The Health Care Blog – Page 202 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

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Healthcare’s ‘Copernican Moment’, Value-Based Health & The Future| Lucien Engelen, Transform.Health

Sep 28, 2019

By JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Is a de-centralized, democratized tech-enabled health system closer than we think? Lucien Engelen, CEO of Transform.Health and Fellow for Deloitte Center for the Edge, talks about the Copernican moment in healthcare: when the industry realizes the world revolves around the patient and NOT the health system. How are the Big Tech companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google (who are sooo good at giving us what we want, when we want it, from the palm of our hand) helping to shift this reorientation of universal order and better empower health consumers? Listen in to find out….

Filmed in the HISA Studio at HIC 2019 in Melbourne, Australia, August 2019.

Jessica DaMassa is the host of the WTF Health show & stars in Health in 2 Point 00 with Matthew Holt. Get a glimpse of the future of healthcare by meeting the people who are going to change it. Find more WTF Health interviews here or check out www.wtf.health.

A Change Management Guru’s Guide to Working with Clinicians | Dr. Margaret Kennedy, Gevity Inc.

Sep 27, 2019

By JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

One of the biggest challenges clinicians face in delivering good care is keeping up with today’s up-and-coming revolutionary health technology. Dr. Margaret Kennedy, Chief Nursing Informatics Officer at Gevity Consulting, is often charged with helping health systems change clinicians’ perspectives when it comes to digital health and tech. So, what has she learned? Among other things, it turns out that some clinicians are more inclined to accept technological change than others. Are there certain traits these ‘early adopters’ have in common? Or does it have to do with the way the healthcare organization sells the tech’s value prop? Hint, hint: You can never go wrong when you can appeal to a clinician’s desire to provide better care.

Filmed in the HISA Studio at HIC 2019 in Melbourne, Australia, August 2019.

AI competitions don’t produce useful models

Sep 27, 2019

By LUKE OAKDEN-RAYNER

A huge new CT brain dataset was released the other day, with the goal of training models to detect intracranial haemorrhage. So far, it looks pretty good, although I haven’t dug into it in detail yet (and the devil is often in the detail).

The dataset has been released for a competition, which obviously lead to the usual friendly rivalry on Twitter:

Of course, this lead to cynicism from the usual suspects as well.

And the conversation continued from there, with thoughts ranging from “but since there is a hold out test set, how can you overfit?” to “the proposed solutions are never intended to be applied directly” (the latter from a previous competition winner).

As the discussion progressed, I realised that while we “all know” that competition results are more than a bit dubious in a clinical sense, I’ve never really seen a compelling explanation for why this is so.

Hopefully that is what this post is, an explanation for why competitions are not really about building useful AI systems.

Ordering Tests Without Using Words: Are ICD-10 and CPT Codes Bringing Precision or Dumbing Us Down?

Sep 26, 2019• 2

By HANS DUVEFELT, MD

The chest CT report was a bit worrisome. Henry had “pleural based masses” that had grown since his previous scan, which had been ordered by another doctor for unrelated reasons. But as Henry’s PCP, it had become my job to follow up on an emergency room doctor’s incidental finding. The radiologist recommended a PET scan to see if there was increased metabolic activity, which would mean the spots were likely cancerous.

So the head of radiology says this is needed. But I am the treating physician, so I have to put the order in. In my clunky EMR I search for an appropriate diagnostic code in situations like this. This software (Greenway) is not like Google; if you don’t search for exactly what the bureaucratic term is, but use clinical terms instead, it doesn’t suggest alternatives (unrelated everyday example – what a doctor calls a laceration is “open wound” in insurance speak but the computer doesn’t know they’re the same thing).

So here I am, trying to find the appropriate ICD-10 code to buy Henry a PET scan. Why can’t I find the diagnosis code I used to get the recent CT order in when I placed it, months ago? I cruise down the list of diagnoses in his EMR “chart”. There, I find every diagnosis that was ever entered. They are not listed alphabetically or chronologically. The list appears totally random, although perhaps the list is organized alphanumerically by ICD-10, although they are not not displayed in my search box, but that wouldn’t do me any good anyway since I don’t have more than five ICD-10 codes memorized.

