I was interviewed over at MDNG, a web site primarily for physicians, where I was asked 5 Questions…about Health 2.0. I hope Steve Case doesn’t put out a hit on me.
Information Therapy time (again)
The Center for Information Therapy has—in a move aimed at upsetting me personally—moved its conference from Park City, Utah, to Washington DC. Today along with some other THCB regulars like star Health 2.0 Ranger Jen McCabe Gorman, and Craig Stoltz, I’m in the Newseum — the new Museum of news media and the First Amendment. Here the Center for Information Therapy is literally and figuratively moving the Information Therapy debate into the core of the Washington Policy process.
The Center’s President, Josh Seidman, drew parallels between the development of news media in the US and what we’re seeing in health care. Here compared the Royal Mail in the UK with the pony express, and noted that some American innovations were “so democratic as to be regarded as subversive.”
Me, Jen & maybe Craig will be back with more later. Here’s the agenda.
Podcast with Marston Alfred, founder and architect of SugarStats
Marston Alfred, founder and chief architect of SugarStats.com chatted recently with me about his relatively new, Web-based program that allows diabetics to track their health statistics online.
Alfred described SugarStats as a portable PHR specifically for diabetics. He hopes diabetics use it to share their progress with others, such as family and doctors, and that by doing so it will improve their adherence to diet, exercise and medication schedules.
SugarStats launched publicly a year ago. It currently has about 4,000 users and gets an average of 10,000-20,000 unique visitors each month.
A diabetic himself, Alfred talks about the need for SugarStats and his hopes for the company’s future. Listen to the podcast.
Sapping VistA’s soul
In the past I’ve spoken highly of VistA, the Veteran’s Administration computerized
health records system, — and with good reason. VistA has a lot going for it. In 2006, it won an “Innovations in American Government Award” from Harvard. Studies show that use of VistA has improved VA productivity by 6 percent a year since national
implementation was achieved in 1999. In a time of sky rocketing health care costs, VA care has become 32 percent less expensive than it was in 1996 in part thanks to VistA. The computerized system also has helped the VA reach an amazing prescription accuracy rate of over 99.997 percent. And last — but certainly not least — VistA is a flexible program that allows for much independent tinkering in the name of improvement, both by techies outside of the VA and those within the administration.
Given all these pluses, you’d think that the government would be happily throwing its weight behind VistA and ensuring that the system is firmly institutionalized for the long term. But in fact, just the opposite is happening. VistA is under attack; and it’s the federal government that’s leading the assault.
Until the middle class truly cares, forget about health reform
Regular THCB contributor Michael Millenson published an op-ed piece in Sunday’s Washington Post, in which he says that until health insurance truly becomes an issue of the white middle-class, politically, nothing will happen.
Michael’s words:
"Here’s a cold truth: Despite much media hand-wringing on the subject, most of us give about as much thought to those who lack health coverage as we do to soybean subsidies.The major obstacle to change? Those of us with insurance simply don’t care very much about those without it. It’s only when health care costs spike sharply, the economy totters or private employers begin to cut back on benefits that the lack of universal health care comes into focus. Noticing the steadily growing ranks of the uninsured, the broad American public — ‘us’ — begins to worry that we’ll soon be joining the ranks of ‘them.’"
"The responses I’ve gotten by putting my personal email on the page have certainly been … educational," Michael told us. You won’t get his personal email here — you’ll have to visit the Post for that.
The Long Baby Boom
Last Friday I had a great chat with healthcare 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 in work. With 76 million baby boomers heading towards age 65, these issues or of great importance.
Optimism about the baby boomers
By 
Fresh from liberating the world from the Axis powers, America’s Greatest Generation came home from World War II and brought forth a baby boom. Seventy-six million children emerged from this remarkable postwar celebration, almost four children per family. American society has not been the same since.
The baby boom increased the U.S. population 44 percent in just eighteen years! American society had to re-create itself to accommodate the new arrivals. Each social institution the baby boomers touched, from elementary schools to university to the family and the work world, they fundamentally reshaped, not only by the press of their sheer numbers but also by their unique, high-maintenance approach to the world. At each turn in their lives, baby boomers have torn up the script and started afresh.
Today, the advance guard of this generation’s legions is within four years of reaching a bristling societal Maginot Line: age 65. According to many pundits and forecasters, the aging baby boom threatens the U.S. economic future.
How the mainstream media hypes health news
“False Hopes, Unwarranted Fears: The Trouble with Medical News Stories.” If you find the headline alarming, you should read the editorial, published just last week in PLoS Medicine. There, the journal’s editors summarize what the Health News Review has discovered over the past two years while evaluating medical stories about new products and procedures throughout the mainstream media.
“It’s not a pretty picture,” says Gary Schwitzer, the University of Minnesota School of Journalism professor who publishes the online project.
Hyping health stories: journalists need to do better
Health care journalists got some bad press last week following the release of a study that showed more often than not they fail to provide the necessary information to make health stories complete, meaningful and tell them in context.
I’m torn. I want to defend journalists who report on this incredibly complex beat and continue ripping on them. So I’ll do a little of both.
The key finding from University of Minnesota Journalism professor Gary Schwitzer’s study published in PLoS Medicine Journal was that “after almost two years and 500 stories, the project has found that journalists usually fail to discuss costs, the quality of the evidence, the existence of alternative options, and the absolute magnitude of potential benefits and harms.”
A veteran CNN health reporter, Schwitzer founded the Web site HealthNewsReview.org to grade health news stories. The study is based on those reviews. I interviewed Schwitzer when the site launched. Gary also wrote a post for THCB that talks a little bit about what his project hopes to achieve.
Brian May, PhD
My favorite rock guitarist of all time, Brian May never quite finished his PhD in Astronomy before going off and becoming a big star with Queen. But this year, he finally did. Here’s an interview with him in the Los Angeles Times.
But for pure enjoyment, here’s 9 minutes of him rocking out at Wembley in 1986. (I’m in the audience somewhere). Think about the complexity of playing everything once and hearing it three times…amazing.
