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Health 2.0 in Europe: Couldn’t? Wouldn’t? Does!

Dec 13, 2009

By Denise Silber

They said it couldn’t happen in Europe, that social media and online tools wouldn’t catch on, because the healthcare context was soooo different from the US. They said that Europeans don’t worry about access and cost, that they aren’t looking for information online because they they trust their doctors utterly and fully, and that European doctors don’t go online, except if they're Scandinavian.

Well, it just isn’t so! True collective intelligence will tell you that participatory medicine is a natural human instinct and that Health 2.0 is kicking up a storm in Europe this winter! Consumers and professionals are generating content everywhere, even though they don't necessarily cross language or country borders. Unfortunately, no one European organization is studying consumer health Internet usage trends on the same basis year after year, as is the Pew Foundation in the U.S. Nonetheless, there is empiric proof; during the current flu epidemic, information from informal sources in Europe is fully surpassing official data. Wikipedia is cited in a recent study by Manhattan Research as one of the most regularly used sites for physicians and consumers across Europe. Private initiative has generated many significant consumer/patient communities, several major physician community portals, online consultation sites, and more.

But, while users are generally "with it", Europe institutions are not. What is at stake is the future of ill-prepared healthcare organizations and institutions and the regulated healthcare industries.

The one hundred– a Boston Cancer Fundraiser

Dec 13, 2009• 14

Earlier this month, the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center opened nominations for its annual gala honoring those who have stood out in the fight against cancer, the one hundred. Each year, one hundred people from all walks of life are honored by the Boston-based hospital for a variety of achievements. Doctors, nurses and researchers have been recognized for ground-breaking research and stellar patient care while those outside of the medical community, like Susan Zuker, were recognized for lobbying the state legislature for a vanity license plate that would raise money for cancer research, or the Boston-based “Cops for Kids with Cancer” program that supports families with children who have cancer. Last year, Elizabeth Edwards was also honored and was the keynote speaker of the gala. To nominate someone you think should be recognized for their outstanding fight against cancer, visit here

Better Care Through Clinical Trials

Dec 13, 2009• 13

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By DOUGLAS BLAYNEY, MD

Amid hundreds of amendments offered in the health care reform debate, there is a non-partisan, non-controversial gem that will both help patients and speed the search for new cures to deadly diseases.

Senators Sherrod Brown [D-OH] and Kay Bailey Hutchison [R-TX] have proposed an amendment that would encourage patients with life-threatening diseases or conditions to participate in clinical trials by requiring private insurers to cover patients’ routine care. It is essential that the Senate pass this amendment as part of health care reform.

As a cancer physician, I can speak to the benefits of clinical trials in my field of oncology. Virtually every advance in cancer prevention, screening, and treatment over the last 40 years can be traced directly to clinical trials – colonoscopies; curative treatment for testicular cancer; improved survival for most pediatric cancers; chemotherapy after surgery to prevent recurrence; new personalized therapies that target specific characteristics of cancer cells; and symptom management. Thanks primarily to the knowledge gained through clinical trials, today two-thirds of cancer patients survive at least five years after diagnosis, compared with only half in the 1970s.Continue reading…

Your Money or Your Wife

Dec 11, 2009• 33

By JD Kleinke

Talk about perfect timing. Just as the last “death panel” falsettos fade into the droning no-government- takeover chorus, along come those “faceless government bureaucrats” from the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force to stop the music in the nation’s busy and profitable mammography suites.

No more breast self-exams or mammograms for low-risk women under 50; mammograms only every other year after the age of 50; nothing for any woman over 74. That was the thunderclap pronouncement from the acrobatically acronymic USPSTF, the dreaded “they” from the gub’mint that has the folks at Fox in full fulmination.Continue reading…

Program Director Healthcare IT

Dec 10, 2009

Since its inception, the New England Healthcare Institute has been committed to the identification, assessment and promotion of valuable health care technologies with the potential to improve the quality of care while reducing cost. The Fast Assessment and Adoption of Significant Technologies (FAST) initiative, conducted in partnership with the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, has been at the core of our work to promote innovation in health care and, among others, has resulted in the identification of computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and tele-ICU programs as key elements of health information technology policy at the private, state and federal levels.

Position Summary

NEHI is seeking a Program Director – Technology with rich experience in the health care technologies to play a critical role in the continued development of NEHI’s portfolio of health care technology projects. As health care technology receives greater attention for its ability to significantly improve health care quality and lower costs as part of state and national health reform effort, the Program Director – Technology has the opportunity to catapult the promise of FAST to the national stage and brand NEHI as a national thought leader in the advancement of promising, underused innovations.

This is a full-time position and an outstanding opportunity for candidates with strong health information technology experience to work with senior leaders from all across the health care community to drive change in a fast-paced, team-oriented environment. Ideal candidates bring a blend of skills – problem solving, intellectual curiosity, collaboration – to their work at NEHI. Download job description. (PDF)

Senate Compromise on Health Care Reform: Political Genius?

