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Health 2.0 Webinar on EMRs, meaningful use & clinical groupware

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By MATTHEW HOLT

The Health 2.0 crew is in Paris—yes Health 2.0 Europe is next week (April 6 & 7) but the Health 2.0 clock is still running in the US with conferences in Florida for physicians on April 24, and in Washington DC on June 7.

We have a special conference for physicians at the Sawgrass Marriott, Ponte Verde, FL on April 24. Health 2.0 in the Doctor’s Office is going to focus on EMRs, the ARRA & meaningful use requirements, and the emerging space of clinical groupware—modular SaaS based applications that help physician workflow, help make practices more efficient, and help physicians communicate better with patients.

In order to give a taster of what will be happening in Florida, tomorrow Tuesday 30 March at 10 am PST, 1pm EST (and yes for us 7pm Europe time), we’re going to have a version of The Health 2.0 Show with Indu & Matthew, that will focus on EMRs and clinical groupware.

The webinar will feature a discussion with three iconoclasts in the EMR world. They are:

These three have very strong opinions about physicians, their EMR use, and clinical groupware—it’s sure to be a fascinating discussion.

And the webinar is (as always) free. You can sign up here

Interview with Alex Savic, CEO of Alensa Next Widgets

By INDU SUBAIYA

Alex Savic is CEO of Alensa NextWidgets, based in Zurich, Switzerland. Alex is a repeat presenter at Health 2.0 and will be presenting an update on the NextWidgets platform at Health 2.0 Europe in Paris April 6-7, 2010. NextWidgets allows pharmacies to sell their products online directly to consumers through widgets placed on relevant content publisher websites.

Indu Subaiya: Alex, tell us a bit about yourself and our background, and what Alensa is all about.

Alex Savic: I’ve been working in the generics industry since 2000, traveling a lot to India and Eastern Europe to meet with manufacturers and inspect manufacturing facilities. Alensa was mostly in the API and finished formulations business then. So to branch out, in 2006 we started working on an e-commerce platform for pharmacies which has since evolved into the NextWidgets platform.Continue reading…

Physicians–grumpy and getting grumpier

By MATTHEW HOLT

As the careful THCB reader may have noted, we like to feature Daniel Palestrant (CEO of Sermo) and Jonathan Bush (CEO of athenahealth) relatively frequently because a) they’re both very entertaining and b) their companies are providing new types of services that aggregate both the opinions and the clinical activities of physicians. Given that physicians are very important in health care, and that I (and my Health 2.0 colleagues) think new clinical and business processes are a must, it’s well worth considering what physicians are thinking.

My impressions from observing what’s happening in Sermo is that physicians are grumpy. Grumpy with insurers, grumpy with the AMA, and grumpy with government. My sense is that about 2/3s of commenters on Sermo wish they can go to some kind of cash-only direct patient pay system, and the rest would want to go to some kind of protected salary system. Continue reading…

Healthcare’s Privacy Problem (Hint: It’s Not What You Think It Is )

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By LYGEIA RICCARDI

Picture 27 I recently applied for life insurance. The broker, whom I’ve never met, asked about my health history. “So you’ve just had a baby,” he began. I asked him how he knew. “You’re on Twitter.”

In the last couple of years concerns about the privacy of online health information have grown, as health care finally catches up to other sectors in its use of information technology (IT). The Stimulus package will pump $19.2 billion into healthcare IT, especially electronic medical records for doctors.

While technology can make your medical records safer in some ways than they’d be in a paper chart (using encryption, fire walls, audit trails, etc.), the fact is, no system is totally fail-safe. And when screw-ups happen, technology tends to super-size them. Continue reading…

The Numbers Tell The Story

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By DANIEL PALESTRANT6a00d8341c909d53ef01310f54af4d970c-320wi

Yesterday, athenahealth and Sermo released our Physician Sentiment Index℠ (PSI). With over 1,000 physicians polled, the national survey is thought to be the largest of its kind.  While many of the findings will come as no surprise to physicians in practice, the messages are nevertheless alarming.  Key findings include:

  • 64% cited the current healthcare climate as somewhat or very detrimental to their delivery of quality care
  • Only 22% are optimistic about the ability of the American physician to practice independently or in small groups
  • 59% are of the mind that the quality of medicine in America will decline in next five years; only 18% believe the quality of medicine will improve
  • The majority (54%) strongly disagree/disagree that more active government involvement in healthcare regulation can improve outcomes; less than a quarter feel otherwise
  • A shift from fee-for-service to pay-for-performance gives hope to almost half (49%) who think it will have a very/somewhat positive impact quality of care but;
    • 53 percent believe pay-for-performance will have a negative/very negative impact on the effort required to get paid

View full PSI survey results (PDF)

Working with athenahealth and THCB, Sermo plans to publicize these findings to help the general public understand what is really happening in our healthcare system today and establish a sentiment indicator that can generate longitudinal trend data in this area.  In the next phase of the athenahealth-Sermo relationship, we’ll be building off these findings to explore ways that physicians can run their practices more efficiently and level the playing field with insurers.

