The Health Care Blog

TECH: HealthCamp

There’s a meeting called HealthCamp about Health2.0 in San Francisco on Saturday. Many of the usual suspects will be there, but I suspect there’s room for lots more. You can add yourself to the list at the wiki.

BLOGS: A great Health Wonk Review

Michael Cannon is hosting Health Wonk Review #21 up at the Cato@Liberty blog. And unlike some HWR hosters (i.e. me) Michael does a great job of not only steering you to the posts, but summarizing them and giving you his...

QUALITY/POLICY/TECH: Quick notes from the road

Apologies to those who’ve missed me. I’ve been lost in the mid-west taking part in some scenario planning about the big picture future of health care. I can’t give you any details (at least not yet) but it did involve...

POLICY: New York Trans Fat Debate Heats Up

The Wall Street Journal reports that McDonalds and other fast food businesses are engaged in a last minute drive to convince health officials in New York City to “soften” the proposed ban on trans fats in restaurants in the five...

HOSPITALS: Panel Said to Call for Closing 9 New York Hospitals

Somehow I think this will be rather difficult! Panel Said to Call for Closing 9 New York Hospitals Welcome to the governorship, Mr Spitzer! UPDATE: Anonymous Coward writes in to say: "The Commission's proposals actually serve as political cover for...

PHYSICIANS: Pity the poor radiologist

They are “frustrated” by Liability and Lifestyle Issues, only 7% them are truly happy—although 70% would do it all over again if they had the chance (more than most other doctors). And only 25% of them make more than $400K...

CONSUMERS/POLICY: Real people really travelling

Via HISTALK, a really interesting column about people traveling to India for surgery. Essentially the total cost slightly exceeds the co-insurance for those with insurance and of course the cost is remarkably lower for the uninsured. The people featured are...

QUALITY: The herniated disk story

Medpundit has a pretty good explanation of the recent study about herniated disk surgery. Basically it works, but if you wait two years, then the results are about the same as non-surgical treatment—roughly 70% of people get better, and there...

POLICY/POLITICS/PHARMA: PhRMA sends the D out on the field

Even thought the White House will likely veto any change to Part D, the WSJ has started playing desperate defense on behalf of PhRMA. Apparently if we impose government price controls, it’ll cripple R&D and no new drug will ever...

PHYSICIANS: The New York Times--desperate to fill column inches

When I think about all the problems in American health care, many of them the result of the political and clinical choices made by “older and middle-aged physicians (like myself)” (“Myself” being the author of the piece, Dr Erin Marcus...

TECH/HEALTH PLANS/QUALITY: Lonny Reisman, Active Health Management transcript

Here’s the transcript from the podcast I did with Lonny Reisman, a week or so back. Really interesting stuff for those of you interested in the future of patient care management. Matthew Holt: So welcome to another forecast here at...

HOSPITALS/TECH: VISICU

My article about VISICU, complete with allusions to rockumentaries, is up at Digital Health & Productivity A new star's emergence meets with wild success. Then problems emerge and it looks like the dream is over, until he or she makes...

HEALTH PLANS/TECH: Full text of Andrew Wiesenthal (Permanente Federation) interview

Here's the full text of my interview from last week with Andrew Wiesenthal of the Permanente Federation--mostly about the HealthConnect project and attendant controversies! Matthew Holt: This is Matthew Holt at The Health Care Blog and tonight at rather short...

POLICY: Maryland plan mandates coverage

Maryland is considering a plan that would require residents to purchase health insurance. Very similar on the surface to the Massachusetts plan, but with a few key differences. Via Balt Sun: The plan would be a radical change from the...

BLOGS/HEALTH PLANS: Why we love Roy Poses!

Over at Health Care Renewal Roy Poses notes that the Annals of Internal Medicine has an article by a little known Columbia University public health professor (well, actually not one, but you’d never know) with the name J. Rowe which...

