The Health Care Blog – Page 1043 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

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Fire Burns Away the Fog of Ideology: Can Humane Health Care Reform Rise from the Ashes? – Michael Millenson

Oct 24, 2007• 13

THCB welcomes back our solid pal, the erudite Michael Millenson, for whom the sun doesn’t shine if there’s no wisecrack in the wings. Now leading a consulting firm specializing in health care quality projects, Michael is a former Chicago Trib reporter with 3 Pulitzer nominations to his credit. Michael’s groundbreaking 1997 book Demanding Medical Excellence was one of the first to call attention to the problems addressed by the Quality and Safety movements. Enjoy.

As wildfires sweep Southern California, I have been surprised that homeowners in some of the most affluent and staunchly Republican enclaves in the state have not protested the widespread deployment of government workers bearing fire hoses and driving ambulances. The pain of watching one’s life possessions burn to a crisp must almost be matched by the pain of watching tax dollars wasted on a task that private, for-profit firefighters could surely perform more cheaply and more effectively. Yet not even the richest of the fire-torn refugees has expressed regret over government intervention in their rescue.

HEALTH2.0: More doctor rating–this time it’s Wellpoint & Zagats

Oct 23, 2007• 10

So Zagats, which is the best known old world ratings guide in the restaurant business, is making a move into health care. And it’s doing it with the biggest blues plan Wellpoint.

So there’s likely to be quite a bit of cynicism about this. After all, why should anyone use a health plan site to rate doctors rather than an independent one, and for that matter is Wellpoint going to let its customers rate it? I can think of a few who won’t rate it so highly!

But beyond the cynicism, it’s clear that some form of ratings is coming fast. And plans might as well get into the game somehow, although given the lack of trust they have in the market, my guess is that an independent ratings company is more likely to succeed. And there are lots of those around. Perhaps the question is whether it’ll be a guide known best for restaurants like Yelp, a general health care site which allows ratings like Revolution or Vimo, or whether a specialist one that just rates doctors like RateMDs or CareSeek.

Quick add: On the panel at Connected Health, Henry DePhillips, ex MedDecision now with Medem says– consumers not going to
rate costs or quality—so that Wellpoint/Zagats are missing the point!

TECH: Fred Trotter–HealthVault: No privacy commitments

Oct 23, 2007• 1

I’m at the Partners Connected Health conference. Yesterday’s entry got killed by an overheating crash—but having blown the dust out of my heatsink, hopefully my Gateway is OK now.

Later today 5 cool Health2.0 companies are going to be showing their goodies on a panel I’m running. (WeGo Health, Enhanced Medical Decisions, DNADirect, PatientsLikeMe, and Praxeon)

I also heard an earlier panel talk from a next generation RelayHealth/online visit type company called American Well (not an oil company) which looks pretty interesting — real time video conf with docs “on call”, apparently some health plan will run it out next year)

Right now I’m at a panel on PHRs. We’re starting to talk about data privacy and trust. Funnily enough open source advocate Fred Trotter has today taken a broad swipe at Microsoft in an article called HealthVault: No Commitments and a Sleeping Watchdog in which he says that there’s no actual audit function and that privacy advocate Deborah Peel has been snowed.

So I asked….James Mault from Microsoft essentially said that they’ve done the best they can so far with a multitude of interested parties and that this is a continual work in process. He did say “ability or third party audits are built into the system” and that “at the end o the day the consumer will tell us what they want”. He didn’t mention the open source issue, and no, I’m sure Microsoft wont show him the code!

Massachusetts Health Care Reform : The Canary in the Coal Mine

Oct 23, 2007• 5

By MAGGIE MAHAR

Advocates for health care reform have been keeping an eye on Massachusetts, hopeful that its new health reform law will serve as a pilot program for the nation.

I’m much less hopeful than I was two days ago.

Yesterday I attended the Massachusetts Medical Society’s Eighth Annual Leadership Forum where I was one of four speakers. This year, the Society (which owns The New England Journal of Medicine) focused on the cost of health care –with a special emphasis on funding universal coverage in Massachusetts. The new was not good. While the citizens of Massachusetts believe that everyone has a right to health care (when polled 92% say “yes”), no one wants to pay for universal coverage. When asked “if the only way to make sure that everyone can get the health care services they need is to have a substantial increase in taxes [should we do it] 55% said “no.”

