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Above the Fold

The Most Commonsensical And Hopeless Reform Idea Ever

Jun 30, 2011• 13

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

The way that Michael Long and Sandeep Green Vaswami want to change hospital care may well rank as both the most commonsensical and most hopeless health reform proposal ever. The real question is whether they can show the same tenacity in pursuing their goal as an elderly Jewish woman from Munster, Ind., who has invested nearly two decades in a similar effort.

What the two men are advocating is simple: hospitals should offer the same level of professional staffing and patient care on weekends as during the rest of the week. They should do this, the two men write in the Health Affairs blog, because trying to cram seven days of care into five leads to a cascade of problems that harm and even kill patients. It also costs a lot of money.

That’s the commonsense part. The hopeless part is that Long and Vaswami, both affiliated with the Institute for Healthcare Optimization, seem to believe that doctors, nurses and hospital execs will read their article and then spontaneously volunteer to work the weekend shift.

American hospitals are complex entities, but at heart they remain the doctor’s workshop, dependent upon the goodwill of physicians who admit and care for patients. Maintaining that goodwill requires treading carefully. For instance, telling a neurosurgeon, “You’re working Wednesday through Sunday this week” would rank high on the list of what a friend of mine calls a “career-limiting event.”

Long and Vaswami are aware they’re tampering with long-standing tradition, but as justification they offer a disturbing catalog of the effect of care controlled by the calendar.

To begin with, bunching scheduled admissions in midweek often overwhelms the staff, leading to “significant” increased risk of patient death or admission to the Intensive Care Unit. Filled beds force emergency rooms to discharge patients to “inappropriate care locations,” with the hospital relying on specialized teams to ride to the rescue “when patients deteriorate because of inadequate care.” At the same time, “medically appropriate transfers … may also be delayed or rejected.”

And that’s when hospitals are operating normally. Patients admitted over the weekend face an increased risk “because critical diagnostic or therapeutic modalities are not available,” while patients staying over the weekend experience “delays at best and deterioration in clinical condition at worst.”

The PHR School of Hard Knocks

Jun 29, 2011• 38

By MISSY KRASNER

By now everyone has seen the announcement last Friday that Google Health is being formally retired. Thanks to the several years I worked on Google Health, my phone was ringing off the hook Friday afternoon and emails were pouring in all weekend long.

Let me first start by saying that I am not going to comment on any specific company details. I think the broader question to ask anybody that has worked in health IT and consumer tech for the past 15 years is what have you learned from this experience. Or how about, is there a market for PHRs in the future? Given that I started looking at PHRs back in 2005 while I was working for David Brailer at the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), here is what I would say I have learned:

1. Healthcare is paternalistic – consumers are blind to costs and data.
Let’s face it. Our current healthcare system is set up to be extremely paternalistic. Health plans, hospitals, and physician practices steward patient data on the patient’s behalf. Patients don’t know the costs of a simple outpatient procedure or inpatient stay. Because health care is not a true market-based commodity in this country, patients end up being lousy healthcare consumers. Unlike the banking, airline, and retail industries, this makes it much harder to convince a broad array of consumers to engage in a service that helps them organize, manage, and share their medical records online. The value proposition becomes even harder when consumers are not rewarded with industry aligned incentives for taking the time to manage their personal health data (e.g., discount on health insurance premiums, lower co-pays at doctor office visits, or something beyond a measly $50.00 benefit credit for signing up for a PHR at their place of employment).

Unheard Voices in the Emergency Room

Jun 29, 2011• 6

By NORA O’BRIEN-SURIC

Not too long ago I had the unique experience of needing the services of the emergency room of a major teaching hospital in New York City. (Don’t worry, I’m fine now.) During my thirty-four hours in the ER, I had the opportunity to observe the other patients crowded around on gurneys, in wheelchairs, or in chairs with canes and walkers resting nearby. The ER was overflowing (I was told later that their capacity is 35 and there were about 100 people waiting), and most of the people were older than 60. The doctors and nurses were incredibly busy and were doing their best to provide attention and comfort to everyone. Yet medical care wasn’t all some patients needed. The older people waiting alone needed an advocate. They needed someone to help them understand what the nurses and doctors were telling them and doing to them, someone to reassure them during the long wait to be seen by a doctor and/or to be admitted onto a hospital floor. More than several people were obviously very confused and agitated. They, like me, were waiting for hours, even days until they received care or were admitted to a room. But unlike me, they did not have family there to support them (my fiancé was with me), and they were not able to, or at least did not, verbalize their discomfort and need for food, water, or the bathroom.

