The Health Care Blog

TCHB NOTICE: Vacation time a-coming

Over the next two weeks I'll be visiting my folks in the UK, and sunning myself on the beaches of Turkey, with hopefully the opportunity to get in a little ruin visiting and paragliding at Olu Deniz. I'll be checking...

QUALITY/MALPRACTICE: Change malpractice system to patient safety system, say Pfizer doc

It's not that often that I agree with Mike Magee, the doctor who's Health Politics is funded by Pfizer and tends to reflect big pharma's viewpoints. But in his latest piece called The Road from Medical Malpractice to Safety: You...

HEALTH PLANS: As you may have guessed CDHP = Cost shifting

So when I told TCHB readers about Harris' forecast for the year a few months back, it sounded like employers were confused by the consumer-directed health plan (CDHP) hype but somehow believed that it gave them a way out of...

QUALITY/PHARMA: A response to the obesity question

Leonard Soloniuk, MD had this to say about my recent post on the obesity issue: I have seen the assertion that obesity is not a health problem in several different contexts, but Paul Campos appears to be quite flamboyant in...

HOPSITALS: Market shrugs off $117m Tenet loss

Well it looks like Sheryl Skolnick, an analyst with Fulcrum Global Partners, who decided that Tenet was worth a break-up value of $9.40 a share was about half-right. That number was the bottom a few months back when various suckers...

PBMs: Medco settles state complaints, but pretty cheaply

Medco today settled its ongoing lawsuit with several state attorneys-general at the relatively modest cost of $30m. The stock rose slightly on the news, although there is an another ongoing Federal lawsuit, that TCHB has covered before. While this looks...

HEALTH PLANS: UnitedHealth to buy Oxford for $4.9 Bln

So three days after Wellchoice (the Old Empire BCBS) decides that it won't buy Oxford Health plans, a bigger fish steps in. UnitedHealth decided to buy it instead for $4.9 Bln, which is roughly the price Wellchoice had agreed to...

TECHNOLOGY: A hint that not all is well with Boston Scientific's Taxus stent

I've noted the incredible new success of Boston Scientific's Taxus stent several times in THCB. Taxus is moving from factory to artery as fast as it can be pushed off the production line. However, the New York Times reports that...

QUALITY/PHARMA: Is the anti-obesity movement a con job?

Fascinating article extracted in The Guardian from a new book from Paul Campos suggests that obesity is not a health problem. Well worth reading the article, but basically he suggests that while fitness and excercise have some impact on health...

HEALTH PLANS/HOSPITALS: Quick left-coast round-up

The California Health Care Foundation released a report a few weeks back showing that medical groups are losing their clout to hospitals. Meanwhile, over the last few years hospitals have been exercising their new found clout against the plans, and...

PHARMA: Drug re-import bill moving into the Senate

Just a tickler update about a process that I've reported on enough and which has been rolling for a while, a bi-partisan group of Senators who's staffers can read opinion polls have introduced a bill to allow Canadian imports. Meanwhile,...

BLOGGING: New Healthcare Blog

Go say hi to John Rodat at Health Signals New York. It's an excellent health policy blog that I found today, even though it's been around for 3 months. Plenty of interesting stuff, with a large concentration on New York...

HEALTH PLANS/POLICY: Real research on consumer-directed health plans

THCB's author's anecdotes about HSAs seem to have been the Internet's major source of information about consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs). We may be wandering slowly past that dangerous stage! Both Health Affairs and Forrester are out with some more information...

TECHNOLOGY: Online consults growing (but slowly) in California

I've been continuing to watch the online consult service provided by RelayHealth (the former Healinx). It's an online system allowing secure interactions and requests from patients to doctors' offices. It's up and running in Mass and in California, sponsored by...

PHARMA: TAP trial starts today, by MATT QUINN

The trial of TAP officials accused of defrauding Medicare over the sale of the cancer drug Lupron starts today in Boston. Matt Quinn isn't sure that the blame is falling entirely where it should: Although "two health plans, 26 group...

