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THCB: Tech section with UPDATE

Over the next few weeks or so you’ll see some changes at
THCB. Most importantly, we’ll be launching the Tech Section, a new area of the site specifically focused on
healthcare and technology. Stories on healthcare, technology and IT subjects
will live here, as will archived podcasts and our rapidly expanding collection
of Health 2.0 focused content.
You’ll also find guest posts by special guest contributors working in the field,
ranging from execs at top hospital and health plan systems, to experts at the forefront of the industry.

Meanwhile, if you want to reach a monthly audience of tens of thousands
of healthcare industry observers interested in the intersection of technology
and healthcare and related stories, you may want to consider  sponsoring THCB or one of our sections. We’re read “religiously” throughout the
industry, by readers who like our “irreverent’ and “influential” coverage of trends and issues (Wall Street Journal.)  Monthly and longer term corporate sponsorships are available.  A limited number of Health 2.0 sponsorships remain
as well. Contact jo**@***************og.com
for rates, availability and other details.

PODCAST/TECH: HEALTH2.0/TECH/PODCAST: Interview with Venky Harinarayan, Founder Kosmix

Here’s this week’s interview is with Venky Harinarayan, Founder and (unofficial) CEO at Kosmix. Kosmix wants its new RightHealth site to be the "unofficial home page for health". He’ll tell you about categories and "broad" searching, the intricacies of the search ecosystem, and how Powerset will beat out Google. (OK he may not have said that, but it should get this entry lots of hits!).

This was the first interview when I could see my interviewee over Skype and I found it very unnerving, even though he couldn’t see me!  But you’ll only have to listen. You might well want to play with RightHealth while he’s describing it.

My take is that search is just starting in health care…and that in 2-3 years we won’t recognize it!

QUALITY/POLICYThe NY Times has licked its sore all better!

The New York Times is suddenly acting like Alain Enthoven and Jack Wennberg have taken over its health care reporting! This is the third article saying sensible things about the health care system in less than a week! Today, following the stories about practice variation in back surgery and Eliot Fisher’s work at Dartmouth, you wonks will all be amazed that Reed Abelson tells the public that In Health Care, Cost Isn’t Proof of High Quality.

They say that it takes about 17 years for a medical discovery to make it into general practice. Funnily enough I heard exactly the same stories about low quality hospitals and surgeons being the highest cost producers 17 years ago in Alain Enthoven’s class! How long before the Wennberg/Enthoven mantra make it into the public’s assessment of the health care system?

POLICY: Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog

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I am supposed to be (but for reasons of schedule and health—I’ll explain later—failing to be) one of the participants in the Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog. But there are lots of great entries there and currently there is Live Blogging of the Influenza Leadership Forum in Washington, DC. Check it out and hopefully I’ll be able to join in later in the week.

POLICY: Jonathan Cohn, on film and in the studio

Up at WorldHealthCareBlog (eventually after some production delays) is the interview I did back in April with Jonathan Cohn, author of Sick.. That’s Sick the book as oppsed to the remarkably similar I guess (as I havent seen it yet) Sicko the movie.

And in an appalling sloppy piece of journalism or editing in the UK newspaper The Independent Andrew Gumble retells a seres of stories from Cohn’s book Sick and ascribes them to Moore’s movie, even though he mentions Cohn’s book later.

I guess Jon should scruff up and put on a few pounds….

PODCAST/TECH: Interview with Luis Machuca, CEO Kryptiq

We had Luis Machuca CEO of Kryptiq on a podcast from WHCC talking about his company’s health plan earlier in May. But he didn’t get to talk much about his company’s business or technology. This interview rectifies that, and it’s another in the series about how messaging and data exchange is arriving in health care. Take a listen to the interview.

THCB Reader mail

The news that former Bush administration Health IT czar David Brailer will head a private equity fund
backed by $700 million from the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPers) drew a  cynical response from a number
of readers.  Vijay Goel MD writes:

"Strangely
enough, Dr. Brailer will be getting 5 times as much to invest in Health
IT from the state of California as he did as Bush’s Health IT czar …
I’ve been somewhat puzzled why certain health IT applications haven’t
been marketed more toward consumers. Things like emailing providers,
access to electronic records (for things like vaccine records), and for
simple questions seems like it would be of significant benefit. Why do
these services also waiting for the big payers to push forward? "

Bev MD had this to say about Sermo’s recently announced partnership with the American Medical Association:

I belong to Sermo, although I don’t use it much since there are few
posts in my esoteric area, pathology. My first reaction to Sermo’s
partnership with AMA was that they’ve sold out the docs to the
Establishment. However, I admit I’m attracted by the free access to
JAMA, a journal which i’d like to read, and by the advertised ability
of the members to have access to senior AMA leadership for constructive
criticism. There has already been posted an open letter to AMA
leadership criticizing their, well, leadership. We’ll see where this
goes."

Marlon Williams chimes in Thomas Goetz’s op-ed in the New York Times
encouraging physicians to adopt VistA, the open source electronic
medical record considered by some to be the leading competitor to
proprietary systems. Safe to say he doesn’t concur with Mr. Goetz’s prescription.

"The introduction of WorldVistA was a
terrible decision," he writes, "that is only confusing the market. A lot of people
are wasting their time and efforts on a system that is as antiquated as
the first PC. The laggards are finally catching up to the fact that
transformation is necessary. Unfortunately, they are stuck on 20-year
old technology."

Continue reading…

HEALTH2.0: Knowledge Prostitution

The powerhouse that is Scott Shreeve, not content with jetting around the US, looking after his newest (and 4th) kid and filling my inbox with amazing stuff, is having a go at prostitutes by comparing them to doctors! Personally I’ve never logically understood the stigma about prostitution, and I like the Heinlein novel where one of the lead characters is a prostitute who charges her son by the hour to see her after he’s 21. After all, they’re providing our society’s most cherished function, and when you pay a high price for great service for anything else in this world it is regarded as a good thing. (And yes I do understand the stigma in this version of the alternate universe).

But I digress….

What Scott’s piece, Knowledge Prostitution, suggests is that for social networking sites to pay members for opinions is not healthy. He particularly looks at Sermo, and he also suggests that the information gained from his inquiry about a rare form of wrist pain is not too helpful.

FD about me and Sermo here. CEO Dan Palestrant bought me dinner to pick my brain (I think I won!), Sermo has paid for advertising for the THCB jobs board, and Sermo is a sponsor of the forthcoming Health2.0 conference—for which Scott is on the advisory board. I like both Daniel and Scott a lot, so it’s good to see a little healthy dispute between MD computer geeks!

Continue reading…

POLICY: And just in case you thought things were getting better

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The answer is not much.

Aon surveyed more than 70 leading healthcare insurers and found that healthcare costs are projected to increase by 10.9 percent for HMOs, 10.8 percent for POS plans, 11.2 percent for PPOs and 10.7 percent for CDH plans. This represents rates of increase lower than one year ago, when HMO cost increases were 12.2 percent, 11.9 percent for POS plans, 12.4 percent for PPOs and 12.5 percent for CDH plans.

So in this survey premium cost growth rates are still well, well above wage growth. So a bigger and bigger share of wages (or the total available to pay wages) is going towards healthcare. And now the public sector, with its new accounting requirements, is starting to run into the same problems. So at some point those “unsustainable” trends start becoming apparent. While the NY Times focuses on the problems within the system, the LA Times has been focusing on the impact on financing and insurance. Maybe the word will get out of those two august organs and make it into the Six O’Clock news sometime.

But it’s all part of the same issue, and eventually there will be some kind of political solution. But of course things might get much worse before they get any better.

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