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Tales From the Accelerator

Oct 10, 2014• 1

By LISA SUENNEN

I hate to give away all the punch lines from my California Healthcare Foundation report on healthcare accelerators, so you will just have to read it for yourself. However, a few extra tidbits that didn’t make it in are here below (as you can imagine, I can’t be quite as Lisa-ish in a commissioned report as in my blog). Among my many discussions with a myriad of willing report interviewees (thanks to all of you!), I started collecting some funny stories that I have begun to refer to as Tales from the Accelerator Crypt. A few of them are here below for your amusement.

From an East Coast Economic Development-Focused Accelerator: By far the worst idea pitched to us was from a company that proposed to prevent falls among the elderly with a vest containing an airbag whose deployment is triggered by EEG signals coming from a wearable computer brain interface. It’s probably obvious why this is so insane. Getting beyond who might actually wear such a thing around their home or to bed, can you imagine the number of erroneous deployments from the notoriously unpredictable, noisy EEG signal? If only they had made a video. That same week in the same city, I was amazed to be introduced to a rival company also developing a wearable airbag for accidental falls, but at least this one was triggered by an accelerometer. File under “You know wearables have jumped the shark when…”

From a University Program in CA: The most awful pitch we had was from a clinician-entrepreneur whose answer to every probing question on commercial viability was “This is going to save countless lives.” It was his answer to every question, clinical to operational to financial. The most entertaining stage moment, however, was when a CEO of a company developing a ‘next generation’ needle-free injector did a live demonstration of his product by injecting himself with saline while up on stage doing his pitch. He unbuttoned his shirt, gave himself the shot and buttoned up again, claiming how painless it was. As he continued to speak, blood pooled and spread from the injection site, down his arm and across his entire white shirt. It was a slow motion disaster. He didn’t recover very well. Needless to say they didn’t win the demo day competition.

Healthcare Accelerators Evolve Towards Specialization

Oct 10, 2014• 3

By LISA SUENNEN

California-HealthCare-Foundation I am excited to announce that the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) has just published a report, authored by me, about the state of healthcare Accelerators in the U.S. and around the world. For those of you who don’t know CHCF, it is a very large not-for-profit endowment that has a mission to improve the quality, cost and efficiency of healthcare delivered to the underserved populations of California. In so doing, they also provide a very valuable educational service to the overall healthcare community and fund the creation of reports like this one about Accelerators.

The new report, entitled Survival of the Fittest: Healthcare Accelerators Evolve Towards Specialization is available for download HERE.

This report is intended to update the report that CHCF released two years ago entitled “Greenhouse Effect: How Accelerators are Seeding Digital Health Innovation” about the then emerging field of healthcare Accelerators. I would have to say that two years later in 2014, these programs have definitely emerged.

Ebola Offers a Teachable Moment For Health Information Technology

Oct 9, 2014• 19

By ADRIAN GROPPER, MD

The essence of controlling Ebola is surveillance. To accept surveillance, the population must trust the system responsible for surveillance. That simple fact is as true in Liberia as it is in the US. The problem is that health care surveillance has been privatized and interoperability is at the mercy of commerce.

Today I listened to the JASON Task Force meeting. The two hours were dedicated to a review of their report to be presented next week at a joint HIT Committee Meeting.

The draft report is well worth reading. Today’s discussion was almost exclusively on Recommendations 1 and 6. I can paraphrase the main theme of the discussion as “Interoperability moves at the speed of commerce and the commercial interests are not in any particular hurry – what can we do about it?”

Health information technology in the US is all about commerce. In a market that is wasting $1 Trillion per year in unwarranted and overpriced services, interoperability and transparency are a risk. Public health does not pay the bills for EHR vendors or their hospital customers.

Let’s Make Sure “Health” Encompasses “Care”

Oct 9, 2014• 23

By RISA LAVIZZO-MOUREY, MD

For the past several months the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has been promoting a particular vision– of a Culture of Health in America, where everyone has the opportunity to live the healthiest life possible, no matter their income, or where they live, or work, or play.