After two nights, I was finally admitted to a cardiac surgery floor. I didn’t need cardiac surgery; it was just the only bed available. Every person who entered my room, from aides to meal servers, physical therapists, nurses, and doctors, was surprised to see someone under 60 on their floor. Each of them asked me, “What are you doing here?” I realized that they are so used to working with older people that someone obviously younger than 60 seemed out of place.

This whole episode got me thinking about the training hospital personnel receive in geriatrics. If everyone on the cardiac care unit expected to see a patient older than 60, and if most people in the ER were over 60, then shouldn’t all personnel receive training in geriatrics and care of the elderly? Yes, but this isn’t likely. Most medical schools do not have a geriatric curriculum or rotation, which is why the John A. Hartford Foundation provides grants to schools of medicine, nursing, and social work to help in developing more leaders and curriculum in geriatric education.

Western PA fight to the finish?

Jun 29, 2011• 4

For a long time Pittsburgh’s UPMC has been flexing its market power and there’s been precious little that dominant local insurer Highmark Blues could do about it. UPMC has long been accused of similar tactics to Partners in Boston and Sutter in Northern California–facing down local insurers, forcing them to pay higher prices than paid to other systems, and using aggressive tactics to crowd out competitors. Highmark has reacted by trying to keep competitors alive, and finally has gone the whole hog and bought West Penn Alleghany the only other viable hospital system in the area. It’s likely that UPMC will end its contract with Highmark when it expires next year, and we’ll see the first in a new round of battles for market share between systems. But it surely won’t be the last across the nation as more and more hospitals will fight to fill the capacity they’re building by acquiring market share. I suspect the end won’t be pretty.

Interview with Alexandra Drane: Eliza loads for bear….

Jun 28, 2011• 2

By MATTHEW HOLT

Eliza is one of the more interesting Health 2.0 companies. It’s best known for making millions of automated (and very cute) phone calls on behalf of health insurers, employers and PBMs, but really they have a wealth of collected data that is received from and delivered to consumers over multiple channels to engage them in their health. We’ve featured them at Health 2.0 several times (and FD they’ve been a sponsor), one appearance resulted in them acquiring a fellow panel member (Sprigley) to enhance their web solutions. Like many companies that get to a decent size (somewhere between $25m & $50m in revenues) they faced the choice of getting bought or continuing on with organic growth–which they’ve done so far. Today they’ve made a third choice and taken on private equity money from Parthenon Capital.

What are they going to do with the cash? After all you might guess that there are other tools and services that health plans might be interested in. I interviewed Eliza’s President Alexandra Drane today to find out.

A Field of Dreams?

Jun 28, 2011

By VINCE KURAITIS

A study released last week by the Massachusetts Attorney Generalcontains surprising data to challenge two commonly held ACO (accountable care organization) ”Field of Dreams” assumptions. These assumptions relate to patient ”leakage” — out-of-network patient care and referrals.

1) Hospital administrators assume that tighter physician-hospital integration (e.g., through employment of physicians) will result in ”captive referrals” by physicians back to the mother-ship hospital.

2) Medicare administrators are assuming that Medicare Shared Savings ACOs will be able to coordinate patient care even without limitations on patients’ choice to go to providers outside of the ACO provider network.

Here’s the data that challenges the validity of BOTH of these assumptions:

Particularly for provider systems where hospitals and physicians are jointly at risk for the quality and cost of patients’ care, and have worked together to coordinate and improve care, we would expect to see physicians referring to their partner hospital more often. However, for the two physician-hospital provider systems in Massachusetts with the most years of experience managing referrals for HMO/POS patients under a global payment, one health insurer’s 2009 referral data shows that only 35-45% of adult inpatient care, as measured by revenue, goes to the partner hospital. That percentage can be even lower for providers with little to no experience managing where their patients receive specialist/hospital care, or under plan designs that do not require referrals. [emphasis added]

Continue reading…

Are Mystery Shoppers Such a Bad Idea for Health Care Quality Improvement?

Jun 28, 2011• 35

By KENT BOTTLES, MD

The decision by the Obama administration to employ “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients to see how difficult it is to get an appointment with a physician has sparked criticism from physicians. However, access to primary care physicians is a very real public policy issue that needs to be understood if we are to successfully care for the more than 30 million Americans who receive coverage under the Affordable Care Act.Is the use of “mystery shoppers” a bad idea?

