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MD Rating Sites: Current State of the Space and Future Prospects

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By Ruth Given

Ruth Given has spent the last few months doing an exhaustive study of the physician ratings business. Ruth is an independent health economist and consultant who has in the past worked for Kaiser, the California Medical Association and Deloitte Consulting. We’re very happy to make her study available on THCB and the Health 2.0 Blog. You can download the full report at the end of this introductory article — Matthew Holt

The past few years have seen an explosion in growth of websites allowing patients to review/rate (usually rant or rave about) their health care providers. Recent mainstream media attention has focused on the rating of physicians, with over 30 such sites now operating. A few sites, including RateMDs and Healthgrades, have been around for a number of years, but several high profile initiatives were recently launched. Last fall, national health plan Anthem announced that it would be partnering with restaurant rater Zagat to allow its enrollees to rate their MDs online. And in April, Angie’s List, whose subscribers rate a wide variety of local service companies, began to include all types of health care providers, including physicians.

Physician reaction to these sites has been generally unenthusiastic; but there is currently very little MDs can do legally to stop patients from posting opinions about them online. While this approach to reporting on MD performance has its shortcomings, there is also a growing recognition of the importance of accounting for patient experience in evaluating quality of care. The federal government, through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is moving to collect patient experience-related feedback, such as that included in their annual consumer assessment of hospitals reports. An AHRQ/Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey tool on patients’ experience with physicians has also been developed and is currently in use in a number of settings.

Given the recent ramp-up in sites and their newly legitimized role, the future for online MD rating seems fairly rosy. But is this really the case?

Continue reading…

Proposal for a THCB Healthcare Reform Effort

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By Deron Schriver

THCB regular reader Deron Schriver wants THCB readers to suggest plans to reform the health care system. Here’s his appeal:

I enjoy many of the discussions on THCB.  Intelligent people from all vantage points of the health care system congregate to engage in conversations about the most important issues out there. What if there was a way to translate those discussions into treatment plans for the ailments of our health care system?

Meaningful, sustainable reform can only come from a collection of people from the various stakeholder positions (physicians, patients, insurance companies, employers, etc.) who see what’s working and what isn’t on a daily basis. Politicians do not have the exposure to the system that is needed to prescribe effective solutions. However, they are in a good position to assist in the implementation of well-designed solutions.

We need to approach reform much like a physician approaches an ill patient. That involves obtaining some history, examining the system, and then prescribing a treatment plan. It would require a progress note, similar to what a physician uses, in order to document our work. After all, “if it wasn’t documented, it wasn’t done”.  All problems considered should be discussed by all stakeholders until solutions are developed that 1) are thorough, 2) treat the problem and not the symptoms, and 3) are not zero sum. We need to follow the system all the way from the time the patient enrolls in an insurance plan, to the time she is treated by her physician, to the time the claim is paid (or not paid).

Continue reading…

Huckabee on health & more around the Web

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By Sarah Arnquist

Trudy Lieberman at the CJR : Campaign Desk calls Mike Huckabee’s views on health care "a fresh addition to the national health care discussion." Huckabee talked about the origins of health and the need to focus on societal issues that help keep people healthy and avoid the pitfalls of obesity, smoking, alcoholism, etc. Huckabee said, “the real enemy is not the health care system; it’s poor health.”

Partners in Health improves chronic care in Rwanda with electronic medical records. The model is based on home health monitoring, a lot like Health Buddy, says Steve Brown, but without the institutional barriers and a lot less expensive.

Alex Savic, of Alensa, compares eHealth in the U.S. to the U.K. and concludes that there’s much less innovation in the U.K., which he attributes to the lack of privitization in the EMR and HIT worlds.

The Toronto Star examines how the elderly thrive in Denmark by staying in their homes as long as possible, and having the option of small, comfortable nursing homes.

At Business Week, Michael Mandel writes
that health care employment is one of the few things keeping the
economy going in a piece called "Revenge of the Health Care Economy."

Despite Democratic control, major health reform still unlikely

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Laszewski_2By Robert Laszewski

With 258 House and 57 Senate Democrats, it’s almost certain that major health
reform will be passed, right?

Actually, that was the number of Democrats Bill Clinton started off with in 1993 and we know what happened to health care reform in that Congress.

With similar Democratic majorities, I do not expect a major health care reform bill like the one President-Elect Barack Obama called for during the campaign–in 2009 or 2010.

