The Health Care Blog – Page 966 – Everything you always wanted to know about the Health Care system. But were afraid to ask.

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Using clinical decision support to get the right diagnosis the first time

Oct 10, 2008• 8

By Joseph Britto, MD

Joseph Britto is co-CEO of Isabel Healthcare, a clinical software vendor that helps clinicians with diagnosis. He practiced medicine in the UK before joining with co-CEO Joseph Maude to start Isabel, named after Joseph’s daughter who was wrongly diagnosed with Chicken Pox and nearly died as a result. Joseph has a personal connection as he was the physician in charge of Isabel’s recovery.

Remember President Bush’s goal, first stated in the 2004 State of the Union message, of giving “every American” his own EMR by 2014?

That goal seems as elusive as ever, especially in light of a recently released study by the The Center for Studying Health System Change which found a discouragingly low rate of EMR adoption among physicians. The new study, released last month, reported that only 29 percent of the hospitals surveyed were actively supporting physician acquisition of EMRs through financial or technical support. This number was disappointing in light of the current government initiative that has relaxed federal rules on physician self-referral and made available hundreds of millions of dollars in various subsidies for EMR adoption by physicians.

Many health policy experts believed that “if you subsidize it, they will come.” While that approach has worked in persuading people to take mass transit, it hasn’t lured many physicians into using EMRs.

Why the reluctance? One reason is cost. On September 25, 2008, the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) issued a report that reviewed 90 EMR incentive programs (state, federal, private) with a total funding of $700 million available.

Subliminal health education

Oct 10, 2008• 3

By Jen McCabe Gorman

You’ve heard of subliminal advertising, but what about subliminal educating for health?

But who’s tried selling health to us where we live, work, and play? What about using ‘mainstream’ TV shows as a public health education tool?

Kaiser Family Foundation’s seeding of Grey’s Anatomy produced some surprising results.

Kaiser worked with the show’s Director of Medical Research to pick health topics based on 3 criteria:

Appropriate for the show
Not well understood by the American public
Topic where learning could be "measured in a straightforward way" in a survey

Tracking media coverage of health care

Oct 9, 2008• 4

By Christopher Weaver

You probably haven’t seen a lot of campaign coverage from the health beat these last few week, unless The Health Care Blog is your exclusive source.

The "Financial Crisis," and its predecessor, the troubled "Economy," have obscured the issue that many voters said should be near the top of the agenda back when Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney were serious contenders and the stock market was inching onward. Look back to the October 2007 Kaiser tracking poll for a recap.

A new tool from LexisNexis Analytics
puts health care media coverage in perspective; based on the charts, media attention hasn’t reflected the public’s call for reform – still the number 3 issue according to over-all voters. The Kaiser polls show 26 percent of independents marking health care as a top issue, up from only 13 percent in August

The Lexis analysis also suggests media scrutiny has focused on McCain’s campaign, which has been the brunt of Obama ads attacking the efficacy of the tax credit strategy. Health care was particularly unpopular with Republican’s last month, reaching "a new low" of 11 percent, Kaiser noted.

Health care stocks falling, too

Oct 9, 2008• 2

By Don Johnson

Health care stocks are proving that they’re not recession proof as I and others predicted back in April.

Look at these charts
for 10 prominent health care stocks. Every one of them has declined so
much in recent weeks that in terms of relative strength, compared with
the market, they’re oversold. All are down significantly from their
52-week highs and several are making new lows.

Schering Plough (SGP), Novartis (NVS) and Quest Diagnostics (DGX) are still trading slightly above their April lows.

Mylan Labs (MYL), Wellpoint (WLP), Humana (HUM), United Health Group
(UNH), Aetna (AET), Universal Health (UHS) and LifePoint (LPNT) are all
trading below their April lows, if not at their lows for the year. (FD: I own none of these stocks.)

Around the Web in 60 Seconds (Or Less)

Oct 9, 2008• 1

By THCB Staff

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s reader blog has a great entry by a college-educated working individual who wonders how people making twice the minimum wage can afford health benefits for the entire family — even if the employer foots part of the bill.

Politico assesses the brain power behind McCain and Obama’s health plans.

