OK, so it’s in Peru. But if they can, why can’t we?
Above the Fold
POLICY: Lord save us–Reggie is back at it again!
America’s most famous business school health care maven is back it again. Reggie has a new book coming out called Who Killed HealthCare? I for one can’t wait to see if she’s managed to sit in on Logic 101 somewhere on the other side of those hallowed Harvard halls and bring that content back to her new tome. She certainly didn’t bother to include any of that in the last two go arounds, as I suggested in my review of her last book. I’d like to tell you what I really think, but Jamie Robinson got there first in Health Affairs letter exchange back in 1998 responding to her letter lambasting his criticism of her book:
To the Editor:
If you liked Regina Herzlinger’s letter, you will love her book. In the larger work you will find the same measured tone, the same intellectual profundity, and the same judicious use of analogy and statistics. Caveat emptor.James C. RobinsonUniversity of California, BerkeleyBerkeley, California
While I have quoted Jamie’s letter before it’s been a while since I took a look at Reggie’s letter in the same issue. It’s just too good not to share this wonderful assessment of what was happening in health care in 1998.
As my book describes, the market forces that revolutionized the once-bloated U.S. economy are now reshaping health care. Activist consumers’ demands for accountability, convenience, and control are making the system more informative and accessible. The focused-factory concepts that revived the nation’s manufacturing sector and fashioned its world-class service sector are now shaping high-quality, cost-controlled health care delivery systems. And the sort of technological innovations that have increased productivity since the Industrial Revolution are improving the quality of health care while controlling costs. Brilliant entrepreneurs are using the managerial lessons learned from successes such as SamWalton to create a better, cheaper,more accessible health care system.
I for one am reveling in the fact that we now have a better, cheaper, (Cheaper?!!) more accessible health care system than we had in 1998! I guess Reggie, who learned the first rule of forecasting–never put a number or a date in your forecast–has only just learned the second. Never actually write your forecast down or let it be recorded.
But don’t worry she has learned that one now. A couple of years back she debated Alain Enthoven, she was apparently so distressed at what he did to her that she forced the conveners of the conference to remove her words from the transcript!!
The other good news is that she’s not the only Harvard Business School professor getting thoroughly confused by the simple laws of economics. More on Clayton Christensen and Michael Porter later.
POLITICS: Survey–wanna take it?
The nice people at SUNY Stony Brook want you to take a survey about political advertising on the Internet. The survey is anonymous. You will not be required to give your name. It should take 10 to 15 minutes to complete. This survey is designed to help us understand what Americans like you think about Internet advertising, modern campaigns, and politics. Here’s the survey
POLICY: Susan Blumenthal–wanting to change the world by studying it?
Susan Blumenthal, M.D (who I’ve met and like a lot) thinks that we can change the world (or at least the health care system) by studying it a little more. Then the incoming President in 2008 will have all the answers and we just have to pass the legislation. (OK she doesn’t quite say that).
I’m all for more better information on what we should do and on what’s wrong now. But I’m torn. Don’t we know the problems already? Don’t we know the solutions? And don’t we know that the health care system actors will do virtually anything to keep the status quo going?
JOB BOARD UPDATE
Last week THCB launched its latest experiment — the THCB health care job board.
Many of you went over to look at our inaugural job postings, which were
offered courtesy of Humana. There are more jobs up today with more on
the way. If you’re an employer tired of being buried in resumes from
the wrong people, you’ll find this may just be one of the best deals on
the web. Yesterday we officially partnered with Kevin MD,
meaning that your post will be exposed to a monthly audience of thousands of healthcare professionals. If you’re hunting for a job, we’re
also collecting resumes (in confidence of course), which we’ll pass on
if we think we might know of a match. Those *******@*********lt.net“>go to Matthew.
THCB’s crack technical staff is hard at work building the board itself.
For now, posts live in their own thread. Go take a look …
JOB POST: Release Engineer
Sermo.com Cambridge, Ma. CNN called Sermo “A MySpace
for Physicians.” The Motley Fool said “Add Sermo to the IPO watch
list.” We say … Sermo aims to revolutionize health
care in the US. We’ve already built the largest on-line community
for physicians, by physicians. And that’s just the start. Sermo’s
unique technology and business model is at the cutting edge of information
markets and arbitrage, and vertical social networks. Learn more about
us at www.sermo.com. > THCB JOB BOARD
PODCAST/CONSUMERS/TECH: Interview with MaryAnn Stump CEO, Consumer Aware–HealthFacts.org
This is the transcript of my interview last month with MaryAnn Stump CEO, Consumer Aware. Consumer Aware is the BCBS Minnesota subsidiary that puts out the web site HealthCareFacts.org which ranks and rates hospitals and clinics. Unfortunately I had some technical problems with this podcast recoding, but 95% of what Mary Ann was saying is here—and she said a lot! The original audio podcast is here
Matthew Holt: This is Matthew Holt with The Health Care Blog, and I’m back with another podcast on the blog. Today I’m very excited that I’m talking with Mary Ann Stump, who is, among her many other titles, the president of Consumer Aware. Which, Mary Ann, you’ll explain to us, is a subsidiary of Blue Cross of Minnesota. Tell us a bit more about what you do, and about what else you’re doing at Blue Cross of Minnesota.
