The Health Care Blog

TECH: Just a little more about the PHR

You can skip this one if you're bored but the Personal Health Record and associated stuff just won't quite go away. I've not only got a tawdry past associated with the PHR/CHR, and have spent far too long thinking about...

HOSPITALS: Friday Night Update by John Pluenneke

When the going gets tough, the tough form a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization. HealthSouth Corp. founder Richard Scrushy has formed a nonprofit group focusing on churches and religious charities. Richard and Leslie Scrushy Ministries was incorporated in Jefferson County last...

POLICY/POLITICS/TECH/HEALTH PLANS: Trown out in the trash

Politically this has been quite a week. Don't you think that John Kerry just wishes that we had five year Presidential terms and that he was going into the election this November, rather than a year ago? This week even...

PHARMA/POLICY: The status quo versus the NHIN

Here's my FierceHealthcare editorial this morning: In a little over a week from now, there's a special election in California with several propositions on the ballot--mostly to do with the political future of Arnold Schwarzenegger. But the two initiatives to...

HOSPITALS: The specialty hospital party looks like it's over

Specialty hospitals have made quite a few docs a very tidy penny, (for instance see this debate from the medical hotspot of South Dakota) and there's been plenty of propaganda from both sides of this debate. But my sense is...

PHARMA: Lowe on Pfizer

Derek Lowe thinks that for Pfizer, The Tar Pit Beckons. That would be Tar Pit as in La Brea, where dinosaurs got stuck. Interesting post and some interesting discussion in the comments about why Pfizer is or isn't going to...

POLICY: Wal-Mart caught with hand in cookie jar -- affixs grin, and says "Look over there!"

So just two days ago, Wal-Mart, which as I've pointed out in THCB before, has never really been serious about offering health benefits to its workers given that it makes higher profit margins when it doesn't, apparently had a change...

BLOGS: Grand Rounds is up

Grand Rounds is up over at Hospital Impact.

BLOGS: Dilbert's creator on blogging

Scott Adams wrote this in his newsletter: People who are trying to decide whether to create a blog or not go through a thought process much like this: The world sure needs more of ME. Maybe I'll shout more often...

POLICY: NY Times opinion on Medicaid

Shorter NY Times opinion on Florida Medicaid: It's so screwed up that screwing it over more can't make it any worse, and really Florida Republicans are deserving of our trust, as they've proved their fairness to their poorer and darker-skinned...

POLICY/CONSUMERS: Privacy and pizza

Here is a fabulous ACLU movie on ordering a pizza in 2010 and the inherent violations of privacy that will be involved. The've got the date for the all the medical data far too early though (most stuff will still...

POLICY: Cohn and the wanna-be abstinents, by Jonathan Cohn

I was somewhat doubtful about the Harris Poll on abstinence last week. (Non)-Volvo-driving, latte-drinking Jonathan Cohn actually knows something about abstinence. Not that I'm sure what that says about Harvard in the early 1990s but here's what he told me....

PHARMA/POLICY: Lowe on the FDA and Pargluva

Derek Lowe has an intelligent post on the Pargluva mess, which is essential reading if you care about the FDA and big pharma and transparency -- and you should.

POLICY/BLOGS: Enthoven coming up on Novack show

Don't get too used to an unregurgitated Marxist like me saying this, but you should listen to a radio station called 960The Patriot this weekend, as Eric Novack has Alain Enthoven on his show on Sunday from 3-4pm Arizona time....

POLICY/BLOGS: More interesting stuff from the young liberals

Now that I've upset every young liberal in America, here's a blog that I was pointed to by Ezra Klein. It's called I am Stella, by Kate who is a young health policy wonk in waiting with her own tale...

TECH: Mr HISTalk's Thoughts on Clinical Systems: introduction (histalk.blog-city.com)

We like MrHISTAlk over at THCB, even if he has a bit of a tendency to mouth off like the southern redneck he may be. So go read his thoughts on clinical information systems and CPOE in an article called...

