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Above the Fold

NDM-1: Why Should the U.S. Care?

Oct 14, 2010• 3

By RAMANAN LAXMINARAYAN and HELLEN GELBAND

Why should the United States care about health problems in distant, poor countries when there are pressing priorities here at home? It’s a classic question. People trying to influence policy have never trusted humanitarianism to carry the day and have instead appealed to the self-interest of U.S. citizens. When it comes to health, U.S. travelers heading to foreign lands for tourism or work need protection from disease or at least the promise of a cure when they return home. Of utmost concern, the military sends large numbers of troops where they are in danger not only from armed conflict, but also from exotic (and often dangerous) diseases.

But no tropical disease can make as clear a case for U.S. self-interest as antibiotic resistance can: witness the furor over NDM-1—the resistance gene that seems to have arisen in patients on the Indian subcontinent. Was the furor over a health problem in India and Pakistan? No. The news that hit U.S. and European newspapers was over the report about NDM-1 in Lancet Infectious Diseases that identified people in England who had had surgery in India—“medical tourists”—as victims, and warned that the UK National Health Service might suffer financially because patients coming home had to be hospitalized and treated with expensive antibiotics to cure their infections. These just as easily could have been Americans—and now they are: NDM-1 was found in three U.S. medical tourists (and one Japanese man) on their return from India.

Care Coordination Metrics: One Can of Worms that NEEDS to be Opened

Oct 14, 2010

By VINCE KURAITIS

“Track who is on a care team — and share info with the patient.”

That’s just one of the summary recommendations coming from expert testimony given in a recent public hearing on how to improve care coordination through the use of health information technology. The Meaningful Use workgroup and Quality Measures workgroups are now wrestling with how to translate this recommendation into meaningful use criteria for HITECH Stages 2 and 3.

Seems like a good idea — simple, straightforward — perhaps even obvious. The EHR (electronic health record) could be a great tool for keeping care team members in the loop and on the same page about a patient’s care.

But then I thought about this for a few minutes, and the complexities started dawning. This seemingly simple recommendation — “Track who is on a care team and share info with the patient” — is the proverbial can of worms.

ACOs and the Looming Antitrust Crisis

Oct 14, 2010• 2

By DAVID DRANOVE

The Federal Trade Commission recently held a day-long workshop focusing on Accountable Care Organizations. ACOs will vertically integrate hospitals and doctors and, in the process, achieve what previous incarnations of vertical integration could not. Let’s forget about whether ACOs will actually fulfill the dream of efficient healthcare delivery and focus on the FTC angle – will the creation of ACOs require the creation of provider market power and should he FTC therefore look the other way?

Many health economists have documented the perils of provider market power. Some of my own research has been instrumental in turning the tide against providers, whose monopolizing tendencies used to get a free pass from the courts. But as policy makers move ACOs to the fore, providers are hoping to sweep antitrust under the rug.

The latest salvo comes from the AHA, which last week released a study challenging two recent studies of hospital market power and then strains to connect their findings to ACOs. The AHA report goes a bit overboard in its criticism of these studies. One study consists of little more than anecdotes and should not be criticized for being anything else. The other study is more complex and the criticism is equally complex, mostly along the lines of “if you had measured things slightly differently, your results would have been slightly different.” The AHA report would have readers believe that these two studies represent the entire body of knowledge about hospital mergers. Having summarily dismissed them, the argument against FTC enforcement would seem complete.

The True Health 2.0 Unmentionables

Oct 14, 2010• 3

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

At the recent Health 2.0 Conference, an unusual session highlighted the health importance of such “unmentionables” as job stress, marital worries and sexual dysfunction. However, despite the moderator’s inexplicable pride in a panelist’s mention of “vagina” – a topic certainly not lacking for Internet attention, albeit under more colloquial synonyms – the truly unmentionable subject was not sex, but the link between social class and health.

Unlike sex, talking openly about age and class distinctions makes most Americans squirm uncomfortably. Still, a number of speakers showed they understood that one of Health 2.0’s biggest challenges is proving itself useful to the population most in need of its help.

