Tag: Wellness

It Cost What? Crowdsourcing Costs In An Evolving Healthcare System

Oct 12, 2014• 16

By JEANNE PINDER

Crowdsourcing is engaging a lot of news organizations today. While some journalists are nervous about crowdsourcing — “Yikes, we’d rather talk than listen, and what if they tell us something we don’t want to hear? Or something that we know isn’t true?” — we here at clearhealthcosts.com love crowdsourcing. We find, as journalists, that our communities are smart, energized, truthful and engaged, and happy to join hands in thinking, reporting and helping us make something that’s bigger than the sum of its parts. We learn great things by listening, so … now we’re going to to an experiment crowdsourcing coverage for our blog.

Our current project crowdsourcing health care prices in California, with KQED public radio in San Francisco and KPCC/Southern California public radio in Los Angeles, has been a great success, as was our previous project with WNYC public radio, and we’re looking forward to launching similar projects with other partners.Continue reading…

Can Pot Protect the Brain After Injury? A New Study Says It Can

Oct 3, 2014• 5

DAVID PLURAD, MD

The use of marijuana is associated with a marked increase in the risk of being involved in severe trauma particularly motor vehicle collisions. In 2009, for instance, marijuana use was a contributing factor in more than 460,000 emergency department visits in the United States.

But we also know that cannabis is potentially neuroprotective. Previous studies have found that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in marijuana, may have beneficial effects in certain types of neurodegenerative processes, like Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease. In addition, previous studies indicate THC may protect the brain in animal models of neurologic injury. However, clinical trials of a synthetic THC derivative were not ultimately associated with an increase in survival in patients with traumatic brain injury. Since overall findings were mixed, we hypothesized that use of the “native” form of THC could be associated with an increase in survival in patients with traumatic brain injury.

PiPS: When Less Is More

Sep 23, 2014• 8

By DEBORAH GROSE

The search for an antidote to the ills of our ailing healthcare system inevitably bumps up against the pervasive mindset that more is better. Each year we develop and prescribe more drugs, more tests, more technology. Yet, despite these investments, more treatment doesn’t always result in better outcomes. Procedures can be invasive or have unintended consequences, medications can have side effects, and tests can be unnecessary. But what is the alternative? As we look to improve quality and reduce cost, less can actually be more.

Results of recent research indicate that there is much to tap into beyond reliance on drugs and other interventions when helping patients heal. For example:

The doctor’s connection with a patient can improve clinical outcomes

In a treatment experiment where the only variable was the quality of the clinician’s engagement with the patient, those in the “higher engagement” group reported much greater relief. 1

Seeing a treatment administered increases effectiveness

Morphine injected directly by syringe has greater pain-killing effects than when added, out of view, to a patient’s IV.

Sugar pills can work as well as “real” medicine 2

In a study concerning migraine, patients reported as much relief after taking a dummy pill labeled as a proven medication as patients who took the proven medication that was labeled as a dummy pill. 3

These occurrences tend to be aggregated under the rubric of the “placebo effect.” Once pigeonholed as a nuisance factor in clinical drug trials, the placebo effect is now the subject of a promising list of studies and experiments in the fields of neurophysiology, psychology, neuroscience, molecular biology, and genetics.

Why Public Health Needs a New Gun Doctrine

Sep 11, 2014• 376

VIK KHANNA

I am a public health professional, educated at the vaunted Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Hygiene and Public Health. I like guns, and I believe the Second Amendment clearly secures the rights of individuals to own firearms.

You read that correctly. I am a public health professional.

And I like guns.

This make me a heretic in American public health, where embracing firearms and the rights of gun owners is a gross violation of orthodoxy.

As a society, our focus on guns and not gun users derives from the shock of mass killings, such as those in Newtown, CT, Aurora, CO, Virginia Tech, and Norway, which has some of the strictest gun control laws on the planet. Mass killings, however tragic, get distorted by saturation media hysterics and 24-hour political grandstanding. What gun opponents refuse to discuss is the precipitous fall in violent crime and deaths by firearms over the past 20 years, and how it coincides with an equally dramatic increase of guns in circulation in the US.