POLICY: Abstinence and universal health insurance prove very popular

Now I'm 42 and never been married, so I don't agree with most Americans about the very last question on this new Harris/WSJ survey. But the rest of it shows that we're a damn site more of a liberal nation...

TECH: PHR conference

Last week's PHR conference that I didn't go to (cos they held it in DC and I'm too cheap to fly there by myself) now has an available transcript. (All big PDFs--you have been warned). The intro is long but...

BLOGS: TCHB tech traumas over

Thanks to John, the tech traumas are over and when you go to www.thehealthcareblog.com you end up in the right place, and it looks like it's really on a standalone domain although it actually lives on typepad, yet you can...

TECH: Privacy, standards, certification and RHIOs--more from AHIMA

Yesterday's the AHIMA meeting morning presentations were excellent. The presenters were all on their game, and were also relatively amusing (especially Mark Frisse). But although I know a lot more about the DC based machinations of the national health initiative...

BLOGS: Wednesday dog blogging

Now that I'm a newly "domestic partnered" person rather than a swinging single, much of my day seems to revolve around walking Charlie, who moved in with Amanda (the other domestic partner). So I'm thinking much more about dogs than...

TECH/CONSUMERS: Tang on the unstated information therapy

Next up was Paul Tang, the CIO of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. He wanted to talk about patients, and about transparency. PAMF went to open access to physician visits (i.e. you call up, and you get a same day...

TECH: The latest from Brailer

Monday crack of dawn saw me heading of to San Diego to sit in a room with thousands of (almost all female) hospital coders at the American Health Information Management Association conference. You know the reality of "information" in health...

POLICY: You're poor, you're uneducated, you're sick?

You are screwed.

BLOGS: THCB hosting prob

Your crack technical team here is trying to get the address bar in your browser to say "TheHealthcareBlog.com" but add all that stuff after the slash that indicates which page you're on, rather than either just saying "TheHealthcareBlog.com" whatever page...

TECHNOLOGY: Open Source EHR Katrina Relief Network: appeal for volunteers

Open source advocate Fred Trotter is appealing for volunteers to help in setting up hospital and physician office systems in areas affected by Katrina. If you're a techie, please go over to his blog to see if you can help.

PHARMA: Can you trust Tufts and should we trust the FDA?

Today I'm off to San Diego to hear David Brailer et al at the AHIMA conference, so expect some more about that later on this channel. Meanwhile, the pro-PhRMA academics at Tufts have a new study which suggests that rushing...

TECH: Manhattan on PHRs. by Erica Fishman with UPDATE from Matthew

Erika Fishman from Manhattan Research, who wrote the report that I mentioned yesterday in my piece on "PHRs, EMRs and pretty much useless surveys", is rightfully a little grumpy about her survey being called useless. She very kindly wrote a...

QUALITY: Job at DM company Lifemasters

So if you're not quite as cynical as me about the future of disease management, LifeMasters is looking for a Product Development Manager in its South San Francisco offices. This is a position that works on the product team and...

POLICY/PHARMA: Pure drug war fascism

So a sick patient is pulled from his hospital bed in another country and extradited and denied all pain medication for days on end? Nothing but pure fascism dressed up in drug war clothing.

TECH: A tawdry tale of practice management software gone south

I've never heard of this little practice management company Dr Notes, but thewhole scam seems quite fun. This is why it's good that there are finally real companies that doctors can deal with.

INDUSTRY: Health Care Mergers up

Jonathan Cohn is very excited that health care mergers are up strongly in the third quarter. I suspect its a blip, as Wellpoint's got no one left to buy, and who'd want Merck in its present state? But who knows...

TECH: PHRs, EMRs and pretty much useless surveys

Because there was a conference Tuesday on Personal Health Records sponsored by RWJ and Markle, there were two surveys out yesterday about consumers and their interest in/love for/need for/ likelihood to buy into electronic medical records. The Markle Foundation, by...

