The Health Care Blog – Page 436 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

Above the Fold

Killing Cancer

Mar 5, 2015• 3

By JOHN IRVINE

As you might expect from a blog, we’re big fans of HBO’s VICE, the cable giant’s slickly-produced answer to staid network news magazine shows like Sixty Minutes. Over it’s first two seasons, the show has established a small cult following with fast-paced, drop-you-down-in-the-center-of-the-action investigations of stories that are usually owned by the major television news organizations.

The recipe works and works surprisingly well as entertainment. It’s also pretty damn good journalism, much to the dismay of traditionalists.

VICE generally avoids slower-moving health care stories in favor of edgy, faster-paced, occasionally subversive pieces that send correspondents to far flung locations around the globe and put their lives in jeopardy as they go places the other guys generally won’t go.

The show’s first two seasons have seen correspondents sent to Afghanistan to report on teen suicide bombers, to Bangladesh to report on the illegal organ trade and to North Korea to a report on a basketball game attended by Dennis Rodman and North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un.

Killing Cancer, Season Three’s season opening special report, an optimistic hour long episode that airs before the season premiere, is an encouraging exception to the no-healthcare rule that demonstrates that the show may be capable of much more than critics give it credit for.

Is There a Business Case For Patient Engagement?

Mar 4, 2015• 9

By DAVID CHASE

In the past, the AMA published an article questioning the merits of patient portals — the primary tool for engaging patients. Rob Tennant, senior policy adviser with the MGMA-ACMPE, the entity formed by the merger of the Medical Group Management Association and the American College of Medical Practice Executives raised the fundamental issue: “The business case just hasn’t been made.” I’ll attempt to make it.

Perhaps the best evidence of the business case is when industry visionaries/organizations/leaders such as HIMSS (the professional association for healthIT), Aetna and Kaiser Permanente have made significant investments in patient engagement.

I’ve excerpted a couple sections of Pam Dolan’s article on the topic to set context and then I will address the business case. The patient portal benefits assume that it’s more than a simplistic silo’ed patient portal tethered to an EHR since they are broadly available. [Disclosure: My company, Avado, is one many patient engagement companies.]

This is why I would call it the patient portal & relationship management system or simply patient relationship management system to distinguish it from traditional limited patient portals.

Dad Has the Flu and There’s a Baby at Home

Mar 4, 2015• 13

By PHILIP LEDERER, MD

At 6:30 AM, I kissed my 14-week-old son Joe on the forehead and headed off to work at the hospital. By 3 PM I was back in bed with a hacking cough and a fever. I had influenza.

As a doctor training in infectious diseases, I knew that the flu can be dangerous in vulnerable populations like little babies. I had visions of Joe being admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit, as I swallowed a pill of oseltamivir (brand name “Tamiflu”) and shivered under the covers.

Should I also give my little boy Tamiflu to prevent him from getting sick? The answer should be clear to an infectious disease physician-in-training, right?

I felt competing instincts. Paternal: to “do something” to prevent Joe from getting the flu. Medical: “do nothing,” as the rampant overuse of antibiotics in children has had negative consequences and the same might be true for antivirals.

As I researched the question further, I learned that the decision to give prophylactic Tamiflu is anything but simple.

Close contacts of people with the flu (including babies) can receive Tamiflu if they are at high risk for influenza complications. One Greek study of 13 newborns found that the drug was safe but did not address its effectiveness. Moreover, the number of babies who would need to receive Tamiflu to prevent one serious case of influenza is unknown.

What Can Meaningful Use Learn From Healthcare.gov?

Mar 2, 2015• 18

By FRED TROTTER

The US has spent several billion dollars on medical records, as part of the HITECH program. The goal of that spend was simple: portable medical records for patients. On our current path, we will have medical records, but without that magic word: “portable.” Ironically, the reason for this is identical to the root-cause of the problems with healthcare.gov

The root-cause of the initial failure of healthcare.gov was a lack of accountability and empowerment. There was no one person who was in charge of the operation, and those who were presumed to be in charge did not have the skill-set or political clout needed to make decisions about the project.

The result was the healthcare.gov train wreck. Thankfully, healthcare.gov was turned around.

That turn-around was the result of decisively fixing these exact issues.

Accountability restored, disaster averted.

You would think that the Obama administration and HHS would have learned the “accountability with empowerment” lesson well, if not for IT projects generally, then at least for projects involving Health IT.

Yet we are repeating this mistake with Meaningful Use. For those who are living in a cave with regards to healthcare reform, Meaningful Use is a set of standards designed to ensure that the money that the federal government spends on Electronic Healthcare Records (EHRs) for doctors results in clinically productive outcomes.

