The Health Care Blog

QUALITY/TECH: Book reviews on quality and technology strategy

So it's time for book reviews on THCB. The first book I will talk about is an excellent business written by -- full disclosure -- my good friend Tony Seba. For several years now Tony has been teaching a course...

POLICY/THE INDUSTRY: Cutler used as propaganda--is that how he likes it?

So David Cutler’s piece which I mentioned in passing because I was asked about it yesterday is now out. (Abstract is here). And although I don’t have access to the whole thing (being a mere blogger and too damn cheap...

QUALITY/PHYSICIANS/POLICY/POLITICS: Hmm...."questiions" about those chemo payments

Chemotherapy; Part B "reforms"; bribes to doctors; taxpayer and Medicare patients bilked. Have we heard any of this before? (I’m sure we’ll hear from Greg soon!)

THCB/HOSPITALS: Google plus THCB makes for some interesting stuff!

So a little over a year ago, I wrote a piece following a WSJ article about a surgeon in S. Dakota, who’d opened a specialty hospital and done very well out of it. Today I was futzing around on my...

INDUSTRY: Who's making money off the health care crisis?

IN an article called Who's making money off the health care crisis? Amy Fletcher at the Denver Business Journal reminds us that “health care costs = health care incomes.” Meanwhile I was called by a journalist from Scientific American ,...

POLICY/POLITICS: California's single payer bill, by Eric Novack

I don't know why a bill that’s destined for a veto in a state he doesn’t live in gets Eric Novack so worked up, but it does. So here’s his take on Sheila Kuehl’s single payer bill getting past the...

HEALTH PLANS/PHYSICIANS: Why Health Care Costs So Much, Reason #581

I’m up at Spot-on about Why Health Care Costs So Much, Reason #581. This one is a little more personal and a lot more ridiculous. As ever please come back here to comment.

PHYSICIANS: More on the problems of primary care

Robin Cook has the solution for the woes of primary care physicians in the New York Times! They should write best-selling novels…or perhaps he means join mutli-specialty group practices.

POLICY: Health care and profits take a hack out of wages

The New York Times picks up on a story that's been going on for a long time in America health care. What's happening is that the increase in real wages has all been sucked up by the added cost of...

POLICY/THE INDUSTRY/QUALITY: Why health care costs so much, reason #498

Two angioplasty procedures on a 93 year old in one week. Former President Ford underwent his second heart procedure in a week at the Mayo Clinic when stents were placed into two of his coronary arteries to increase blood flow,...

HOSPITALS: Tony Chen, happily paranoid

At Hospital Impact Tony Chen is a little bit paranoid about the multiple different competitors hospitals might face—I think they’ll be OK if they keep paying the lobbyists. On the other hand Tony, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re...

TECH: Dragon NaturallySpeaking first review

So I was so fed up with the common tunnel syndrome article from my last big project that I went out on board Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9. Now I am a hell of a challenge for any dictation system because as...

INTL/POLICY/POLITICS: American governor crosses border for healthcare

In the first public (non-academic) health care talk I ever gave to a Rotary club (in I think 1993) I was laying into the US health care system when some guy stood up and said “when he was sick the...

HEALTH PLANS/QUALITY: BC California on P4P

My erstwhile colleagues at FierceHealthcare have an interview up with Dr. Michael Belman, staff VP and Medical Director, Blue Cross of California. It's a pretty good introduction, for those of you who don't know much about it, to the P4P...

TECH: EMR meant savings, says Pa. doc

Meanwhile this is either a Misys plant or damn sensible

TECH: JSK tries to sort out the "Chaos and Creation in the Health IT Market"

Jane Sarasohn Kahn tries to sort out chaos and creation in the Health IT Market. JSK “remains hopeful” that the market will sort it all out. I’d say she was from the Planet Pluto, but it’s not one anymore. (Ho,...

PHARMA: Jim Edwards is very smart

Brandweek’s Jim Edwards is very smart and sees through the industry BS very well—almost at a Venessa Furhman level. He probably should be plying his trade on a bigger stage given the rubbish that the science/business reporters of certain national...