POLICY: Adverse Selection, a young liberal's learning experience

Sometimes I despair about the young liberals over at Ezra's blog. Health care is so screwed up and they're just discovering it. On the other hand they are discovering it and somehow figuring it out. Neil (the ethical werewolf) has...

HEALTH PLANS/POLICY: High-deductible health plans and how the employer does the math

Marketwatch has an article about how you should choose your high-deductible health plan and as you might expect it goes over ground that has been pretty well trod over here at THCB. Basically it suggests that an employee should guess...

INTERNATIONAL: Monday morning world view

If you thought America was strange consider the plight of my birthplace and its former Empire. For a start the Royal Family is so broke it's having to send its first-born son out to work for a Hong Kong bank,...

PHARMA/QUALITY/PHYSICIANS: Rational sense on opioid use for cancer sufferers, with reference to Kinsey and rationalism.

A very important THCB reader -- one that I have to be nice to if I want to feature in the will, and you might guess that I'm a couple of wickets down already -- has forwarded me this BMJ...

BLOGS: World Mental Health Day

Psychologist Deb Serani informs me that it's World Mental Health Day. Go to her blog to see more, and no snide remarks about which of our nation's leaders this is aimed at!

BLOGS/PHYSICIANS: Enoch Choi in New Orleans

oDr. Enoch Choi, a medblogger (and OT but BTW a liberal evangelical Christian just so you know there is one!) has packed up his black bag and spent the week in New Orleans following his medical calling. Go read his...

POLICY/POLITICS: Linking Katrina, Medicare Part D and bird Flu

Here's my FierceHealthcare editorial today: FierceHealthcare has been following two stories all year that both had big moments this week. One is the avian flu that's been popping up in Asia and may end up being as deadly as the...

POLICY: Afternoon update by John Pluenneke

Stewart Simonson, the Bush administration official currently in charge of pandemic preparedness could be another Michael Brown, say critics. Perhaps they're just being mean.

QUALITY: DM has been counting it wrong but Al Lewis sets it straight

Over the last year or so the DM listserv has been buzzing with the concept put about from Al Lewis, Ariel Linden, and Ian Duncan that to this point ROI for disease management programs has been calculated wrongly. But in...

PHYSICIANS/POLICY: Malpractice explained

Susan Sheridan, whom I wrote about last month, is even more famous. She and her son Cal who has kernicterus syndrome are the hook for a piece in The New Republic by Robert Berenson. (You may only be able to...

HOSPITALS: Sutter and Kaiser getting pissy, and fiddling while Rome burns

Just to follow up on the recent "SEIU hates Sutter but loves Kaiser" piece, this morning I was up at CPMC as a patient, having a doctor looking at my bum knee in the medical office building next door. (And...

THCB: Email problems

Some a-hole spammer is spoofing ATmatthewholtDOTnet as their outbound address, luckily so far without the correct first name. The result is that I'm getting hundreds of bounce-backs with "undeliverable" email (you know, the MAILER DAEMON ones), as all emails to...

TECH/BLOGS: HISTalk nails it again

Mr HISTalk and I have a mutual love affair with each others blogs, and his news sections are always gems. Today he has a story that I've missed about a payroll system in Ireland (no jokes from you Brits), and...

POLICY: Employer health insurance and stuttering efforts to delude the public

In The New York Times Milt Freudenheim reports a little too gushingly about the attempt by a number of big companies to let the part-time employees that they don't cover buy into their health insurance programs. The companies are taking...

HOSPITALS: How to play nice with workers, and how not to

If you hadn't noticed, the next round of unionization will come in the big service industries. This is going to build over time, but health care services will be the biggest push because (with the obvious caveat about overseas surgeries)...

TECH: IDX and GE in a lovefest--We'll see

IDX was being shopped earlier this year as its founder Rich Tarrant wants to run for a Senate seat as a Republican in Vermont where Bernie Sanders will probably enjoy pointing out how much money he's got and how he...