HOPSITALS/HEALTH PLANS: You'd think Kaiser's had enough bad publicity lately, but then again

The city of Los Angeles. is filing patient `dumping' charges against Kaiser Permanente. Obviously there are plenty of hospitals dumping patients onto LA’s Skid Row, and obviously the way our society deals with elderly people with dementia, (and younger ones...

BLOGS: Health Wonk Review #20

Health Wonk Review #20 is up at the Health Business Blog

PODCAST/TECH: Health2.0 Communities

Moving on from the Health2.0 conversation about search and transactions, this week I've moved into the really new, new thing. Both the companies on this podcast are at the cusp of health and communities, and both have offerings whose age...

POLICY: What Would Dubya Do?

So I’m up at Spot-on asking if you really wanted to get to universal care and reward your base, what type of political moves would you have to make. In other words, What Would Dubya Do? Comment back here if...

HOSPITALS: It's not all financial woe in the big white building

Just a reminder from the Rocky Mountain News that plenty of hospitals are doing just fine. A HealthOne hospital (a local JV with HCA) made a pre-tax margin of 25%! That'll make some pharma companies jealous!

TECH/HEALTH PLANS: Perhaps the last word on KP (for now at least)

Here’s a stack more comments on Kaiser HealthConnect at HISTalk (go down) and then Mr HISTalk’s conclusions, (again read down) which are very sensible and basically mirror mine! (surprise surprise!). As I said in comments over there and here—openness for...

TECH/HEALTH PLAN: HISTalk nabs Justen Deal

HISTalk has an interview with Justen Deal (of Kaiser Permanente although probably not for long, my guess)! It seems to me that we’re now coming down to degrees as to how to interpret the same facts. There isn’t too much...

HEALTH PLANS/POLICY: Would you buy a used health care policy solution from this association?

Here it is. AHIP’s Proposal — because they didn’t obviously didn’t get enough at the MMA trough in the last go around, they figure another $30 Billion a year for ten years will get us all the way to 95%...

TECH/HEALTH PLANS: Chris Rauber pokes more into KP

For those of you who can’t get enough, Chris Rauber, health care reporter from the SF Business Times has discovered that the investigations into the KP Kidney transplant fiasco are getting wider. And if anyone from KP wants to go...

POLICY: This is just brutal

Ugly truth: no health insurance, no liver transplant. Lose your health insurance in your 50s for a brief time period and your reward is death and bankruptcy. You cannot read this story without going “that’s not fair”. There may be...

TECH/HEALTH PLANS: more on KP

Well it’s coming thick and fast. First the podcast with Andrew Wiesenthal (previous post here). Then Gadlfy in her anti Kaiser site has some more about her take, including her commenters thinking that I’m just an apolgist being paid off...

TECH/HEALTH PLANS: A Permanente Group Executive speaks

There continues to be much flack in about the “email heard around the health care IT world” about Kaiser Permanente’s HealthConnect program and its success or lack or it, and its contribution or lack of it to a potential massive...

TECH: Medsphere; what's going on?

Fred Trotter, advocate of open source for health care , has tried to help out Medsphere which is having a nasty dispute with its founders Scott and Steven Shreeves. This is long and complex, but if you’re interested read this...

BLOGS: Business Blogging for Health Professionals

Dale Hunscher of FutureHIT is a glutton for blogging punishment who wants to afflict his addiction on the rest of health care’s unwashed masses. So he’s written a book and a has a blog called Business Blogging for Health Professionals....

JOBS: Hospital Accounts specialist for software co

And on the not really existing jobs board… (it's the board that doesnt really exist, the job is real!) a healthcare financial services, software company seeks Hospital Accounting Specialist. Ideal candidate will have an accounting background with work experience in...

INTERNATIONAL/POLICY: Compare and contrast the attitudes

Crowd Protests Health Care in China (in the New York Times) Some 2,000 people mobbed and ransacked a hospital in southwestern China on Friday in a dispute over medical fees and shoddy health care practices……essential medical care was denied the...