To start with, that means the elderly. Age brings an increased susceptibility to disease: half of Medicare beneficiaries are receiving care for one of six chronic conditions. Similarly, income is one of the most powerful predictors of health status. Those in the bottom 80 percent of adult income earners have an adjusted life expectancy almost 6 years shorter than those in the top 20 percent.

From that population perspective, two presentations stood out. The first was the partnership between Geisinger Health System and dLife. The second, for very different reasons, was the unveiling of Sharecare.

Republican Economics as Social Darwinism

Oct 14, 2010• 27

By ROBERT REICH

John Boehner, the Republican House leader who will become Speaker if Democrats lose control of the House in the upcoming midterms, recently offered his solution to the current economic crisis: “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. People will work harder, lead a more moral life.”

Actually, those weren’t Boehner’s words. They were uttered by Herbert Hoover’s treasury secretary, millionaire industrialist Andrew Mellon, after the Great Crash of 1929.

But they might as well have been Boehner’s because Hoover’s and Mellon’s means of purging the rottenness was by doing exactly what Boehner and his colleagues are now calling for: shrink government, cut the federal deficit, reduce the national debt, and balance the budget.

And we all know what happened after 1929, at least until FDR reversed course.

San Francisco 2010: First Life Research at Health 2.0

Oct 14, 2010• 1

By Bianca Grogan

In the coming days and weeks we’re going to start rolling out a lot of video from last week’s Health 2.0 Conference held in San Francisco, CA on October 7-8, 2010. There is a ton of material to show you. But we’re going to start with one of the more remarkable demos at the conference. This is Gideon Mantel, Co-Founder and Chairman of First Life Research showing his company’s search capabilities which are able to comb millions of user-generated posts and comments to spot emergent trends in health experiences. His two examples are early detection of side effects in pharmaceuticals, but when you understand what they are doing, you’ll be amazed not only at the technology but also at the potential for converting messy narrative into actionable information.

Tugging on Superman’s Cape

Oct 12, 2010• 6

By BOB WACHTER, MD

Several years ago, I spoke at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where Michael DeBakey, the legendary heart surgeon, was master of the universe for nearly half a century. I heard lots of DeBakey stories during my visit, but one in particular really stuck with me. “A few years back,” someone told me in a voice of hushed reverence usually reserved for descriptions of flawless beach days and single malt scotch, “he performed 16 open heart operations in a single day.” This was clearly intended to impress, but all I could think was, “Boy, I wouldn’t want to be patient #16.”

Lacking any information to help us understand when fatigue trumps even legendary prowess, such monumental tales of endurance can take on Man of Steel proportions. But a recent study in the Journal of the American College of Radiology may be the start of efforts to trim Superman’s cape.

Researchers from the Universities of Arizona and Iowa observed radiologists as they reviewed a handpicked set of 60 bone x-rays, half with fractures and half without. As their eight-hour workdays wore on, the radiologists’ accuracy fell by an average of 4%, with equal drops in sensitivity (missing a true fracture) and specificity (incorrectly calling a fracture when there was none). The degradation in performance was statistically significant.

First Bend in the Health Care Cost Curve

Oct 12, 2010• 14

By PAUL LEVY

Recent trends in radiology imaging portend a dramatic and rapid reduction in this segment of a hospital’s business plan. Even before capitated (or global) payments have come into full play, there has been a large reduction in the number of some types of imaging studies in hospitals.

Our Chief of Radiology summarizes our experience — common to other hospitals as well — and provides some of the reasons.

The biggest hit has been in CT, the modality we are most dependent on for revenue. We are about 10% down in CT cases from last year, due to a combination of patient and physician fears about radiation exposure, more prudent ordering of studies by physicians, leakage out of the medical center, and the introduction of physician incentive programs (to minimize the amount of imaging) by some insurers.

Also, and very surprising, we have not seen an upswing in ultrasound or MRI to match the CT volume drop. We have, however, seen an increase in the number of patients arriving with their scans on CD ROMS having been imaged at other lower priced vendors. We don’t bill for these interpretations even though we are frequently asked to reinterpret the studies for our clinicians, and BIDMC is paying to store these images on our PACS systems.