The Most Expensive Data in the US & Why we’re NOT Using It | Atul Butte, UC Health

Sep 26, 2019

By JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

When you ask the ‘big data guy’ at a massive health system what’s wrong with EMRs, it’s surprising to hear that his problem is NOT with the EMRs themselves but with the fact that health systems are just not using the data they’re collecting in any meaningful way. Atul Butte, Chief Data Scientist for University of California Health System says interoperability is not the big issue! Instead, he says it’s the fact that health systems are not using some of the most expensive data in the country (we are using doctors to data entry it…) to draw big, game-changing conclusions about the way we practice medicine and deliver care. Listen in to find out why Atul thinks that the business incentives are misaligned for a data revolution and what we need to do to help.

Filmed at Health Datapalooza in Washington DC, March 2019.

Jessica DaMassa is the host of the WTF Health show & stars in Health in 2 Point 00 with Matthew Holt.

Get a glimpse of the future of healthcare by meeting the people who are going to change it. Find more WTF Health interviews here or check out www.wtf.health.

Indigenous Medicine– From Illegal to Integral

Sep 25, 2019• 4

By PHUOC LE, MD and BROOKE WARREN

In the 2020 Summer Olympics, we will undoubtedly see large, red circles down the arms and backs of many Olympians. These spots are a side-effect of cupping, a treatment originating from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to reduce pain. TCM is a globally used Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), but it still battles its critics who think it is only a belief system, rather than a legitimate medical practice. Even so, the usage of TCM continues to grow. This led the National Institute of Health (NIH) to sponsor a meeting in 1997 to determine the efficacy of acupuncture, paving the way in CAM research. Today, there are now over 50 schools dedicated to teaching Chinese acupuncture in the US under the Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine.

Image of Michael Phelps swimming in 2016 Rio Olympics after using TCM cupping. (Al Bello/Getty Images)

While TCM has seen immense growth and integration around the globe throughout the last twenty years, other forms of CAM continue to struggle for acceptance in the U.S. In this article we will focus on Native American/Indigenous traditional medical practices. Indigenous and non-Indigenous patients should not have to choose between traditional and allopathic medicine, but rather have them working harmoniously from prevention to diagnosis to treatment plan.

It was not until August of 1978 that federally recognized tribal members were officially able to openly practice their Indigenous traditional medicine (the knowledge and practices of Indigenous people that prevent or eliminate physical, mental and social diseases) when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) was passed. Prior to 1978, the federal government’s Department of Interior could convict a medicine man to a minimum of 10 days in prison if he encouraged others to follow traditional practices.

It is difficult to comprehend that tribes throughout the U.S. were only given the ability to openly exercise their medicinal practices 41 years ago when the “healing traditions of indigenous Native Americans have been practiced on this continent for 12,000 years ago and possibly for more than 40,000 years.”[1]

Since the passage of AIRFA, many tribally run clinics and hospitals are finding ways to incorporate Indigenous traditional healing into their treatment plans, when requested by patients.

Announcing Winners for the RWJF Innovation Challenges

Sep 25, 2019• 1

The Opportunity in Disruption, Part 3: The Shape of Things to Come

Sep 24, 2019

By JOE FLOWER

Picture, if you will, a healthcare sector that costs less, whose share of the national economy is more like it is in other advanced economies—let’s imagine 9% or 10% rather than 18% or 19%.

A big part of this drop is a vast reduction in overtreatment because non-fee-for-service payment systems are far less likely to pay for things that don’t help the patient. Another part of this drop is the greater efficiency of every procedure and process as providers get better at knowing their true costs and cutting out waste. The third major factor is that new payment systems and business models actually drive toward true value for the buyers and healthcare consumers. This includes giving a return on the investment for prevention, population health management, and building healthier communities. This incentive would reduce the large percentage of healthcare costs due to preventable and manageable diseases, trauma, and addictions.

Picture, if you will, a healthcare sector in which prices are real, known, and reliable. Price outliers that today may be two, three, five times the industry median have rapidly disappeared. Prices for comparable procedures have normalized in a narrower range well below today’s median prices. Most prices are bundled, a single price for an entire procedure or process, in ways that can be compared across the entire industry. Prices are guaranteed. There are no circumstances under which a healthcare provider can decide after the fact how much to charge, or a health insurer can decide after the fact that the procedure was not covered, or that the unconscious heart attack victim should have been taken to a different emergency department farther away.

