The Health Care Blog

CONSUMERS: Medicare Part D ... as in Detail by Mr Jib

The Sacramento Bee has a good article which exposes a little detail which may be important to people who are thinking about signing up for Medicare Part D. It turns out that people who are in managed care plans and...

CONSUMERS: A little help from my friends, by Mr JiB

THIS IS A GOOD idea. Barry Katz came up with Lotsa Helping Hands after his wife's four year ordeal with cancer. The web-based calendar system he developed helps friends and family volunteer their time and support. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical...

PHARMA: Senator Grassley, I presume? by Mr JiB

IN CALIFORNIA things are starting to heat up in advance of the November special election. Proposition 78, the drug-industry backed ballot measure targeting high prescription drug costs, picked up a key endorsement this week. On Monday, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger gave...

POLICY: On von Eschenbach's appointment, by Gregory Pawelski

Greg Pawelski with a view on the new head of the FDA More and more physicians and patients are turning to individualized therapies to treat cancers. Under this approach, scientists study how an individual's cancerous cells respond to several drugs....

HEALTH PLANS: It's too late Riker, they've assimilated them all....

Today the Wellpoint Borg collective has assimilated the last of the resistant for-profit Federation Blues spaceships that was challenging them in the outer Galaxy. But shouldn't it be the Empire crushing the rebels rather than being the rebels (or am...

HOSPITALS/INDUSTRY: How stupid is Navigant really?

So Navigant Consulting has been gilding the lily on its expenses in the apparently somewhat shoddy consulting job it's doing at King-Drew. Their basic excuse is that their private sector clients (almost all non-profit hospitals by the way) are quite...

PHARMA/POLICY/POLITICS: Well at least he gets to put "former FDA Commissioner" on his resume!

So just like that after a contentious time getting confirmed, FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford resigns, after only formally being in the job for less than three months (although effectively having basically run the agency for three years). I wonder what...

POLICY: Jamie Robinson on HSAs

I haven't had a chance to comment on this, but anything Jamie writes is usually pretty good, and here he is in the NEJM on Health Savings Accounts -- The Ownership Society in Health Care.

TECH/CONSUMER: Don Kemper wraps up

In the home stretch now. Don Kemper, the guru of this information therapy, self-care stuff is up now. His goal is that every medical encounter ends with an information prescription, which would then drive better compliance and better health outcomes...

CONSUMERS/TECH: Data and more impressions from Information Therapy conference

More from Park City.... Shorter Mark Bard (Manhattan Research)-- two thirds of docs are suggesting that younger female patients go to the web, but there's no financial mechanism for it, and no real business case for physicians to do better...

HEALTH PLANS/TECH: PHR and CRM for health plans--finally on the way

At the conference I met David Vinson who (unlike yours truly) did successfully sell his benefits comparison analysis company to WebMD and now is running their private portal business for plans. Finally all the stuff I was trying to sell...

TECH/CONSUMERS: Kaiser and Renaissance, the big and the small

David Sobel runs Kaiser Permanente Northern California's attempts to provide patient information therapy -- to him there are professional providers and lay providers of health care! The opportunity is in self-care management. Ought to be easy for Kaiser--as the incentives...

TECH/CONSUMERS: Standards for consumer health info

Still in Utah, still at the Information Therapy conference -- A session on how to guide consumers to high quality content, that's integrated with their care, electronically Shorter Tom Lee (Calif HC Foundation): Standards for consumer data don't really exist,...

TECH: An Epic employee sounds off about EMRs and HSAs

Over at liberal blog Daily Kos there's a long diary about EMR and Uwe Rheindhardt from an Epic employee. Good to know that Epic's doing well enough to be able to pay his speaking fee! But really good stuff to...

TECH/CONSUMERS/QUALITY: Information Therapy and care management

This panel has representatives from a care management vendor (Health Dialog), a staff model integrated system (GHCPS) and a big insurer (United). Shorter George Bennet, Health Dialog -- You make $3 for every 88 cents you spend on care management...

POLICY: Paduda knocks back the maths behind HSAs

I'm reading the new Cato book and won't unload on review it until I'm done, but it's fair to say that Joe Paduda's view is pretty close to my own.