By the way, this occurred while our overall patient volume increased during the same period.

The result of these trends will be to reduce the number of radiologists working in hospitals, and there will also probably result in a reduction of salaries for this physician specialty.

Paul Levy is the President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Paul recently became the focus of much media attention when he decided to publish infection rates at his hospital, despite the fact that under Massachusetts law he is not yet required to do so. For the past three years he has blogged about his experiences in an online journal, Running a Hospital, one of the few blogs we know of maintained by a senior hospital executive.

Northwestern Memorial Hospital Faces a Brave New World

Oct 11, 2010• 19

By David Dranove

If you have read my earlier blogs, you know that I am writing a book about the organization of healthcare delivery. A recent story in the Chicago Tribune reminds me that I need to keep my nose to the grindstone. The article told of changes underway at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. In order to prepare for new payment models, the medical staff and hospital want to create something along the lines of an Accountable Care Organization. The ACO will accept an “all-in” fee for treatment of specific conditions. The ACO makes money if it can keep costs under the fee and receives bonuses if quality objectives are met. The ACO model, or versions of it, have floated around for some time, and prepayment is certainly not new. What is new is that payers will now prepay for all costs associated with episodes of care, as opposed to prepaying hospitals for inpatient stays, or prepaying primary care physicians for a year of primary care.

The ACO model tries to better align the payment modality with the “product” that patients would naturally purchase. This should, in theory, lead to a matching of incentives with production. Hospital prepayment leads to a shift to outpatient care. Primary care physician prepayment leads to too much hospital care. Episode of illness prepayment should eliminate these gaming incentives.

Northwestern Memorial and its medical staff still face a dilemma. Should they create a new third legal entity to accept the prepayment, or should the prepayment go directly to the hospital or medical foundation? More importantly, should the hospital and medical foundation become partners in the new venture, or, more radically, unite into a single entity without creating the new entity? Healthcare executives have not always approached this question in the most thoughtful manner, as this short film painfully shows. (Painfully funny if you approach it with the right mindset.)

Integration has many positive connotations, and executives who create new integrated organizations can usually keep their boards at bay. This may explain why so many executives are eager to integrate. But integration comes with numerous challenges. It will take an entire book to make this argument clear, but consider the following two questions. First, what happens when physicians switch from being entrepreneurs to being employees? Second, accepting all-in capitated payments turns the ACO into a de facto insurance company. Will the ACO have the capabilities to be an effective insurer? I hope that Northwestern Memorial does not face the future with its eyes wide shut. Many hospitals have fared quite poorly by jumping on the integration bandwagon without understanding the risks.

David Dranove is the Walter McNerney Distinguished Professor of Health Industry Management at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management, where he is also Professor of Management and Strategy and Director of the Health Enterprise Management Program. He has published over 80 research articles and book chapters and written five books, including "The Economic Evolution of American Healthcare and Code Red". He has a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.

The Massachusetts Connector: Success or Just a PR Coup?

Oct 11, 2010• 13

By ROGER COLLIER

With the passage of insurance exchange legislation in California, and the release of a template for state exchange statutes by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, many state eyes are turning towards the only existing exchange comparable to that required by PPACA: Massachusetts’ Connector.

The Connector, which offers Commonwealth Care subsidized coverage for those with incomes below 300 percent of FPL but not eligible for Medicaid, and Commonwealth Choice private plans for other families and individuals and small employer groups, has been touted as a major success by current and former Commonwealth officials and many national reform advocates.

But, after four years of operation, just how successful has the Connector really been? Has it simplified health plan choice and enrollment, increased the number of insured, reduced marketing costs, created competition, or driven down premiums? It turns out that the answers are far less positive than the Connector’s boosters have admitted.

HAS THE CONNECTOR SIMPLIFIED PLAN SELECTION AND ENROLLMENT?

For some, at least.

For the 33,000-enrollee unsubsidized CommChoice program the answer is yes. Health plan selection and enrollment for the seven plans (with six levels of benefits each) is directly available via the Connector website, with simple well-designed screens and navigation, and easy comparison of alternatives. Even so, only half of thepost-reform non-subsidized insured have chosen coverage via CommChoice.