The Health Care Blog

BLOGS/QUALITY: Big themes and signing off from FierceHealthcare

Here’s my last ever FierceHealthcare editorial. The FierceMarkets team is taking the editorializing of FierceHealthcare back in-house and I wish them luck. It’s been fun for me (and John Irvine who’s supported me all the way) to work on this...

OFF-TOPIC: Football, bloody hell

It’s World Cup 1/4 final weekend. So what did you expect me to write about over at Spot-On. It’s called Football, bloody hell Bonus points if you know the quote.

HOSPITALS: Scrushy guilty of something at last

Those of you despairing of rich people being able to buy their way out of trouble may be encouraged by this headline—Scrushy, Siegelman found guilty on federal conspiracy, bribery charges . Well at least he’s going down for something. Perhaps...

PHARMA/PHYSICIANS: Yet more on Rx data sales

The NEJM has a perspective about the sale of Rx data of physicians prescribing patterns, which caused a lot of fuss on THCB a while back. In my view this is problem about number 728 on the docket of what's...

HOSPITALS: Tenet saga over for now

This edition of the soap opera known as Tenet Healthcare Corporation is over, or at least has gone to commercial break. The DOJ settlement is for $725m in cash and another $175m in billing to Medicare it won't collect. How...

BLOGS: Health Wonk Review is up

I knew I should have hired an unpaid summer intern. At IBM they have them by the dozen and one of them, Emily Goodson, has done a nice round up of health care blogging in Health Wonk Review over at...

PHARMA: The Macular Degeneration Rip Off, By PAT AWASH

Occassionally I get actual patients writing into me at THCB and sometimes it's worth letting their experience with the system tell a story about how the opaque world of drug and health services pricing comes home to ground level. This...

TECH/CONSUMERS: Anytime, Anywhere Healthcare

This panel will focus on in-store clinics, and mobile devices in health care On the panel is Michael Howe, CEO MinuteClinic, Delmer Dukjhart from Technology Center, Cisco & Don Jones, VP Healthcare, Qualcom Intro from Richard Adler, IFTF—about 100 clinics...

CONSUMERS/TECH: Technology in health in the next decade

Tech trends…. EMR is now banal, aparently its happening, and there’s congestion in hospitals on traffic over WiFi networks. Personal products Nike has systems that track your health conditions as you run—your new buzz word is the “Body Area network”....

POLICY/TECH: Foodscapes ( cool word, huh!)

More from the IFTF meeting on Global Health…. Food production is a 200 year old paradigm dominated by producers. Food producers are going to have to deal with increasingly active bio-citizens. More than 70% of Americans identify themselves as environmentalists,...

QUALITY/TECH/POLICY: IFTF meeting on the Global Health Economy

I’m at an IFTF meeting on the Global Health Economy. IFTF has gone a little off into left field on the “health” issue since I left. They’re slowly coming back relating “health” back to the health care system (the stuff...

TECH: Is Newer Better? It’s a Coin-Toss, by Maggie Mahar

Last week The Annals of Internal Medicine roiled the medical world by publishing a study suggesting that the drug-coated stents produced by companies like Boston Scientific and J&J may not be quite as miraculous as first advertised.Following a two-year study,...

OFF-TOPIC: World Cup medical latest

So the main Aussie star, Harry Kewell, couldn’t play against Italy because of gout. Being a fellow traveler I sympathize, but isn’t he a bit young and thin for that?

POLICY: The times they are a changin'?

By THOMAS R.LEITH I am not quite sure what to make of this. In this past Sunday's (18-Jun-2006) edition of the St. Louis (my fair city) Post Dispatch on Page 1, above the fold, was a story headlined Is your...

TECH/QUALITY: Buying Guidant still such a great idea?

"We knew, when we did our due diligence, that the [cardiac rhythm management business] of Guidant hadn't had its last recall," Chief Executive Jim Tobin said on a conference call with analysts and investors. He said it will take 18...

TECH: Barcoding prevalent almost everywhere! (Just kidding)

Brian Klepper writes to tell me that in today’s almanac On this day in 1974, bar codes were first used in supermarket checkout lanes. In a Marsh's supermarket in Troy, Ohio, the first product to be scanned was a 10-pack...

OFF-TOPIC: Torture day 2006

Today is Torture day 2006. That’s not an invitation for people to do more of it despite what our current Adminstration thinks. instead it’s UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. I’ve supported a London Charity called The...