What’s wrong with Cannon, Halbig & King in 5 tweets

Mar 2, 2015• 28

By MATTHEW HOLT

When the latest post from Michael Cannon–he who seeks to sink the subsidies attached to the Federal exchange–hit my inbox, I wondered, “Why don’t his opponents stop arguing the specifics, and instead explain what the Supreme Court ought to do. I also don’t see why Mark Andreeseen (@pmarca) should have all the fun with long Twitter essays. So in only 5 tweets complete with misspellings and other contortions to get my thoughts into 140 characters, this is what I sent back

1/ I might be prepared to concede that @mfcannon is right on the facts of what the wording of the law says (King vs Burwell)

— Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) March 2, 2015

2/ might also concede that @mfcannon is right that the real @JonathanGruber & Senate HELP staffers meant to punish non-excange states

— Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) March 2, 2015

3/ But that doesn't mean that the language would have survived in committee. More likely we'd have House version = one national exchange

— Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) March 2, 2015

4/ And, sorry @mfcannon, the job of SCOTUS is to fix bad laws NOT perpatuate them (Brown vs Bd eductaion. Lawrence vs texas)

— Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) March 2, 2015

5/ Removing the subsidies in King vs Burwell would simply be punishing low inc. people on basis of geography. Is that what @mfcannon wants?

— Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) March 2, 2015

Value-Based Reform

Mar 2, 2015• 31

By JACK COCHRAN, MD and CHARLES KENNEY

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ recent announcement to move the Medicare program toward value-based payments is among the most promising recent developments in health care.

While changing the way we pay for care will not be easy, we believe that shifting away from fee-for-service to value-based payments could be a catalyst to a better, more affordable health care system in our country.

Three Benefits of Paying for Quality
There are numerous potential benefits to paying for quality rather than quantity, including the three we want to focus on today.

We believe this payment shift has the potential to accelerate progress toward achieving the Triple Aim – defined as better individual care, better population care, and lower cost.
We believe the payment shift by Medicare will accelerate the transition to value-based payments among commercial insurers – a major benefit to employers in terms of improved health for employees and greater affordability.
We believe value-based payments have the potential to help slow – and possibly reverse – the epidemic of physician burnout in the United States, particularly among primary care doctors.Continue reading…

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King v Burwell: Three Scenarios

Mar 2, 2015• 15

By ROGER COLLIER

By now, every reader of THCB must be aware the Supreme Court is hearing arguments this week in a case that could undermine much of Obamacare. Simplifying somewhat, the plaintiffs in King versus Burwell argue that the phrase “exchange established by the state” in the Affordable Care Act’s section 1311 dealing with tax subsidies precludes making such subsidies available to those who enroll through the federal exchange(s). The government argues (a) that other sections of the law make it apparent that all exchange enrollees are potentially eligible for subsidies, and (b) that language in section 1321 providing that HHS shall “establish and operate such exchange within the state,” where a state is unable or unwilling to create their own exchange, essentially establishes a state exchange.

As many media articles have commented, the implications of a SCOTUS ruling for the plaintiffs are huge. Some five to eight million enrollees in the 34 federal exchange states would lose their subsidies, making insurance unaffordable for many of them, and premiums in these states would skyrocket—all while leaving the existing tax fines for being uninsured in place.

Using a Mobile App for Monitoring Post-Operative Quality of Recovery

Mar 2, 2015• 5

By JAAN SIDOROV, MD

While your correspondent is tantalized by the prospect of healthcare consumers using mHealth apps to lower costs, increase quality and improve care, he wanted to better understand their real-world value propositions.

Are app-empowered patients less likely to use the emergency room?

Do they have a higher survival rate?

Do they have higher levels of satisfaction?

In other words, where’s the beef?

That’s when this paper caught my search engine eye. It’s a report on using an app to monitor post-operative patients at home.Continue reading…

Shared Responsibility in the Affordable Care Act

Mar 1, 2015• 3

By DRANOVE AND GARTHWAITE

Recently we wrote that it was well past time to end the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act. In light of some commentary, we thought it best to revisit this issue in more detail. It seems that most of the support for the employer mandate comes from a misguided understanding of why employers are currently the primary source of private health insurance. It is explicitly not because of a sense of “responsibility” to the employee, at least not any more responsibility than they feel when they pay employee wages for their work.

Here is a basic summary of how labor markets work, based on decades of very widely accepted academic research and practical experience. Employees receive compensation from their employers in return for their work product. In other words, employers aren’t running charities for their workers, but neither are workers volunteering their time at firms. Each expects something from the other. Some employee compensation comes in the form of cash wages and some in the form of fringe benefits such as health insurance, pensions, free coffee, parking, etc.Continue reading…