Mary Ann Stump: Ok. Well first of all, good to talk with you Matthew. I appreciate the opportunity. About a year and a half or so ago…I’ve been working with Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Minnesota for about 16 years now. About a year and a half ago, when I had been working diligently in this whole space of consumer information‑‑that became known more formally as "transparency"‑‑our CEO and I were talking one day. I said, "You know, I think we really need a team. Sort of a garage type of situation, a learning laboratory where we can really start devoting‑‑with a particular number of people that have an interest in advancing a whole vision around effective and useful consumer information‑‑ someplace where we can sort of work on this in addition to thinking about the business the way that it is today."
We had an affiliate organization that essentially was doing managed‑care tools. Really as you know, the whole managed‑care movement is not only changing significantly, but I think the kinds of things we were doing historically are not the kinds of things that we’re going to need as far as the future is concerned.What he suggested was: Why don’t we take that particular affiliate organization‑‑that I like to think about as a garage so to speak‑‑and say let’s set off deliberately to start to look at how we were going to do things differently as far as consumer information is concerned. Based not only on what we know but where we want to start to see people moving. From being the usual recipient approach to health care and really with the consumer at the center, being customers of care. What are the kinds of tools we would develop in that regard? I’d already been working on a couple things, and so essentially we formalized not only the expectations but the opportunity to be able to accelerate that. So Consumer Aware was born.
POLITICS: Powell’s speech at HIMSS
I thought Gen. Colin Powell’s speech at HIMSS was fantastic, funny, moving, intelligent, wonderful and hopeful. Lots of other people were cheerleading him too. However, what else I thought you can see over at Modern Healthcare.
HEALTH PLANS: Guess who said this?
"Health insurers are committed to improving health care choices for small businesses and bringing costs under control for all Americans,"
A woman who’ll say anything in absolute opposition to the facts, so long as it makes her patrons look better. Don’t you think she’d make a good next attorney-general?
PODCAST/TECH: Glen Tullman, CEO Allscripts interview–What’s the future for eRx and EHR?
This is the transcript of my HIMSS interview with Glen Tullman, the CEO of Allscripts. it includes some comments from Jim Morrow, an MD from Georgia who is HIMSS doc of the year too. The original audio podcast is here.
Matthew Holt: …It’s Matthew Holt with The Health Care Blog. It’s another of my HIMMS podcasts, and this one’s really exciting. I have not only Glen Tullman, who is the CEO of Allscripts, which is one of the dominant players in the EMR market for ambulatory care, and moving to other areas, but I also have Jim Morrow who is a doc from…Where in Georgia, Jim?
Jim Morrow: From Cumming Georgia, North Fulton Family Medicine.
Matthew: Ah. From a medium‑sized practice, a family medicine practice in Georgia. He is an Allscripts user. Jim isn’t going to be prepared for this, but we brought him here anyway. Anyway. Good morning, Glen.
Glen Tullman: Good morning. It’s good to be here.
Matthew: We do this thing‑‑as my listeners are now familiar with‑‑with the mike, so it will fade in and out because it’s not very professional. [laughs]. Anyway, first off Glen, you’ve been CEO of Allscripts since what? 1997, 1998, something like that?
Glen: I’ve been with Allscripts for nine years now.
Matthew: Right, so ’98. And you had the joy of being the head of a public company, which went from a stock price of what, seventy‑eight or seventy‑nine in 2000, to two, or three, or something in 2002? And yet, you’re still there. I can’t think of any other health care CEO who’s gone through that experience. Luckily the stock has been at more than two these days. So how did it feel in those dark days…
Glen: Well, we’ve been…I’m fortunate, this is the third public company that I’ve run, two in health care, one in the property and casualty insurance business. We were the beneficiaries of the Internet "craze", if you will and the stock price ran up. I continued to tell our people that we hadn’t accomplished our mission, but the market put a high valuation on us and the stock ran up to $89. Then it actually came down.Our investors were fortunate that someone called us "the last man standing." It came down slower than most Internet stocks that collapsed; because we had a real business and a real vision. And I think, today we’ve continued over the years to execute on the vision, to build the infrastructure that you see working today. The stock market seems to be rewarding us for it.
Matthew: Well, you guys made what, nine million bucks last year in profit? What are you scheduled for this year?
Glen: Well, I’d like to talk about what we’re accomplishing. I think the accomplishment is that the product is working for physicians. We have over 30, 000 physicians today, over 400 hospitals. When you do things right, when you deliver for your customers, the end result is profitability. So we’re seeing a nice growth in our profitability. The analysts have put a number of different numbers on what we’ll look like next year.I think another key point I’d make is: We are actually reinvesting in software development, and other processes, more money than anyone else in the ambulatory sector. So we’re able to provide a great return on products that are well priced. And also invest in the market. Things like the NEPSI initiative, which is a 30 million dollar investment for us over five years.
Matthew: Let’s move on to NEPSI.