HOSPITALS/QUALITY: A quiet little speech by Michael Millenson

Millenson on the lack of real committment to patient safety. Acerbic and fantastic. A few quotes, but as they say in the blogosphere read the whole thing If there is a quality crisis today, it certainly is not apparent from...

POLICY: Universal Health Care in San Francisco...well not exactly

My buddy Laura Locke has a nice article in Time about San Francisco's Latest Innovation: Universal Health Care. This one’s closer to the George Bush agenda than gay marriage—and I’m pretty sure that we’ll all have accepted gay marriage long...

PHARMA/POLICY: Scottish Drug Czar Says Drug War Is Lost, Causes Big To-Do

Everyone with half a brain knows that the drug “war” is lost and was always unwinnable and that the drug “problem” is only controllable by sensible legalization, regulation and education—as has been done with other addictive drugs like alcohol and...

HOSPITALS/POLICY: MY 2 cents on the non-profit conundrum....incentives matter more than labels

Here’s my follow up to Maggie’s interesting piece and it’s the editorial in FierceHealthcare later today The non-profit hospital world has been in the news lately, and this week a study of all the studies ever done on the non-profit/for-profit...

QUALITY: Improving health care from within, by Eric Novack

Eric Novack sees hope in the IHI’s 100K lives program which announced impressive results this week, and being Eric, he thinks that there’s a political message in there too. There’ll be more on his show this Sunday. The Institute for...

QUALITY: Book reviewer?

There’s an article out called “How We Die in America” which is from a new book called UNPLUGGED: Reclaiming our Right to Die in America, by William Colby. The publisher is looking for a reviewer, so if you’re interested in...

TECH: PHRs and Info Therapy

While I was away Health IT World published a short piece I wrote about the integration of the PHR with Information Therapy. Comments back here, if you please.

PHYSICIANS/POLICY: Brian Klepper on the end of life as we know it, or something like that

Brian Klepper was recently up at Medscape bemoaning the lack of physician leadership in righting the troubled ship of our health care system, and challenging physicians to do better. He got lots of feedback, not all of it as negative...

TECH: Lost in the memory hole at McKesson

I’ve given my view on RelayHealth before—Nice product but apparently no physician or actual patient demand for it, well not enough that would have sustained a real business that didn’t get unbelievably lucky with its financing in the dotcom days....

BLOGS: Peter Rost fired again?

After writing a post questioning the scoring of comments at his blog home the Huffington Post, in which he exposed a "troll" as being the Huff Post's technology manager, Rost was fired from writing at the Huff Po this morning....

PHYSICIANS/TECH/POLICY/POLITICS: Hard to generate savings when you spend more, eh?

The real medical story of the day is of course Michael Owen’s torn ACL, which leaves the idiot Swede’s decision to take only one fully fit striker plus a kid he won’t play to Germany as dumb as they come....

Do Non-Profit Hospitals Deserve Their Tax Breaks?

By MAGGIE MAHAR Monday, The New York Times reported that the IRS, Congress and state officials have begun taking a close look at nonprofit hospitals, all asking one charged question: Do they really deserve their tax-exempt status? Some 16% of...

THCB: Back and in one piece...oh and there's football

I’m back from my vacation. My sister is married off and in Dubai on honeymoon, the Jerez region in southern Spain is full of cute bars serving Sherry and drunken policeman, and I’ve watched multo World Cup games, including perhaps...

Hospitals: LSU and VA to build Center

On Monday, Louisiana State University and the Department of Veterans Affairs announced a plan to build a new $1.2 billion medical center in New Orleans. The hospital will probably take over the role played by historic Charity Hospital, although no...

Hospitals: The Rosenbaum Case

By JOHN IRVINE Three months ago retired New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum was mortally wounded by a mugger armed with a lead pipe in an encounter on a street near his home in Northwest Washington. Believing the injured journalist...

TECH: The VA and Health IT A Model that Works By Maggie Mahar

Did it ever occur to you that your dog might have better health records than you do? While veterinarians routinely keep computerized records of their four-footed patients’ medications and vaccinations, human health care still relies heavily on pen, paper, phone...

POLICY: Consumer-Driven Medicine Is Not The AnswerBy Maggie Mahar

Consumer-driven medicine is seen, by many, as the answer to our health care crisis. Put the consumer in the driver’s seat, we are told, and patients will drive down costs by insisting on the very best value for their dollars....

