The Health Care Blog

TECH: LinuxWorld - Healthcare Day

For those of you who believe in Open Source at LinuxWorld in San Francisco on Aug 15 there is a Healthcare Day. Sometime THCB commenter and contributor Fred Trotter is on at 2pm running a panel on innovation.

BLOGS: HEWR is up at Medical Connectivity Consulting

Health Wonk Review is up at Tim Gee’s excellent Medical Connectivity Consulting. The next HWR is going to be here at THCB on August 10 so hurry over to Dimitriy’s The Medical Blog Network to submit… Yup I’ll remind you...

POLICY/HEALTH PLANS/PHARMA: Part D--a tale of two headlines

Most Beneficiaries Enrolled in Medicare Rx Benefit Satisfied With Drug Plan, Nearly Two in 10 Experienced Major Problem, Study Finds or if you prefer Poll shows 80% of those enrolled in Medicare drug plan satisfied So go ahead and guess...

HEALTH PLANS: And just in case the pro-Kaiser bias is getting out of hand

Now that we've let Pat Salber be so nice to Kaiser, Gadlfy reminds me about a couple of things. First a lost laptop apparently filched out of Oakland HQ with a mere 160,000 patients’ details on it. They were fined...

HEALTH PLANS/PHYSICIANS/TECH:Health care, the way it should be (or How to stop worrying and learn to love the bomb), by Pat Salber

Pat Salber writes The Doctor Weighs In. She is a doc, an ex-med director at California blue shield, and a Kaiser Permanente member. And she loves them. This is why, and it’s quite an advertorial for Kaiser and an indictment...

TECH: Is Continua the work of the devil

You and I might have thought that Continua was a sensible business led approach to get medical devices and remote monitoring systems operating together. But looking at this photo of Intel’s Dave Whitlinger who runs the Continua Health Alliance over...

BLOGS: New hospital industry blog

Health Care Policy, Innovation and Renewal is a pretty interesting new blog from a hopsital system strategy exec, who appears to have something of a social conscience—if that’s not a contradiction in terms! Doesn’t seem to be updated all that...

HOSPITALS: Yet more insider trading at HCA?

Apparently the SEC is understood to be examining suspicious option trades in the run-up to the HCA leveraged buyout. Which does give me the thought, can’t Bill Frist leave well enough alone?

BLOGS: How many nurses can dance on the head of a pin?

Change of Shift, the nurses compendium is up.

THCB: Tech stuff

If you've tried to sign up for the THCB Update email at any point in the past two or three days you may have encountered problems. THCB's intrepid techies are working to resolve matters. Meanwhile, If you'd like to sign...

QUALIY/PHYSICIANS: P4P in the United Kingdom

The biggest P4P scheme in the world is going on in the UK, one that I first wrote about in early 2004. (For more on the wider ramifications of reform in the UK ,see yet another article in this weeks...

HEALTH PLANS: You sleep with scumbags, you expect to catch nasty diseases

More on the incredible United Healthcare/Golden Rule story that Joe Paduda’s been following. Joe’s latest is called Who is UHC's customer? Essentially United’ high deductible subsidiary Golden Rule is advertising that it’s selling a HDHP with agreed procedure rates for...

TECH/QUALITY/PHYSICIANS: Healthcare and The Long Tail - Searching for help when you’re on the wrong-end of the curve by Jim Walker

Two things have got my attention recently. The first is the concept of the long tail in medicine, which I've thought about alot since my fiancee got an odd condition (shortness of breath) that didn’t match any of the symptoms...

PBMs: Rebates are nearly dead; can the PBMs keep their generic margins?

Vanessa Furhman continues her swath through the PBM industry in the WSJ. The article is called Managers of Drug Benefits Agree To More Transparency in Pricing. Apparently bullied into this by fear of losing some big clients, both Medco and...

TECH/HEALTH PLANS: JSK on Health IT After the Employer-Sponsored Health Era

JSK is up on iHealthbeat about Health IT After the Employer-Sponsored Health Era. Go read.

