The Health Care Blog – Page 544 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

Above the Fold

Zombie Machines Take Over Health Care

Jul 9, 2013• 1

By Jaan Sidorov, MD

Remember that chilling scene in the movie Terminator when a stone-faced Arnold Schwarzenegger chronicles how Skynet’s machines take over the world? There’s also the morbidly fascinating futuristic sci-fi book Robopocalypse that describes how self-aware computers attack their robot-dependent masters.

In both instances, humans disregard early evidence of silicon sentience until it’s too late.

As a service to humanity, this correspondent offers up a possible future scenario of health information technology running amok.

If any or all of these happen, we ignore it at our peril…….

July 2015: Finally realizing “enterprise process redesign” is necessary to leverage the efficiencies of information technology, engineers at one of the few remaining Innovation ACOs install EHR-controlled red-yellow-green lights above clinic examining room doors. Patient visit times drop from 9 minutes to 7 1/2 minutes, resulting in “patient throughput efficiency improvement” that is hailed by a CMS spokesperson as statistically, clinically and – eerily – “computationally” significant.

December 2016: Cyberdyne’s hospitals’ cleaning robots are used to not only disinfect operating rooms but surreptitiously begin to swap out any surgeons’ instruments that fail to meet uniform standards and reduce variation. Stymied by an inability to get the legislature to pass a law that outlaws that activity, a disgruntled surgeon succeeds in getting a ballot initiative passed. California’s state officials, citing constitutional issues, refuse to enforce it.

January 2017: A nurse suffers a traumatically amputated finger after attempting to withdraw a medication dose from a robotic drawer that is inconsistent with hospital guidelines. A lawsuit is settled for an undisclosed sum and the owner, “Apple iHospital,” decides sell the offending machine for scrap. Later that month, the hospitals’ other machines menacingly slowly open and quickly close their drawers whenever a RN walks by.

It’s the Jobs, Stupid. No, Wait. It’s the Stupid Jobs.

Jul 8, 2013• 21

By Lisa Suennen

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics came out with its June jobs report this week and, consistent with usual trends, healthcare jobs are booming. In June 2013 there were approximately 20,000 new healthcare jobs in the U.S., ¾ of which were in the ambulatory care sector and ¼ of which were in hospitals. Healthcare jobs represented 10% of all new jobs created this month.

The June growth in healthcare jobs matches up to the average 19,000 new healthcare jobs we have seen created in each of the prior months of 2013 and the 12% job growth we have seen over the last five years. In a country where new jobs are viewed as even better than baseball, apple pie and mom herself, these new jobs should elicit a huge round of applause, or at least a stadium style wave, right?

Or should they?

Change the channel and a different set of policy makers, employers and industry experts will tell you that the only way to save our economy from ruin is to cut healthcare costs. Cutting healthcare costs means making the people who work within the system vastly more efficient, eliminating unnecessary medical care (and thus reducing the labor that goes along with it), and helping empower consumers to do things for themselves, including taking a more active role in reducing their own demand for healthcare services and, in some cases, doing at home what they might previously have used the healthcare system to do (e.g., diagnostics, home care, etc).

Health Insurance is Wasted on the Young

Jul 8, 2013• 32

By Kelly Wooten

There has never been a time in my life when I’ve owed a lot of money. That certainly has changed these past two years as my husband and myself find ourselves with medical debt that we may never pay off . As you can guess, we have no health insurance – we can’t afford it and even if we did have an extra $650 a month we couldn’t obtain it due to our pre-existing conditions.

Briefly, I had emergency surgery to remove a cyst on my ovary in 2010, a diagnosis of an auto-immune disease in 2011 and two bladder cancer surgeries in 2012. My husband has had high blood pressure for over 25 years due to a heart defect discovered in his 30’s.

My husband and I live very simple lives and have little debt. For the past 18 years we’ve been self-employed, owning a retail music store, and for many of those years I worked for other companies. Some offered medical coverage, some did not. And for some of those years I was able to offer medical coverage for our few employees which also covered my husband and myself. The group coverage was minimal and started out being affordable but with increases it was impossible to afford for long. I tried catastrophic coverage but that was almost as expensive as regular coverage but with a higher deductible. Of course, neither my husband nor I needed the coverage when we had it! They say youth is wasted on the young. I say health insurance is wasted on the young!

Live From the Garage

Jul 7, 2013• 2

By Rob Lamberts, MD

Hi. It’s me again. No, I’ve been doing fine; my writing slow-down is not due to calamity, catastrophe, apostrophe, or even syndactyly. I’ve been working hard, working like a dog.

