The Health Care Blog – Page 669 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

Above the Fold

Bring Back the Public Option

Jan 13, 2012• 108

By Scott Carroll

The way health care is administered in the United States is unsustainable and in need of fundamental reengineering — right? During the 2008 presidential race, the country appeared to be in agreement on this point. But that all changed somewhere, somewhere after the election of a dark-skinned new president with a foreign-sounding name whom even proud Medicare card-carrying Americans were viscerally driven to deride as a socialist.

This was recently reported in The Hill: “The six largest investor-owned health insurance companies saw a 22 percent increase in combined net income in the third quarter, putting them on pace to break profit records for 2010.” The president was castigated by loud little crowds around the country for championing the overwhelmingly popular idea of a publicly funded, public health insurance alternative to challenge the partly publicly funded, private health insurance companies’ assertion that they simply cannot provide their services any cheaper. Rather than groundbreaking legislation, what we got was the president being caricatured on national television, in effigy, as The Joker — and health insurance executives laughed all the way to the bank.

Patients Rating Doctors: Let’s Pay Popular People More!

Jan 13, 2012• 2

By Doc Gurley

My patient only had 20 minutes to wait for the van headed to detox. The people who had worked to get him into a detox program already numbered in the double digits. Sam (not his real name) was the classic public inebriate — he woke on sidewalks with the shakes, vomited blood on a regular basis, had lost most of his teeth, and was such a frequent victim of head trauma that depressions and scars ridged his balding skull.

Over the last week, our substance abuse counselor had daisy-chained together an impressive series of phone calls, blood tests, and clearance forms to line him up for one of our rarely-available detox beds.

Only 20 minutes to go.

But it was 20 minutes too long for him.

How Healthcare’s Embrace of Mobility has Turned Dangerous

Jan 11, 2012• 9

By Eric Lai

No industry has adopted mobility faster than healthcare.

Doctors love their devices. 81% of physicians have smartphones. They also love their apps. 38% of them use medical apps daily. One-third use smartphones or tablets to access electronic medical records today, with another 20% expecting to start using them this year.

For instance, 200 doctors and nurses at Charite Berlin, one of Europe’s largest hospitals, are piloting SAP’s new Electronic Medical Record app on iPad.

The app allows medical providers to trade their clipboards for (electronic) tablets, which present them a clean dashboard that lets them drill down into data such as medical history, medications (and allergies), X-rays and vital signs. It pulls that data down from a speedy SAP Hana in-memory database.

CES Mania Over at Health 2.0 News

Jan 11, 2012

If you’re not seeing all the news and views coming out of the Digital Health Summit at the huge CES show in Vegas–a big segment of the Health 2.0 team is there so you dont have to join the hour long cablines. There’s a series of fabulous articles on new products, a great newsbites roundup and an interview with the new Blueprint Health incubator launching in NYC this week. All a click away here—Matthew Holt

An Interview with Blueprint Health

Jan 11, 2012

By Matthew Holt

Blueprint Health is a specialist health IT incubator that just opened its doors this week and selected its first group of startups who get $20K each and a chance to hang in a nice art gallery in Soho that’s opening officially Thursday (FD Health 2.0′s NY city team will be moving in too). You can read more at Techcrunch and see the HUGE list of mentors here (I was thinking of throwing my hat in the ring until they told me it involved work!). But I wanted to ask Brad Weinberg & Mat Farkash, the founders, what was so special about Blueprint, so Mat told me:

Matthew H: Describe the Blueprint program

Mat Farkash: Blueprint Health is a New York based health-focused accelerator that is a Charter member of the TechStars Network. Blueprint Health kicked off its three-monthWinter program on January 9 in its 12,000 square foot office in SoHo and will also host a summer program in 2012. The program is a heavily mentorship focused, providing teams with access to over 120 mentors, all of whom have experience in the healthcare industry, including many physicians and health providers.

