Over at HealthNex, Jack Mason is organizing the first Blogposium. Participants will be working together to fill out the clinical wiki ClinfoWiki. Go check it out and comment over the next day or two about what you see
Above the Fold
PHARMA/POLICY: Libby on the war on Pain Doctors
Ron Libby, a political scientist at University of North Florida, is one of the few academics looking at the war on drugs. He has amassed an array of evidence showing that the incredible and pernicious behavior of the DEA has led to an epidemic of untreated pain. His piece is available here—Treating Doctors as Drug Dealers: The Drug Enforcement Administration’s War on Prescription Painkillers.
Meanwhile lunatic politicians continue to spout crap on the subject. The real number of people in Florida dying from Oxycontin overdoses may, just may, have been as high as 71. Not the 500 that a series of totally discredited articles in the Orlando Sentinel published. But just yesterday this rubbish ran in the Fort Myers News Press.
Sgt. Lisa McElheney, who heads Broward County’s
drug diversion unit, said even when law enforcement are tipped off
about a doctor over-prescribing drugs like Oxycontin, they often don’t
have the manpower to follow all their leads. “Most of these drugs are going through legal channels,” she said. Six
people a day die in Florida from prescription drug abuse, according to
the Florida Office of Drug Control. House and Senate versions of the
bill are still in committees.
Tell me that the average reader looking at that wouldn’t think that 6 people a day or 2,000 a year are dying from Oxycontin in Florida. 2,000 a year may be dying from prescription drugs in Florida, but not from Oxycontin–more likely from drug-drug interactions and medical errors related to them (assuming that the IOM’s 100,000 patient deaths number is correct).
This is more shameful hysteria with real and bitter consequences.
THCB: Light today
I just got in late due to a big storm in the Sierra (but I got some powder in!) and have the joy of a 7 am plane tomorrow. As mentioned I’ll be blogging from the World Health Care Congress in DC on Tuesday and Wednesday.
And then there’s that small matter of finding a checkbook to send in my guestimate taxes…
So don’t expect too much here today…
Happy Easter
See you next week when I’ll be the official bloggist at the WHCC Conference
Meanwhile, congrats to John who actually runs this blog, and became a Daddy to Lilly on Tuesday!
BLOGS: And on the subject of blog collaboration
Steve Beller, over on his Curing Healthcare blog, has a proposal for linking blogs with a Wiki. He wants to convert all the great stuff being generated in blogs and other sources all over the web into an encyclopedia of content about the system. Go take a look a his proposal for A Healthcare Wikipedia Linking with Community of Healthcare Blogs.
BLOGS: Report on health care blogs
Fard Johnmar has written a report on health care blogs. It’s available from his site for around $37, rather less than the $3,000 analysis Datamonitor was offering on the same topic a few weeks back. Despite the fact that my ego is still recovering from the act that in over 100 pages he only mentions THCB twice, I thought I’d let him tell you about it! Here’s Fard:
"One of the reasons that I wrote this report was to acknowledge the hard work of the bloggers who take the time everyday to collect, analyze and debate the politics, practice and social aspects of healthcare. It’s not easy, and everyone in the healthcare blogosphere deserves tremendous respect. Another reason I developed this report was to provide those of you out there looking for ways to explain the value of blogs to your colleagues, employers and others with cogent and well-referenced arguments for why blogs are a useful and powerful communications medium. However, I believe that blogs are not right for every organization, so I provide reasons not to start one. So, pick up a report, if you feel you will gain from it. Whatever you decide, lets continue having this conversation about how blogs can benefit healthcare."
POLICY/PHYSICIANS: Mother of all comment threads
If you haven’t been reading, there are now some 46 long detailed and excellent comments in the article called Can the real HSA fan, please stand, please stand up?.
Speaking as someone who’s been through the academic mill, this comment thread provides about a semester and more’s worth of education on the entire topic of health management and health policy. Note Steve Beller’s excellent summary of the conversation so far at around comment #30!
Fantastic work—my hat is off to all the commenters
Spot-On: Matthew Holt: A Tale of Two Underwriters
My latest—and hopefully last—explanation of my weird trip through the individual insurance market is up over at Spot-on. I’m channeling a certain boring English 19th century author in a A Tale of Two Underwriters.
As ever please come back here to comment if you like.
POLICY/PHARMA/POLITICS: Losing it with the WaPo
It’s interesting tracking intellectual BS. The latest one is all the surveys selecting only people who have signed up with Part D and then reporting their experience, without mentioning that they’re likely to be happy because it’s a self selected group! And of course not surveying those who didn’t sign up about their experience. Over at TPMCafe I explain why the Washington Post continues to look like a bunch of idiots for using the Administration’s data, and—worse—for commissioning a survey continuing the lie!
POLICY/PHYSICIANS: Full disclosure, well not really
There’s been a lot of debate about transparency on THCB. I believe in as full disclosure as possible about all kinds of medical data, including pay rates, utilization rates, quality indicators, etc, etc. But I also count myself among the enlightened few who realize that the individual piece-rate service level is not the place at which consumers are best qualified to make comparison judgments about the value of their care. I liken it to the computer purchaser at a corporation—sure you want to know the individual prices of the computers you buy, but what’s really important is the total cost of ownership divided by the benefit you get from them. Or take a motoring analogy, as Glen Tullman CEO of Allscripts does over at HHN on a different topic—you want to know the total cost per year for purchase, insurance, gas, repair, etc, etc for your car. You don’t care in great detail how much your mechanic charges you for an individual spark plug so that you can go to Pep boys and buy one cheaper. Instead you want to know the rough overall cost between a Yugo versus a Camry versus a Jaguar, and then within each class. That’s what the managed competition model is trying to get to.
Of course transparency does help. Joe Paduda is right when he finds the Administration’s position on not releasing Medicare physician data is too, say the least, a little odd. Unlike most of their information releases these days, this one is apparently legal and makes sense for the nation. Although I understand why the Business Roundtable is for it and equally why the AMA is no doubt against it.