HOSPITALS: Dr. Anna Pou Defense Fund

From THCB's New York Desk ... A defense fund has been set up to help cover legal expenses for Dr. Anna Pou and the two nurses charged with murder by Louisiana attorney general Charles Foti in the Memorial Medical Center...

HOSPITALS: The secret to Sutter's high margins?

Appears to be defamation suits! Yup Sutter just got awarded $17.3m because Unite Here, one of the nation's largest unions that represents hotel, restaurant and laundry workers, defamed Sutter Health early last year by sending postcards to women of child-bearing...

POLICY/INTERNATIONAL: Canadians somewhat grumpy about waiting, but not waiting that long

How bad are those terrible waiting lists in Canada? Well if you hang with the loonies at Fraser and PRI they average 10 months for a typical pregnancy and care for everyone else is delivered only by morticians. On the...

TECH: Cerner stock heading up again?

Following almost a 30% fall from its heights late last year, Cerner’s stock seems to be on the move again. Its numbers had lower profits than the analysts guessed but higher revenue, and then they raised guidance for profits and...

HEALTH PLANS/POLICY: eHealthinsurance still skipping stats 101

eHealthinsurance is out with its annual report of what premiums are in different cities and they’re still comparing the price of rotten month old apples with sweet juicy, juicy mangoes. And amazingly enough they’re different. Basically some states ban underwriting...

TECH: Why we love HISTalk

Every so often Mr HIStalk reminds me why he’s the best blogger in Healthcare IT and possibly far beyond: Kaiser Permanente's Northwest region president resigns, seemingly because of computer problems that hurt earnings. "Kaiser launched a computer system to govern...

QUALITY/CONSUMERS: A really personal piece about obesity

From Pat Salber at The Doctor Weighs In, here's a very personal look at the life of someone extremely obese as a side effect of diabetes . Well worth reading, even if it might spoil your appetite and get you...

TECH/POLICY: All Oprah's fault

You just thought she just plugged crappy books. But no, apparently the medical arms race is all Oprah's fault!

TECH: IOM reccomends ePrescribing by 2010

The IOM is out with another report on medication errors in which it recommends the use of ePrescribing for all scripts by 2010. And it’s made it into the news, at least into the AP Headlines where the tale is...

POLICY/HOSPITALS: Joe agrees that end of life care costs too much

You don’t need me to prattle on about the systemic over-spending on end of life care when Joe Paduda is doing it instead. But on the day when we’re arresting doctors for delivering what they perceive to be the best...

THCB Update

QUICK REMINDER CATEGORY: THCB's update service is up and online. Signing up only takes a minute. You'll get an email every few days notifying you of new content on the site. And special alerts for important posts. Go on. It's...

TECH: PHR has opportunity to go mainstream

Wellpoint is going to roll out the WebMD PHR based system which has been working at Empire Blues (Wellchoice) for about a year to the rest of its plans to the rest of its plans. So theoretically up to 34...

QUALITY/PHYSICIANS: Just what we need now, another grandstanding politician on end of life issues

I’ve been having a backchat email with the people from the Tenet Shareholders Committee. They are enjoying the legal attack on the Louisiana physician who is supposed to have performed a mercy killing or provided ample pain medication at Tenet’s...

QUALITY/HOSPITALS: I shouldn't joke about this, but...

....you've got to ask if this is is a case of a fatal nosocomial illness.

TECH: Tim keeping track of healthcare unbound

Over at Medical Connectivity Consulting Tim Gee is blogging up a storm about the Healthcare Unbound conference going on in Boston. For those of you who don't know “Healthcare Unbound” is our friends at Forrester’s cute-sy way of talking about...

POLITICS/POLICY/HEALTH PLANS: On the Blues' political giving & CDHP complexity

Says here that Blues Plans Favor Republicans With Their 2006 Campaign Contributions. But I think what it means is that they’re favoring incumbents. Having said that and reading the polls and the tea leaves, I think the Blues might think...

POLICY/THE INDUSTRY: Nice work if you can get it

So for rewriting Alain Enthoven’s lectures from the late 1980s and missing the main points, apparently Michael Porter is being paid $50,000 a day, and that is a discount from his apparently usual fee of $100,000! Damn, that’s nice work...

