The Health Care Blog – Page 316 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

Above the Fold

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”.

Why Science is Mistrusted

Apr 22, 2017• 9

By SAURABH JHA, MD

Recently, the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, in their press release, reported about the effect of surgical checklists in South Carolina. The release was titled, “South Carolina hospitals see major drop in post-surgical deaths with nation’s first proven statewide Surgical Safety Checklist Program.”

The Health News Review, for which I review, grades coverage of research in the media. Based on their objective criteria, the Harvard press release would not score highly.

The title exudes certainty – “nation’s first proven.” The study, not being a randomized controlled trial (RCT), though suggests that checklists are effective, far from proves it. At least one study failed to show that surgical checklists improve outcomes.

The press release’s opening line is “South Carolina saw a 22 percent reduction in deaths.” It reports relative risk reduction (RRR). Reporting RRR is now considered a cardinal sin in healthcare journalism, because RRR inflates therapeutic optimism by making the intervention sound more efficacious than it is.

Reform & Improve

Apr 20, 2017• 2

By JON KINGSDALE

With the failure of the Republican’s American Health Care Act (AHCA), what’s next? Congressional Republicans face the ugly choice of admitting defeat and funding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including the cost-sharing reductions (CSRs) that they have tied up in federal court, de-funding the ACA and likely being blamed for its demise, or compromising with Democrats to improve it. In all likelihood, the next set of moves will focus on avoiding/shifting blame for the imminent crisis of health plan withdrawals that failure to fund CSRs would precipitate.

But the long-term problems with the ACA should be addressed: How to sustain health plan competition? How to simplify a nearly incomprehensible medical financing scheme? How to cover more of the uninsured? How to win enough moderate Republican support to de-escalate partisan wars over the ACA? Sooner or later, Congress needs to consider serious compromise proposals for improving the ACA.

So, what might they consider?

Were a bargain on improving the ACA to be struck, Democrats would insist that it ensure full federal funding and maintain goals related to covering most Americans. Taxes will be the “sticking point” for many Republicans, but not all: Senators Cassidy & Collins’ Patient Freedom Act (PFA) retains 95% of current funding.) On the other hand, the price of support from moderate Republicans probably includes making substantial changes that borrow heavily from the best ideas in the AHCA and the PFA. The approach proposed below does both.

I propose three goals for a bipartisan effort to “reform and improve” the ACA:

A Modest Health Care Economics Experiment to Fight Rising Costs

Apr 20, 2017• 34

By HAYWARD ZWERLING, MD

Healthcare providers, medical institutions, local pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies generally set the price of their products/services well above the payment they expect to receive from all insurers. These healthcare vendors set their fee schedule at 150%, 200% or 1,000% of the maximum payment they expect to receive from their most generous payor.

Here in Massachusetts, when a healthcare product or service is consumed and the patient has health insurance, the vendor submits a bill to the insurance company who specifies the “allowed fee,” which is considerably less than the “billed fee,” and the vendor “writes off” the balance of the “billed fee” from their books.

For example, I recently had some blood tests done at Quest Diagnostics. Quest Diagnostics sent a bill to my insurance company for $660. The “allowed payment” was $110, so Quest wrote-off $550 and the “allowed payment” of $110 was divided between me and my insurance company.