If you missed Health 2.0 User-Generated Healthcare this September you are now officially in luck. The 4 DVD box set of conference highlights is now available for
purchase. And just in time for Christmas! Starring Dr. David Brailer,
Sermo’s Daniel Palestrant, Esther Dyson, Google, Yahoo! Healthline,
Microsoft, Cisco, WebMD, Patients Like Me, Daily Strength, Organized
Wisdom, Enhanced Medical Decisions, Health 2.0 founders Matthew Holt
and Indu Subaiya and many many more.
Above the Fold
POLICY: Overtreated gets huge plaudit
OK. It’s official. David Leonhardt is a convert, even one who can’t quite leave his past behind. In is NY Times selection for Economics book of the year he picks Shannon Brownlee’s Overtreated. (If you want to hear me and Shannon having a good gossip about the American health care system, see here).
Leonhardt can’t quite shake his Stephen Colbert-like past (the market has spoken so it must be true). He still says this:
As I’ve written before, there is nothing wrong with devoting a large chunk of our economy to medical care. Since the 1950s, doctors have made incredible progress against diseases that were once inevitably fatal. That progress is probably the finest human achievement of the last half century. If we weren’t wasting so much money on overtreatment, it would be a lot easier to repeat the achievement over the next half century.
Of course, and it’s been pointed out ad nauseam here, those results were achievable at a much lower cost than we’ve paid, and the difference could have been spent on something with a higher economic return (or in invading any middle eastern countries we haven’t got to yet).
But it’s great to have Leonhardt on board, at least for the Wennberg thesis. Now he just has to convince the rest of the NY Times editorial board.
POLICY/QUALITY: Uninsurance does indeed kill you quicker
I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores of what’s wrong with cancer care in this country. But when the IOM said that people die early because of uninsurance, people scoffed. The same people (and you know who you are David Gratzer) say (pretty disingenuously) that we do cancer care much better than countries with universal insurance, and for at least partly that reason universal insurance is a bad idea.
So presumably they have a good answer for this new report from the American Cancer Society, which essentially shows that–whatever the state of American cancer care maybe overall–you’re much more more likely to have a good outcome if you’ve got insurance. Some tidbits from the release:
For all cancer sites combined, patients who
were uninsured were 1.6 times as likely to die in five years as those with
private insurance.The
relationship between access to care and cancer outcomes is particularly striking
for several cancers which can be prevented or detected earlier by screening and
for which there are effective treatments, including breast and colorectal
cancer. At every level of education, individuals with health insurance were
about twice as likely as those without health insurance to have had mammography
or colorectal cancer screening.
TECH: UPDATE The British & Germans are coming…..to Disease Mangement?
Health Dialog sold itself to partial investor BUPA, a British insurance company, today. The price tag valued Health Dialog at $775m
However, this may not be the only European incursion into DM this week. Rumor has it that The Health Buddy may find itself has a new owner very shortly too. Bosch, the German auto parts manufacturer, bought Health Hero Network, Thursday.
Finally although its off its recent highs, Healthways’ stock is still some 25% about where it was in the summer.
Hey maybe after all this time someone has decided that DM works?
THCB is proudly sponsored by CDW Healthcare
POLICY: As Goes California, So Should Go the Nation, by Mary Kay Henry
Now I can’t claim to be an optimist about the future of California’s health reform bill. But at least someone is. And that someone is SEIU Executive Vice President Mary Kay Henry. Here’s her take on the latest California news and why the SEIU is at least one union buying in.
ABx1 1: no, it’s not the holiday season’s hot new video game. It’s the bill name for historic legislation approved yesterday by the California State Assembly to make healthcare more secure and affordable for those who have insurance, and provide coverage to millions who don’t.
Months of intense negotiations drew on the collective creativity and wisdom of elected officials, consumer groups, healthcare professionals, and labor and business community leaders to generate the comprehensive plan. The measure has the potential to transform the healthcare reality for millions of Californians, and it will fundamentally change the healthcare debate nationally.
THCB Sponsor Shout out
A quick reminder that THCB would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors. We’d like to give a shout out to
CDW-Healthcare, who were the first gold sponsor to sign on this year. If you haven’t been over to take a look at their site since they remodeled it’s well worth a quick look. They specialize in everything tech for the Healthcare market, from surge protectors to PACS systems to cool little gadgets with blinking red and green lights that look really useful. Your purchases help THCB continue to provide cutting edge industry analysis, commentary and discussion of the issues that matter. Tell ’em we sent you.
We’re pleased to announce CDW Healthcare have signed on again as gold sponsor for 2008. Meanwhile,if you are interested in reaching a monthly audience of 35,000 plus healthcare professionals, wonks and other healthcare observers, we are accepting sponsorship applications for the coming year. You may also want to consider a sponsorship of the Health 2.0 conference, which (unbelievably, horrifyingly) is just right around the corner. The theme of the March event in San Diego is connecting patients and providers. There will be an exclusive, tres cool healthcare crowd in attendance. For details on opportunities jo**@********on.com
Policy- vs. Market-Based Reform: RHIOs as a Case Study – Brian Klepper
As Anonymouse insightfully commented, the Harvard team’s RHIO study in Health Affairs is very telling
about the barriers facing do-gooder health care projects. That said, I wanted to add two comments.
First, while RHIOs are unquestionably good public policy, what they might accomplish can be seen as counter to their interests of many organizations expected to support them. (The same can be said for EHRs, by the way)
Second, this is why health care reform will emerge not from within health care and not from policy, but from the marketplace, driven by non-health care interests.
Read the rest over at the Health 2.0 Blog
BLOGS: Diabetes Year in Review
Our friend and colleague Amy Tenderich has a just excellent Diabetes Year in Review up at DiabetesMine. It covers Health 2.0 (of course) but also drugs devices, design, and the growth of people with diabetes as a social force.
Amy knows that she’ll always be the #1 blogger in my heart!
TECH: RHIO, RHIO, ree-ay-yo,by anonymouse
OK, the title is a take off on the Police song, but the subject has got a little more influence lately. A sometime THCB correspondent had these thoughts:
The December 11 edition of Health Affairs contains a very important article on “The State of Regional Health Information Organizations.” At first glance, the article seems to pile on to the prevailing wisdom that RHIOs are a bad idea, because, of course, RHIOs are failing.
A more careful read, though, differentiates the issue of whether fully-functioning RHIOs (or clinical health information exchanges, more broadly) could provide value to a community and its (healthcare) stakeholders and the issue of whether the current model for funding RHIOs is sustainable – two very different issues.
The study takes no issue with the notion of the value of RHIOs: “Electronic clinical data exchange promises substantial financial and societal benefits…”