Continue reading…

ON THCB This Week …

Health care information technology in an early Obama AdministrationBy JOHN HALAMKA

When Obama takes office in January, the economy will be his first
priority, followed by the war in Iraq. Health care will follow as his
next major issue to address. What will he do? I imagine
he’ll take a phased approach to ensuring all Americans have access to
health care. Given the change management needed to accomplish this, it
will take a while. FULL POST

The next president’s health agendaBy MERRILL GOOZNER

A year ago, health care held a solid lead in the polls as the number
one concern of the American people. But by the time the Iowa caucuses
closed, and Barack Obama surged to his unexpected win, it had been
supplanted by the economy … FULL POST

Social solidarity is key to meaningful health reformBy MAGGIE MAHAR

In the recent past, some progressives have warned that liberals made
a mistake when they reached out to minorities, new immigrants, and
gays, "ignoring" the mainstream middle class. But in fact,
"mainstream" America is no longer one recognizable culture. FULL POST

Is much more than we think really possible?By MATTHEW HOLT

On THCB today Maggie Mahar basically tells the health reform crowd to be patient. But two members of the unreconstructed left in other venues don’t agree. In the NY Times Paul Krugman says that deficit spending is OK, and correctly points out that Obama has a real mandate to fix the underlying problems of middle America  — and yes, that would include health care. FULL POST

"The EMR is the Foundation of Everything We Do"
Scott Shreeve interviews Anna-Lisa Silvestre, the VP of Online Services for Kaiser Permanente. TRANSCRIPT

Sermo CEO Daniel PalestrantVIDEO with BNet’s David Hamilton

Sermo has very quickly become the big Kahuna in the physician social
network space. So big in fact that its rivals trumpet how different
they are from it in their models and approach. VIDEO

What health care plans does Baucus have up his sleeve?

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By THCB Staff

In a letter of congratulations,
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus told Obama he’s already
got health reform on his radar.

THCB regular Michael Millenson doesn’t understand Baucus’ strategy.

Here’s Millenson’s two theories on what this could mean:

Scenario No. 1: The Republicans in Congress, chastened by their election losses, join in a lame-duck effort with Democrats who, in the a spirit of forgiveness and comity, help pass a bipartisan health care reform plan before Christmas. President Bush, fresh from long weeks of prayer and repentance, signs the bill on the morning of January 20 with President-elect Obama looking on. Bush hands him a pen, and then they step out onto the Capitol Rotunda for the swearing-in.Alternative scenario: Baucus holds a press conference and Obama aides wonder silently why a *!# Democratic senator is upstaging a guy from his own party who just won a resounding and historic victory with health care at the very center of it. Republicans, meanwhile, encourage Kennedy to introduce his own plan, and maybe Bernie Sanders wants to try his hand at a real socialist version and, by gosh, it sure is great to see the Democrats being Democrats.

Is much more than we think really possible?

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By Matthew Holt

On THCB today Maggie Mahar basically tells the health reform crowd to be patient. But two members of the unreconstructed left in other venues don’t agree. In the NY Times Paul Krugman says that deficit spending is OK, and correctly points out that Obama has a real mandate to fix the underlying problems of middle America (and yes that would include health care). And yes polling data shows that on balance America is as liberal now as it was in the 1960s. 35 years of blind-ish belief in conservatism is more or less over.

And if you want to see the optimist’s view on what Obama might do, Jonathan Cohn has a long article in The New Republic called Surgical Prep explaining why now is the time for health care reform and how the brass knuckles approach is being put together to get it done.

I’m not sure I’m there but let’s not underestimate how big a political win this was.

Social Solidarity is Key to Meaningful Health Reform

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By MAGGIE MAHAR

On HealthBeat, I have talked about social solidarity as the key to meaningful health care reform.

In his victory speech, President-elect Obama sounded that theme repeatedly, reminding his audience that he had been elected “by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled—Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals…”

In the recent past, some progressives have warned that liberals made a mistake when they reached out to minorities, new immigrants, and gays, “ignoring” the mainstream middle class. But in fact, “mainstream” America is no longer one recognizable culture. It is fast becoming a “magnificent mosaic,” the phrase Mario Cuomo used when he ran to become mayor of New York City in 1977.

Barack Obama won, not because he managed to win over the white middle-class, or the white working class, but because he managed to put together a coalition from so many groups—including white voters.  Many thanks to Ezra Klein for breaking down the vote: 31.82 percent of voters who chose Obama were white, just as 31.57 percent of the voters who stood for John Kerry in 2004 were white.  But Obama won. What was the difference?Continue reading…

Health care information technology in an early Obama Administration

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By John HalamkaHalamka

When Obama takes office in January, the economy will be his first
priority, followed by the war in Iraq. Health care will follow as his
next major issue to address.

What will he do?

I imagine
he’ll take a phased approach to ensuring all Americans have access to
health care. Given the change management needed to accomplish this, it
will take a while.

However, Health care Information Technology
has broad bipartisan support and is his best strategy to reduce
health care costs, reimburse providers for quality instead of quantity,
and to ensure coordination of care. Here are my predictions for
health care IT in the first year of the Obama administration:

Continue reading…

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