The Health Care Blog – Page 939 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

Above the Fold

Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General? Not so fast.

Jan 8, 2009• 15

By VAL JONES MD

Sguptalarge150x150 This week’s news that Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s medical correspondent, is being considered for the office of
Surgeon General by President-elect Obama came as quite a shock to me. I’ve met and interviewed 3 of the
recent Surgeons General over the past few years. Of course, I like
Sanjay Gupta as a reporter. He’s a fine communicator and does a good
job covering subjects for a consumer audience. But I don’t think he has
the gravitas or appropriate experience for the role of Surgeon General
of the United States.

I spoke with one source close to the nomination proceedings, and he
said that most senior people were secretly disappointed with the
choice. My source requested that I not reveal his name.

If Sanjay Gupta is confirmed as Surgeon General he will
achieve the immediate rank of admiral, even though he has no previous
military or public health experience whatsoever. It will be difficult
for Gupta to be taken seriously by peers at the Pentagon and State
Department. The office of Surgeon General is a very important position
given only to the most senior and experienced medical professionals
with decades of achievements in their fields. Gupta is a good reporter,
he should consider a role in public relations for the U.S. government,
not the office of Surgeon General.

The Five Myths of Healthcare Reform

Jan 8, 2009• 5

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI

The arguments that the widespread use of health information technology (HIT), improving health status, expanding outcomes research, implementing pay-for-performance systems, and covering everyone will make it possible for us to afford comprehensive health care reform are commonly cited by people on both sides of the political aisle. It’s all a myth.

Undoubtedly, these ideas will be at the core of any number of health care reform proposals as we begin the 2009 health care reform effort.There is nothing wrong with any of these things and all can make a positive contribution toward improving both the cost of and especially the quality in our health care system. All should be part of a reform proposal.The problem is that none of them would make more than a modest dent in what a reformed system would cost us and not come anywhere near close to
accomplishing the objective of stabilizing our health care costs much less reducing them.

Commentology

Jan 8, 2009

Longtime THCB reader Barry Carol writes in on Matthew’s "Shocker …"

"Most hospital CEO’s, especially those who oversee academic medical centers, would probably tell you that their profit margins are quite low and that they could not make ends meet or continue to provide the quality of care they do now if they had to accept Medicare rates from all comers, even with no uncompensated care …"

David Kibbe continued the ongoing dialogue on the thread on the "Rebooting Health IT" series he is co-authoring with Brian Klepper.

"Having thoughtful physicians like yourself enter the debate and
discussion is one of the primary reasons that Brian Klepper and I are
doing these blogs on re-thinking health IT! Thanks for your input,
which I think is brilliant … Let’s not forget the story of John Snow and the removal of the Broad
Street pump handle, during the deadly cholera outbreak in London in
1854. While all the experts were debating the causes of the infection
and what to do about it, Dr. Snow had the simplest and most direct
answer of all: remove access to the offending source of the calamity."

Shocker–Karen Ignagni almost tells the truth

Jan 8, 2009• 21

The NY Times’ Robert Pear has an article on the politics of the Obama Administration introducing a public plan as part of FEHBP.

As you might expect a boat load of Republicans who were told in grade school that private is good and public is bad are concerned about this causing the demise of private health plans–even though that would clearly benefit the country. Of course Pete Stark is quite happy to say that it’s not that Medicare underpays (as Charlie Baker said here last week), but it’s that private plans over pay.

So why is that the case? Well you knew that I couldn’t resist the appearance of my favorite lobbyist. Here’s what Karen Ignagni says, and — this is the shocker– it’s half true.

Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health
Insurance Plans, a trade group, said the consolidation of the hospital
industry in the last seven or eight years had increased the market
power of hospitals, thereby reducing the ability of insurers to
negotiate discounts.

Actually it’s been more
like twelve to fifteen years since big players started merging (IFTF’s
Ellen Morrison wrote a great report about that in 1994 called "The Six Americas").
By the late 1990s Sutter, for example, was facing down Blue Cross of
California on price and winning. And of course in Boston Partners was
getting bigger and bigger, and facing down Blue Cross and the other plans. (Leading occasional THCB contributor and Beth Israel Deaconess CEO Paul Levy to become a big whiner, according to Partners Chairman Jack Connors). So Karen is telling the truth.

Poizner: talks tough, wimps out WITH UPDATE

Jan 7, 2009• 16

By Matthew Holt

Previously in the long running retroactive insurance cancellation story I’d accused Steve Poizner (yes, the only Republican I’ve ever voted for and) California state insurance commissioner of being a bit soft. Now he really needs calling out.

Saint Lisa Girion reports in the LA Times today that to make up for cancelling 678 policies, Blue Shield, yes the warm cuddly pro-universal care loving non-profit insurer that’s not Wellpoint, has to reinstate them. Which means they have to reinstate the policies and pay the bills that they’d previously decided not to pay.