PHARMA/PHYSICIANS: No Free Lunch gets in...

So, ridiculed, the AAFP has backed down, and No Free Lunch is now in the AAFP meeting.

CONSUMERS: Jessie Gruman on hammers and nails

Shorter Jess Gruman (Center for Advancement of Health): Information therapy only works when the information is relevant to the exact individual and their exact culture -- and patients vary tremendously in how they need to have that information conveyed to...

TECH/CONSUMERS: Holstein on Information Therapy

So it's Fall in Park City, so here are some pictures of the view I'm getting. Yes that is a weather balloon rising over the valley. Meanwhile back to the conference. Roger Holstein just left WebMd after it was spun...

TECH/CONSUMERS: Information Therapy, and a patient changing the world one baby at a time

So the Information Therapy, largely driven by Molly Mettler and Don Kemper from Healthwise, is the concept that if you put the right information in the right place and to the right person at the right time, then it can...

CONSUMERS: New category and Information therapy conference

Today I am adding a new category, to which probably a lot of the consumer-directed stuff will get at least a shared nomination. The category is consumers, and this is intended to catch all I write about the consumerization of...

PHARMA: How to make a fortune in health care

The Industry Veteran is right. Don't bother with expensive degrees or clever busines planning. Just get close to an organization (preferably in it) that can't keep its hand out of the cookie jar, and nail them by letting the Feds...

TECH: Special Prize for knowing this? (UPDATED and closed Weds at 4pm)

OK, first person to figure out why I put this screen-grab up up gets a special THCB prize, (and hint, it's nothing to do with Frank Rich) You can click on the image to get a better look. Put your...

PHARMA/PHYSICIANS: Trying to stop the biting of the feeding hand

So there's a bunch of rabble-rouser docs who are actually trying to enforce the often mouthed concept that doctors shouldn't take freebies from pharma companies. They're called No Free Lunch And of course, given the actual views of mainstream doctors...

POLICY/POLITICS: The ugly side of American character revealed by Katrina, by The Industry Veteran

The Industry Veteran has been a little quiet of late. But you wouldn't expect him to keep too quiet about an event like Katrina. Given the way that the whole thing has been turned into an Iraq-style feeding frenzy by...

BLOGS: Grand Rounds is up at SoundPractice

Kent Bottles is hosting Grand Rounds over at SoundPractice.Net. He thinks that I'm always modest....but he may perhaps be poking fun!

TECH: JD Kleinke--the Arianna Huffington of health care

JD Kleinke has a great article in this months Health Affairs in which he gets into the meat of why our bastardized health systems multiple contradictory incentives prevent the kind of open standards developments that brought ATMs to banking and...

HOPSITALS: Universal stopped from saving its people by FEMA

We've by now heard of the real heroics performed by HCA to get people out of Tulane Hospitals (and the city owned hospital next door). Yesterday Bob Herbert's NY Times Op-Ed highlights a case I missed where another for-profit corporate...

TECH: Are stents a waste of money? Maybe

This takes me back to one of my favorites. Two years ago a Stanford study suggested that we should dump the stents and have a by-pass instead, because they were more cost-effective. Stents only delayed the need for by-pass surgery....

THCB: PharmaBlogging

I've been told (or at least like to believe) that I'm an entertaining speaker, and I'll be doing a little bit more in the coming months. One conference that is relevant to many readers is being put on by some...

HOSPITALS: Consumer-driven care and hospitals, by Richard Reece

Richard Reece, Editor-in-Chief of Physician Practice Options has been corresponding with me for some time. He's the author of a new book of interviews called Voices of Health Reform with interesting health care people, and I published a self-interview with...

TECH: Google, blogs, IT will save the day, blah blah

So a ton of news today, but also a ton of work for your host from outside the blog world requires some brevity. So go look elsewhere for more on these, although you'll get the caustic comment from me. First...

POLCY: HDHPs, employer insurance and regulation the Cato Way | SignalHealth

Over at Signal Health Tom Hilliard has been having an entertaining time with Mark Pauly and the boys from Cato. Go over there and take a look at the latest round of back and forth. Suffice it to say that...

