The Health Care Blog

BLOGS: Grand Rounds

Welcome to Grand Rounds on THCB, the weekly round-up of all that is good and great in medical and health care blogging. This is a special edition as it’s the last of 2005 and so I’ve asked my fellow bloggers...

THCB: And in a piece of crass commercialism in the spirit of the season!

As the result of a drunken conversation, you can now buy THCB t-shirts and mugs....and if you don't like those, you can look around the rest of the Vaniteez store run by my friend Shazza. (and if anyone buys anything,...

OFF-TOPIC: Here's your feel good story for Christmas

A clerk working at Sees Candy lost her ring — a diamond encrusted family heirloom — thinking she’d let it slip into a bag of candy. There’s quite a bit of fuss in the Bay Area media about it, with...

PHYSICIANS/POLICY/POLITICS: Is cutting Medicare Part B fees a good thing? by Eric Novack

THCB’s favorite orthopedic surgeon Eric Novack is grumpy about Medicare’s proposed cuts in physician reimbursement, which are still up in the air as I write. Not sure how much support he’ll get over here on THCB, but it’s ironic that...

TECH: JSK's 2006 Health IT Forecast

Skip over to iHealthbeat to see the ever wonderful Jane Sarasohn Kahn’s 2006 Health IT Forecast Jane is pretty gung-ho about ePrescribing. She says: I predict that e-Prescribing will come of age in 2006. With Medicare kicking the tires on...

BLOGS: Shahid Shah becoming even more famous

He is interviewed telling the lazy dogs (i.e. health care IT companies) to get on with blogging before the quick brown foxes jump over them. I just hopes he remembers us little people when his wealth matches his fame!

BLOGS/POLICY: My readers are way smarter than I am

The best thing about this year in THCB has been opening the comments up for discussion, which was actually a function of changing hosts from Blogger to TypePad, and not part of some grand design. Although certain themes have been...

TECH: Interesting post on physician IT education

Tech-over-achiever Shahid Shah’s new IT aggregator blog — the HITSphere— has started up a community feature that’s well worth tracking. Several people have started their own blogs there and one is an MD called Mike. He has some interesting things...

TECH/CONSUMERS: Joe Paduda is nice to Steve Case

Here's Joe Paduda on Steve Case's strategy for Revolution Health Loyal readers know I have been less than impressed with Case’s strategy, team, and acquisitions to date. While I admire the audacity, I question the judgment. Joe is too nice....

QUALITY: Can a hospital CEO get us all to integrate (medicine, that is...)

This is pretty interesting. A fairly hard nosed hospital CEO, under it appears the tutelage of his new wife, gets into alternate and preventative medicine. Three years ago, Treuman Katz got some troubling news: At 60, he was on his...

BLOGS: Grand Rounds up at Medpundit, and here next week

Whoops. If you're looking for the December 28th, Grand Rounds please click HERE. ------ Grand Rounds is up at the ever-wonderful Medpundit’s site. OK I rag on Syd a lot, but she’s a great blogger in addition to having a...

POLICY: I'm up at Spot-on

My next column is up over at Spot-on. It’s a remedial work for you lot about why we have uninsured and why they are good for the medical system’s overall fiscal health — called It Still Ain't Necessarily So.

POLICY: Tax health care benefits, go on I dare ya!

Hat tip to Ezra, who clearly wasn’t partying enough this weekend and read the NY Times on Sunday. In it there’s a rational argument that me, Fuchs, Enthoven and Eric Novack all agree with: get rid of the tax deductibility...

PHYSICIANS/PHARMA: Is academic medicine beyond salvage? by The Industry Veteran

Several people are concerned about the integrity of our medical leaders, and the latest Cleveland Clinic spat has upset a few people, notably local MD Medpundit. I have a more jaded view. I liken it to when I heard that...

POLICY/INTERNATIONAL/PHYSICIANS: It's not just here that doctors fees are an issue

And from the THCB Japan bureau (well actually the Yomiuri Shimbun)…. It’s worth noting that the Japanese, who have one medical fee schedule for all of their multi-payers (and also a complex system of cross-subsidization between those payers), are about...

TECH: More on CPOE

Typepad (the hosting service I use) was down on Friday, giving THCB an involuntary day off. Here was my FierceHealthcare editorial on Friday. You can use this as a continuation of the discussion from last week: There is little doubt...

