After much tinkering and grumbling, THCB’s crack tech staff has set up new RSS feeds filtered by content category. This means you can now get Health Care Blog posts on specific topics delivered to your trusty RSS reader without having to look at everything. There are now individual feeds for pharma and technology. More categories will be added soon.
Above the Fold
BLOGS: Grand Rounds coming here for an end of year special
I have finally been suckered into offered to host Grand Rounds, and will be doing so in the week between Christmas and New Year on Tuesday 27th December. And it’s likely that’s all I’ll be doing that week over here.
So to make it special I’m putting out a request for your best post of 2005–-the whole year. Please think about it and get it to me by the end of next week, that’s Friday 23rd.
TECH: EMR comments
If you haven’t seen it in the last few hours, you should see what Kelly Clark (who started all this) has added to the comments on the EMR piece, and see the subsequent discussion. Continually really excellent stuff from all concerned, and no mention of a certain insurance product.
TECH: Bloggers chasing own tails on EMR
Both the Health Care Law Blog and the Health Care IT Guy have follow ups on the long post here on EMRs and whether docs ever can love ‘em. I’ll say little more other than I feel a little like we’re in one of those Warner Bros cartoons where Tazzy is chasing his own tail….especially as this post now automatically appears over at Shahid Shah (The Health Care IT Guy)’s meta-HealthIT blog, the HITSphere….
But I’m not sure that I like Shahid’s take on my business model, and I’m not sure I like it either!
Isn’t the blogosphere and the Internet wonderful? It would take thousands of dollars and months to put together a focus group of professionals to get us this kind of input. Now, Matthew’s given it to us health IT guys for free. Thanks, Matthew
TECH: What? Were you expecting them to come out against it?
How about this for vacuous press release of the week:
But please, go read the press release and tell me what they’re actually doing other than putting out a press release saying that they think it’s a good idea. Still Neil Versel reports in that they have sponsored the pens at the IHI meeting, and it bought them a quote from renowned commie Don Berwick himself (even though Neal Patterson’s wife may not agree with his politics).
POLICY: Ignorance is not bliss
Young punk Kate Steadman has a very interesting post about the uninsured over at Health Policy
The current display of ignorance was on the subject of being uninsured. The woman I talked with didn’t really understand what it meant to be uninsured until her housekeeper had a health problem and couldn’t get seen by a doctor.
Look down in the comments for a combination of ignorance and desperation, and you’ll see why this will end up the political topic of the next two decades, as I said in my Spot-on piece last week.
And a big Hat-tip to Derek Lowe who’s doing Grand Rounds this week.
POLICY: Another balanced debate–what did you expect from the WSJ editorial pages?
So in this online "debate" about consumer health care called Consumer Choice: Can It Cure The Nation’s Health-Care Ills? the WSJ editorial page shows its lack of bias by having two HSA advocates, and one very tired liberal debunking them. And Reischauer obviously couldn’t type as fast as the other two.
And no one mentioned the 80/20 rule, nor the RAND experiment that showed that needed care was forgone as often as un-needed care. And despite the fact that the two HSA loonies claim that we do not apparently ration by price, we have a huge rate of bankruptcies caused by medical bills, and huge numbers of the poor are unable to afford reccomended care or have trouble paying for care compared to poor people in other countries. But why bother using actual data published in peer reviewed journals when you can wax poetic telling lies about South Africa while ignoring what’s going on in Singapore. But it’s a "debate" so why sweat the small stuff?
TECH: Just an excellent discussion from THCB readers
Yesterday’s post on physicians and the EMR from Dr. Kelly Clark caused one of the most excellent discussions ever seen on THCB. If you didn’t read it, or read it early I suggest you go back and look at the comments — and even join in.
TCHB: Jobs and requested people
I’m getting an increasing number of people calling me looking for senior and not so senior health care consulting, strategy and marketing types. Not that I’ve figured out how to get in the middle of this or make any money out of it yet, but if you are looking and want to send me a little synopsis, go ahead. (I will of course treat any emails with the fullest confidentiality). Extra points for senior consultants who want to head to the East Coast, and health plan marketing types interested in the south and Texas.
Let me know….
QUALITY: We spend how much on the NIH and how much on AHQR?
Spending less money on better drugs and more on getting existing therapies to patients would save more lives. That’s the conclusion of a study published by a Virginia Commonwealth University family medicine and public health physician."For every dollar Congress gives the National Institutes of Health to develop blockbuster treatments, it spends only one penny to ensure that Americans actually receive them," said Steven Woolf, professor and director of research in VCU’s Department of Family Medicine and a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine. "This reflects, in part, a misperception that the improved drugs, procedures and the like will improve health outcomes, and that does not happen," he said.To illustrate, Woolf used a theoretical disease that claims 100,000 lives a year. If a drug is available that reduces the mortality rate from that disease by 20 percent, it has the potential to save 20,000 lives each year, he said. But if only 60 percent of eligible patients receive the drug, only 12,000 deaths will be averted. So closing the gap in care by making it available to 100 percent of eligible patients would save 8,000 additional lives, Woolf said.But to save the same number of lives by making a better drug and without closing the gap in care, i.e., delivering the better drug to only 60 percent of eligible patients, the drug’s lowering of mortality would have to be increased from 20 percent to 33 percent, he noted. Calling this the "break-even point," Woolf said that is an unrealistic goal for many treatments. In fact, the study showed that the billions invested in statins and anti-clotting drugs failed to reach the break-even point.
And we know that this is not just theoretical.