While that isn’t cause and effect, the association is certainly curious.

In 2013, the Institute of Medicine, at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control, produced a report on firearms violence that has been ignored by the mainstream media. The upshot: defensive use of firearms occurs much more frequently than is recognized, “can be an important crime deterrent,” and unauthorized possession (read: by someone other than the lawful owner) of a firearm is a crucial driver of firearms violence.

That report went away for political reasons. Translation. Nobody wanted to talk about it because it raised more questions than it answered.

What Killed Joan Rivers? Piecing Together a Medical Mystery

Sep 8, 2014• 33

KAREN SIBERT, MD

There are minor operations and procedures, but there are no minor anesthetics. This could turn out to be the one lesson learned from the ongoing investigation into the death of comedian Joan Rivers.

Ms. Rivers’ funeral was held yesterday, September 7. Like so many of her fans, I appreciated her quick wit as she entertained us for decades, poking fun at herself and skewering the fashion choices of the rich and famous. She earned her success with hard work and keen intelligence–she was, after all, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Barnard College. Ms. Rivers was still going strong at 81 when she walked into an outpatient center for what should have been a quick procedure.

So when she suffered cardiac arrest on August 28, and died a week later, we all wondered what happened. I have no access to any inside information, and the only people who know are those who were present at the time.

But the facts as they’ve been reported in the press don’t fully make sense, and they raise a number of questions.

What procedure was done?

Early reports stated that Ms. Rivers underwent a procedure involving her vocal cords. A close friend, Jay Redack, told reporters at the NY Post, “Her throat was bothering her for a long time. Her voice was getting more raspy, if that was possible.” In a televised interview, Redack told CNN that Ms. Rivers was scheduled to undergo a procedure “on either her vocal cords or her throat.”

However, the Manhattan clinic where Ms. Rivers was treated, Yorkville Endoscopy, offers only procedures to diagnose problems of the digestive tract. All the physicians listed on the staff are specialists in gastroenterology. Any procedure on the vocal cords typically would be done by an otolaryngologist, who specializes in disorders of the ear, nose, and throat.

So it may be that acid reflux was considered as a possible cause of Ms. Rivers’ increasingly raspy voice, and she may have been scheduled for endoscopy at the Yorkville clinic to examine the lining of her esophagus and stomach. Endoscopy could reveal signs of inflammation and support a diagnosis of acid reflux.

Upper gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy involves insertion of a large scope through the patient’s mouth into the esophagus, and passage of the scope into the stomach and the beginning of the small intestine. It’s a simple procedure, but uncomfortable enough that most patients are given sedation or, less commonly, general anesthesia.

Was sedation given?

Three types of medication are commonly used for sedation during endoscopy:

1. Midazolam, diazepam (Valium), or other medications in the benzodiazepine family are often used to help patients relax before the start of the procedure and to produce amnesia.

2. Narcotics such as Demerol and morphine are often used to provide pain relief and make the procedure less uncomfortable.

3. Propofol, a potent sedative and hypnotic medication, may be used to induce sleep and prevent awareness. Many people first heard of propofol as the medication associated with the death of singer Michael Jackson in 2009.

How Much Is My Colonoscopy Going to Cost? $600? $5,400?

Aug 27, 2014• 88

By JEANNE PINDER

How much does a colonoscopy cost? Well, that depends.

If you’re uninsured, this is a big question. We’ve learned that cash or self-pay prices can range from $600 to over $5,400, so it pays to ask.

If you’re insured, you may think it doesn’t matter. Routine, preventive screening colonoscopies are to be covered free with no co-insurance or co-payment under the Affordable Care Act.

However, we’re learning that with colonoscopies, as with mammograms, people are being asked to pay sometimes. It’s not clear to us in every case that they should pay, and since we don’t know all the details of these events, we can only offer some general thoughts. We’ve also heard from Medicare enrollees without supplemental Medicare policies that they think they’re responsible for 20 percent of the charged price — so 20 percent of $600 vs. 20 percent of $5,400 is a big deal.

