The Health Care Blog – Page 1005 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

Above the Fold

Healthy Americans Act could be the place of compromise for health reform in 2008

May 8, 2008• 8

By Robert Laszewski

Health care reform will be hard to do after the November election. I’ve even called it a long-shot.

Wyden_smile Polls clearly show the voters split evenly between the Democratic and Republican approach to health care reform. I can’t tell you who will win the presidency, but I am willing to make the bold statement that it will be a close election and neither very different approach to health care reform will enjoy any kind of mandate.

So finding common ground between these very different approaches will be more than tricky.

But we may already have an outline.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) have crafted a health care reform plan that gives both sides the most important things each are looking for.

Indian docs endorse O.J. and oatmeal

May 8, 2008• 3

By Sarah Arnquist

PepsiCo maneuvered marketing genius this week by convincing the Indian Medical Association to endorse the health benefits of Tropicana fruit juice and Quaker Oats for three years.

Pepsi
Now, when Indians reach for these products, they’ll see a stamp of approval from the IMA. In turn, Pepsi will sponsor IMA events and forums. This so-called noncommercial deal is the first of its kind globally.

The Indian Medical Association, an organization with 175,000 members, is India’s equivalent to the American Medical Association. It has received harsh criticism for the deal. The Times of India ran opposing viewpoints Thursday on the endorsement.

"The IMA cannot be seen to be favouring any one corporation over its rivals when it comes to benefits that flow from a healthy diet," the opposing editorial states.

In the IMA’s defense, a columnist wrote, "Brand promotions of healthy products of a corporation like PepsiCO — that’s more of a cola company — will help it diversify its operations in holistic areas that enhance, rather than compromise, public health."

Did Pepsi ghostwrite that?

Ten years ago, the American Medical Association had to backtrack on an agreement to endorse Sunbeam medical supplies after its members responded with fury. The AMA’s violation of an unwritten 40-year-old rule against product endorsements caused four top officials to resign.

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.

Interview with Joseph Kvedar, Partners Center for Connected Health

May 7, 2008• 2

By Matthew Holt

Joseph Kvedar is the director of Center for Connected Health, which is part of the Partners HealthCare System’s empire in Boston (that’s Mass General and the Brigham for you old-schoolers). Joe emceed the conference I spoke at yesterday, and I stopped in for a quick chat with him this morning to get an update on the Center’s progress.

If you need an introduction to the Center, its web site is here, a piece Joe wrote for THCB last year is here and the transcript of a longer interview I did with Joe is here.

Today we had time for a quick catch-up, in which he touches on the state of the EMR initiative at Partners, the wider role of Connected Health within Partners, and the state of their current pilots. Here’s the interview (The first minute is a little quiet. My apologies.)

You can also see the details about the Center’s symposium (27-28 October). There, you can find out more about Connected Health than you can imagine, and you’ll probably see a little flavor of Health 2.0 there, too. We hope to bring a little flavor of the community aspect of Connected Health to the Health 2.0 Conference (October 22-23). Yes, we know they’re close together … but speaking as someone who’s been to both, I recommend both highly!

Health Plan Illiteracy: study finds many do not understand their benefits

May 7, 2008• 7

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn

Health plan illiteracy is alive and well, according to J.D. Power and Associates. The consumer market research firm’s 2008 National Health Insurance Plan Study finds that one in two plan members don’t understand their plan.

In this second year of the survey, J.D. Power notes that, as consumers understand the benefits of their Benefit, their satisfaction with the plan increases. Thus, there is a virtuous cycle that happens between a plan and an enrollee when communication is clear and understood.

J.D. Power looked at member satisfaction in 107 health plans throughout the U.S. in terms of seven key metrics: coverage and benefits; choice of doctors, hospitals and pharmacies; information and communication; approval processes; claims processing; insurance statements; and customer service. The survey was conducted in November and December 2007.

Last year, Abt Associates found that most insured workers don’t understand simple health plan language. I abstracted some of Abt’s findings in this chart that I use in many of my presentations. Health plan illiteracy goes beyond general health illiteracy — this is people blessed with benefits who don’t ‘get’ them.

The virtues of virtual visits

May 7, 2008• 2

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn

Rush-Presbyterian Medical Center’s Virtual Integrated Practice (VIP) is more evidence that remote health care can improve health outcomes.

At Rush, a team has been refining the VIP model for the past four years. The VIP’s objective is to improve chronic disease management for older people by deploying aninterdisciplinary team using communications technology.

The main challenges in primary care for VIP’s target patient population are:

Multiple chronic problems
Polypharmacy
Physical disability
Functional impairment
Economic stressors

The Holy Grail here is that when these patients are optimally-managed, VIP can identify missed opportunities for primary prevention and avoid eventual disability.

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."

Around the Web in 60 Seconds

May 6, 2008• 1

By THCB STAFF

NYT Lying – Giving Ourselves The Psychological Push We Need to Reach Future Goals? Or Just Good Old-Fashioned Twisted Fun?

LAT: Food 2.0 – What to eat while Googling

Microsoft: Health 2.0 could eventually "expand Web 2.0 concepts to the entire health
ecosystem of payors, providers, employers, consumers, life sciences entities and even the government."

Wired Science: ""With the world teetering on the edge of a full-blown food crisis, it may be time to cut back on biofuel, said Barack Obama yesterday."

MIT Tech Review: The Candidates on Tech

HealthTech: "A Pan-European eHealth Infrastructure Could Revolutionize Healthcare."

SF Chronicle: Medical Tourism is Big…

WSJ: Medical Tourism is Not So Big…

Can “consumerism” work in health care?

May 6, 2008• 14

By Brian Baum

“Consumerism,” — free market, open competition – regardless of the term used to describe this market behavior, can the concept of “natural market forces” exist in health care? It seems as though observers of the health care “market” fall into two distinct points of view:

POV 1: Consumerism in health care is a train that has already left the station.POV 2: Health care is different and true market forces can never prevail because the players’ roles are so polarizing, and the “buyer” and the “consumer” are so disconnected.

I suspect that for anyone reading this, you have already checked off your respective point of view. (While the merits of this topic are worth debating, ultimately, time and events will answer this question.)

In the meantime, let’s consider the following:

THCB’s own correspondent in India

May 6, 2008• 1

By Sarah Arnquist

Less than a month ago, I quit my job as a newspaper health care reporter and moved to India. No, I wasn’t fleeing the dismal atmosphere permeating traditional newsrooms these days (not entirely at least). This was a premeditated step to travel and learn about health care in the world’s largest democracy before starting Johns Hopkins Masters in Public Health Program this summer. Oh, and in the meantime, I joined the staff of THCB.

After 16 days in Hyderabad (located in the south-central state of Andhra Pradesh), I’ve adjusted to the heat, spicy food and traffic, and am now ready to begin some real reporting. Over the next month or two, I’ll share what I learn on THCB. I’m particularly interested in the exploding private health sector, the emerging health insurance markets, maternal and child health, and the wide gaps in care between the haves and the have-nots.

If you have any contacts in Hyderabad or suggestions for posts, please feel free to contact me at *******@***il.com“>sa*******@***il.com or in the comments section.