The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has announced a new call for proposals for Project HealthDesign: Rethinking the Power and Potential of Personal Health Records, a $10-million national program to stimulate innovations in personal health information technology. Project HealthDesign will host a series of two informational web seminars for potential applicants. The first on April 29th at 2PM EST. The second on May 7th. For more information and to register: http://www.projecthealthdesign.org
Above the Fold
Interview with Sage Software, Lindy Benton, COO & Maureen Peszko, SVP
Lindy Benton, COO & Maureen Peszko Senior Vice President, Strategy and Business Development at Sage
Software, at the
HIMSS conference April 3, 2009
Commentology:
Microsoft's, Bill Crounse, said this about David Kibbe's article, "The Parable of the Wicked EMR."
"Excellent, well written piece, David. Thanks for sharing your insights. It is important to not only meet the regulatory and privacy requirements associated with health data, but also expectations around its intended use. EMR or PHR data is just data unless it contributes to user knowledge. EHRs and PHRs don't add value unless they improve our understanding of health status and direct us toward health improvement."
Harvard Pilgrim's, Charlie Baker had this to say about Anne Tumlinson's article, "Reforming Long-Term Care and Post-Acute Care Could Save Billions."
"I've
written about the extraordinary lack of connectivity between Medicaid
and Medicare when it comes to long term care for dual eligible seniors
many times at www.letstalkhealthcare.org. Medicare & Medicaid are
their own worst enemies – and do senior citizens a tremendous
disservice – when it comes to financing care for seniors who are
eligible for both programs. There's a problem here that needs to be
solved."
Community: Online Bone Marrow Drive
I am a first-year medical student,
president of the Yale Medical Student Council, and a reader of the Health Care
Blog. I am writing to make you aware of an effort among members of my
class to increase registration for bone marrow donation. This was
inspired by a classmate, Natasha Collins, who has recurrent leukemia
and requires a bone marrow transplant. A major issue is that Natasha is
of mixed ethnic background, making it particularly difficult to find
her a match.Members of my class have been very active in trying to increase
awareness of the need for bone marrow donors – they have organized an
online bone marrow drive, and achieved some degree of publicity via
Facebook , YouTube, and local media coverage.I think this story may be of interest for your readers. For me and
many of my classmates, who are training to be future physicians,
Natasha provided a different perspective on disease and the ways we can
try to help a sick patient or friend – not only by medical
interventions, but by social networking and publicity. If I can provide
any further information, or if you'd like to contact anyone else
involved, please let me know.
Op-Ed: Patients first. Doctors second.
As part of the recently enacted stimulus bill the federal government is spending $19 billion to promote the adoption of electronic medical records by physicians. Yet, with all the focus on doctors, lawmakers have forgotten the most critical piece of the puzzle — patients.
Take the case of Joe (not his real name), a patient who came to see one of us recently. Joe is a thirty-something year-old with type 1 diabetes. After a rebellious few decades that included dozens of hospitalizations, he was finally re-engaged in his care. His most recent request — to access his electronic medical record. Joe wanted to track his hemoglobin A1c, an important marker of his diabetes, follow his blood pressure and take a closer look at his cholesterol. After all, it is his information in the clinic's commercially available electronic medical record. Sadly, his request couldn't be honored. Patient-access features simply hadn't been built in.
Health information technology offers great promise to patients. Patients can access their medical information online, communicate with doctors by email, schedule appointments through the web and take advantage of numerous tools to manage their own illnesses. They can become equal partners in their care.
Medicity, CEO Kip Lassetter and SVP Robert Connely
Medicity, CEO Kip Lassetter & SVP Robert Connely talk about the
Medicity/Novo merger and what the combined company does. Interviewed by
Matthew Holt for The Health Care Blog, April 3, 2009 at HIMSS
Medicine’s Missing Foundation for Health Care Reform
Preface by Michael Millenson: Lawrence L. Weed published a seminal article in the Archives of Internal Medicine on using the medical record to improve patient care back in January, 1971.
To give you an idea of how glacially the health care system changes, that same issue contained an article entitled, “Universal Health Insurance is the Wave of the Future,” by New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, and another, “What Possible Use Can Computers Be to Medicine?” by a Duke University physician that began this way: “The physician's attitude toward computing machinery has changed greatly in the last ten years. A bright future is predicted for its application within medicine.”
In an era when the autonomy of the individual physicians was nearly unchallenged, Weed boldly asserted that “modern data acquisition and retrieval systems” could help doctors make more accurate diagnoses and provide “proper care” more effectively. Weed has continued that same fight ever since, later joined by his son, attorney Lincoln Weed. In the process he has acquired neither fame, popularity or riches — merely become legendary to a small segment of us familiar with his work.
ABSTRACT: Medical practice lacks a foundation in scientific behavior corresponding to its foundation in scientific knowledge. The missing foundation involves standards of care to govern how practitioners manage clinical information. These standards of care, roughly analogous to accounting standards for managing financial information, are essential to exploit the enormous potential of health information technology. Moreover, without these standards and corresponding information tools, evidence-based medicine in its current form is unworkable. Medical practice has failed to adopt the necessary standards and tools, because its historical development has diverged from the paths taken in the domains of science and commerce. The culture of medicine tolerates unnecessary dependence on the personal intellects of practitioners. This dependence has blocked the use of potent information tools, and isolated medicine from forces of feedback and accountability, that operate in the domains of science and commerce. If the necessary standards and tools are adopted, health care cost and quality could become an arena of continuous improvement, rather than a quagmire of intractable dilemmas.
A.D.A.M., Inc Launches New iPhone Application, Medzio
This past week at the Health 2.0 conference, A.D.A.M., Inc demoed their recently launched iphone application Medzio, which connects users with a network of healthcare services and free expert health advice. It's a very cool application and an exciting new
tool. Click the link below to be taken directly to Apple itunes Store, where you can check out the application for yourself.
Roni Zeiger on what Google Health is doing next
For those of you who weren’t at Health 2.0 Meets Ix to hear from the mouths of the four horsemen (Halamka, Sands, Zeiger & deBronkhart) here is Google’s Roni Zeiger’s version of what went wrong with the “incorrect data from BIDMC to Google Health” story and what they’re going to do to fix it.
Capstone conference, May 14: Fresh thinking on health care reform
Matthew’s note: imagine that several of your intellectual health care policy wonk heroes were teaming up with at least one big time industry player that you sometimes love to hate, but who’s always a great source of thinking. Imagine that they were getting together in an intimate setting to spend a day focusing on health care reform. Imagine that two of them are behind the two ideas you consider the best for the future of health care in the US. And it’s all just down the street from you. Then imagine that because of a prior client commitment you can’t go. Now you know how I feel, but it doesn't have to be that way for you!
The Capstone Conference: Fresh Thinking on Health Care Reform will bring together influential health care reform professionals from academia, industry and government for a day of presentations and discussion. The Conference represents the culminating activity of the FRESH-Thinking Project, which has conducted eight workshops over three years on health care reform.
Thursday, May 14, 2009 at the Quadrus Conference Center, 2400 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park, CA from 9:30 am – 5:30 pm
TOPICS of INTEREST:
* Prospects for National Health Care Reform* Funding and Access to Health Care* Organization And Delivery Of Medical Care* Fostering Innovation In a Value–Conscious Environment* What Health Care Reform Means to Physicians, Employers and the Public?
The panel is stellar: Alain Enthoven, Victor Fuchs, Alan Garber, Leonard Schaeffer, John Shoven, & Wallace R. Hawley. For more information, www.fresh-thinking.org.
Write and tell me how it was. Or if you can be there and can write for THCB, let me know
