The Health Care Blog – Page 463 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

Above the Fold

What Would You Give Up For a Virtual Doctor Visit?

Sep 13, 2014• 1

By Girish Navani

With the fast adoption of smart phones, tablets and wearable devices, the way people communicate, travel, eat and entertain have all been simplified. Why not streamline the way we experience healthcare as well? A study released in May 2014 from MDLive discovered that 82% of young adults 18-34 would prefer consulting with their doctor via a mobile device than show up for an appointment. Twenty seven percent of patients confirmed they’d be willing to give up shopping for a month, skip their next vacation, even refrain from showers for a week—if it meant they would be able to access their doctor via a smart phone! These results, along with the multiple surveys and studies conducted in the past year, confirm that a new way to conduct healthcare services is in high demand.

The solution to changing up the healthcare system sits at the center of three key advancements: patient engagement, population health and electronic health records (EHRs). At eClinicalWorks, we consider these components of healthcare to be like a three-legged stool where two cannot stand without the other. We recognized this need as an opportunity within the healthcare IT space and created healow in order to provide our customers and their patients with a platform to schedule doctors’ appointments and get immediate access to medical records via an online interface or mobile app. healow empowers doctors and patients by packaging personal health records (PHRs), healthcare tools and appointment scheduling together, making the data readily accessible to patients and their doctors from the palm of their hand.

CVS Health: Breathing a Little Easier and Holding Our Breath

Sep 11, 2014• 2

By WILLIAM SHADEL

Well, it’s official: CVS has stopped selling cigarettes and other tobacco products.

The sales ban will cost the multi-billion dollar pharmacy chain about $2 billion a year in profits. But the hope is that the move will provide a more consistent health promotion message to consumers (it has changed its corporate name to CVS Health) and lead to new business (for example, through visits to its in-store health clinics).

But will this move have any effect on smoking in the population? It’s difficult to say at this point.

The impact of the ban on overall tobacco sales nationwide will probably be negligible. Only a very small percentage of consumers buy their tobacco at pharmacies and there are plenty of retail options available beyond the local pharmacy.

CVS is also banning the sale of electronic or e-cigarettes. Advocates from this industry are predictably agitated: “It’s smoking that causes all the health problems, not the smokeless alternatives.” Others argue that e-cigarettes and other smokeless alternatives are effective aids for those wishing to quit-smoking.

Eighth Annual Health 2.0 Conference

Sep 11, 2014

In MEETINGS, CONFERENCES, ETC

Want to reach THCB’s influential healthcare audience? Drop us a line.

Why Public Health Needs a New Gun Doctrine

Sep 11, 2014• 376

VIK KHANNA

I am a public health professional, educated at the vaunted Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Hygiene and Public Health. I like guns, and I believe the Second Amendment clearly secures the rights of individuals to own firearms.

You read that correctly. I am a public health professional.

And I like guns.

This make me a heretic in American public health, where embracing firearms and the rights of gun owners is a gross violation of orthodoxy.

As a society, our focus on guns and not gun users derives from the shock of mass killings, such as those in Newtown, CT, Aurora, CO, Virginia Tech, and Norway, which has some of the strictest gun control laws on the planet. Mass killings, however tragic, get distorted by saturation media hysterics and 24-hour political grandstanding. What gun opponents refuse to discuss is the precipitous fall in violent crime and deaths by firearms over the past 20 years, and how it coincides with an equally dramatic increase of guns in circulation in the US.

While that isn’t cause and effect, the association is certainly curious.

In 2013, the Institute of Medicine, at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control, produced a report on firearms violence that has been ignored by the mainstream media. The upshot: defensive use of firearms occurs much more frequently than is recognized, “can be an important crime deterrent,” and unauthorized possession (read: by someone other than the lawful owner) of a firearm is a crucial driver of firearms violence.

That report went away for political reasons. Translation. Nobody wanted to talk about it because it raised more questions than it answered.

Can Self-Made Hospital Apps Reduce Healthcare Costs?

Sep 11, 2014• 2

In MARKETPLACE, WHITE PAPERS and NOTICES by MOBILESMITH

Today’s healthcare industry bears a startling resemblance to a Charles Dickens novel. It is the best of times, and the worst of times. In an age where advancements in technology have extended patient lifespans, many healthcare systems are struggling to pay their bills. Deloitte pegs healthcare spending at over $3.8 Trillion in 2014, and providers are desperately searching for any cost-cutting solutions. Many found a means to treat their own symptoms, with a prescription of mobile apps.

It seems to not make sense. How would hospitals save money by spending thousands to build an app? Today, almost 60% of the U.S. population owns smartphones. Patients, especially seniors, are adopting tablets at a rapid rate. Successful hospitals are leveraging branded mobile apps not only to engage their patients and boost HCHAPS scores, but to achieve cost reduction by launching efficient mobile apps.

Waiting For Payment Reform?