POLICY: Canadian Giver By Eric Novack

With well over 25,000 visitors per month to THCB, undoubtedly many are not well grounded in critically looking at published research studies. This, of course, also is true in the media at large. With the recent publication in the American...

TECH: No I'm Not Really ChangingMy View About IT in Healthcare, But ...By The Industry Veteran

So maybe IT can have some marginal role after all in addressing health care costs and quality. The key word is “marginal” and the point of influence is not necessarily where the techie devotees think it will be. I still...

POLICY: Why Medicare is More Efficient Than Private Insurers By Maggie Mahar

I found Eric’s Novack’s June 13 post, “The Three Percent Myth,” provocative, though I’m afraid I can’t agree. Medicare is, in fact, more efficient than private insurers. In his comment on the post, Rick underlines a key difference: In contrast...

POLICY: A Riposte to Physicians Who Post on THCBBy the Industry Veteran

The Industry Veteran joins us this afternoon in the latest in THCB’s series by guest posters, following up on excellent posts by veteran financial journalist Maggie Mahar and orthopedic surgeon turned talk show host Eric Novack. The Veteran found Eric’s...

POLICY: Two Scenarios ... By Eric Novack

Here is a quick hit for the day. We have read about Medicare (actually CMS, but it sounds better to give Medicare its own personality) publishing payments for 30 procedures. I encourage you check out cms.gov and try to actually...

POLICY: If You Can't Beat Them, Beat Them Back By Thomas Leith

The Wall Street Journal reported in a June 13th article, Page D1 that several major insurers (Aetna, Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth) as well as Medicare are disclosing the prices they have negotiated with doctors and hospitals for a number of common...

POLICY: The Three Percent Myth By Eric Novack M.D.

As the premier health policy blog on the net, I am honored that Matthew has asked me to occasionally guest post here. I also am regularly impressed with the level of thought and knowledge of so many posters of comments....

PHARMA: Can There Be Too Many Cures for Cancer? by Maggie Mahar

Last week, an upbeat story in the New York Times described how big pharmaceutical companies have discovered cancer. A few years ago, the article points out, companies like Pfizer, Glaxo and Wyeth had relatively little interest in what they saw...

TECH: If he beeps, he’s clean Bob By John Irvine

“It’s really no different than a tamperproof passport you can carry all the time,” Applied Digital CEO Scott Silverman, attempting to explain why his company’s proposal to use surgically implanted RFID microchips to help keep tabs on immigrants is really...

BLOGS: Medpundit quits

Damn--I never posted this when it happened last month! But I still mean it --------------- Medpundit stopped blogging last week. Sydney drove me mad. We fought about ethics, politics and everything. But she inspired some of my best thinking. She...

PHARMA/POLICY/POLITICS: The beginning of the doughnut hole

The beginning of the doughnut hole has been noticed at a new blog (to me) called On the Pharm. I suspect we'll hear lots more about this by November.

CONSUMERS/HEALTH PLANS/HOSPITALS/TECH: Consumer comparison tools, not exactly wowing the world as yet

There’s a new report from CHCF, written by Katy Hendrickson at Forrester, it’s called (pdf) Health Care Cost Comparison Tools: A market under construction. I’ve read it and it does suggest that something is slowly happening in the Submio/Health Grades...

TECH: Conflict-of-interest! This is the best Modern Healthcare could do?

I greeted with glee an email from Modern Healthcare suggesting that there was some seedy goings on in the RHIO world. That article is called Conflict-of-interest questions arise over RHIOs. I was looking forward to the expose of fraud, graft...

POLICY: Last shot of the Cannon?

Michael Cannon has written a response to my response to him. Even ignoring the issue about my personal HSA, we’re really talking past each other. Cannon doesn’t think our discussion is fruitful, and in truth it’s not. He wants to...

TECH: Has net neutrality already ended?

From Tom Foremski at Silicon Valley Watcher, Net neutrality has already left the building. You can subtley divert lots of content and commerce if you own the ISP and the pipes…

TECH: Physician IT use growing but not that fast

The conventional wisdom among the three of us who care is that physician clinical IT use is climbing among docs in big groups (really taking off 2003 onwards), but at a slower rate amongst other docs. A new survey from...