Now Blue Shield has been the most aggressive of all the insurers in the state in claiming that it had the right to retroactively cancel policies. Most of the others settled ages before. Meanwhile Poizner last year said this about Blue Shield:

Confusing ‘Standards’ With ‘Interoperability’–Lessons For The 111th Congress From HIPAA

Jan 7, 2009• 12

By RICK PETERS, MD

As we debate whether or not the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress should work towards directly funding EHRs, one of the key questions seems to be whether or not EHRs and interoperability standards are mature enough.

My colleague, John Halamka, Chair of the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), made an rational and impassioned plea last week that we have reached a state of interoperability that is at least good enough not to delay allocating Federal funds for investments in EHRs. Dr. Halamka had earlier in December advocated direct grants from the Federal government of $50,000 per U.S. clinician to states to fund the purchase of CCHIT compliant commercial EHR products.

In the ideal world, I agree with John’s position, but have spent perhaps too much time in the real EHR world and in health care standards to truly believe we are where we think we are. We have been here before and our best intentions were subverted.

Cool Technology of the Week

Jan 7, 2009

By JOHN HALAMKA

Community_map_2 As part of the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Awards, we’ve built a number of social
networking tools while also leveraging components built by others such as NetAge. These tools typically work by analyzing collaborators on publications, co-PIs on grant funding, and subject matter interests.

A possibly more precise way to identify networks and communities is by analyzing email traffic patterns – senders, receivers and subjects. A novel social networking tool from Metasight called Morphix, does this.

MetaSight Communities of Interest and Communities of Relationships are web applications which can be implemented as standalone applications or integrated with a corporate portal or intranet.

The tools work by automatically analysing e-mail subject titles and recipients. Personal, private and confidential e-mails are excluded.

Per the Metasight website, social networking applications of this analysis include:

Whata Gupta Fuss

Jan 7, 2009• 4

By Matthew Holt

Mostly because he went off erroneously at Michael Moore in what I remember as two amateur policy analysts being unable to either get their facts straight or explain what was important, Sanjay Gupta’s floated appointment as surgeon general has got the left in a tizzy. And I agree that a neurosurgeon is not exactly who I’d go to for information about public health. But part of the amusement/confusion is that via a now contrite Merril Goozner, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta was confused with another Sanjay Gupta who was a big time recipient of drug company funding.

But does any of this this matter? I know that the rumor is that he’ll have input into health reform, but then again so does anyone who went to a Daschle house party. And if this position is so important, answer me this: who is the current Surgeon General and what notable thing has he or she done?

I knew you couldn’t do it sans Google….

If you really care, Val Jones has recently interviewed the last but one surgeon-general Richard Carmona. In your piece of trivia for today Carmona knows about Health 2.0, or at least is on the board of Healthline.

Anyway we may not have enough general surgeons according to their trade group, but why should the head of public health for the nation be a surgeon. Shouldn’t they be an epidemiologist? And why are they a general? Don’t we waste enough money on the military as it is?

Let’s Reboot America’s Health IT Conversation Part 2: Beyond EHRs

Jan 6, 2009• 9

By DAVID KIBBE and BRIAN KLEPPER

Yesterday we tried to put EHRs into perspective. They’re important, and
we can’t effectively move health care forward without them. But they’re
only one of many important health IT functions. EHRs and health IT
alone won’t fix health care. So developing a comprehensive but
effective national health IT plan is a huge undertaking that requires
broad, non-ideological thinking.

As we’ve learned so painfully elsewhere in the economy, the danger we
face now in developing health care solutions is throwing good money
after bad. We don’t merely need a readjustment of how health IT dollars
are spent. We need to reboot the entire conversation about how health
IT relates to health, health care, and health care reform. To get
there, we need to take a deep breath and start from well-established
and agreed-upon principles.

Most of us want a health system that, whenever possible, bases care on
knowledge of what does and doesn’t work – i.e., evidence. We want care
that is coordinated, not fragmented, across the continuum of settings,
visits and events. And we want care that is personal, affordable and
increasingly convenient.

Most of us also agree that, so far, we have not achieved these ideals.
In fact, health care continues to become costlier, quality is spotty,
and the gap between the health care we believe possible and the current
system is widening.

The demise of Medicare Health Support

Jan 6, 2009• 4

By Matthew Holt

I guess we knew it, but here’s the confirmation in the analysis of the first 18 months from CMS.

The summary: DM companies in Medicare Health Support enrolled healthier than average populations; they had limited to no impact on improving their patients’ care, satisfaction or outcomes; and didn’t save any money.

I wonder how Disease Management is going to fare in the future. It’s clear that this "occasional remote intervention" model needs to change.