The Health Care Blog – Page 313 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

Above the Fold

Nature vs Nurture

Apr 29, 2017• 4

By SAURABH JHA MD

My wife chooses sides in the nature-versus-nurture war expeditiously. When our children are polite, she credits her nurture. When they’re rowdy, she blames my genes. But the nature-nurture war won’t be resolved anytime soon.

The gene played a significant role in the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata. Karna, abandoned by his mother, Kunti, and raised by a charioteer, was taught warfare by Parashurama, a gifted teacher with a fiery temperament, who despised warriors and only taught Brahmins.

One day, Parashurama was asleep with his head on Karna’s lap. Karna was bitten by a scorpion but did not move, because he did not want to disturb his guru’s nap. Parashurama, who believed that Karna was a Brahmin, seeing Karna’s blood on the ground realized that he had withstood pain which only a warrior could abide. Parashurama cursed Karna that he would forget his knowledge of warfare when he most needed it. Karna later fought for the Kauravas in the Battle of Kurukshetra. Parashurama’s malediction helped Arjuna beat Karna, which sealed the victory for the Pandavas. Neither Karna nor Parashurama knew about the double helix. The gene is an abstraction which has stood the test of time.

Would Repealing the ACA Violate International Law?

Apr 28, 2017• 2

By DAVID INTROCASO and JASON CHUNG

Barely one month after a stinging and stunning legislative defeat, President Donald Trump has committed to revising the AHCA and potentially resubmitting it for Congressional approval.

In addition to Democrats and widespread popular opinion against ACA repeal, the AHCA may face another obstacle – international law.

This week the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank reported that the United Nations Office of the High Commission on Human Rights forwarded a four-page letter to the Acting Secretary of State, Thomas A. Shannon, to express the Commission’s “serious concern” that the US was in danger of violating its obligations under international law if the U.S. ratified legislation repealing the ACA.

The letter authored by Dainius Puras, a Lithuanian with the somewhat remarkable title of UN Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, argues that repealing core elements of the ACA would negatively impact almost 30 million Americans’ right to the “highest attainable standards of physical and mental health”, particularly those in moderate and low income brackets and those suffering from poverty or social exclusion.

Can Interactive Group Therapy Boost Productivity in Medicine?

Apr 27, 2017

By DEVON HERRICK

Imagine attending private lectures and taking all your college exams in your professors’ offices individually, one-on-one. Your instructors lecture you, then pepper you with questions, grading your answers and recording your scores. This is not unlike traditional physician visits. Contrast this to attending classroom lectures and taking online multiple choice exams where a computer algorithm or Scantron tallies your answers and calculates your grade. Classroom instruction with standardized testing is much more efficient that private tutoring. Hundreds of students can learn and take their online exams simultaneously. What if medical productivity could be similarly improved?

Inefficient Physician Communication. When you visit your doctor you are engaging in what’s known as synchronous communication. You queue up in a waiting room and later both you and your doctor meet one-on-one in an exam room (at the same time). You may spend five minutes talking to a nurse and then 10 minutes talking to a doctor. A survey found with waiting and travel time, the whole process takes patients about three hours, on average. Furthermore, many doctors see only about 20 to 25 patients a day. The amount of information conveyed during an office visit is limited — as is the amount of information patients retain. Doctors also must take notes and update medical records during the exam. Fiddling with electronic health records further reduces the amount of useful information exchanged during a 10-minute encounter while your doctor hunts for pull-down menus. The way medicine is practiced is inherently labor intensive, not to mention inconvenient for patients.

Synchronous telemedicine is where you call your doctor or he/she calls back and you talk one-on-one. That may be a little more convenient for patients, but it’s still labor intensive. Asynchronous telemedicine is like email (or snail mail for that matter). You email your doctor or call your doctor and leave a message. Your doctor replies via email or by leaving voicemail. Asynchronous communication doesn’t require both parties to be present at the same time to communicate, but the information flow back and forth can be slow and inhibited compared to talking.

GuideWell Wants Your Opinion: Deadline Tomorrow!

Apr 27, 2017• 2

By CHELSEA POLANIECKI

It goes without saying that a cancer diagnosis is daunting, terrifying and can be completely life-altering. With approximately 40 percent of men and women being diagnosed at some pointduring their lifetimes. cancer changes a survivor’s life from one-minute daily activities to grand life decisions. GuideWell Innovation is committed to

bringing great minds together to facilitate and transform new ideas into solutions, helping to jumpstart the path to better health. With the launch of the GuideWell Cancer Challenge this past February, GuideWell is harnessing the strength of collaboration to help support cancer patients and survivors with concierge services to support the wide range of needs of living with cancer.

The challenge deadline is nearly here, but it’s not too late to make your mark. We want to hear from you! Simply register or log in to the challenge website to submit an idea for a service, share insights about living with cancer, or view ideas submitted by others. You can then VOTE or COMMENT on any submitted idea. And get this—you don’t even have to submit an idea to be eligible for a prize! Just by providing your thoughts and insight on a submission you can enter the competition for cash prizes ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.
Continue reading…

The Return of the Angry Granny State

Apr 26, 2017• 19

By CHARLES SILVER

Texas should call itself The Granny State. That’s because it’s a nanny state in which the public officials who run the place have the values of a tea-totaling, Bible-thumping biddy who knows how God wants everyone to live and can’t resist telling them. No buying liquor on Sundays when people are supposed to be at church. No gambling ever. No whacky-weed for medicinal uses or recreation, even in the privacy of one’s home. No gay marriage, preferably no gays, and no transgender folk deciding which restrooms to use. And, of course, no sex, sex education, birth control, or abortions. Women should have sex only in marriage and then only to reproduce, and those who get pregnant must carry their babies to term, regardless of the consequences for themselves or anyone else.