Work Induced Attention Deficit Disorder

Jan 11, 2012• 5

By John Halamka

When you’re in meetings or on phone calls, are you focused in the moment or are you distracted by emails, text messages, or social networking traffic?

When you’re reading a 20 page whitepaper, RFP, or article, can you finish it?

When you’re writing a presentation or article, can you keep your thoughts flowing or are they interrupted by the urge to check your email or mobile device?

Part of the problem is the expectation that we’re all connected 24×7 and should respond in near real time.

Part of the problem is an addiction-like behavior caused by a need to feel connected to other people.

Part of the problem is the pace of change that makes us work two days for every workday – one with scheduled meetings and one with unscheduled electronic messaging.

Do you find that your ability to explore issues in depth has diminished over time because of the need to react to the constant flow of input?

The National Nurse

Jan 11, 2012• 13

By Brian Klepper

On December 15, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30) introduced HR 3679, The National Nurse Act of 2011.

The legislation, co-led by Rep. Peter King (NY-3), would elevate the existing Chief Nurse Officer of the US Public Health Service, to the National Nurse for Public Health, a new full time leadership position that can focus nationally on health promotion and disease prevention priorities.

Teri Mills, a Certified Nurse Educator at Portland Community College in Oregon and President of the National Nursing Network Organization (NNNO), introduced the idea of a National Nurse in a 2005 NY Times op/ed. Here is an excerpt from that article.

…Nurses are considered the most honest and ethical professionals, according to a recent Gallup poll. It’s the nurse whom the patient trusts to explain the treatment ordered by a doctor. It is the nurse who teaches new parents how to care for their newborn. It is the nurse who explains to the family how to comfort a dying loved one.

Now, I’m not saying that a National Nurse will become a household name immediately. But given all that’s at stake – the health of a nation – it seems to me that we should at least give nurses a try.

Continue reading…

What Missy Did Next

Jan 10, 2012

By Matthew Holt

While I was blundering around the excellent Venrock/athenahealth party last night I ran into Missy Krasner. Missy ran David Brailer at ONC and then ran Adam Bosworth at Google Health and is as good as anyone in spotting and being around the trends in health IT. So what’s she doing now? Well she’s joined Rebecca Lynn’s crew at Morgenthaler Ventures. Is this cause for the boys of health IT VC to get afraid? Probably yes.

So what is Missy actually going to do? I had the good sense to ask her and she had perhaps less sense in telling me in quite some detail:

During my 5 years at Google on Google Health, we met with alot of innovative healthcare startups who came in and pitched their solutions as possible integration partners or acquisition targets. There is still so much out there that has not be adequately addressed: end-of-life documentation, personalized health and provider search, big data and analytics, patient/provider communications via ACO trends, transparency solutions for benefit design and EBOs, patient UGC and the social web, cheaper and better reimbursable telemedicine, and on and on. With all the innovation coming out of the various health IT accelerators and government app challenges, it’s a great time to align with a seasoned venture firm and take a deeper look at what is really ripe to become a market disrupter.

Continue reading…

2012: A Year of Huge Uncertainty in Health Care Policy

Jan 10, 2012• 5

By Robert Laszweski

2013 may be the most significant year in health care policy ever.

But we have to get through 2012 first.

Once the 2012 election results are in there will be the very real opportunity to address a long list of health care issues.

If Republicans win, the top of the list will include “repealing and replacing” the Affordable Care Act. If Obama is reelected, but Republicans capture both houses of Congress, we can still expect a serious effort to change the law. Then there is the granddaddy of all problems, the federal debt. The 2012 elections could well prepare the way for entitlement reform—particularly for Medicare and Medicaid. Even if Obama is reelected, the 2013 agenda will include a serious debate about Republican ideas to change Medicare into a premium support system and block grant Medicaid to the states.

If the election is a draw with neither side able to unilaterally move their agenda—likely in the form of Obama still in the White House but facing a Republican Congress, the pressure to deal with the growing costs of Medicare and Medicaid as well as nagging concerns about the implementation of the Affordable Care Act will create an imperative for action in 2013.