If you’re on a high-deductible plan and the charge to you will be, say, $3,600, you can probably ask around and find a lower rate.

A thorough view of some colonoscopy billing issues is in this article in The New York Times by Libby Rosenthal, who has been covering health costs for the paper. We’ve heard also about in-network providers using out-of-network anesthesiologists, so it pays to pay attention.

Circulation: The Nineties Called. They Want Their Wellness Policy Back

Jul 15, 2014• 22

By AL LEWIS and VIK KHANNA

Last year, we soundly criticized the American Heart Association (AHA) on this blog for its proposal to lower the thresholds for treating cholesterol and getting larger numbers of Americans to swallow statins. We also exposed wellness vendor StayWell, for its mathematically impossible claims of success in British Petroleum’s wellness program. Proving that great minds aren’t the only ones that think alike, StayWell and the AHA have now joined forces. Specifically, the AHA invited the CEO of StayWell, Paul Terry, Ph.D., to help write its workplace wellness policy statement, sort of like Enron inviting Bernie Madoff to help design its financial plan. You don’t learn of this fox-in-the-henhouse conflict of interest unless you read the table on the penultimate page of text.

Naturally, Mr. Terry parlayed this windfall to StayWell’s advantage. The statement: “currently available studies indicate that employers can achieve a positive ROI through wellness” is footnoted to two studies authored by: Paul Terry, along with other Staywell executives. One wonders how a StayWell executive writing policy for the AHA based partly on StayWell’s own articles passes the AHA’s own test of “making every effort to avoid actual or potential conflicts of interest that may arise as a result of an outside relationship.”

How did this conflict of interest get by the peer reviewers? Look at the list of peer reviewers. Prominent among them is Ron Goetzel. Readers of THCB may recall Mr. Goetzel not just from his central role in the Penn State debacle, but also from the ”The Strange Case of the C. Everett Koop Award,” in which it was documented that his committee gave the ironically named award to a sponsor of the award (without disclosing that conflict), even though that sponsor had admitted lying about saving the lives of 514 cancer victims, who, as luck would have it, didn’t have cancer. (The sponsor, Health Fitness Corporation, a division of the equally ironically named Trustmark, has won the Koop award several times, thus proving the cost-effectiveness of their sponsorship.)

If this litany were not enough to dismiss the policy statement forthwith, there is small matter of the actual policy itself, a full employment act for wellness vendors and cardiologists alike, advocating more screening of more employees more often, while ignoring more self-evident facts than Sergeant Schultz. Specifically, they cherry-picked the available literature, continuing to cite the old “Harvard study” whose lead author has now walked it back three times. Except that they didn’t call it the “old Harvard study,” but rather a “recent [italics ours] meta-analysis,” despite the fact it was submitted for publication in 2009, and the average year of the analyses in the study was 2004. Some studies began in the 1990s and were able to use sleight-of-hand to “show savings” despite presumably — in accordance with the conventional wisdom of the era — getting people to eat more carbohydrates and less fat. No wonder Soeren Mattke of RAND Corporation dismissed the Harvard data as archaic in his interview with CoHealth radio in February 2014.

What’s In Our Medicine Cabinets?

Jun 20, 2014• 8

By HANS DUVEFELT, MD

Recently published statistics show that the top-grossing medication in the U.S. for 2013 was the antipsychotic Abilify (aripiprazole) with over $6 billion in sales, narrowly beating out the previous few years’ winner, Nexium.

The past decade’s dominating pharmaceuticals have been Lipitor (atorvastatin) for high cholesterol and Nexium (esomeprazole) for acid reflux. Nexium was preceded at the top by Prilosec (omeprazole), and before that we had Pepcid (famotidine) and Zantac (ranitidine) somewhere near the top of the sales data.

A country’s medicine cabinets tell us something about its culture and its predominant issues.