BLOGS: Grand Rounds is up

At the wackily named Sneezing Po.

HEALTH PLANS: Hidden gems for health plans in Part D

There have been some questions about why health plans and PBMs would want to be quite so enthusiastic about becoming Participating Drug Plans or Medicare Regional PPOs, or for that matter getting back into being Medicare, given that they all...

PHARMA/INDUSTRY: Hurricane Katrina Direct Relief!

I was contacted late last night by Grace Davis who is one of "two moms" who is running a blog helping support relief for Katrina victims. The other mom is Victoria Powell, a doctors wife, who is visiting health clinics...

PBMs: Are the rebate chickens coming home to roost?

Friday's news that Caremark was settling with the Feds over a whistle-blower over rebates at AdvancePCS gave me some pause for thought. For a start, the number is $135m, and for a relatively low margin business like a PBM, that's...

INDUSTRY/TECH: More ways to help Katrina victims: An open source response

Healthcare IT journo Neil Versel has a podcast up on his site of an interview with Jordan Glogau, chief technology officer of Preferred Health Resources, a medical billing services company in Nanuet, N.Y., made the following suggestion: "Why don’t people...

TECH/POLICY: Things to think about in Katrina's aftermath

Here's my FierceHealthcare editorial today: In Katrina's wake the inquests are beginning after the tragic failure to get help to where it was needed, especially in New Orleans. For healthcare organizations there are some immediate lessons, wherever in the country...

POLICY/POLITICS: Blame for Katrina--enough to go around but it's FEMA in the lead, with UPDATE

With all the BSing that's gone on from the Administration about what went wrong and finger pointing, there is clearly much blame to go around. I'm impressed that New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin went ballistic when nothing was happening last...

TECH: Disaster recovery

Echoing a theme that I've been pushing over at my FierceHealthcare newsletter the last two days, here's a nasty story about the awful subject of disaster recovery. Not only will Charity Hospital and University Hospital in New Orleans never reopen...

POLICY: Enthoven on the rational place for consumer choice in health care, and why CDHC is missing the point

It was a little while back that I heard a webinar from Michael Porter, and I described him as the next great business school professor to get lost in the health care quagmire. At Stanford Alain Enthoven has been stuck...

POLICY/HEALTH PLANS: What to do about coverage in Katrina's diaspora

Ezra Klein has an article up the thorny problem of how to get health coverage or continue it to those who have been displaced. Ezra suggests extending COBRA to all of them. The major problem there of course is that...

TECH: FEMA and the Wisconsin CHIN -- incompetence together?

MrHISTalk had a little rant yesterday about the crappy demands from the Wisconsin Health Information Network that its users only use Internet Explorer. User tip: those interoperability and open standards folks at the Wisconsin Health Information Exchange might want to...

POLICY/POLITICS: A harrowing story from Katrina

SignalHealth pointed the way to this story, which I've since found at another source by a couple of hotel guests who were basically imprisoned in New Orleans and not allowed to leave by the law enforcement and FEMA people who...

TECH: Foundation for eHealth Initiative in a smidgin of trouble

You know, you try to help get this health care system IT stuff sorted out, you try to get people on one page on this eHealth BS, you get a little Federal money to try to get some of these...

PHYSICIANS/POLICY: Another Podcast with Eric Novack

So here's another podcast recorded at the tail end of last week with me chatting with surgeon, talk radio host and "free-market" advocating surgeon Eric Novack. This one focuses on why health care costs so much and why we can't...

HOSPITALS/POLICY/INDUSTRY: Katrina and the response

We have all been shaken by the devastation in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. After a couple of days to reflect, three thoughts come to my mind. First has been the absolute heroism of health care workers in New...

INTERNATIONAL: Medpundit in another foolish attack on the NHS

It's been a while since I took at look at what Syd has been saying over at Medpundit, but I picked up a couple of gems recently. One gave Syd the chance to attack those damn socialists in the UK...

POLICY: Hilliard on Cato

Over at SignalHealth Tom Hilliard has another interesting analysis of the Hilliard on Cato analysis of the Shadegg bill. He's a bit too nice about Mark Pauly but otherwise it makes for combustible reading, and don't miss the rebuttal comment...