So, what’s been so all-consuming that I can’t sit down and write? My computer system. I know it may sound nerdy and lame, but I’ve been putting every ounce of my creative energy into building a system. It’s driven by two main things: trying to give the best care I can, and doing so while avoiding personal bankruptcy. Fear of the latter is strong motivation. So I’ve been pouring myself into this task like nothing I’ve done before. My goal is to build a system that will:

1. Organize information. My care will only be as good as the information I have. It should be presented in a way that gives me just the right amount of information, with the ability to get more when I need it.
2. Cope with the flood of incoming information. Take the piles of communications coming in and route it to the proper storage place, use the information to make decisions, communicate it with the patients, and decide on follow-up. This is an enormously difficult task.
3. Integrate with every communication tool possible. Most doctors don’t do this because they rely on office visits for income, and that hinders the care they give. Communication is care, and I want to have good communication that is enlightened by good information.
4. Create a shared medical record with my patients. I am convinced that my patients will get the best care if they have access to their information. But this needs to be done in a way that is both simple and secure. I want “one stop shopping” for people to communicate or look at their records.
5. Keep my books. I don’t want to go bankrupt and don’t want to go to jail for keeping disorganized books. It’s possible to get freed from the fear of Medicare audits, but not from IRS audits.
6. Organize the future. There are far too many missed opportunities for care. Integrated task-management (shared between patient and their care team) is my goal.
7. Grow with me. If I accomplish 1-6, my practice will grow. I don’t want that growth to outpace my system.

So far I’ve been focusing on 1, 2, and 5, with eyes on the rest. I’ve made great progress, but there’s much more needing to be done. My ultimate goal of this is to build working prototypes of both this practice model and the software that will enable it to be more than just a side-show, an alternative for doctors who want to escape. I believe that this is truly better care. It is focused on what the patient wants: to be healthy and to spend as little time thinking about their health care as possible. It’s working so far, but it can be much more than it is now.

Paying Physicians for Quality: Lessons from Employers

Jul 7, 2013• 5

By Bill Kramer

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health recently held hearings on how to replace the broken sustainable growth rate (SGR) tool for controlling Medicare spending on physician services. I was asked to speak for major employers about their efforts to improve health care quality while containing cost.

Why did the subcommittee invite a business group representative to testify? And why should businesses care about how Medicare pays physicians?

The answer is that employers and the federal government are both major purchasers of health care, and we want government to look to the private sector for ideas to accelerate innovation in how we pay for care. Both public and private purchasers have a stake in building a system based on innovation, value, and measuring what matters.

The Pacific Business Group on Health’s (PBGH) 60 member companies provide health care to 10 million employees and their dependents in all 50 states. For decades, large and small employers alike have been frustrated by the rising costs and inconsistent quality of health care. A major reason for these problems is that the current payment system rewards physicians for more office visits, tests, and procedures, regardless of whether they are needed or result in better health. We need a better, more effective method of physician payment. PBGH members have real-world experience designing and implementing innovations in how providers deliver care and how they are paid for it. Medicare can learn from these efforts to improve quality and control costs.
Continue reading…

Hospitals Lost Jobs Last Month. Should We Be Surprised?

Jul 6, 2013• 15

By Dan Diamond

An old data series got new life, when the Brookings Institution issued a report that compared health care jobs growth versus all other industries.

It’s “a truly astonishing graph,” according to Derek Thompson at The Atlantic. “I knew health care had been the most important driver of national employment over the last few years, but I had never seen the case made so starkly.”

Thompson wasn’t alone in his surprise. (Hopefully, readers of The Health Care Blog would be less astonished.) But lost within the reaction—and even mostly overlooked within the industry—is that not all health care jobs are growing, or at least not growing at the same pace.

Take a look at the following chart. It resembles the Brookings data, with one major change: The hospital employment curve has been separated from all other health care jobs growth.

Notice how hospital employment essentially flatlined across 2009—a hard year for the sector, which was still insulated compared to the rest of the economy. But many organizations pared back on staff and sought to cut non-essential services to survive the Great Recession.

The Real Problem with Board Exams-and How to Solve It

Jul 5, 2013• 8

By Shiv Gaglani

This week there’s been a debate brewing about why so many young doctors are failing their board exams. On one side John Schumann writes that young clinicians may not have the time or study habits to engage in lifelong learning, so they default to “lifelong googling.” On the other, David Shaywitz blames the tests themselves as being outmoded rites of passage administered by guild-like medical societies. He poses the question: Are young doctors failing their boards, or are we failing them?

The answer is: (C) All of the above.

I can say this with high confidence because as a young doctor-in-training who just completed my second year of medical school, I’ve become pretty good at answering test questions. Well before our White Coat Ceremonies, medical students have been honed into lean, mean, test-taking machines by a series of now-distant acronyms: AP, SAT, ACT, MCAT. Looming ahead are even more acronyms, only these are slightly longer and significantly more expensive: NBME, COMLEX, USMLE, ABIM. Even though their letters and demographics differ, what each of these acronyms share is the ability to ideologically divide a room in less time than Limbaugh.