From the late 1960’s to the early 1980’s the tranquilizer Valium (diazepam) was the top grossing drug. The 1965 US sales volume of tranquilizers was somewhere around 166 million prescriptions or 14% of all prescriptions filled in this country. Both “uppers” and “downers” were subjects of the 1966 best seller “Valley of the Dolls”. Valium rose to the top after the previous few years’ blockbuster tranquilizer Miltown (meprobamate) proved to have significant toxicity risks.

So, this country has gone from treating nervousness and suppressed emotions to heartburn and high cholesterol, the latter two sometimes self-inflicted through dietary indiscretion, and now back to psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia. True, there are other, “softer” indications for Abilify – bipolar disorder, treatment resistant depression and for chemical restraining of aggressive individuals, even children.

One cannot help but stop and reflect on this pharmaceutical sales phenomenon.

The postwar years, although portrayed in media as a time of health care advances, optimism and prosperity, were years of great anxiety. My own observation is that many of my patients and acquaintances who were children during World War II lack the emotional imperturbability of those whose childhood fell in the 1930’s, born in the early to mid 1920’s.

Health Care’s Rube Goldberg Machine. Who Is Responsible?

Jun 12, 2014• 31

By RICHARD GUNDERMAN, MD and Brian Callender, MD

Rube Goldberg was an American cartoonist and inventor, perhaps best known for the extremely complicated contraptions he devised for performing the simplest tasks. Each year, a national Rube Goldberg Machine Contest is held, challenging competitors to devise bizarre contrivances that can shine a shoe or zip a zipper. One day while watching a group of children marvel at such a machine in a museum, a thought occurred to one of us: As healthcare becomes more complex, the interactions between patients, physicians, hospitals, payers, and communities increasingly resemble a Rube Goldberg machine.

Consider a recent case. Ms. Jones was a 50-something year old African American woman with type I diabetes, high blood pressure and end-stage kidney disease requiring peritoneal dialysis, a form of dialysis performed nightly at home. She was recently admitted to the hospital because of an apartment fire that destroyed everything she owned, including her home dialysis equipment and medications. Once she was hospitalized, the medical team restarted her dialysis, restored her blood chemistries to normal, corrected her blood sugar, and began to make plans for her discharge. There was just one problem. They had no place to send her.

Ms. Jones could not return to her apartment, which had essentially burnt to the ground. She did not qualify for admission to a nursing home. And she couldn’t afford to rent a new apartment, at a cost of about $1,500 per month. She had paid for insurance on the apartment for years, but had recently let the insurance lapse to help finance the purchase of an $8,000 living room suite. The medical team had heard that social service agencies would provide one month’s rent, but it turned out that she could get only one-time distributions of $100 from the Red Cross and $200 from the Salvation Army – not nearly enough.

As the days rolled by, the medical team caring for Ms. Jones began feeling escalating pressure from hospital administration to discharge her. Her medical problems had been taken care of, and there was no medical need for her to remain in a hospital bed at a cost of $1,500 per day. The team arranged to get her dialysis supplies delivered to her sister’s house, hoping that she could stay there until she found a place of her own. But it turned out that too many people were already living there. Attempts to find temporary housing through friends and her church dead-ended. Hotels she contacted were all too expensive. Going to a homeless shelter was not a viable option; it would give her a place to sleep, but she couldn’t perform her dialysis there. She volunteered that she could live out of her car, for which she reportedly used some of the $300 to buy gas, but it later turned out that she did not have one.

As pressure to discharge Ms. Jones mounted, team members became increasingly frustrated. Each new hope was thwarted by an opposing reality. The team had provided their patient with the best available medical care, marshaling the impressive resources of a major academic medical center to solve her acute medical problems as effectively and efficiently as possible. But now they had run up against a barrier for which they lacked the necessary training and resources – not a medical problem so much as a social one. Treating acute illness was doable, but looking out for their patient as a whole person with a real life outside the hospital was proving quite another matter.