Daniel Palestrant, MD is the Founder & CEO of Sermo, Inc.  A frequent contributor to THCB, his work also appears on the FtF blog at Sermo.com, where this piece first appeared.

Op-Ed: After Reform

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By GARY S. CAMPBELL, CEO Centura Health System

Gary Campbell

Our current national health policy is certainly not the result of a well-conceived, comprehensive approach to health care; rather it is the result of decades of incremental legislation, regulation, and market changes. Put this antiquated legacy system against the backdrop of the worst economic crisis in 80 years, the cost of health care approaching 20 percent of our gross domestic product, health insurance premiums in Colorado approaching 20 percent of median income, and the burning platform for change looks more like a raging inferno. While the national health care reform enacted this week is historic in its proportions, it will by no means be a panacea. The passage of national health care reform legislation, as President Obama, states, “is not radical reform, but it is major reform. This legislation will not fix everything that ails our health care system. But it moves us decisively in the right direction.” Over the next few years, there will be tens of thousands of pages of rules and regulations that will interpret the 2,000+ page legislation and spell out more clearly how it will be administered. So it is impossible to determine with certainty today exactly how the legislation will affect us in the future. But against a backdrop of five fundamental issues that must form the basis of a rational national health policy, we can assess how far we have come and how much more there is to do:

Continue reading…

Health Reform: A Class Act

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By THOMAS GREANEY, St. Louis University School of Law

Tim-greaney A few headlines from coverage of the passage of the health reform bill:

Winners, Losers in the House Healthcare Bill (Reuters)

Health Reform: What’s in it for you? (US News) 

Already Insured? Get Ready to Pay More (CBS)

Almost immediately after the House vote on Sunday, the media switched its “horse race” coverage from analyzing the politics of the affair to what it characterized as a clash of economic classes. Analysts were often quick to suggest that the average American might find himself in the loser column.  Others offered the conventional  ”on the one hand, on the other hand” pseudo-journalism, probably leaving most to assume (not unreasonably, based on their experience under trickle-down economics) that they have little to gain.  And inevitably, confusion spawns cynicism: The first question on Monday from my 91 year old uncle  was:  ”Do I still have Medicare?”Continue reading…

Database of Bad Doctors Blocks Public From Seeing Names

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By JIM MORRIS, Staff Writer, The Center For Public Integrity

Picture 26In the mid-1980s, incompetent and negligent doctors were moving freely between states, with state licensing boards and hospitals largely oblivious to lawsuits or disciplinary actions in other locations that might have flagged bad providers.

In response, Congress passed the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986, which created the National Practitioner Data Bank, a repository of information that includes malpractice payments, license revocations and loss of clinical privileges for physicians, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists and other professionals . “The NPDB is primarily an alert or flagging system intended to facilitate a comprehensive review of health care practitioners’ professional credentials,” says the Department of Health and Human Services, which maintains it.Continue reading…

A Tribute to Austin Ross

By GARY S. KAPLAN, MD, Chairman and CEO Virginia Mason Medical Center

The selection of Austin Ross for the Modern Healthcare Hall of Fame is fitting. His ideas on leading and managing in health care – which he’s written about extensively in books and articles dating back to 1959 – laid the foundation for successful health care administration nationwide.  His leadership has guided me and countless other health care leaders and administrators across the country.

Virginia Mason was privileged to benefit from Austin’s expertise for most of his 36 year career. He came to what was then Virginia Mason Hospital and Clinic in Seattle as an administrative resident in 1955 after completing his MPH degree from the University of California, Berkeley. By 1968 he was the hospital administrator and in 1977 he became executive administrator, a position he held until his retirement in 1991. Austin’s leadership is credited with putting Virginia Mason in the national spotlight as a foremost example of how to integrate a multi-specialty group practice with a hospital.Continue reading…

What you don’t know about the Netherlands is your loss!

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By DENISE SILBER

Denise Silber, founder of Basil Strategies (Health 2.0’s Partner in Europe) interviewed Chris Flim, Health 2.0 Europe Ambassador to the Netherlands, in Barcelona during eHealthWeek where Denise presented in the Health 2.0 session organized by Miguel Cabrer (Health 2.0 Europe Ambassador to Spain). Chris is looking forward to attending Health 2.0 Europe and, if you listen to the brief video, you will learn one important thing about the Netherlands and Health 2.0 which will make you proud to be Dutch and probably jealous if you are not.

Health 2.0 Europe’s Denise Silber interviews Chris Flim

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