These religion-inspired policies have served Texans poorly. The state’s maternal mortality rate nearly doubled in just two years after Texas cut its budget for family planning by two-thirds and eliminated funding for Planned Parenthood clinics. It’s now the worst in the developed world, not just in the US. Texas ranks 8^th from the bottom in the frequency of STDs and has the 5^th highest teen pregnancy rate too. Its 35 births per 1,000 girls aged 15-19 are nearly double the national average. Meanwhile, Colorado and other states have achieved miraculous reductions in teen pregnancy rates and abortion rates by providing young women with long-acting contraceptives, like implants and IUDs. If Texas is following God’s plan, then God’s plan is a bust.

Now Granny is once again sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. Currently before the Texas legislature is Senate Bill 25, which would eliminate the wrongful birth cause of action that the Texas Supreme Court recognized four decades ago in Jacobs v. Theimer. The facts were as follows. While traveling, Dortha Jacobs became ill. Upon returning home, she consulted a physician, Dr. Louis Theimer, who discovered that she was newly pregnant. Fearing that the illness was rubella—also known as the German measles—Jacobs asked Dr. Theimer if there was reason for concern. Rubella can injure a gestating fetus severely. Dr. Theimer told her not to worry, but he did so without performing an available diagnostic test. In fact, the disease was rubella and the child “was born with defects of brain, speech, sight, hearing, kidneys, and urinary tract,” among others. The medical expenses were extraordinary.

The Fairy Tale of a Non-Profit Hospital

Apr 25, 2017• 22

By NIRAN AL-AGBA, MD

Nonprofit hospitals have higher profit margins than most for-profit hospitals after accounting for their tax obligations. 3900 (62%) of U.S. Hospitals are non-profit and therefore tax-exempt: they pay no property tax, no federal or state income tax, and no sales tax. An article published in Health Affairs found seven of the nation’s 10 most profitable hospitals were of the non-profit variety, each earning more than $163 million from patient care services. Revoking their property tax-exempt status for not functioning as a charitable entity could return billions in healthcare dollars to local government, communities, and citizens, struggling to afford quality health care.

The idea of exempting nonprofits from paying taxes in the first place is based on the belief these entities provide charity for the underserved and underinsured who would otherwise require the government to lend a helping hand. As the percentage of uninsured declines as a result of the ACA, the justification for tax exempt status is being called into question.

BTG buys Oncoverse–Amanda Goltz explains all

Apr 24, 2017

Amanda Goltz is a massive ball of energy in the world of digital health. For the past 2 years she’s been working for English pharma company BTG. But how does a pharma company get involved in health tech without wasting everyone’s time, and what exactly are they trying to do? Amanda certainly has both opinions and a plan. Today part of that plan became official with the purchase of Oncoverse, a cancer management program BTG has been working on with Wanda and Dignity Health. I spoke to her Monday morning my time to find out more (and yes, if you wait to the end, there is both a job “offer” and I have my own BBC Live home office moment!)

The Sad Myth of the Direct to Consumer Startup

Apr 24, 2017

By LISA SUENNEN

Last week I had a startup entrepreneur come to me with an idea about how to “pivot” his company strategy. The company, which had begun as a medical device company but couldn’t quite find it’s market, was considering re-emerging as a consumer-focused digital medical device company in an adjacent market. The idea was to create a device to measure a serious medical condition and market it to consumers directly. Their plan was to target mothers who would be paranoid enough to spend money on medical devices to diagnose an issue in their children.

Imagine my heavy sigh.

Ever the heart-breaker, I had to tell this person that this strategy did not make any sense to me. As his target market representative du jour, I mentioned that there is no world in which I would trust myself to diagnose a major medical problem. Rather, if I even suspected a hangnail I would rush my precious princess straight to the doctor, do not pass Go, do not pay iTunes fees.

Finding Care Can Be Easy; Check Out The RWJF Choosing Care Challenge Finalists

Apr 24, 2017

By CHELSEA POLANIECKI PARTNER CONTENT

How would you get to an unfamiliar destination without Google Maps, Waze, a GPS or even an old school map? Now how about your health care– how do you determine which road to take when you need local, reliable and affordable services? It can be tough to find the right care, but the RWJF Choosing Care Challenge is changing the game. In Phase I of the challenge, over 60 teams submitted seamless solutions to help patients find the care and services that fit their needs. Each team’s solution simplifies the journey to address the crucial need for personalized and accessible health care.

The challenge judges were particularly impressed with the solutions of: Stroll Health, Project Helix, A Moment Team, Luma Health and Transcendent Endeavors. Named the Phase I Finalists, each of these teams will receive $5,000 to further their tech development for Phase II of the challenge. These solutions include:

Stroll Health (@StrollHealth) helps health providers send patients directly to a local imaging center that fits their needs. Stroll delivers a convenient easy-to-use platform providing automatic referrals, prior authorization and real-time scheduling.

If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Blog Post

Apr 23, 2017

By ROBERT MCNUTT

I don’t know why, but even as a young person I never could make sense of the saying, “seeing is believing”. Seeing, vision, is nothing more than a data collection instrument, not an arbiter of insight. I saw my wife frown at me the other day, for example, after I claimed to have washed the dishes so thoroughly that no spot of grease could be left behind. I have made this claim before and been incorrect, so the frown, the data, triggered an anticipation of being rebuffed. However, nothing of that sort followed. I asked, Why the frown?” She responded, “I just cut my finger”. The frown was obvious, the cause unclear. I believed I was about to be reprimanded and missed the chance to notice her accident. This story suggests that a truer aphorism might be, instead, then, that “believing is seeing”.