a food additive is “any substance the intended use of which results or may reasonably be expected to result—directly or indirectly—in its becoming a component or otherwise affecting the characteristics of any food.” This broad definition would include sugar. The FDA does not, however, regulate food additives that are “generally recognized as safe” (“GRAS”). Presumably the FDA considers sugar to be GRAS—for now. Continue reading…