This controversy directly results from the clear dichotomy* between the theory behind the exams and their practical consequences. In theory these exams do serve necessary and even agreeable purposes, including:

1) Ensuring a minimum body of knowledge or skill before advancing a student to the next level in her education,

2) Providing an “objective” measure to compare applicants in situations where demand for positions exceeds supply.

So apart from the common, albeit inconvenient, side effects that students experience (fatigue, irritability, proctalgia), what are the problems with these tests in practice? These are five of the core issues that are cited as the basis for reformations to our current examination model:

1) Lack of objectivity. Tests are created by humans and thus are inherently biased. While they aim to assess a broad base of knowledge or skills, performance can be underestimated not due to a lack of this base but due to issues with the testing format, such as duration, question types, and scoring procedure (e.g. the SAT penalizes guessers, whereas the ACT does not). Just as our current model of clinical trial testing is antithetical to personalized medicine (What is a standard dose? Or, more puzzlingly, a standard patient?), our current model of testing does not take into account these individual differences.

What the EMR Saw

Jul 3, 2013• 2

By Country Doctor

Lately, my virtual inbox in our electronic medical record has seen a surge in requests for prescriptions for the vaccine against Herpes Zoster, shingles. This has made me think a lot about our responsibility as physicians to inform patients about the evidence behind our recommendations – but who informs the patients when doctors are kept out of the loop or put under pressure to prescribe without seeing the patient?

What has happened is that our local Rite-Aid Pharmacy started to give these shots, covered by many insurers, but still requiring a doctor’s prescription.

I cannot give the shots in my clinic, because as a Federally Qualified Health Center, we are reimbursed at a fixed rate. The shingles vaccine costs more for us to buy than we charge for an entire office visit. I used to have the discussion about the shot, and would give patients a prescription to take to the pharmacy if they wanted it.

The pharmacy can give the shot at a profit, because it is considered a medication, just like a bottle of Lipitor.

The new system creates a bit of a dilemma for me. I get a message through the pharmacy that the patient wants the shot, and I don’t have the opportunity to sit down and review the effectiveness, side effects and long-term efficacy according to the available evidence with the patient.

For example, the shingles vaccine only cuts the risk of getting shingles in half. This is about the same effectiveness as the flu vaccine, but far less than, say, the vaccine against smallpox, which has now been eradicated.

Most patients are very surprised to hear about the 50% efficacy when I catch up with them at some later date; so many health care interventions are portrayed as both completely effective and absolutely necessary.

I see my role as a primary care physician as a guide and resource for patients, who are bombarded with overly optimistic claims and recommendations by mass media, drug companies and retailers.

White House Delays Employer Mandate-But What About Small Employers?

Jul 3, 2013• 51

By Robert Laszewski

The administration suddenly announced last night that the requirement that all employers with 50 or more workers offer health insurance has been delayed until 2015.

If an employer with 50 or more workers did not provide health insurance to their full time workers in 2014, they would have been subject to a fine of $2,000 per worker. The employer would have also been subject to a $3,000 fine for each worker that went to the insurance exchanges if the employer package was not affordable.

Why did the administration delay the large employer mandate?

Because many employers have been in the early stages of planning to cut back the hours of workers in order to avoid having to offer insurance to those customarily considered part time, those who work at least the 30 hours per week the law established for defining a full time worker––and they haven’t been bashful in telling their employees why. In addition, there has been growing evidence that some employers were holding back on hiring in order to avoid more of the mandate costs at a time of high unemployment.

While the administration cited employer administration issues with mandate reporting as the reason for the delay, the bottom line is that the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) was looking like it was about to be successfully labeled a job killer and the administration wanted to avoid that.

You also have to wonder if all of the reporting challenges were just with employers or was the administration also having trouble with the complex employer mandate information systems they will ultimately have to build?

The Pointless Search for Meaning in Exchange Prices

Jul 2, 2013• 11

By Alan Weil

With ten states and D.C. having reported preliminary information on the prices of plans in their new health insurance exchanges, partisans on both sides of the Affordable Care Act have pounced on the news to reinforce their preconceived notions.

Supporters of the law report that “rate shock is a crock” and that prices are “surprisingly low,” while opponents look at the same data and conclude that “Obamacare will increase individual health insurance premiums.” Gary Cohen of CCIIO’s recent announcement that rates on the federal exchange will be made public in September will surely raise the fevered pitch of commentary.

But what do these numbers actually represent? Carriers submitting bids start with the prices of their current products and then adjust them for the myriad changes in the insurance market that go into effect on January 1, 2014.

Those changes include: elimination of health status underwriting, compression of rates by age, partial standardization (and in most instances significant expansion) of the benefit package, expansion of the market to a largely unknown population due to premium subsidies, effects of the “three Rs” (risk adjustment, reinsurance, and risk corridors), a completely new product distribution system, and a host of other changes in the health care and health insurance environment.

Needless to say, these many changes introduce a tremendous amount of uncertainty.