PHYSICIANS/INDUSTRY: Retail clinics

I recently met Michael Howe who is CEO of MinuteClinic, and he had the good graces to call me back and talk on the day that they sold out to CVS. Very classy as it would have been easy to...

PHARMA/CONSUMERS: Med Solutions

This is more of a public service announcement, but Med Solutions offers a service which can put you in touch with all the patient assistance programs from big Pharma. It looks to be well worth checking out if you need...

BLOGS: Medpundit's back

My fiancee complains when I come to bed late after blogging. Medpundit’s family complained when she ranted to them instead of to us. So she’s back! Hi Syd and welcome back!

HOSPITALS/POLICY: Unhealthy & unhappy Returns from BillMon

I missed this but last week my favorite writer on the entire Internet, Billmon at the Whiskey Bar, wrote about health care. 99% of his posts are about foreign policy, from an extremely cynical point of view. But this time...

THCB - You've got mail!

Or we've got mail. Or we've all got mail. Or something ... After much late night heroism by THCB's trusty (and highly sensitive) tech staff, the THCB email list is up and running. If you'd like to get a quick...

PHARMA/POLICY: Medicaid gets screwed over on best price, Ignagni fibbing again.

A little while ago I sat through a webcast starring my favorite factually challenged health plan lobbyist. Karen Ignagni said this about the costs of pharmaceuticals for Medicaid that are now bought instead by the private plans working under Part...

POLICY: The health care, gay marriage re-run

Over at Spot-on I’m finally back to health care after a while off talking about footy. And I notice that San Francisco and Massachusetts share a couple of policy issues in common. It’s The health care, gay marriage re-run. As...

Hospitals: Doctor in Katrina case arrested

From THCB’s NEW YORK DESK – Authorities in Louisiana have arrested a doctor and two nurses in connection with the deaths of scores of elderly patients at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Attorney...

TECH/POLICY/RANDOM: Monday update

Apologies for the quiet start today. A few things to keep you going with while I work on some other stuff off-line MyMedwork is a MySpace/Linked in for physicians which has funding from a business accelerator started by bunch of...

BLOGS: Start the weekend early

Busy today—see ya Monday

TECH: Comparing chronic disease management systems with EMRs

My favorite EMR consultant, Laura Jantos (from ECG in Seattle)—who retains that title despite owing me lunch since 1995—has a report out from the California Health Care Foundation about tools for managing disease management systems. The very short summary is...

TECH: Uh-oh, dissent in the orthodoxy that EMR will save money

In his Health Affairs piece It Ain't Necessarily So (which steals its title from my one Health Affairs article on which I was 4th banana author back in 1994) Jaan Sidorov claims that merely introducing “The Electronic Health Record” is...

HOSPITALS: Apparently they're shooting them down in Texas.

Additional light shed on Houston Healthcare firings. I can’t claim to know anything about this, other than isn’t it a little rare for this type of mass firing in the rather clubby hospital industry? Usually grand larceny and Medicare fraud...

BLOGS: Nurses--lots of them

Did you know that there were 4 million nurses in America? OK I made that up, but there are about 3 million RNs, not that all of them are working as nurses. I tell you this because virtually all of...

TECH: Instapundit on Kessler

Andy Kessler was on THCB plugging his book in a fun way the other day. Now he’s getting closer to the blogging big time with InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds reviewing his book over on Oil Company Central. And (gasp) I agree...

BLOGS: HWR is up

Oops—I forgot to submit this week, but Health Wonk Review #11 is up at the Healthcare Economist.

QUALITY: Yogurt--health food or dessert?

At The Doctor Weighs In spoilsport Pat Salber tells you that yogurt is not a health food! As I like (sweetened) yogurt — as oppsed to the natural rubbish — that’s obvious to me. The Matthew Holt test is, if...

POLICY/POLITICS/HEALTH PLANS: HSAs for Medicare? Crazy but apparently true

So the HSA ideology has wormed its way into CMS, and now Medicare is seeking proposals for its Consumer-Directed Health Plan demonstration. Those taxpayers who can do basic math might wonder why you’d want to to give healthy Medicare beneficiaries...