Dr. Raymond Scalettar certainly thinks it is a bad idea. “I don’t like the idea of the government snooping. It’s a pernicious practice – Big Brother tactics, which should be opposed.”

Dr. George Petruncio says, “This is not the way to build trust in government. Why should I trust someone who does not correctly identify himself.”

Westby Fisher, MD writes in his blog: “When information gathering trumps patient care – particularly fictitious care – we’ve got a problem. Is this a new quality standard we can expect from our new government health care initiative? Just like scam-artists that phish for unsuspecting people’s financial information online, governmental appointment phishing should not be tolerated in any way, shape, or form. It is fraud – plain and simple.”

Several physicians on twitter retweeted Dr. Fisher’s blog post and indicated they agreed with his analysis.

Secret Shoppers: Needing A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows

Jun 28, 2011• 1

By BRIAN KLEPPER

Every now and then, a well-intentioned administration does something relatively harmless but so hare-brained and openly foolish that it takes our breath away. The Obama Administration’s primary care “secret shopper” plan fit this bill, and has already been shelved due to the withering criticism. My inbox a couple days ago was filled with rants by physicians of all political persuasions marveling at the lameness of the idea.

Here’s a short description from Robert Pear’s article in Sunday’s New York Times.

The administration says the survey will address a “critical public policy problem”: the increasing shortage of primary care doctors, including specialists in internal medicine and family practice. It will also try to discover whether doctors are accepting patients with private insurance while turning away those in government health programs that pay lower reimbursement rates.

That primary care access has been squeezed is hardly in question. Undervalue a critically important resource, make it a financially undesirable choice for young professionalsand – Voila! – capacity drops. Having too few primary care physicians is the result of 20 years of systematic effort by the specialist-dominated American Medical Association, with the seeming oblivious complicity of both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Ironically, a new study answering a question related to the Administration’s project’s question was released last week. Writing in New England Journal of Medicine, Bisgaier and Rhodes had research assistants pose as mothers trying to make pediatric specialty care appointments, with type of insurance as the only variable. Two-thirds (66%) of those who mentioned Medicaid/CHIP were denied appointments, compared with 11% of those who mentioned private insurance. In 89 clinics that accepted both kinds of patients, the waiting time for callers who said they had Medicaid was 22.1 days longer, on average, than for those who said they had private insurance.

Are We Ready for Global Payments?

Jun 28, 2011• 2

By DAVID HARLOW

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley released her office’s second annual report, An Examination of Health Care Cost Trends and Drivers (PDF; see also press release), which contains a wealth of critical data analysis — and also highlights how little we know about certain things — providing some important context for the discussion of the proposed Part III of Massachusetts health reform, a bill filed by Governor Patrick which would create all-payor ACOs and a system of global payments.

At this late date, few would argue against a move a way from fee-for-service reimbursement for health care, or adding quality metrics to the mix, and tying financial rewards to providers to their performance measured against these metrics. (Consider the Massachusetts Blue Cross Blue Shield ACQ (alternative quality contract) experience.) The AG’s report, however, highlights the wide disparities in payments to providers based on negotiating strength, rather than quality or cost of care (as noted in last year’s AG report; check out the 2009 special commission report, too).

Sorrell vs. IMS Health: Not a Privacy Case

Jun 27, 2011

By JIM HARPER

The Supreme Court’s decision in Sorrell vs. IMS Health is being touted in many quarters as a privacy case, and a concerning one at that. Example: Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) released a statement saying “the Supreme Court has overturned a sensible Vermont law that sought to protect the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship.” That’s a stretch.

The Vermont law at issue restricted the sale, disclosure, and use of pharmacy records that revealed the prescribing practices of doctors if that information was to be used in marketing by pharmaceutical manufacturers. Under the law, prescription drug salespeople—”detailers” in industry parlance—could not access information about doctors’ prescribing to use in focusing their efforts. As the Court noted, the statute barred few other uses of this information.

It is a stretch to suggest that this is a privacy law, given the sharply limited scope of its “protections.” Rather, the law was intended to advance the state’s preferences in the area of drug prescribing, which skew toward generic drugs rather than name brands. The Court quoted the Vermont legislature itself, finding that the purpose of the law was to thwart “detailers, in particular those who promote brand-name drugs, convey[ing] messages that ‘are often in conflict with the goals of the state.’” Accordingly, the Court addressed the law as a content- and viewpoint-oriented regulation of speech which could not survive First Amendment scrutiny (something Cato and the Pacific Legal Foundation argued for in their joint brief.)