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TECH/HEALTH 2.0: Eliza & Silverlink, strategic healthcom 2.0

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So the gang is all in San Diego getting ready for the Health 2.0 conference which starts Monday (gulp, that’s today!) Feverish last minute preparations are apace. 

I spent some time on Saturday morning talking to two people at the forefront of the communications revolution on the telephone. Alex Drane, President of Eliza, and Stan Nowak, CEO of Silverlink.  We had a fascinating
interview. See if you can spot the moment when Stan invented a new term which Alex trademarked before he’d finished speaking. (Hey at least the lawyers are making money!)

TECH: Drugs & technology–Allscripts and SafeMed

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To finish off the last but not least of my HIMSS interviews, here are two companies that both announced being part of the Google ecosystem on the Thursday of HIMSS. One is well known and a leader in ePrescribing and EHRs (even though it’s had a tough year on Wall Street and won the HISSIE for most likely to be acquired!) That’s Allscripts of course, and I was able to grab a quick chat with head marketing honcho Dan Michelson and Jamie Stick, IS Director from one of their star clients, Central Utah Clinic in Provo, Utah.

They also have a very cool video called Paper Free health care (I spot some inspiration from the Health 2.0 video!)

I also got the chance to meet a much smaller company called SafeMed. Rich Nossfinger & Ahmed Ghouri hasve built a very very sophisticated rules and processing engine which can interpret drug data and embed that decision support into patient specific indications. Very intriguing stuff and you can learn more by listening to this interview (although they weren’t allowed to let me tell the world in advance that they are one of the first partners in the Google ecosystem. Here’s the SafeMed interview.

TECH: Location tracking, RadarFind’s view

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I’m still hot on location tracking. The idea is that if you can locate devices like pumps and wheelchairs and eventually staff and patients, hospitals should become much more operationally efficient.

But this market which is now 4–5 years old has yet to take off. Part of the reason is that WiFi based systems don’t seem to work as well as advertised, and infra red or others that need new networks are too expensive. Stephen Jackson is CTO of RadarFind, which has a new system which plugs into the electrical system and uses that to move its tracking data around. It seems cheap, easy and effective. Too good to be true? Let Stephen convince you in this podcast.

TECH/PODCAST: Microsoft speaks health care

Microsoft has made some big strides in health this past year. You can easily argue that a) its search has outpaced Google (following the acquisition of Medstory), b) that it’s making strides in the provider market with the renamed Amalga (although that’s leading to a strategic question about whether they’re really going to be a serious player on the inpatient EMR side there) and c) finally that HealthVault legitimizes the whole PHR market. Microsoft will be at pains to tell you that HealthVault is not, though, a PHR. What is it? Ad what about the rest of those questions?

Listen to my interview with Chris Sullivan (US Provider Solutions) and Grad Conn (HealthVault) to find out…

TECH: Interview with Newt Gingrich

The controversial and not-shy-with-his-opinions former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has been very active in recent years promoting the automation of health records and EMRs. But he’s never been a great pains to stress how that would get done from a policy perspective.

I was glad to get a few minute with him because I was able to get straight to that question. And on that topic it appears that Newt has become a fan of government mandates and directed government spending. I think you’ll find this podcast fascinating, although it’s short.

TECH: Finishing up HIMSS!

HIMSS was an intense experience this year. Not only did I present on Health 2.0 at CHIME and at the Cisco Community for Connected Health, but I met lots of old friends and made some new ones at the ICW, HISTalk, Allscripts and Google parties, as well as seeing an almost complete reunion of the old i-Beacon gang. (Bringing back memories of the famous 2001 New Orleans HIMSS beigner 2am powdered sugar fight!)

I also got up very early to attend a breakfast organized by the good people at Allscripts for Newt Gingrich and 50 of his closet friends, and was lucky enough to get 5 minutes to talk with him…..and those of you who think I’m an un-repenting Marxist will be amazed that I agree with him on the issue of mandating and payment for ePrescribing and EMRs! (Although I suspect several of my free market friends do not!)

Unfortunately my experience getting home from HIMSS was way less fun, and I arrived home way later than expected (although I narrowly avoided spending the night on the floor of the Miami airport and actually had a nice room in a rather trendy airport hotel called the Preston in Nashville). And of course by the time I got home I as deeply underwater in Health 2.0 Conference related activities.

So I’m playing catch up and the next several posts will be the remaining podcasts from HIMSS. They’re well well worth listening to.

What’s wrong with individual health insurance mandates by Claudia Chaufan

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Individual health insurance mandates have lately been hailed as the solution to the health care crisis in America. Mandates to buy health insurance have been included in legislative proposals at the state level – for instance, by Gov. Schwarzenegger and Speaker Nunez, in their “Health Care Security and Cost Reduction Act”, or at the federal level, by Hillary Clinton in her “American Health Choice Plan”. Can mandates achieve universal access to health care and control rising costs of medical care? This article explains why they can’t.

Lately, legislation including a universal mandate – a legal obligation that everybody purchase a health insurance policy – has been hailed as the solution to the health care crisis in America. At the state level, mandates have been included, for instance, in Gov. Schwarzenegger and Speaker Nunez’s “Health Care Security and Cost Reduction Act”, and at the federal level, by Hillary Clinton in her “American Health Choice Plan”. Yet many of us remain skeptical. Why? After all, if everybody is forced to buy a health insurance plan – maybe with a subsidy if you are “poor enough” – would this not resolve the problem of uninsurance? Maybe so. But the real question is: would mandating universal health insurance guarantee universal access to medical care? And the short answer is no. 

Continue reading…

Healthcare and The Gathering Storm – Brian Klepper

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Here are two very interesting and frightening charts that my good friend Warren Brennan, the CEO of SMA Informatics in Richmond, passed along this AM, with this question, aimed at the CFOs of hospitals and other health care organizations:

What do these mean for bad debt and for the health care sector’s future financial performance?

Earnings_change

Continue reading…

Clinton v. Obama on Healthcare, by Bob Laszewski

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This is a repost of an original that addresses Hillary Clinton’s claim, repeated in last week’s Texas debate, that only her health plan accomplishes universal coverage because it has a individual mandate and Barak Obama’s does not. Senator Clinton goes so far as to say she would garnish wages to enforce her mandate that everyone buy health insurance. Hillary Clinton has gone on the attack in recent days criticizing Barack Obama’s health care plan. She charges that his plan would not cover everyone and hers would.

Is she right?

Senator Clinton has an individual mandate in her plan. That means
that everyone would be required to purchase coverage or suffer a
penalty she hasn’t defined. Senator Obama does not have an individual
mandate in his plan although he would require all children to be
covered. Both candidates would require employers to cover their
employees.

Continue reading…

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