Here’s the CBS News clip that ran about PatientsLikeMe last week
Of course you’ve probably already seen the Business Week article about Health 2.0 which quotes Jane Sarasohn-Kahn and little ol’ me. Cathy Arnst did a nice job, including referring people back to Jane’s most excellent piece on the Wisdom of Patients
The New York Times published a story this month about
one of the biggest medical trials ever organized by the federal
government, a study that showed that the newest, most expensive drugs
used to treat high blood pressure (a.k.a. hypertension) work no better
than inexpensive diuretics—water pills that flush excess fluid and salt
from the body. Moreover, the research revealed that the pricier drugs
increase the risk of heart failure and stroke.
The trial was
completed in 2002. Why is the story running now? Because six years
later, the findings still have had little impact on what doctors
prescribe for patients suffering from hypertension.
Allhat –which
stands for the Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent
Heart Attack Trial—demonstrated that when, it comes to preventing heart
attacks, the diuretics—which have been used since the 1950s and cost
only pennies a day—is just as effective as newer calcium channel
blockers and ACE inhibitors that cost up to 20 times as much.
And
the diuretic is safer. Patients receiving Pfizer’s calcium channel
blocker (Norvasc) had a 38 percent greater chance of heart failure than
those on the diuretic. And those receiving AstraZeneca’s ACE inhibitor
were exposed to a 15 percent higher risk of strokes and a 19 percent
higher risk of heart failure.
Then Click here.
The NYTimes had a recent article on real world testing of drugs. This raises questions, such as how are consumers to be informed today?
There are limited head to head
trials, and almost all of the data comes from highly selected groups of
individuals under conditions that are nearly impossible to replicate in
the real world. Ivory tower medicine indeed, giving us the best case
scenarios only…but far from the outcome impact for all the spend and
utilization occurring in very different ways out in the real world.
By
Today a dear friend of mine told me a horror story about her recent trip to a hospital ER. She has kidney stones, with rare bouts of excruciating pain when they decide to break off from their renal resting place and scrape their way down her ureters.
My friend is a stoic person who also doesn’t like to cause trouble for others – so when she was awoken at 4am with that same familiar pain, she decided not to call an ambulance but rather drive herself to the ER. She also chose not to call her doctor out of consideration for his sleep needs.
She managed to make it to the triage desk at her local hospital and was relieved to see that the ER was quite empty. There were no ambulances in the docks, no one in the waiting area, and no sign of any trauma or resuscitations in the trauma bay. She approached the desk trembling in pain and put her health insurance card, driver’s license, and hospital card on the desk and let the clerk know that she was in incredible pain.
Patients still choose where they receive care based on good old word of mouth and referrals from their doctors, despite numerous Web sites and initiatives aimed at giving them information to compare the cost and quality of doctors and hospitals.
That’s the finding of a new national study released today by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) and funded by the California HealthCare Foundation.
The key findings were:
The bottom line: All the hoopla about consumer shopping and seeking out the bargains and best value for themselves, may be just that – hoopla.
How do all the Health 2.0 platforms launching into this area plan to change this ingrained consumer behavior?
Health care costs in the U.S. are approaching 17 percent of the GDP and may be as high as 20 percent in the next few years.
What is causing the US to have the highest cost and lowest value for the healthcare dollar? Simple – it’s overtreatment.
Overtreatment
takes many forms – from over ordering expensive diagnostic tests to the
prescribing of expensive and sometimes unneeded therapeutics.
Past U.S. presidents have provided innovative leadership that shaped the landscape for our national health and science institutions.
President Lincoln established the National Academy of Sciences. President Truman’s foreign policies inspired the creation of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation that established Medicaid and Medicare. And President Clinton signed legislation that created the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
Currently, our country faces significant health challenges including skyrocketing health-care costs, declining funding for medical and scientific research, and a lack of effective coordination and innovation in the government’s response to emerging health threats such as obesity and pandemic flu. Addressing these issues must be a top national and foreign policy priority for the next administration. With transformational leadership, President-elect Barack Obama has the opportunity to build upon his predecessors’ legacies and write a new national prescription for improving the health of Americans.
By Charlie Baker
A good friend sent me a recent op-ed from the Washington Post that discussed the 5 myths of health care reform by Shannon Brownlee and Ezekiel Emanuel.
I’ve written about both of them before (here & here). Brownlee is a visiting scholar at the NIH’s Clinical
Center, and Emanuel is the chair of the Center’s Bioethics Department.
Ezekiel also happens to be the brother of incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm
Emanuel’s. Hmmm…
Anyway, I really like most of what they have to say – which will
probably come as a surprise to them – and maybe to some of my
colleagues as well. Their five myths are, in no particular order…
1) America has the best health care in the world.
2) Somebody else is paying for your health insurance.
3) We would save a lot if we could cut the administrative waste of private insurance.
4) Health care reform is going to cost a bundle.
5) Americans aren’t ready for an overhaul of the health care system.
Over at the e-patients blog, blogger e-patient Dave has posted video clips from his presentation with Dr. Danny Sands at the Connected Health Forum last month at Harvard Medical School.
Dave describes the presentation called "Illness in the Age of ‘e’ " as a "full-length case study in participatory medicine." Here’s the first video clip. To see the rest go to the e-patients blog, where presentation slides are also uploaded.
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