Sep 10, 2014• 40

By CHARLES KENNEY and JACK COCHRAN, MD

The Health Care Blog recently featured our Open Letter to Primary Care Physicians,generating quite a bit of reaction. A commenter made the point that “we cannot expect” primary care physicians “to act differently until and unless they get paid differently.” [Emphasis added]

The comment refers to a doctor in solo practice and notes that “the first step is changing how you are paid, in one way or another. And there are many ways that work better than the current code-driven fee-for-service model.”

Does waiting for payment reform make sense? Or should primary care practices act now to change the way they practice in anticipation of payment shifts?

Moving Toward Value-based Care

Some physicians groups seem somewhat frozen – unsure exactly where health care payment is headed and thus waiting until there is a clearer signal.

But it seems to us that the payment reform signal grows louder and clearer and support for that contention comes in a recent research report* from McKesson, the international consultancy:

We can now say with certainty that healthcare delivery is moving in one direction: towards value-based care.

This is care that is paid for based on results – on measurable quality – as opposed to the traditional fee-for-service approach that pays for volume. McKesson notes that

The affordability crisis is causing unprecedented changes in the healthcare landscape, the most significant of which is the transition from the current volume-based model [fee-for-service] to myriad models based on measures of value.

To remain relevant and competitive, payers, hospitals, health systems, and clinicians must respond now to integrate value-based models into their existing systems.

On the origins of Maintenance of Certification in the National Health Service: A Serial Killer

Sep 10, 2014• 26

By SAURABH JHA, MD

Britain’s most prolific serial killer was a General Practitioner (GP), Dr. Harold Shipman. He wasn’t England’s most famous murderer. That accolade goes to Jack the Ripper. The Ripper killed five women in the streets of Whitechapel. Shipman might have been responsible for over 200 deaths.

Shipman’s legacy to the medical profession was not just a permanent simmering of mistrust. He triggered the introduction of revalidation, Britain’s version of maintenance of certification (MOC).

During Shipman’s prosecution the media scrutiny on physicians was intense. It’s both a beauty of and curse on our profession that we’re assumed to have such high code of ethics yet not spared the foibles of human nature.

“Homo homini lupus” doesn’t spare physicians. Bashar al-Assad was an ophthalmologist. Ayman al-Zawahiri once had taken the Hippocratic Oath.

This means that outliers, inevitable products of a Gaussian distribution, also get past the gates of medical school.

The government set up an inquiry headed by Dame Janet Smith. How could Shipman have gotten away with murder for so long? What were the systemic failures?

The Shipman Inquiry is 5000 pages long, compiled after interviewing 2500 witnesses. It cost the tax payer nearly 21 million pounds. Its conclusion was stunningly bland even if of military precision: doctors need more policing. This is like concluding that the First World War happened because people aren’t always nice to one another; a truism so uniformly true that it ceases to inform policy.

The report called for the General Medical Council (GMC), the prime regulatory agency for physicians, to work for patients, not physicians.

The solution: Revalidation.

Patient IO Care Plan Platform Announces Integration with Apple HealthKit

Sep 10, 2014• 1

MARKETPLACE, DEALS + ANNOUNCEMENTS

Filament Labs announces the integration of its Patient IO care delivery platform with Apple’s newly announced HealthKit, enhancing the ability of health professionals to manage patient health behaviors between doctor visits. The integration will allow providers to automatically pull critical health data from a patient’s HealthKit-supported device and import the details directly into the patient’s care plan.

“We are excited to be one of the first companies to offer a patient engagement platform integrated with Apple’s HealthKit,” said Filament Labs CEO Jason Bornhorst. “Having a patient’s care plan automatically populated with current, accurate and complete data will help providers monitor patient adherence to treatment plans and in turn improve patient outcomes.”Continue reading…

Expecting the Unexpected

Sep 10, 2014• 1

By KAREN DESALVO

The question isn’t whether or not we will have another disaster – it is just a matter of when, where and how severe it will be. The recent earthquake in Northern California, centered near Napa, serves as a reminder that we must be prepared for the unexpected no matter where we live.

Northern California’s largest quake since 1989 happened in a large state where ONC has been working for the past year to ensure health data access every day and especially during disasters. In fact, in April of this year, we issued an assessment on available opportunities to address potential disasters in California and along the Gulf Coast.

Based on those assessments and our expectations of a catastrophic event in California, ONC started working with state emergency medical services officials last year to begin connecting the state’s 35 health information exchange organizations (HIEs) and EMS organizations. This effort was launched to help ensure health data access during emergencies.

The program is working on a pilot project involving several counties in California. However, the Northern California earthquake reminds us that there is much work to do, and it must happen faster statewide and nationwide. We simply cannot make assumptions about how best to prepare for emergencies. In recognition of the importance of this initiative, the HHS Idea Lab awarded a joint ONC/ASPR proposal for the inaugural HHS Ventures Program. The team has been actively engaged in this project as well as other ways technology can improve the routine delivery of care and disaster response – all in an effort to create more resilient communities.