INTERNATIONAL: Maybe privatization in the UK will not be quite so swift

Strike one for the little guy. A pensioner (that’s a “senior” to us Yanks) has won a court battle to stop a US healthcare giant from taking over a GP practice. The giant in question is United HealthGroup which apparently...

BLOGS: HWR is up

HWR is up at The Lucidicus Project

PHARMA/POLICY: New trial for Hurwitz

Excellent news as there’ll be a new trial for William Hurwitz. I’m trying to find out if they’ve released him from jail already. I and my crusty old dad have both contributed to his defense fund, and it looks like...

PHYSICIANS/TECH: Technology won't replace doctors -- and it won't cut costs, at least so says a doctor

Kessler’s book on how doctors will get replaced by technology is dissed by a doctor who points out that he had to go to medical school and learn stuff that you could never teach a CT Scanner, dammit! And those...

PHYSICIANS/HOSPITALS/POLICY: Explaining practice variation to the masses

I'm up over at Spot-on trying to explain practice variation to the masses. Let me know how I did back here.

POLICY: Grace-Marie Turner podcast transcript.

I know a lot of people don't like podcasts and the one I did with Grace Marie Turner from Galen back in April was both fascinating and recorded in a painful way to listen to. So now I’ve found CastingWords...

PHYSICIANS: Ed Goldman podcast transcript

This is the transcript from the interview/podcast I did with Ed Goldman from MDVIP a week or so back. (The transcript was done very well and very affordably by castingwords. I just gave it a light readability edit) Matthew Holt:...

THCB: Fame and fortune and everything that goes with it....

I’ll be on a panel with Dimitry, Amy Hughes from Cisco and several non-bloggers talking about new media, blogs, podcasts, etc, etc in healthcare Date: Thursday, September 28, 2006 Time: 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. (includes light breakfast) Location: Jack...

POLICY: You can be a Nobel laureate and still be very confused

The NY Times has a fairly jaw dropping article which basically says that whatever we spend on health care, it's all good! It basically goes down the David Cutler/Mark Pauly line of “we wouldn’t spend all that money if the...

TECH/HOPSITALS: IBM Consulting's view of the full employment future

Up over at Health IT World, there's an interview I did with Ivo Nelson, the Healthcare Industry Leader of IBM Global Business Services. Suffice it to say that Ivo doesn't think we're very far along in the transformation of clinical...

JOBS: Wanna go to the middle east?

No, I'm not offering a one-way trip to Baghdad. This sounds a whole lot better. A colleague in the recruiting world is looking for 3 senior nursing directors and 3 medical directors to work in the United Arab Emirates. Salaries...

HOSPITALS: Pick the odd one out

Quiz time at THCB this morning, where you get to pick the odd one out from this list 1 —Hospitals 2 —New Jersey 3 —Fraud 4 —The Sopranos The answer? Maybe Number 4, but I doubt it. Anyway, here’s the...

HEALTH PLANS: Roy Poses keeps up his attack dog tactics

Roy Poses at Health Care Renewal keeps up his attack dog stance on the United HealthGroup board. Although I can’t exactly agree with all of his criticisms—for instance Mary Mudlinger’s attempt to increase the use of NPs is probably a...

PHYSICIANS: Patient comments on overuse

The NY Times asked. Have you ever suspected that a physician had financial incentives for recommending a medical treatment to you? One day later they have 236 comments from readers. almost all uniformly going after doctors and dentists for overtreatment....

The Industry: Worth a look By John Irvine

Today contributor John Irvine reprises his role at FierceHealthcare with a guided tour of some of last week's top healthcare stories. Go have a read and I'll be back tomorrow with more.The FBI’s Upgrade that wasn’t Five years ago the...

QUALITY/POLICY/HEALTH PLANS: Cranky, confused, aimless and spineless

And in the all talk and no action department… Ian Morrison and Bob Leitman used to go around America calling employers’ attitude towards buying health care for their employees“cranky, confused, aimless and spineless”….that was in the early 1990s. It’s all...