One speaker at the forum recalled a man who explained why taxpayers shouldn’t have to pick up the bill: “The government should pay for it.” (He didn’t disclose who he thinks “the government” is. )Continue reading…

Food Porn: Hardees and the 920 Calorie Burrito – Pat Salber

Oct 22, 2007• 31

Perhaps
the folks over at Hardee’s fast food haven’t heard the country is in
the midst of an obesity epidemic. They have just unveiled a new
breakfast offering, the Country Breakfast burrito. It consists of a
two egg omelet filled with bacon, sausage, diced ham, cheddar cheese,
hash browns and sausage gravy. Surrounding this protein load is a
flour tortilla. The burrito weighs in at 920 calories. That’s right,
920 calories, about half of what you should ingest in a day. This
little baby also has 60 grams of fat. All those calories and all that
fat will only set you back $2.69.

According to a story by the Associated Press,
Brad Haley, Hardees’ marketing chief, says that the burrito offers the
sort of big breakfast item normally found in sit-down restaurants with
an added advantage. “It makes this big country breakfast portable,” he
said.

Esther Dyson on Health 2.0

Oct 22, 2007

I hadn’t heard this quote from Esther Dyson describing Health 2.0 before. She puts it very well.

What we heard today was to me something like the mobile phone system;
it kind of snuck in quietly. It didn’t say it was going to replace the
landline phones. It just appeared.

HEALTH 2.0: Sssh. It’s a secret!

Oct 22, 2007

Pre-registration for the next Health 2.0 conference is now open. The exact location and date for this March event must remain a closely-guarded state secret for now, but expect an official announcement from the Health 2.o team soon. September’s conference sold out weeks before the event, so if you want the best odds of obtaining a pass, you probably should take the two minutes it takes to go sign up. If you attended the September 20th event in San Francisco, all you need do is email in**@********on.com with "I want to come to the next one" in the body of your email. Meanwhile, if you missed the September event in San Francisco, we will shortly be making an 8 DVD box with highlights of the Health 2.0 User-Generated Healthcare conference available for sale. Just send us an email with "I want the DVD in your subject line." We will provide details on pricing and shipping options when copies are available to ship.

Is BC/BS Practicing Medicine? By Gregory Paweleski

Oct 20, 2007• 13

I’ve observed the incessant complaints on various cancer blogs and discussion boards about BC/BS "denial of coverage" on the backs of injured and diseased human beings during their fight with the great crab.

In one case, the patient was denied a CT scan. As the poster said, "because BC/BS is practicing medicine and deciding that such a thing is not medically necessary." Without the CT scan, there was no way for the doctor to definitively tell if a swollen leg is cancer related or a blood clot. The physician couldn’t make a diagnosis based on the best available technique to make that diagnosis.

Another poster presented the case that BC/BS used to cover Pet Scans. Unfortunately, some study came out stating that Pet Scans aren’t more effective than CT Scans to find colon cancer. With that one study, BC/BS had decided not to cover the Pet Scan, even against the physician protest.

HEALTH2.0: Vertical Search–The only way is up?

Oct 19, 2007• 7

Forrester data in iHealthbeat:

Seventy percent of online consumers surveyed said they have used a Web-based search engine to find health-related information, but just 7% of online consumers surveyed said they have used a health-specific search engine, according to a survey by Forrester Research

That means that the vertical search guys have had 10% of the market in users although surely much less than 10% of the market in traffic. You can see why with the huge CPM rates for health care advertising this is indeed an interesting market for vertical search crowd like Healia, Healthline, Microsoft/Medstory, Kosmix, Praxeon et al. (Yes, I’m using those 5 as examples as they were on the panel at Health2.0 and I am just reviewing the DVD). But there are others too, like Medgle.

So will they gain any traction from this? Or will the big three (or really the big one) simply take their share back with their new tech releases…

POLICY: Friday quiz–A tale of two professors

Oct 19, 2007• 1

I’ve been told that I make “vicious ad hominem attacks” about people I disagree with on matters of substance. So I thought it would be fun to show what some other luminaries say. See if you can guess who wrote this and who they’re talking about—yes both in the same long article and both people with similar roles and titles:

XXX XXX is a professor at XXXX Business School and the thought leader on consumer driven health care in the United States. XXX is the author or editor of three books that laid out the intellectual foundation for the consumer empowerment movement: (book titles redacted). XXX is a frequent and popular lecturer on all aspects of health care reform, and serves on the Boards of some of the most innovative health care companies in America.