Tag: The Insider’s Guide To Health Care

Information Therapy time (again)

Jun 12, 2008

By Matthew Holt

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.

Consumer Reports on Health: Worse Than Average

Jun 4, 2008• 9

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

Maybe no one at Consumer Reports has a mother.

The first rule of effective consumer information is “tell it to Mom.” That is, explain why something is important in the kind of language you would use when speaking to your mother. Unfortunately, the folks at Consumers Union have now, for the second time, put out purportedly pro-consumer health care information that no one’s mother could love. Their latest offering is at best mildly helpful and at worst seriously misleading. The only explanation I can think of is that the CU folks believe so firmly in their own good intentions that they ignore the impact of what they are actually doing.

Diabetes Mine, revamped

Jun 4, 2008• 1

By Matthew Holt

No. 1 health care blogger Amy Tenderich has revamped Diabetes Mine and made it even better (as if that were possible!).

More on consumer targeting for health plans

Jun 3, 2008• 4

By Matthew Holt

Wrapping up this morning’s Silverlink seminar….

Stan Nowak, Silverlink CEO, says we’re all part of an experiment in response rate from credit card marketing departments (previous speaker Fred Jubitz had talked lots about that!). It’s not cheap to do, but the best companies in consumer marketing are doing it because those experiments (sending out all those letters) can offer a small percentage lift. And they’re good at predicting who will do what based on these segments.

Microtrends, Consumer Health Segmentation, and more ….

Jun 3, 2008• 3

By Matthew Holt

I’m at a seminar put on by Silverlink (FD, they’re a THCB sponsor), but shockingly they haven’t asked me to speak! (By the way this seminar is like a rock band on tour, click here for the schedule). Here’s a quick hit on the first three speakers.

Google Health finally up and open for business

May 20, 2008• 3

After a long time in discussion, Google publicly launched Monday its free online personal health records. The operation first made headlines a couple of months ago when Google announced it at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). I was invited to the Googleplex, but due to a prior engagement, had to miss the chance to get it from the horses mouth.

Much like the "non-PHR" HealthVault, Google now allows consumers to download records from its eight initial partners and store them for free.

As the WSJ Health Blog points out, only a minority of medical practices keep records electronically. But the good news is that Google has been thinking not just about EMRs, but also about the rest of data that’s most useful (Rx and lab results) and has some big players, such as Medco, Walgreens and Quest on its list of initial partners.

Google will also have to spend more time now dealing with the privacy zealots and not just leaving it all to, well, me!

Although I wasn’t there, a much more famous health IT person was. John Halamka is the Chief Information Officer at one of Google’s initial partners, Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (and of course colleague of THCB regular Paul Levy, and more recently himself a blogger). BIDMC has offered its patients a PHR for more than 7 years, and now that data can be brought into Google Health (and I assume vice versa). John’s post about the launch is below — Matthew Holt

By John D. Halamka

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is now live with Google Health. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a member of the Google Health Advisory Council and have not accepted any payments from Google for my advisory role. BIDMC is also working with Microsoft Health Vault and Dossia.

I’m now at Google Headquarters in Mountain View with the Google Health team – Roni, Missy, Maneesh, Jerry etc. and several dozen reporters.

Here’s the functionality we’ve launched.

When a user logs into Google Health and clicks on Import Health Records – the following choices appear:

BIDMC
Cleveland Clinic
Longs
MEDCO
Minute Clinic/CVS
Quest Laboratories
RxAmerica
Walgreens

They are all early integrators with Google Health.

At BIDMC, we have enhanced our hospital and ambulatory systems such that a patient, with their consent and control, can upload their BIDMC records to Google Health in a few keystrokes. There is no need to manually enter this health data into Google’s personal health record, unlike earlier PHRs from Dr. Koop, HealthCentral and Revolution Health. Once these records are uploaded, patients receive drug/drug interaction advice, drug monographs, and disease reference materials. They can subscribe to additional third party applications, share their records if desired, and receive additional health knowledge services.

Humana’s competition for change

May 20, 2008• 6

By Jen McCabe Gorman

Health benefits heavyweight Humana Inc. (HUM – 11.5M members) recently launched ChangeNow4Health, an ambitious, optimistic coalition inviting anyone to submit ideas to fix America’s ailing health care system.

The top three entries receive a $10k prize, and the top 20 get publication exposure galore, including a spot in Humana’s forthcoming e-book, “Tomorrow’s Health Care.” The big winning concepts have a chance to secure further funding and incubation support from Humana.

Full Disclosure: Shortly after this interview was conducted, ChangeNow4Health became a sponsor of The Health care Blog. However, if you think that in any way influenced the content of this article, you don’t know the Health 2.0 folks very well…

Cn4hds

On the second day of World Health care Congress 2008 in Washington D.C., I interviewed Elizabeth Bierbower, Humana’s Vice President of Product Innovation.

Bierbower, who has spent her career working with consumers, told me that ChangeNow4Health is looking for doable ideas that can quickly be put into play in the game as it is now, not how we wish it were.

They’re also harnessing the power of the semantic Web by partnering with Innocentive.com, an online community that posts projects from groups like the Rockefeller Foundation.

The contest has 4 categories:

Helping Consumers Make Smarter Health Care Decisions

Simplifying the Business of Health Care

Preventing Sickness and Maintaining Health

General Innovations in Health Care

The contest runs through July, and winners will be announced in August. Judges include industry experts, who are looking for “both an idea’s potential to bring about true change in a tangible way” and “feasibility for implementation now.”

Here’s a transcript of my conversation with Bierbower.

Millenson on doc rating

May 15, 2008• 1

By THCB Staff

And in our continuing efforts to send you everywhere else on the web but here (but still seeing the same authors), up at H&HN’s Most Wired Magazine, Michael Millenson is writing about the still emerging and not-there-yet field of physician and hospital social rating sites.

Interview with CEO of Limeade, Henry Albrecht

May 8, 2008• 1

By Jen McCabe Gorman Imageprovider

Henry Albrecht, CEO of Limeade online employee wellness firm, was nice enough to talk with me on his cell phone in the evening (after 5 p.m. West Coast, 2 a.m. Amsterdam time).

Both of us were banging pots and pans, cooking dinner (him), making coffee (me).There’s something comforting about speaking with a high-tech health care executive in such an old-fashioned, "conversational" way.

Thanks again Henry – pleasure to meet you and Limeade.

Searching for the price of one appendectomy

May 6, 2008• 18

By Sarah Arnquist

This month’s Philadelphia Magazine ranks the city’s top physicians — a fad nearly all major city magazines have adopted because it attracts great advertising dollars.

Tom

But tucked amid the pages of smiling surgeons and OB-GYNs is a gem of a story by the magazine’s executive editor, Tom McGrath, in which he takes readers through the maze he encountered while trying to decipher the hospital and insurance bills following his daughter’s appendectomy.

After his five-year-old daughter had her appendix out at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), McGrath set out to learn why it was so impossible for him to understand how much his daughter’s surgery and hospital stay cost, how much the insurance company was paying, and how much he owed.

"I discovered two things: first, that much of the cost of our health care is determined behind smoked glass, where patients are never invited to look," McGrath wrote. "And second, that in trying to make sense of a single simple case where everything went right, you can learn a lot about what’s wrong with health care in America."