Category: Uncategorized

New report shows health blogosphere going strong

Sep 3, 2008• 7

By Fard Johnmar

It started as a whisper and then grew to a roar. Last year, the Detroit Free Press wrote the first in what would become series of articles questioning the wisdom of medical blogging. In 2007 and 2008, USA Today and National Public Radio featured stories that noted the benefits of physician blogging, but also highlighted patient privacy and legal concerns associated with this activity. Finally, early last month, the Los Angeles Times and other publications featured a study that has generated a lot of heated commentary in the blogosphere and beyond.

In an analysis of medical blogs published in the July 23rd edition of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Dr. Tara Lagu suggested that some doctor bloggers are painting an unflattering picture of the medical profession and fail to disclose financial conflicts. Lagu cited a 2006 poll produced by my firm Envision Solutions and the social network Trusted.MD indicating that public relations professionals approached nearly one-third of health bloggers responding to the survey. Lagu recently told American Medical News that she believes medical associations should “adopt policies explicitly addressing blogging ethics.”

Health care lessons from the Titanic

Sep 3, 2008• 4

By Sarah Arnquist

The U.S. Health Care system is like the Titanic — a big, fancy,
expensive ship that unequally doles out limited resources depending on class
status and is destined to hit an iceberg and sink.

A professor used this analogy recently to provoke students to look
more deeply into the complex and intractable factors that determine health status. Biology
and genetics surely are important, he said, but one cannot ignore the environmental,
social and economic factors that influence an individual’s
susceptibility to disease.

Comparing the U.S. health care system to the Titanic is an analogy as hackneyed as saying the system is in crisis. Yet, it remains useful.

Around the Web in 60 Seconds (Or Less)

Sep 3, 2008• 1

By Sarah Arnquist

A clinic in Minnesota is routinely dropping patients with high-deductible health plans who aren’t paying their bills, the Star Tribune reports. "For the most part, these are college-educated and middle-class folks," Dr. Rochelle Taube told the Tribune. "We send them a letter and say unfortunately, we’re not able to care for you." Some clinics and doctors’ offices that aren’t dropping patients have had to exert more effort or new approaches to getting paid, "such as swiping a credit card at check-in just like at a hotel."

Sicker patients are better off getting bypass surgery than medicated coronary stents, according to the Wall Street Journal. Boston Scientific funded the study using its own stents. It’s the first head-to-head study of its kind, but hopefully not the last if analysts’ predictions are accurate that the failure to show stents as the obvious treatment of choice for complicated heart patients will lead to a drop in sales. The BSX stock price increased 1 percent Tuesday.

In 2006, U.S. pharmaceutical companies spent about $5 billion on consumer marketing campaigns, but the Washington Post reports a Harvard Medical School study in the British Medical Journal found the spending may have less impact on consumer behavior than previously assumed.

Also in BMJ, a review of Britain’s National Health Services records shows that patients undergoing a hip or knee joint replacement using the new resurfacing technique are more than three times as likely to need a replacement than if the joint were fully replaced and cemented. The study tracked more than 150 000 people who underwent a hip or knee replacement between April 2003 and September 2006. To learn more about the U.S. failure to track the safety of joint replacements, read this New York Times article.

Health 2.0 User-Generated Healthcare

Sep 2, 2008

How are Web 2.0
technologies like social networks, wikis and online communities
changing the face of the health care industry? How are hospital systems
and physician practices evolving as a result of rapid technological
change? How can health plans evolve in
the face of emerging challenges with the help of new technologies and
new thinking? What will come of the recent controversies over genetic
testing and the privacy of patient data? Where does the hype over social networks and
user-generated content end and the reality begin? H20logo

Come learn more about these questions and many more at Health 2.0 on October 22nd – 23rd at the San Francisco Marriott.
You’ll meet industry insiders and new players entering the field. You’ll see
rapid-fire demos of new technologies and hear both expert reaction from
established players in the field and fresh perspectives from newcomers.
You’ll also get critical insight from industry observers as well as practical,
common-sense advice on employing these new technologies in your own
business or organization.

