Tag: Uncategorized

Knol and web publishing challenge medical journals’ stronghold

Jul 25, 2008• 7

Robert_wachter By Bob Wachter

Yesterday, Google launched Knol, immediately branded as Google’s answer to Wikipedia. As health care adviser to the project, I’ll say a few words about Knol, but focus on how it – and other forms of electronic self-publishing – may signal the end of medical publishing as we have known it.

First, a word about Knol (the name is short for “a unit of knowledge”). Google’s vision is that providing a tool for people to write about “things that they know” will make the world a better place. Unlike Wikipedia’s anonymous, collaborative writing/editing process, Knols have authors, with names, faces, and reputations. (Authors can choose to have their identity verified, through a cross-check on their credit card or phone records.) Google provides Knolers a tool; authors enter their content and click “publish.” And poof, there it is, on the Web. Users can rate and comment on Knols, send them to friends, and suggest changes. But the author remains the sole owner of the content, able to update and modify it (or remove it) at any time.

Century Foundation launches group to study Medicare reform

Jul 25, 2008

By THCB Staff

The Century Foundation announced this week the creation of a working group to create a blueprint for Medicare reform.

Maggie Mahar, award winning journalist, author of the HealthBeatBlog and regular THCB contributor, will direct the group of prominent physicians and health care experts.

Bob Wachter, another regular THCB contributor, UCSF physician and author of Wachter’s World, is also part of the eight-member working group.

The group’s blueprint will be based on recommendations in the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission’s 2007 and 2008 reports. Among the issues the group will review are:

Revising Medicare’s physician fee schedule to pay more for primary care, palliative care, and co-ordination and management of chronic diseases.

Rethinking Medicare’s fee-for-service system to reward doctors for quality, not volume.

Creating an independent Comparative Effectiveness Institute that reviews head-to-head testing of drugs, devices, and procedures to ensure that they are effective.

Identifying and rewarding hospitals that provide better outcomes and higher patient satisfaction at a lower cost while helping other hospitals meet benchmarks.

Around the Web in 60 Seconds (Or Less)

Jul 25, 2008

ABC: A Rhode Island man arrested this week for drunk driving had a potentially lethal blood-alcohol level at the highest ever recorded by police.

LA Times: Physicians and entrepreneurs team up to launch Medpedia — a Wikipedia for medical issues.

HC Finance News: HHS doles out $49 million to state high-risk pools.

Plain Dealer: AHIP launches astroturf campaign in Cleveland called a "Campaign for an American Solution." Members of Health Care for All protested outside.

Wash Post: Some doctors and hospitals are trying to go green.

LA Times: Medicare Part D a boon to drug companies.

Sharing more than they intended — future doctors on Facebook

Jul 24, 2008• 7

By Sarah Arnquist

The Facebook/MySpace generation is now graduating from medical school, and their
profiles along with much embarrassing personal information has been indexed in cyberworld for many to see.

The Associated Press wrote an interesting story about how researchers from the University of Florida combed through the social web sites and found embarrassing pictures of future doctors “grabbing their breasts and crotches or posing with a dead animal. They also found many photos of students drinking heavily.”

About half of the medical students they looked at had Facebook pages but only 37 percent of those limited viewership.

Clearly, the take-home message is to refrain from putting things you wouldn’t want your mother to see on your profile and to restrict who can see your profile.

Still, the info is out there. Perhaps, doctor rating sites could incorporate this readily accessible information onto their physician profiles. That would be scary.

Communication 101: Shedding power imbalances to protect patients

Jul 24, 2008• 2

By Katie Fiebelkorn Westman

Katie Fiebelkorn Westman is a registered nurse at an acute care hospital in the Minnesota Twin Cities. She is working toward a clinical nurse specialist degree, focusing on improving patient care quality.

The Joint Commission’s recent sentinel event alert on the detrimental affects of ineffective communication between caregivers prompted me to examine the communication I see daily in the hospital.

The dearth of effective communication skills is not limited to the health care profession — we just have bigger consequences when we get things wrong. Someone in another profession may run a report incorrectly and be annoyed to have to redo it, but in health care, we can take off the wrong body part, give the wrong medicine, or send someone home with the wrong discharge instructions.

These mistakes are big deals. We need, as healthcare providers, to respect each other, our different points of view, and learn how to talk.

Health Wonks unite

Jul 24, 2008

The bi-weekly review of the best from health bloggers is up over at Health Business Blog.

CCR Symposium: Current and Future Uses for Health Data Exchange

Jul 24, 2008• 1

The Massachusetts Medical Society will hold a symposium next month called the "Current and Future Uses for Health Data Exchange." Adam Bosworth, former VP of Google Health and CEO of his new start-up, Keas, Inc., will be the keynote speaker.

The Sept. 13 symposium is intended for a non-technical audience of providers, administrators, and standards professionals who have an interest in the exchange of networked personal health data and information.

The all-day event near Boston costs $125, whcih includes breakfast and lunch. Seating is limited to under 200 due to the size of the amphitheater. For more information visit the Medical society’s Website.

Obama health plan, silliness

Jul 23, 2008• 16

By Matthew Holt

Enter David Cutler. Result is more silly meaningless numbers

<sigh>

It is truly worrying when the single most sensible quote in the whole damn article comes from AEI’s Joe Antos.

How is this worth the NY Times’ attention? And what happens when the Obama bill comes up in Congress and somehow there isn’t a $2,500 check to be mailed to each household?

I thought this guy was going to treat us like grown-ups. After 8 years of insanity that would be nice.

If Cutler, who doesn’t exactly strike me as a major league populist, thinks that Obama has to “find a way to talk to people in a way they understand” how about he steers him to talk more about some insurance reforms that are both possible and very understandable. Like stopping this.

Information therapy goes beyond evidenced-based info

Jul 23, 2008• 1

Siedman_2

By Joshua Seidman

Joshua Seidman is the president of of the Center for Information Therapy
that aims to provide the timely prescription and availability of evidence-based health information to meet individuals’ specific needs and support sound decision making.

I had a fun meeting recently with some smart folks from the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation that raised questions about Ix that could use some clarification. When we talk about information therapy (Ix), we often drift into “evidence-based information” to help with some specific health condition.

That certainly is an important component of Ix, but it’s too limiting in many circumstances. When we talk about the “proactive delivery of the right information to the right person at the right time,” that has to encompass whatever the information needs of the consumer are.

Health Systems’ Ferocious Challenges

Jul 22, 2008• 3

By Brian Klepper

Lately, I’ve had interesting discussions with a thoughtful exec. at a
major Western health system about the ferocious challenges facing
hospitals and health systems. Her organization’s internal conversations
at the moment are centered, in part, on what they should do to become
"reform ready," not only for policy changes that could be in the wings,
but more importantly, for emerging market dynamics that will change the
ways hospitals work. She asked me to catalog some of the trends I think
health system managers will have to deal with, along with five
recommendations for action. Here’s some of what I told her.

Hospitals face dramatic financial stresses on a range of fronts.
Over the last 25 years, health systems’ average total margins have
remained reasonably stable at around 5 percent. As you’d expect, some
organizations have performed better, and others worse. About
one-quarter of all US hospitals, many of them safety nets, have
reported negative margins, and continually teeter toward failure.

Now the pressures are ramping up considerably. Perhaps most
profoundly, the balance has eroded between more profitable
privately-covered patients, and patients with public coverage –-
Medicare, Medicaid and other governmental sources –- that may not cover
cost.