TECH: Cerner's very rough days

So despite the denials, Cerner’s stock had another dreadful day. Following a fall on Wednesday, Thursday it was down another $10 on concerns that they’re cooking the books. Now Neal Patterson may be a rough around the edges guy, but...

TECH: Christiana hospital knows where you are

All the staff, patients, physicians and everyone else in the ED in Christiana hospital (in Delaware) is now tracked everywhere they go...and it works -- but no staff tracking in the break room or bathroom. But quite a few tracker...

QUALITY/TECH: Bob Wachter on patient safety

Bob Wachter is probably the leading expert in the nation on medical errors and a great speaker. He's worried about the lack of budget for training, and that IT = Patient safety. But he does think that the IT/EMR movement...

TECH/QUALITY: Leapfrog

I'm at a conference on patient safety... Suzanne Delbanco is the CEO of the Leapfrog Group. This is the group which is where big employers get together to grouch about health care and ask the providers nicely to try to...

THCB: New feeds live!

After much tinkering and grumbling, THCB's crack tech staff has set up new RSS feeds filtered by content category. This means you can now get Health Care Blog posts on specific topics delivered to your trusty RSS reader without having...

BLOGS: Grand Rounds coming here for an end of year special

I have finally been suckered into offered to host Grand Rounds, and will be doing so in the week between Christmas and New Year on Tuesday 27th December. And it’s likely that’s all I’ll be doing that week over here....

TECH: EMR comments

If you haven’t seen it in the last few hours, you should see what Kelly Clark (who started all this) has added to the comments on the EMR piece, and see the subsequent discussion. Continually really excellent stuff from all...

TECH: Bloggers chasing own tails on EMR

Both the Health Care Law Blog and the Health Care IT Guy have follow ups on the long post here on EMRs and whether docs ever can love ‘em. I’ll say little more other than I feel a little like...

TECH: What? Were you expecting them to come out against it?

How about this for vacuous press release of the week: Cerner Technology to Support Participation in IHI's 100,000 Lives Campaign; Healthcare IT Leader Supports Effort to Reduce Hospital Mortality Rates But please, go read the press release and tell me...

POLICY: Ignorance is not bliss

Young punk Kate Steadman has a very interesting post about the uninsured over at Health Policy The current display of ignorance was on the subject of being uninsured. The woman I talked with didn't really understand what it meant to...

POLICY: Another balanced debate--what did you expect from the WSJ editorial pages?

So in this online "debate" about consumer health care called Consumer Choice: Can It Cure The Nation's Health-Care Ills? the WSJ editorial page shows its lack of bias by having two HSA advocates, and one very tired liberal debunking them....

TECH: Just an excellent discussion from THCB readers

Yesterday's post on physicians and the EMR from Dr. Kelly Clark caused one of the most excellent discussions ever seen on THCB. If you didn't read it, or read it early I suggest you go back and look at the...

TCHB: Jobs and requested people

I'm getting an increasing number of people calling me looking for senior and not so senior health care consulting, strategy and marketing types. Not that I've figured out how to get in the middle of this or make any money...

QUALITY: We spend how much on the NIH and how much on AHQR?

This is far, far too true. Spending less money on better drugs and more on getting existing therapies to patients would save more lives. That's the conclusion of a study published by a Virginia Commonwealth University family medicine and public...

THCB: Wussies--Tough? Try not drinking for a month

Apparently it’s to difficult to give up drinking for a month. As many of my friends will tell you I drink my fair share of alcohol, but I’ve managed it quite a few times. The LA Times reports how difficult...

TECH: Can doctors ever learn to love the EMR?

This was my editorial at FierceHealthcare on Friday This week I heard a very bitter physician complaining that using an electronic medical record got between him and caring for his patients, and imposed secretarial tasks on him. Then on Tuesday...

BLOGS/POLICY: And over at Spot-on, c'est moi

I have found myself another gig amongst a great group of political writers led by the intrepid Chris Nolan. Chris is a leading Silicon Valley journo and a policy wonk, and she has surrounded herself with a group of op-ed...

PHARMA: Looks like more good news for the Vioxx plaintiff bar!