Confirmed speakers include: Google Health, Microsoft, Yahoo Health, Healthline, Cisco, Eliza, Silverlink, DestinationRX, AthenaHealth CEO Jonathan Bush, Sermo CEO Daniel Palestrant, HealthGrades CEO Kerry Hicks, WebMD CEO Wayne Gatinella, Clay Shirky, author of "Here Comes Everybody: Organizing Without Organizations." Dr. David Kibbe, Jay Parkinson, M.D., Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, THCB’s Matthew Holt, Health 2.0’s Indu Subaiya, CrossoverHealth founder Scott Shreeve, 23andMe and many, many more.

A long way to go in price and quality transparency

Sep 2, 2008• 4

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn

Providing price and quality information is viewed as a Holy Grail among health plans and providers, who see transparency as the key for igniting health care consumerism. However, that Grail remains elusive, as issues of tool usefulness and consumer trust cloud the market."A Health Plan Work in Progress: Hospital-Physician Price and Quality Transparency," a report from those indefatigable folks at the Center for Studying Health System Change (CSHSC), explains that health plans are ramping up transparency efforts in what is still an early phase of market development and adoption.

Do membership practices offer privileges or just reserved for the privileged?

Sep 2, 2008• 3

By Scott Shreeve

Scott_shreeve I have watched the meteoric rise of popular term “Medical Home.” While I personally dislike this phrase, it has caught on in the popular vernacular and looks like it is here to stay. In conjunction with the rise of the term is the growing popularity of a practice model that includes a higher level of service on a membership basis. It is essentially, next-generation concierge medicine, but now being promoted under the more politically correct banner of “direct practice.” Multiple variations of the model exist, from an all-inclusive single fee to a membership structure that retains a fee for service financial arrangement.

So discerning patients evaluating these practices are forced to determine the relative value of this new direct practice concept, and having passed that test, determine which type of practice model actually makes sense to them (All inclusive or Fee-for-Service). Lets look at these questions using a traditional four-person family with an annual all-in health care spending of $15,000 (consistent with Milliman’s 2008 numbers).

Around the Web in 60 Seconds (Or Less)

Sep 2, 2008

By Sarah Arnquist

Chrome

Google launches its own Web browser, Chrome. The latest competitive move with Microsoft is available for download today.

About 800 people in New Hampshire are about to lose their health insurance because the plans don’t meet the minimum requirements set by the state. Can you say unintended consequences of consumer protection laws?

The Joint Commission will now grade hospitals on their level of "cultural competency." The Commonwealth Fund will fund a panel to "explore how diversity, culture, language and health literacy issues can
be better incorporated into current Joint Commission standards or
drafted into new requirements."

The National Quality Forum has endorsed nine new national standards for health information technology in the areas of electronic prescribing, electronic health record, interoperability, care management, quality registries, and the medical home.

California steps into uncharted territory without a state operating budget. The Legislature’s failure to agree has led to the longest overdue budget in state history.

Medicare hospital quality reporting steps up in sophistication

Sep 2, 2008• 2

By Bob Wachter

Robert_wachter
Medicare is now reporting actual risk-adjusted mortality rates for pneumonia, MI, and heart failure. The topic must be important because NPR’s "Talk of the Nation" spent 30 minutes interviewing Don Berwick and me about it — on the day of Hillary’s speech nonetheless!

To listen to the show, click here. Also, here’s an article from USA Today that got the ball rolling, as well as Avery Comarow’s thoughtful blog on these new reports.

Here are a few observations about the new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services initiative, some of which I made on the NPR broadcast:

Keep tabs on your digital footprint

Sep 1, 2008

By Susannah Fox

Is it "disordered" behavior to Google your doctor? An article in JAMA suggests that doctors should be on their guard.

The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published an article about how doctors should be aware of how they are portrayed online and consider taking steps to manage their digital identities.

It is an article that, for the most part, could have been written about any profession with its warnings about “slanderous information published about someone with the same name” or “by a vengeful…colleague or ex-lover.” And the advice given is also familiar: create your own Web page to be sure correct information is available about you and use appropriate privacy settings on social network sites.

And if you thought the requirements for Health 2.0 were tough…

Aug 29, 2008

By Matthew Holt

For the Health 2.0 conference we look at lots of great technologies and put the people who make them through the wringer before and after we choose them. But apparently we’re not quite as honorous in our requirements as TechCrunch is for its conference. We also don’t have a major league Hollywood celebrity presenting at Health 2.0.

TechCrunch50 does, and boy is Aston Kuchner pissed!