Picture a well-informed, savvy healthcare consumer, with active support and incentives from their employers and payors, who is far more willing and eager to find out what their choices are and exercise that choice. They want the same level of service, quality, and financial choices they get from almost every other industry. And as their financial burden increases, so do their demands.

Picture a reversing of consolidation, ending a providers’ ability to demand full-network contracting with opaque price agreements—and encouraging new market entrants capable of facilitating a yeasty market for competition. Picture growing disintermediation and decentralization of healthcare, with buyers increasingly able to act like real customers, picking and choosing particular services based on price and quality.

Picture an industry whose processes are as revolutionized by new technologies as the news industry has been, or gaming, or energy. Picture a healthcare industry in which you simply cannot compete using yesterday’s technologies—not just clinical technologies but data, communications, and transaction technologies.

WTF are Digital Therapeutics? | Digital Therapeutics Alliance Executive Director, Megan Coder

Sep 24, 2019

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Digital therapeutics has exploded as the new hot buzzword in digital health. But how are digital therapeutics different from digital health applications, applied health signals, or m-health technologies? The Digital Therapeutics Alliance was formed to answer that exact question. DTA Executive Director Megan Coder sets the record straight, hint: it involves software algorithms.

Filmed at JP Morgan Healthcare in San Francisco, CA, January 2019.

Jessica DaMassa is the host of the WTF Health show & stars in Health in 2 Point 00 with Matthew Holt.

Get a glimpse of the future of healthcare by meeting the people who are going to change it. Find more WTF Health interviews here or check out www.wtf.health.

How Are Hospitals Supposed to Reduce Readmissions? | Part I

Sep 24, 2019• 4

By KIP SULLIVAN

The notion that hospital readmission rates are a “quality” measure reached the status of conventional wisdom by the late 2000s. In their 2007 and 2008 reports to Congress, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) recommended that Congress authorize a program that would punish hospitals for “excess readmissions” of Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) enrollees. In 2010, Congress accepted MedPAC’s recommendation and, in Section 3025 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) (p. 328), ordered the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to start the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP). Section 3025 instructed CMS to target heart failure (HF) and other diseases MedPAC listed in their 2007 report. [1] State Medicaid programs and the insurance industry followed suit.

Today, twelve years after MedPAC recommended the HRRP and seven years after CMS implemented it, it is still not clear how hospitals are supposed to reduce the readmissions targeted by the HRRP, which are all unplanned readmissions that follow discharges within 30 days of patients diagnosed with HF and five other conditions. It is not even clear that hospitals have reduced return visits to hospitals within 30 days of discharge. The ten highly respected organizations that participated in CMS’s first “accountable care organization” (ACO) demonstration, the Physician Group Practice (PGP) Demonstration (which ran from 2005 to 2010), were unable to reduce readmissions (see Table 9.3 p. 147 of the final evaluation) The research consistently shows, however, that at some point in the 2000s many hospitals began to cut 30-day readmissions of Medicare FFS patients. But research also suggests that this decline in readmissions was achieved in part by diverting patients to emergency rooms and observation units, and that the rising rate of ER visits and observation stays may be putting sicker patients at risk [2] Responses like this to incentives imposed by regulators, employers, etc. are often called “unintended consequences” and “gaming.”

To determine whether hospitals are gaming the HRRP, it would help to know, first of all, whether it’s possible for hospitals to reduce readmissions, as the HRRP defines them, without gaming. If there are few or no proven methods of reducing readmissions by improving quality of care (as opposed to gaming), it is reasonable to assume the HRRP has induced gaming. If, on the other hand, (a) proven interventions exist that reduce readmissions as the HRRP defines them, and (b) those interventions cost less than, or no more than, the savings hospitals would reap from the intervention (in the form of avoided penalties or shared savings), then we should expect much less gaming. (As long as risk-adjustment of readmission rates remains crude, we cannot expect gaming to disappear completely even if both conditions are met.)