So according to the NEJM there were serious errors in the original Vioxx study--that is errors of omission. The New England Journal of Medicine publicly alleged Thursday at least two of the authors of a major Canadian-led study on the...

PHYSICIANS/POLICY/POLITICS: The AMA, as reliable as ever

The AMA -- well after 100 years of hisory, we'd never have seen this one coming. The American Medical Association has made clear that it will oppose efforts to link Medicare payments to higher-quality healthcare services unless Congress and Medicare...

TECH/HOSPITALS: Mr HISTalk says "Does Cerner Millennium kill children? I don't think so."

MrHISTalk, who’s blog is fantastic, out-does himself in an article about the University of Pittsburgh Children’s hospital CPOE implementation, which has had so much publicity since the article was released on Monday. His article is called, Does Cerner Millennium kill...

TECH: What's wrong with health care IT

This story about the wonderful new personal health record available to the patients who frequent the BJC system in in St.Louis explains about 90% of what's wrong with American health care IT. Peterson said myHealthFolders.com was developed internally, because BJC...

POLICY/HEALTH PLANS: The perils of the individual health insurance market...revisited

So last week arrived with bad news. For the last year and a half I have bought my health insurance from Blue Shield of California via a group called PacAdvantage. PacAdvantage is an employer-buying coalition that had its origins back...

OFF-TOPIC: In my dreams...

So I’m reading a loony conservative psychologist's blog and I see this link about a Florida teacher having sex with a 14 yr old. Being a standard British pervert I click over. If you’re not a pervert like me you...

INTERNATIONAL/QUALITY: U.S., Canada heart-failure mortality compared

This one's from last week, but well worth a quick look. A study in the Archives of Internal Medicine compared heart-failure mortality in the U.S. and Canada Two findings emerged from a recent Archives of Internal Medicine report on heart-failure...

HEALTH PLANS/TECHNOLOGY: AHIP impressed with itself yet again, with UPDATE

Long term THCB readers will know the the term "AHIP report" tends to put me in a just a little bit of a tizzy, given the generally shoddy "research" they've been foisting on those of us who bother to read...

POLICY: It's not just me saying that the individual market sucks

You’ve heard me saying it often enough. And later this week I will start to tell you my new personal horror show in navigating yet another twist in the individual insurance market. But given the lack of a rational government...

PHARMA: Cox-2s--Really putting the boot in

So the latest study about the Cox-2s shows not only that they give heart trouble, they’re used for people who shouldn’t need them, etc, etc, etc. No this study shows that they don’t even do what they’re supposed to do—they...

TECH: Mark Gaynor on sensor network

Mark from Boston is building a sensor based application that talks HL7 (open standards) to all systems so that an air ambulance company (Boston MedFlight) can gather data in advance of hospital admission. Thus they need to build a sensor...

TECH: Cindy LeRouge on using claims data in PHRs

Cindy LeRouge is from Washington Univ in St Louis, and has been working with Wellpoint on a study of integrating claims and chart data….there is some chart-type data (i.e. lab tests) around so some chart elements (electronic) can be put...

TECH: Mary Jo Deering

Mary Jo Deering is the director for Informatics Dissemination, National Cancer Institute’s Center for Bioinformatics; she has (self-professed) been around health informatics in DC for quite a while! The big problem they face is that there is a divide between...

TECH: Motorola's view of seamless health

Jose Lacal is from Florida, and they have lots of hurricanes there (and there’s a reason for that!). Motorola has built a seamless health record (basically a CRM system that has all the information, built on the mobile device). You...

TECH/POLICY: Steeve Kay on integrating disability via PHRs

More from the conference. Steeve Kay is the founder of QTC, a disability company which provides outsourced evaluations. Given the problems in figuring out who’s disabled and who’s not, you can see why they care about getting these records electronic....

TECH/POLICY: Disability and PHRs

David Stapleton (from Cornell Univ Inst for Policy Research) is here to talk about disability. He says that we spend over $200bn on disability (via Medicare, SSI, and Medicaid) and the process of getting people onto disability is totally broken...

TECH: Personal Health Records--a conference

I’m at a conference with a bunch of academics at Claremont graduate school, all about the Personal Health Record. Helga Rippen, who’s been hanging out in health care IT for a while, and is now buried somewhere in HHS is...