PHARMA/POLITICS: Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the FDA toilet

Anti-Abortion Groups are opposing the FDA Nominee over the compromise on the OTC switch for for adults only for Plan B. Robert Steeves, who’s desperately trying to stay dry on what’s a fast receding sand bank for rational Republicans, writes...

TECH: The real news

MrHISTalk channels The Onion. I get the impression he’s having way too much fun.

Quiet today

I'm dealing with the not very nice condition of trigeminal neuralgia. I had it ten years ago and thankfully it went away after a few days. It seems to be getting better as the day goes on (possibly helped by...

BLOGS: Quick blog round up

I’ m having a tough medical day myself so today I’m just sending you to two excellent bloggers—John Mack at the Pharma Marketing Blog on the new deconstruction of off-label marketing of Neurotin and its implications for consumer marketing, and...

INDUSTRY/POLICY: Brian Klepper is still an optimist

In an excellent article at HealthLeaders, Brian Klepper believes that enough is enough and that transparency gleaned from large data sets is the key to solving the health care crisis. I think he's mostly right, but of course what he...

PHYSICIANS/POLICY: Concierge Medicine-Interview with Ed Goldman MDVIP

Does primary care have a future? And is that future a version of concierge medicine? It's very early days, but yesterday I had a great conversation with Ed Goldman, CEO of MDVIP, a franchise concierge medicine company. He has some...

BLOGS: Grand Rounds

Over at Tony Chen’s Hospital impact, a very personal and very entertaining Grand Rounds is up

HOSPITALS: McKinsey wants to inspire lots of change; caveat emptor

McKinsey, an organization that prides itself on increasing the amount of consulting dollars it gets paid by improving the strategic direction of American business is making another foray into health care. You may recall their last study on CDHPs was...

TECH: Asset tracking continues to get important

Worth noting that although I haven't mentioned it for a while, asset tracking using WiFi appears to be making headway. Ekahau chalked up another client win last week while this is a big market for Pango, AeroScout, Cisco and others....

HEALTH PLANS/POLICY: And for those of you suffering from the voluntary pooling delusion...

PacAdvantage, nee CalHIPC, was the biggest small business purchasing pool in the nation. It was supposed to be a model for the Clinton-era Regional Health Alliances, but because that reform never happened, it was forced to soldier on and accept...

POLICY: How dumb is this, part 34

Study Says Medicare, Health Insurance May Be Major Cause of Hospital Spending Growth. The Galen crowd are all over this study from an Asst Professor at MIT because it tells apparently a new tale which is that the spread of...

HEALTH PLANS/POLICY/TECH: Millenson on health prediction

Michael Millenson writes on the new possibilities of predicting disease status and utilization using huge databases. As usual Michael is clever. Perhaps too clever!

PHARMA/POLITICS: Closing the loop on Plan B

So finally we got some resolution to the ridiculous Plan B situation which has helped drag the FDA even further into the mud --F.D.A. Gains Accord on Wider Sales of Next-Day Pill . It will go OTC but only for...

HOSPITALS/TECH: Getting the machine that goes "ping" into the EMR

Tim Gee managed to get to one of my posts when I didn’t submit for the last HWR for which he was host, to my chagrin and I failed to return the favor. But he does have a really interesting...

POLICY/POLITICS: The Real Politic$-As-U$ual of Health Care

I am up at Spot-on putting Health Care Politic$-As-U$ual in context. As ever come back here to comment if you like.

BLOGS: Health Wonk Review

Welcome to Health Wonk Review. The bi-weekly round up of the great and the good in health policy wonkery around the web. Putting HWR together this week confirms that health wonks know alot about health care, but can’t follow simple...

PHYSICIANS: The sky is falling

Mark McClellan says that Medicare payments to physicians are going down 5%. This of course is leading to political pressure, with the President of the AMA writing op-eds showing that the sky is indeed falling on the heads of seniors....