Tag: Michael Millenson

Trump Urges Insured COVID-19 Victims to Use For-Profit Medical Care

Apr 1, 2020• 1

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

(Foxnoxious News) WASHINGTON, April 1 – President Trump today urged all insured Americans infected by the coronavirus to seek care only at for-profit facilities.

“American capitalism is the world’s greatest job-creating engine,” said the president in a prepared statement. “That’s why I urge all Americans who have both good health insurance and COVID-19 to get their care at for-profit hospitals and other wonderful, for-profit health care facilities.

The president expressed his compassion “for all the great companies whose share prices are suffering.” Americans who fall sick “can help make your life savings great again,” he said, by using investor-owned firms. In addition to hospitals, these include for-profit nursing homes, rehab facilities, home care and hospice, as well as funeral homes.

“If one million Americans get infected by COVID-19, that’s a terrific business opportunity,” the president declared.

To Improve Patient Care, Think Both “Zebras” and Golf

Feb 5, 2020

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

Super Bowl Week ended with the San Francisco 49ers and 161 U.S. hospitals having something in common.

Both were publicly penalized, both lost money as a result and both passionately believed the process was unfair. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to decide whether their objections were sensible or sour grapes and, in the case of hospitals, the real-life consequences are not a game.

The penalty that pained the 49ers occurred shortly before halftime of Super Bowl LIV, when offensive pass interference was called on tight end George Kittle. The call negated a big gain that might have enabled the 49ers to take the lead.

Replays showed that the referees – nicknamed “zebras” for their black-and-white striped shirts – were technically correct in their decision. Nonetheless, controversy erupted over whether given other possible penalties called or overlooked, this one deserved a yellow flag.

Hospitals call that kind of context “risk adjustment.” A few days before the Super Bowl, the Medicare program blew the whistle on a group of hospitals having high rates of infection and other patient injuries. The hospitals who are outliers in what are blandly labeled “hospital-acquired conditions” (HACs) suffer a cut of one percent in their Medicare payments over next fiscal year.

Will Your Health Plan Tell You That It Can Save Your Life?

Dec 26, 2019• 3

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

At kitchen tables everywhere, ordinary Americans have been grappling with the arcane language of deductibles and co-pays as they’ve struggled to select a health insurance plan during “open enrollment” season.

Unfortunately, critical information that could literally spell the difference between life and death is conspicuously absent from the glossy brochures and eye-catching websites.

Which plan will arrange a consultation with top-tier oncologists if I’m diagnosed with a complex cancer? Which might alert my doctor that I urgently need heart bypass surgery? And which plan will tell me important information such as doctor-specific breast cancer screening rates?

According to Matt Eyles, president and chief executive officer of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), insurers over the last decade have made a “dramatic shift” to focus more on consumers. That shift, however, has yet to include giving members the kind of detailed information available to corporate human resources managers and benefits consultants (one of my past jobs).

What’s at stake could be seen at a recent AHIP-sponsored meeting in Chicago on consumerism. Rajeev Ronaki, chief digital officer for Anthem, Inc., explained how the giant insurer is using artificial intelligence to predict a long list of medical conditions, including the need for heart bypass surgery. Information on individual patients is passed on to clinicians.

Angels are Taking our Data

Dec 20, 2019• 1

By ePatient Dave deBronkart

A response to Michael Millenson’s holiday song

Angels seeking Clouds to buy
But healthcare’s not like Spotify
My health data’s here and yon
Monetized by Amazon

Gloria, in excessive profits
Gloria, it’s excessive net cash flow

Investors, why this jubilee?
You’ve done naught to soothe our pain
No care’s improved nor costs controlled
My data just fuels cap’tal gains

Gloria, in excessive profits
Gloria, it’s excessive net cash flow

Silicon Valley come and see
Start-up births thy VCs sing
Come invest on bended knee
But health care’s not yet transforming

Gloria, such excessive profits
Gloria, just excessive net cash flow

Angels Have Our Health Data

Dec 19, 2019• 1

A holiday song from @MLMillenson, December 2019

Angels we’ve heard from the Cloud on high
Or maybe it was Spotify.

Our health data’s floating hither and yon
Monetized by Google and Amazon.

Gloria, in excessive profits
Gloria, in excessive profits

Investors, why this jubilee?
’cause you’ve made us healthy and absent pain?
Is care improved and costs controlled?
Or our data just fuels your capital gains?

Gloria, in excessive profits
Gloria, in excessive profits

Come to Silicon Valley and see
Start-ups whose birth the VC’s sing.
Come adore on bended knee
Promises of health care transforming.

Gloria, in excessive profits
Gloria, in excessive profits

Concrete Problems: Experts Caution on Construction of Digital Health Superhighway

Nov 27, 2019• 1

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

If you’re used to health tech meetings filled with go-go entrepreneurs and the investors who love them, a conference of academic technology experts can be jarring.

Speakers repeatedly pointed to portions of the digital health superhighway that sorely need more concrete – in this case, concrete knowledge. One researcher even used the word “humility.”

