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PODCAST/TECH/QUALITY: Don Kemper podcast

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Here’s the transcript from the recent podcast with Don Kemper. Interesting stuff from a real pioneer.

Matthew Holt: So welcome to another THCB podcast. Today we’re very lucky to have Don Kemper, who is the President, CEO and certainly the joint founder of Healthwise, and also, although he’d be too bashful to say it, probably the main individual in America who has been behind the information therapy movement, which now has its own separate Center for Information Therapy, the one that Don I believe founded. So Don, welcome to The Health Care Blog.

Don Kemper: Thank you, Matthew. I’m pleased to be here. You’re very kind.

Matthew: Those of you who’ve been reading the blog have noticed that over the years I’ve both been to a couple of information therapy conferences, partly because they’re held in Park City, Utah, which is a beautiful and lovely place to go where I have friends (even though I left most of my left knee there in the trees some years ago and am just steadily getting it put back together) but also because I’m pretty convinced and a firm believer that the concept of information therapy is one that is going to be of significant importance no matter what happens in the future health care reform debate. And it’s something that, as people are developing new and different forms of information technology to support those patients and physicians, information therapy is going to be an important part of that.

So, with that, Don, why don’t you take us back to the early days. Tell us a little about what Healthwise does, how that started, how the Healthwise Handbook got going, and then perhaps just tell us a bit about Information therapy to start off with.

Don: It all started, Matthew, when I was a lieutenant in the U.S. Public Health Service back in 1970, and I heard a talk by the assistant secretary for health education and welfare in those days, Vern Wilson. He said the greatest untapped resource in health care is the consumer. And that was at a time when nobody was thinking about what a patient could do for themselves, and I though, "That’s a good idea." I had a little baby at home and somebody had given me a Dr. Spock, and I thought, "Well, what the world needs is a Dr. Spock for the whole family," and began to try to get the federal government to write a basic self-care book that they could give to every family in America.

That idea didn’t get very far in my two year tenure with the Public Health Service, but I held onto the idea, and a few years later landed in Boise, Idaho with a pretty open book on what I could do, and we started to develop that idea. And so Healthwise was formed in 1975. We published the first copy of the Healthwise Handbook through Doubleday in 1976. And we have been growing toward the same mission that we established right then, which was to help people make better health decisions.

So over the last 31 years, we have been continually looking for ways to enrich this mission of helping people make better health decisions by giving them books, giving them workshops, giving them good web based information, and now finding ways to prescribe information to meet their specific needs in every moment of care.

Do you want to know more?

Matthew: Sure. Let me ask you some more specific questions. Healthwise is founded as a non-profit, and I guess that perhaps the first time I ran into Healthwise was back in early ’90s. Somewhere around that time you convinced the folks at Kaiser Permanente to give that book to every member, I believe. Maybe that was just Northern California. The thing that I as a health care economist policy guy that I sort of sat up and took a notice, was that actually, they showed that emergency room visits declined dramatically amongst people who had these books.

So tell me a little bit about how that evolved, and how, apart from being sort of a worthy organization giving out information to people, Healthwise started evolving into being a place where the health care system realized it could start having a positive impact on savings, as well as outcomes.

Continue reading…

POLICY: Healthcare crisis countdown

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The Christian Science Monitor has a pretty interesting article about how the healthcare crisis countdown may lead to a big debate in health care politics either 2008 or later. My guess is much later, but it’s a matter of timing. And the later the system players leave it to sort themselves out, the more likely it’ll be that we get an unthinking single payer solution (as opposed to a thinking one).

Meanwhile John Abramson has joined the hate America crowd. Just because he has data and evidence on his side, he thinks he can get away with that stuff?!

TECH: McKesson Buys Per-Se Technologies

McKesson is buying Per-Se Technologies . Per-Se was the result of a series of roll-ups in practice management and hospital billing companies, which bought the “switch” part of NDC two years ago. McKesson itself has quite some experience buying technology companies that are roll-ups of others! (And not all of that experience was good!).

More later on the impact.

POLICY: Health care astroturf gets me all grumpy

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I wrote a scathing piece about an astroturf lobbying organziation that is pretending to be something it’s clearly not. My Spot-on editor Chris Nolan didn’t want me to be sued for libel, so the resulting slightly less caustic article is up there called Action and Reaction. My version was subtitled "Taking the piss."As ever come back here  to comment.

Back in the day when there was some vague interest from Democrats in fixing our health care system, a kindly millionaire gave a pile of money
to a lobbying pressure group that had quite some influence behind the
ill-fated Clinton Health Plan. Not too much has been heard since from
Families USA and its leader Ron Pollack. Sadly, those of us of a
certain age felt that its day in the sun had come and gone.
But what was interesting about Families USA was that, unlike
other Capitol Hill groups with "friendly" names, it actually lobbied
for things that might make pretty good sense to families, especially
poor ones. Namely national health insurance coverage that couldn’t be
taken away if the breadwinner got sick. Continue

TECH/PHARMA: McCall aquitted

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I must admit that I didn’t even know he was on trial, but it appears that he was and he just got away with it. Yup Charlie McCall who guilt up HBOC based on fraudulent accounting, and sold it to McKesson back in 1998 whereupon the fraudulent shit hit the fan, was acquitted on one charge and the jury was deadlocked on the others. Proving that you can get away with it even today (or perhaps that the Justice system works perfectly!).

POLICY/INTERNATIONAL: Damn communists with endowments, again

So the Commonwealth Fund is at it again. Notice how “Commonwealth” has the same root as “Communist”? I thought you did.

Why else would they come out with yet another study showing that compared to other parts of the world that spend a whole lot less money, the U.S. Lags in Several Areas of Health Care. But don’t worry. If you get cancer here and have insurance, you might outlive those damn foreigners…or at least that’s what David Gratzer thinks is the main result of those studies.

If you want to see the whole article in Health Affairs, this is the link. But it doesn’t tell you anything we didn’t already know.

PBMs/BLOGS: A blogger at a major PBM

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Libratto is a blog written by a senior exec from a PBM, Bob Neaser at Express Scripts. I haven’t exactly been polite about PBMs or more accurately about their customers’ willingness to explore their business models over the years. I’ll be interested in watching this blog and seeing what Bob thinks. He’s been posting a little the last two months and I want to encourage him to make the arguments. He started with a rants about why employees should demand less waste in their health care benefits and I (and probably Eric Novack) would agree. But of course one man’s waste…

Still I’m looking forward to more from Bob, especially with the CVS/Caremark deal apparently changing the PBM model.

You should also look at Adam Fein’s blog Drug Channels. He has lots of interesting things to say about PBMs, pharmacy chains et al—even if he’s a little less cynical than I am!

PODCAST/TECH: Healia, Vimo, Healthline–3 Health 2.0 Execs talk about their business

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So in a first for THCB I put together a 4 way skype call for a podcast. On the call are three Health care tech start-up leaders: Dean Stephens, President, Healthline; Tom Eng, Chairman, Healia; and Chini Krishnan, CEO, Vimo.  The podcast is here, and I think you’ll find it pretty interesting.

Unfortunately the recording quality isn’t great. And worse there’s an ugly period between 29.30 and 32.00 mins when the others couldn’t hear me even though the recorder could (although Skype’s IM function did work and saved the day). So please wind on when your MP3 player gets to that part. (Someone who knows might want to help me with my recording setup and editing skills!) For those of you who can’t deal with the thrill/drawbacks of the new technology, the transcript will be up in a few days.

assetto corsa mods