HEALTH PLANS: California Blue Cross now accepting Mexican ID

Blue Cross of California, (owned by Wellpoint) has been talking a good game for a while about creating low cost products to help the uninsured. And they have been making some progress, Now they are taking a real and somewhat...

QUALITY/MALPRACTICE: Questioning the accepted wisdom in Pennsylvania

In a slightly embarrassing article for the local state medical society, an article in the Allentown Morning Call suggests that stories of doctors leaving the state because of the malpractice crisis in Pennsylvania are massively exaggerated. Now this is in...

POLICY & BLOGGING: MedPundit on insurance and SARS

Sydney Smith at Medpundit is a great med-blogger but sometimes she drives me nuts with her inconsistency, such as in this criticism of Hillary Clinton's rambling piece in the NY Times magazine: Except that SARS wasn't a disease of poor...

HOSPITALS: HCA profits cut by lack of paying customers--Congress says "tough!"

Hat tip to Don McCanne for this one. HCS, the largest for-profit hospital chain has cut its numbers because too many uninsured people are coming in the doors and not paying their bills. You can be assured that HCA does...

TECHNOLOGY: Stents'R'Us and hospitals are scared

Both Boston Scientific and J&J are printing money every time they send another drug-eluting stent off the factory floor. In fact neither of them can keep up with the demand. J&J recently had some production quality problems which may limit...

PERSONAL/MEDICAL RESEARCH: Apparently drinking beer causes gout

Yup, yet another affliction that happens to me. Gout is a real mother of a pain. Black cherry didn't work, but happily I now control it with allopurinol. But apparently Boston researchers say that I should give up beer. How...

HEALTH PLANS: United's good news not good enough?

Over at the Business Word Don Johnson notes that the healt plan sector took a nosedive even though United came out with pretty good numbers and forecasts for better numbers to come. Don and I have both been somewhat bearish...

TECHNOLOGY: Mittman on Cyborgs, Healthtech on Sensors

Pretty interesting technology column from Robert Mittman over at iHealthbeat. This one focuses on the growing internal interaction between man and machine known as cyborgs. Given that I live in a state run by a guy who imitated a machine...

TECHNOLOGY: ePrescribing and consumer medical records

These are two issues close to my heart. I have limited time to write on them now, maybe more next week. However if you're interested go look at the ehealth intiative's report on Electronic Prescribing (here's the press release) and...

TECHNOLOGY: Virtual Colonoscopy not ready for prime time

Much to the chagrin of GE, Phillips, and Siemens (as well as patients who don't want "garden hoses" shoved up their rear ends) a new study in JAMA shows that virtual colonoscopy doesn't work as well as advertised.

BLOGS & WRITING: New News Source

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association has done a very nice job on its redesigned news and opinions web site, called Health Issues. Kudos to Julie Tippet, the editor there. As I've been linking more and more to them...

PHARMA: Even the WSJ concedes the importation debate is lost

The Republican retreat on the re-importation bill continues. All stuff I've posted on before, including leading communist Chuck Grassley (R-Nebraska) introducing a bill to get the FDA to certify certain Canadian pharmacies and Tommy Thompson running his mock show trials...

TECHNOLOGY: Cyberchondria and "online-itis stalls"--Looking back at old forecasts

Harris Interactive is out with its latest analysis of how many adults are online and who's using the Internet for health information. After massive growth through the last decade, the number of adults online has stalled at around 69%, with...

TECHNOLOGY/QUALITY: CPOE not enough to prevent errors?

Well we haven't even got CPOE systems in more than a small percentage of hospitals (4%-15% depending on who you believe) and their validity as a major weapon against medical errors is already being questioned. A study in Annals of...

HOSPITALS: You know your hospital bill is out of control when USA Today tells you so!

Hospital care is expensive. And, as USA Today points out, it is getting more and more expensive. While hospital costs overall are going up fairly fast, hospital charges have been galloping ahead, up to 30%+ a year in some areas....

HOSPITALS: Tenet losing independents off the board

Tenet stock is back up to $11.20 at Monday's close, up from a low of $9.15 a few weeks back when rumors of bankruptcy caused some of the weaker hands (e.g. me--curses, curses) to fold, and the stock teetered towards...