The gathering was the annual symposium of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). AMIA’s founders were pioneers. Witness the physician featured in a Wall Street Journal story detailing his use of “advanced machines [in] helping diagnose illness” – way back in 1959.

That history should provide a sobering perspective on the distinction between inevitable and imminent (a difference at least as important to investors as intellectuals), even on hot-button topics such as new data uses involving the electronic health record (EHR).

I’ve been one of the optimists. Earlier this year, my colleague Adrian Gropper and I wrote about pending federal regulations requiring providers to give patients access to their medical record in a format usable by mobile apps. This, we said, could “decisively disrupt medicine’s clinical and economic power structure.”

Can Rah-Rah, Blah-Blah and Meh Accelerate Digital Health Innovation?

Sep 11, 2019

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

Can combining health tech “rah-rah,” health policy “blah-blah” and the “meh” of academic research accelerate the uptake of digital health innovation?

AcademyHealth, the health services research policy group, is co-locating its Health Datapalooza meeting, rooted in cheerleading for “Data Liberación,” with the National Health Policy Conference, rooted in endless debate about policy detail.

Sharing a hotel room, however, does not a marriage make. In order to get better digital health interventions to market faster, we need what I’m calling a Partnership for Innovators, Policymakers and Evidence-generators (PIPE). As someone who functions variously in the policy, tech and academic worlds, I believe PIPE needn’t be a dream.

The potential of digital health is obvious. Venture funding of digital health companies soared to $8.1 billion in 2018, up 40 percent from 2017, according to Rock Health, with another $4.2 billion invested during the first half of this year. Meanwhile, MedCityNews proclaimed 2019 “the year of the digital health IPO,” such as HealthCatalyst and Livongo.

Separately, Congress has sought to speed digital health innovation through bipartisan efforts such as the 21^stCentury Cures Act and the formation last year of the Bipartisan Health Care Innovation Caucus. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is also pursuing innovator and advocacy group input on regulatory relief.

Off the Couch, Onto the Stage: My First, Only and Not-So-Great Presidential Debate

Aug 5, 2019• 1

DETROIT, MICHIGAN – JULY 31: Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden (C) speaks while Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) (R) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) listen during the Democratic Presidential Debate at the Fox Theatre July 31,
GETTY IMAGES

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

I could’ve been Kamala Harris, Joe Biden and Marianne Williamson all rolled into one. That’s how I might have handled my first, only, and not-so-great presidential debate.

No, I wasn’t actually running for president. But I was involved in the campaign of someone who was: Barack Obama. In September, 2008, the campaign asked me to serve as a surrogate in a debate with John McCain’s health care adviser when one of Obama’s close advisers – as opposed to me, who’d met the candidate once at a campaign event – couldn’t make it.

As a policy wonk and politics junkie, I was ecstatic. Entering the debate, I was confident. Afterwards, metaphorically dusting the dirt off my clothing and checking for cuts and bruises, I was chastened.

Getting off the couch and onto the stage, even a small one, is tougher than it looks. Watching the cluster of Democratic presidential candidates go at it on health care, I scoffed and sneered along with other experts at their obfuscations and oversimplifications. (More on that in a moment.) But I also sympathized.

Health Care Price Tags Won’t Find You the Best Doctor

Mar 12, 2019• 14

By MICHAEL L. MILLENSON

Say you want to know which baseball players provide the most value for the big dollars they’re being paid. A Google search quickly yields analytics. But suppose your primary care physician just diagnosed you with cancer. What will a search for a “high value” cancer doctor tell you?

Not much.

Public concern over bloated and unintelligible medical bills has prompted pushback ranging from an exposé by a satirical TV show to a government edict that hospitals list their prices online. But despite widespread agreement about the importance of high-value care, information about the clinical outcomes of individual physicians, which can put cost into perspective, is scarce. Even when information about quality of care is available, it’s often unreliable, outdated, or limited in scope.

For those who are sick and scared, posting health care price tags isn’t good enough. The glaring information gap about the quality of care must be eliminated.

“When people are comparison shopping, knowing the price of something is not enough,” notes Eric Schneider, a primary care physician and senior vice president of policy and research at the Commonwealth Fund. “People want to know the quality of the goods and services they’re buying.”

Despite Youth On Farm, Abbott Ventures Chief Avoids Spreading Manure

Jan 14, 2019

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

Abbott Ventures chief Evan Norton may have spent part of his youth on a farm, but there’s no manure in his manner when speaking of the medical device and diagnostics market landscape. The key, he says, is to avoid being blindsided by the transformational power of digital data.

“We’ve been competing against Medtronic and J&J, so that has the risk of us being disintermediated by other players that come into the market,” Norton told attendees at MedCity Invest, a meeting focused on health care entrepreneurs. “Physicians are coming to us and asking for access to data for decisions, and they don’t care who the manufacturer [of the device] is. Are we enabling data creation?”

Abbott, said Norton, wrestles with whether they are simply data creators or want to get paid for providing algorithmic guidance on how the data is used. (Full disclosure: I own Abbott shares.) Other panelists agreed making sense of the digital data deluge remains the central business challenge.