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Tag: Michael Millenson

THCB Gang Episode 122, Thursday March 30

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday March 30th at 1PM PT 4PM ET are Olympic rower for 2 countries and DiME CEO Jennifer Goldsack, (@GoldsackJen); patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@mlmillenson); benefits expert Jennifer Benz (@Jenbenz); and our special guest health economist & VP of Research at Trilliant Health, Sanjula Jain @sanjula_jain.

If you’d rather listen, the “audio only” version is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels — Matthew Holt

THCB Gang Episode 120, Thursday March 16

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday March 16 at 1PM PT 4PM ET were futurist Ian Morrison (@seccurve); medical historian Mike Magee (@drmikemagee); patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@mlmillenson); and delivery & platform expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis). Lots of discussion about the Walgreens not selling abortifacients, Silicon Valley Bank’s impact on digital health, and how hospitals are doing.

You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

THCB Gang Episode 115, Thursday February 9

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday February 9 at 1PM PT 4PM ET were futurist Ian Morrison (@seccurve); medical historian Mike Magee (@drmikemagee); patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@mlmillenson); and delivery & platform expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis). There was the usual chat and a lot of conversation about the future of Medicare, Medicare Advantage and the CVS acquisition of Oak Street.

You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

At CES, A Tractor And A Patient Stethoscope Point To Digital Health Future

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

A Deere tractor developed in Moline, Illinois and a stethoscope-for-patients from Singapore pointed to the future of digital health at CES 2023, the Consumer Technology Association gathering that’s become a global innovation hub.

The tractor appeared on a large video screen during the opening keynote by Deere & Company chief executive officer John May. The industrial company exec clearly relished the chance to trumpet the way Deere had turned tractors into high-tech tools to optimize farmers’ outcomes ­– an accomplishment inspiring envy among medical information mavens hoping to similarly transform patients’ outcomes.

“The John Deere presentation was one of the best technological presentations I have ever seen,” enthused ResMed chief medical officer Dr. Carlos Nunez at a later panel. Nunez pointedly noted that “you think health care would be difficult,” yet here Deere had revolutionized a centuries-old, rural, agrarian, manual profession.

Deere’s “smart machines” incorporate computer vision, soil moisture sensing, GPS with precise signal correction, machine learning and cloud computing, all of which enable farmers to plant corn, cotton and other crops “with precision beyond human capacity.” Farmers can track the tractor’s data collection with their smartphone and make real-time adjustments. In health care terms, that all adds up to personalized, evidence-based farming.

The technology gap between physicians and farmers is actually wider than May let on.

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THCB Gang Episode 110, Thursday December 15

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday December 15 were patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@mlmillenson); policy expert consultant/author Rosemarie Day (@Rosemarie_Day1); writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), consumer expert Lygeia Riccardi (@Lygeia) radiologist Saurabh Jha (@RogueRad), and Olympic rower for 2 countries and all around dynamo Jennifer Goldsack, (@GoldsackJen). It was a full house and lots of fun, with a lot wrapped round the theme of protecting consumers (or not) online.

You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

THCB Gang Episode 108, Thursday December 1

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday November 17 were futurist Jeff Goldsmith; THCB regular writer and ponderer of odd juxtapositions Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard); patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@mlmillenson); fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey); and Olympic rower for 2 countries and all around dynamo Jennifer Goldsack, (@GoldsackJen). This was quite the conversation!

You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

The Secret Surveillance Capitalism That Suffuses Medicare

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

Imagine a government program where private contractors boost their bottom line by secretly mining participants’ personal information, such as credit reports, shopping habits and even website logins.

It’s called Medicare.

This is open enrollment season, when 64 million elderly and disabled Americans choose between traditional fee-for-service Medicare and private Medicare Advantage (MA) health plans. MA membership is soaring; within a few years it’s expected to encompass the majority of beneficiaries. That popularity is due in no small part to the extra benefits plans can provide to promote good health, ranging from gym membership and eyeglasses to meal delivery and transportation assistance.

There is, however, an unspoken price for these enhancements that’s being paid not in dollars but in privacy. To better target outreach, some plans are routinely accessing sophisticated analytics that draw upon what’s euphemistically labeled “consumer data.” One vendor boasts of having up to 5,000 “certified variables for every adult in America,” including “clinical, social, economic, behavioral and environmental data.” 

Yet while companies like Facebook and Google have faced intense scrutiny, health care firms have remained largely under the radar. The ethical issue is obvious. Since none of this sensitive personal information is covered by the privacy and disclosure rules protecting actual medical data, it is being deliberately used without disclosure to, or explicit consent by, consumers. That’s simply wrong.

But a more fundamental concern involves the analyses themselves.

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When Medical Error Becomes Personal, Activism Becomes Painful

BY MICHAEL MILLENSON

In the mid-1990s, researching a book about the quality of medical care, I discovered how the profession had for years been ignoring evidence about the appalling death toll from preventable medical error. Though I’d never myself experienced an error, I became an activist.

Recently, however, a relative was a victim, and the frustrating persistence of error became personally painful.

Thanks to my relative being acutely aware of the need to be alert (and a bit of luck), no harm was caused by what could have been a serious medication mistake. That was the good news. The bad news is that even Famous Name Hospitals, like the one where my relative was treated, are rarely doing everything possible to forestall the impact of inevitable human fallibility.

September 17 was World Patient Safety Day, and the theme for the next 12 months is “Medication Without Harm.” That makes this an opportune time to examine more closely what the profession euphemistically calls a “medication misadventure.”

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THCB Gang Episode 104, Thursday September 15 at 1pm PT, 4pm ET

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday September 15 patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@mlmillenson); Suntra Modern Recovery CEO JL Neptune (@JeanLucNeptune); fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey); delivery & platforms expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis); &  policy expert consultant/author Rosemarie Day (@Rosemarie_Day1);

You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

The Shocking Impact of an Ancestor’s Secret Abortion

BY MICHAEL MILLENSON

When my siblings and I were young, we were fascinated by my father’s Uncle Byron. Handsome and confident, he drove a big, 1960s-era Chrysler Imperial, had a glamorous job — an executive at a Baltimore radio station — and radiated panache.

He also was part of a small family mystery. His father, Louis, was married three times, and Byron was raised by Wife № 3. But he was the biological child of Wife № 2, who died just a few years after his birth from an unknown cause.

Thanks to some persistent genealogical research, I recently discovered that cause: Annie Millenson had a botched abortion, and it killed her. It also destroyed her surviving family.

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