Dec 10, 2009• 13

By JOE FLOWER

Democrat Roland Burris, the sudden senator who replaced Barack Obama in that august body, has now joined those who are pledging to filibuster any bill that does not have a “public option” – joining of course those, like Connecticut’s infigurable Joe Lieberman who will filibuster if it does have a “public option.” But the compromise that is brewing may turn all such pledges inside out. The compromise would allow 55 to 65-year-olds to buy into Medicare, while letting under-55s without insurance into the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan, along with mandates to buy in, and subsidies for those who can’t afford it. If this does indeed emerge, liberal Democrats in both houses may have some trouble defining what they mean by the “public option” they are so strongly demangin. Is it a “public option” for 55-and-overs if they can buy into Medicare? Sure sounds like it – a government-run plan that people can buy into, in competition with private plans. Is it a “public option” if the federal Office of Personnel Management runs an exchange called the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP) setting the rules and transparency for private plans, with subsidies and tax credits for those 54 and under who can’t afford a health plan?Sounds close, but not quite. Close enough for confusion, at least.

Convergence and the Death of the Public Option

Dec 10, 2009• 9

By TIM GREANEY

So maybe the two parties are coming together on health reform after all. Last night we learned that after days of “secret talks” among the “gang of ten” the Democrats have reached agreement to restructure their health care proposal. The changes are significant:

– ditch the already-watered-down public option plan;

– create a new insurance exchange “option” for individuals and small groups consisting of a nonprofit plan as negotiated by the Office of Personnel Management;

– expand Medicare eligibility to cover uninsured individuals aged 55-64.

What does the Democrats’ “public option ultralight” compromise have in common with Republicans’ alternative universe? Well, consider the latter’s proposal to open interstate competition for all health insurers–a move they promise will immediately lower health care costs. Besides being shameless attempts to offer simple solutions to complex problems, the two proposals are guilty of the same fundamental misunderstanding of health insurance. Simply put, they both ignore a critical economic truth of health insurance today: insurers require a provider network of hospitals and doctors or must have market leverage in order to negotiate for lower provider prices and for controls on excessive volume.

Making (sh)it up as they go along

Dec 9, 2009• 9

By Matthew Holt

So today’s news is that the gang of ten have come up with something. (If you haven’t been following along, the gang of ten are the five “liberal” Democrats and the five DINOs asked by Harry Reid to come up with something to break the deadlock and get some type of compromise that will pass the Senate). More details are here from Brian Beutler at TPM

So it might vanish like a Clinton-era trial balloon, or it might be a stayer, but the core of the new concept is to allow the 55–64 crowd to buy into Medicare, and to ask/allow/mandate a non-profit insurer(s) to provide a substitute public option. Exactly what the second point means is unclear to me. It may turn out to be some collapsing of Kent Conrad’s notion of the cooperative with an extension of the Federal Employees’ Plan (presumably minus the for-profit carriers) and somehow cramming that into the exchange. Of course providing something like the choice among private plans that Federal Employees now get was at the heart of Ron Wyden’s plan. We’ll see if it can last a couple of days scrutiny, or the wrath of the House Democrats.

The Medicare buy-in seems both sensible politics and half-decent policy.

Pelosi’s Hidden Tort Bomb — an Alternative View

Dec 8, 2009• 17

by Charles Silver & David A. Hyman

We once thought Democrats would accept tort reform to win Republicans’ support for national health care legislation. Now, however, Democrats have dispensed with bipartisanship. Perhaps they think they can ram health care legislation through without any Republican backing. Perhaps the price required to obtain even a few Republican votes was too high. Perhaps Democrats received too much pressure from the trial bar. Whatever the reason, neither the bill passed by the House nor the bill pending in the Senate contains any of the tort reform provisions Republicans want. To the contrary, the House health care bill is anti-tort reform.

Not only does it reject the entire slate of lawsuit restrictions Representative John Boehner put forward in the Republican alternative to the Democrats’ bill; it contains a provision that will reward states for scrapping damages caps and other tort reforms many already have in place. This provision flew beneath the radar during the House debate, but the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal condemned it after the vote took place. Describing the provision as a “hidden Pelosi tort bomb ,” the Journal editors predicted that “[i]f it passes in anything like its current form, we are going to be cleaning up the mess for decades to come.”

Most predictions that the sky will fall are wrong. This one is wrong as well.

Abortion Should Not Imperil Health Care Reform

Dec 8, 2009• 9

By MELISSA REED

The House vote to establish near-universal health-care coverage came at a steep cost to women. That cost, issued as an amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), eliminates abortion coverage by private insurance companies even when women are paying for all or most of the premium.

Stupak’s amendment is a cynical attempt to push an anti-choice agenda that imperils badly needed reform. His amendment restricts women’s access to abortion coverage in the private health insurance market as well as in a “public option,” undermining the ability of women to purchase private health plans that cover abortion. It reaches much further than the Hyde Amendment, which has prohibited public funding of abortion in most instances since 1977.Continue reading…