PHARMA: Oncology drugs seeing effect of payment changes

From the THCB's Sacramento bureau, Matt Quinn has been following the changes in reimbursement for oncologists. He notes that although last week Genentech's income rose 17%, not all is well at the onco-pharma shop. Matt writes: Change monetary incentives and...

POLICY: News just in.....Bill Frist is connected to a hospital chain

OK, so its not really news, but Senate Majority leader Bill Frist has played the gallant heart surgeon for a very long time, and has had clear sailing for many years despite the fact that HCA (or as it was...

QUALITY: Are we getting our money's worth?

On the very day that a fascinating article confirms that high spending does not equal high quality overall care, Pfizer-sponsored doc Mike Magee has a new presentation out based on the industry report which suggested that every dollar spent on...

TECHNOLOGY: Boston Sci winning the latest battle in the Stent war

The latest battle in the cardiology war between drug-eluting stents seems to be going decisively to Boston Scientific. Their Taxus stent has barely been on the market for a few weeks and it's already burning up the charts, already selling...

HEALTH PLANS: Oops my bad, Aetna's not overpaying Rowe after all

You may recall a while back that I was a tad critical of Aetna for paying Jack Rowe $18 million for his efforts in 2003. They claimed of course that they had to keep his compensation competitive to keep him...

PHARMA: The re-import battle that will not die

Surely big pharma can put together an organized retreat on this re-import issue. All they have to do is allow the FDA to announce that they will allow imports, have them promise to report back on how some time after...

TECHNOLOGY: New York Times CPOE article

Milt Freudenheim has an article in the New York Times about the trouble that hospitals are having with computerized patient care. Well worth a read, even though the numbers about the current low use of CPOE and relatively low planned...

POLICY: Health care lobbyists pay up, get their money's worth

In a recent study originally in JAMA, it was shown that health care companies put $237m into lobbying in the year 2000. 2000 was you may recall the year of a somewhat controversial and close election. Of the money Drug...

HOSPITALS: Emergency departments and how hospitals make money. With UPDATE late afternoon 4/6/04

There's a very interesting new(ish) and counter-intuitive web-only article out in Health Affairs from USC and RAND health economist Glen Melnick about emergency department (ED) capacity in California. The conventional wisdom is that emergency departments at hospitals are flooded with...

INDUSTRY: Consolidation in the health care sector

Today looks like a big day for more consolidation. Big drug chain CVS is getting bigger by buying part of the Eckerd chain owned by JC Penny. The other part is being bought by Canadian chain Jean Coutu Group. In...

PERSONAL/QUALITY: Knee surgery update

So I had arthroscopic surgery at a Healthsouth facility from a Brown & Toland surgeon on Friday. The admin staff and the nursing staff were superb, and the majority of my information from the physician's office had in fact got...

PERSONAL: Back on the slab

By the time most of you read this, I'll be on the table having yet more knee surgery (An arthroscopy to repair cartilage and scar tissue following my ACL/PCL repair 2 years ago). I'll report back Monday about how it...

QUALITY: Malpractice Jury-Award Median Up Slightly

A new study out from Jury Verdict Research shows that the median malpractice award for 2002 was stuck at $1m--no real increase from 2001. The proportion of successful cases brought against doctors went up slightly but was still only 42%....

POLICY/QUALITY: Antibiotics overuse as an emerging public health threat

THCB is now so influential that people are seeking to advertise on it. Really! (Stop that sniggering). I did get a message from John Riley at Keep Antibiotics Working to ask if he could advertise to my readers. As this...

POLICY: Just one more poll showing that Medicare bill is a loser for Bush

I tend to believe that the Adminstration wouldn't have tried quite so hard to pass PDIMA had they known that 55% of seniors would dissaprove and only 35% approve of their handling of Medicare a mere 100 days later. This...

CONSUMERS/INDUSTRY: Reggie's back and the intellectual slop goes on

Regina Herzlinger is back and has now moved from Market Driven HealthCare (which in my view produced one of the best letters ever to Health Affairs from Jamie Robinson following her disputing of his review) to a new tome called...