With that vision in mind, geriatrician Dr. Leslie Kernisan asks an important question in her Oct 7 Health Care Blog post, “Why #CultureofHealth Doesn’t Work For Me.” She writes: “Is promoting a Culture of Health the same as promoting a Culture of Care? As a front-line clinician, they feel very different to me.”

For physicians treating the chronically ill and patients facing the end of life, good health might seem like a pipe dream. Kernisan and some of her commenters even wonder if the phrase “Culture of Health” could be misconstrued as “blaming the victim.”

UC Davis Pre-Medical & Pre-Health Professionals National Conference

Oct 9, 2014

By AMERICAN RESIDENT PROJECT

Open to students of any level, the conference is the largest pre-medical and pre-health professions gathering at an undergraduate institution, and is the only event of its kind, supporting URM students (underrepresented in medicine, as defined by the AAMC) interested in a career in medicine. More than 8,500 pre-medical and pre-health students from California and beyond will attend alongside deans of admissions from top medical, dental, public health, pharmacy and nursing schools.

The American Resident Project is hosting a panel at the UC Davis Pre-Medical & Pre-Health Professionals National Conference this coming Saturday, Octoer 11th. The panel will feature The American Resident Project Writing Fellows Dr. Marisa Camilon, Dr. Craig Chen and Dr. Elaine Khoong who will discuss what it’s really like to be a medical resident and will be moderated by WellPoint Chief Medical Officer and conference keynote speaker Dr. Sam Nussbaum.

http://www.americanresidentproject.com/

Why ACO Savings Aren’t About Location.

Oct 8, 2014• 21

By TRAVIS BROOME

One of the big questions since the inception of the Medicare Shared Savings Program has been whether the model would only work in regions with extremely high baseline costs. Farzad’s state-level analysis of earlier MSSP results suggested that ACOs in higher-cost areas were more likely to receive shared savings. It’s one of the questions that Bob Kocher and Farzad received in the wake of the op-ed on Rio Grande Valley Health Providers last week.

So we decided to dig into the data.

We’re still waiting for CMS to make baseline costs for ACOs – and the local areas they serve – public. But in the meantime, we linked each ACO to a Hospital Referral Region using the main ACO address provided by CMS – and took a look at the region’s per capita Medicare costs as a predictor of ACO success.

An Open Letter to the FTC on Hospitals and Providers

Oct 8, 2014• 20

By DAVID BALTO

The role of the United States’ antitrust laws are to ensure competition, not to prescribe or favor any particular organizational structure. Yet recent Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) enforcement actions in the health care provider merger arena have done just that – dictated that if provider groups want to integrate, they can only do so through contractual means, not by merging their businesses. Everyone accepts the proposition that health care integration is essential to improving health care and bending the cost curve. Yet often the FTC has been a roadblock to provider consolidation arguing that any efficiencies can be achieved through separate contracting.[1] But this regulatory second guessing is inconsistent with sound health care and competition policy.

Health care provider consolidation poses some of the most challenging antitrust issues. Particularly challenging are efforts by hospitals to acquire or integrate with physician practices. There is clearly tremendous pressure from both the demand and supply side for greater integration between hospital and physicians. And arrangements between firms in a vertical relationship are treated solicitously by the antitrust laws, because they are typically procompetitive and efficient. Where competitive concerns arise from a merger or alliance, the FTC will ask if there are efficiencies from the relationship and, if so, whether there are less restrictive alternatives to achieve the efficiencies. If there is a less restrictive alternative, the FTC will claim the efficiencies should not be credited. So for example, if the FTC believes that contractual arrangements between doctors and hospitals can achieve comparable efficiencies, the FTC will reject the merging parties’ claimed efficiencies.

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Oct 8, 2014

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A Crowdsourced Campaign to Help Patients Access Their Medical History

Oct 6, 2014• 6

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