Senators discussed this week draft legislation that would encourage more disclosure of health care costs to workers. "As long as people are insulated from the cost and just think someone
else is paying for it, then it’s easy to overlook expenses," Sen. Grassley
said. "But once they realize they themselves are paying for it, it
should spark a genuine conversation about what to do."

Health Partners published on its Website the prices for 83 procedures at its network primary care and radiology facilities in Minnesota’s seven-county metro area.

A British woman is fighting in the courts to use the sperm of her husband who died unexpectedly in the hospital last year following a routine operation. The law currently says sperm can only be used with consent for the donor. (They have laws for this stuff? Wow.)

Millenson on McCain’s Radical Health Care Plan

Oct 8, 2008• 9

By Brian Klepper

Over at the Huffington Post, Michael Millenson walks us through McCain’s plan to end employer sponsored coverage, noting that it would apply faith-based economics to one seventh of the US economy, and pointing out that its as radical a ploy to foist on the innocent bystander American people as any bomb-thrower ever cooked up.

It’s vintage Millenson: erudite, an airtight argument, gleefully presented, and making no apologies for its partisanship. A fun and informative read.

See also: An analysis of the about-face the McCain camp made suddenly regarding funding for his health plan. He’ll now keep the payroll exemption and cut $1.3 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid to pay for his tax subsidies.

Tell us what you think

Oct 8, 2008• 3

<a href="http://www.buzzdash.com/index.php?page=buzzbite&BB_id=121448">Is health care is a right, privilege or social responsibility?</a> | <a href="http://www.buzzdash.com">BuzzDash polls</a>

Is Health Care a Right?

Oct 8, 2008• 91

By MAGGIE MAHAR

I have to admit I often have found the language of health care “rights” off-putting. Yet the idea of health care as a “right” is usually pitted against the idea of health care as a “privilege.” Given that choice, I’ll circle “right” every time.

Still, when people claim something as a “right,” they often sound shrill and demanding. Then someone comes along to remind us that people who have “rights” also have “responsibilities,” and the next thing you know, we’re off and running in the debate about health care as a “right” vs. health care as a matter of “individual responsibility.”

As regular readers know, I believe that when would-be reformers emphasize “individual responsibilities,” they shift the burden to the poorest and sickest among us. The numbers are irrefutable: low-income people are far more likely than other Americans to become obese, smoke, drink to excess and abuse drugs, in part because a healthy lifestyle is expensive, and in part because the stress of being poor—and “having little control over your life”—leads many to self-medicate. (For evidence and the full argument, see this recent post). This is a major reason why the poor are sicker than the rest of us, and die prematurely of treatable conditions.

Those conservatives and libertarians who put such emphasis on “individual responsibility” are saying, in effect, that low-income families should learn to take care of themselves.Continue reading…

Presidential candidates on health care

Oct 8, 2008• 2

By Charlie Baker

As CEO of Harvard Pilgrim, I find I do a fair amount of public speaking. Over the past ten days or so, I’ve been on several panels with a variety of public policy, health policy and industry types. We also represented a pretty broad collection of political philosophies – some Democrats, some Republicans, some liberals, some moderates and some conservatives.

What really struck me, though, was the amount of cross-over support several policy ideas had in the “what do we need to do about health care” arena. To listen to the media, one would conclude there is no common ground between the parties on this issue – and, frankly, a lot of the stuff the people I was with were talking about hasn’t really showed up on the national debate scene at all.

So – at the risk of over-simplifying what my fellow panelists and I talked about during these discussions – I’d offer up these four national policy ideas – all of which seemed to have pretty broad ideological support.

Economic stress — bad for your health

Oct 8, 2008• 3

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn

Stress due to the economic downturn is causing more of us to be irritable, angry, sleepless, and self-medicating through food.

And stress in the workplace is costing business $300 billion a year, according to the American Psychological Association (APA), due to the loss of productivity, absenteeism, turnover and increased medical costs.

The APA completed its survey, Stress in America, in August 2008 — more than a month ago, well before yesterday’s biggest stock market fall in 4 years.

The APA warns that the levels of stress felt by Americans due to the financial downturn can wreak significant havoc on health. 46% of Americans are now worried about providing for their families’ basic needs. One can imagine this number will be much higher based on the past few weeks’ financial events.