HEALTH PLANS: Legal cons abound in health insurance

(Hat tip to Don McCanne). Apparently being a scummy insurance company and selling not-quite-fraudulent policies to dumb consumers is all fine and dandy—or at least legal. This is not the first or last we’ve head of this type of thing—a...

HEALTH PLANS/POLICY: Policy wonks explaining the bleeding obvious

KFF has some new reports out. The first is a Comparison of Expenditures in Nongroup and Employer-Sponsored Insurance. Here’s what the press release says: The first Snapshot examines the differences in costs associated with individual, nongroup insurance and employer-sponsored insurance....

QUALITY/POLICY: Report on Long term Care

Long term care gets kind of short shrift in our health care system, and on this blog too. Which is a pity as it’s really important. Joe Anglelli from The Pioneer Network writes to me telling us about a new...

TECH: Big practices using IT, less so in smaller ones

Another incomplete but useful study from HSC on physician technology use. Essentially the investments made by big groups in EMRs are showing up in the data, with nearly half those in groups of 50 and above using ePrescribing—perhaps the key...

TECH/QUALITY: Reason why health care costs keep exploding, #469

The number of CT studies is growing at 8% annually.

PODCASTS/TECH/CONSUMERS: Health2.0 roundtable

Here’s the transcript from last weeks podcast. It gives you a window into one of the hot areas at the moment, Health2.0 (perhaps I should trademark that quick!). The participants are three leaders of new online health focused companies, all...

HEALTH PLANS: Matthew Holt, stock trading pussy

Sector Wrap: Health Insurers Fall. UNH is down $5 or close to 10% from its high on Tuesday with Allen’s conecession in VA giving the Dems the Senate being probably the clincher today. And was I short, like I said...

HEALTH PLANS: A little more on KP

Here’s a piece from veteran SF Business Times health care reporter Chris Rauber on the Kaiser saga. I still basically stay where I was, but it’s worth noting that the presumed reason that Cliff Dodd resigned on such short notice...

QUALITY/PHYSICIANS: OBGYNs are scientists, scientists I tell you

Interesting long article in the New Yorker by Atul Gawande about How childbirth went industrial. Briefly it’s about how we stopped using all kinds of techniques for getting kids out that required a lot of skill because we started measuring...

PODCAST: Lonny Reisman of Active Health Management

Lonny Reisman is a physician who came up with what he believes is a way to improve medical care and patient outcomes by tracking data and feeding it back to practitioners in close to real time. Aetna liked the idea...

HEALTH PLANS: Are we finally at the top?

I was going to do a post election special, but Joe Paduda beat me to it over at Managed Care Matters. I was also going to short United Healthcare, given that the Dems win will likely make it rough on...

TECH: RHIOs as ASPs?

My piece about RHIOs as ASPs is up at Digital Healthcare and Productivity

TECH/POLICY: McCall gets off the Scrushy way

Want to be a fraudulent gazillionaire running a public company? Get your CFO (or in Scrushy’s case a plethera of them) to commit fraud, blame it all on them when it gets discovered, and suggest that as CEO it’s got...

POLICY: Morrison, Klepper & Enthoven--radical communists or mercantilist capitalist apologists?

You be the judge! Ian Morrison is trying to point out to the upper echelon of America’s body politic (i.e. the rich bit of its health care system) that some compromise may be reasonable in order to avoid single payer....

TECH/HEALTH PLANS: Gadfly tells me I'm MIA on Kaiser

Gadlfy has been telling me that I’m MIA on the big Kaiser story, but luckily MrHISTalk has picked up the slack and has printed the Internal E-Mail Criticizing Kaiser's HealthConnect Lands Employee in Hot Water. In addition in a presumably...

HOSPITALS/HEALTH PLANS: HCA and United---Someone blinked

After being at war in several markets for the past few months (Florida and Denver come to mind) HCA has agreed a national contract with UnitedHealthcare. United has been having member retention problems in N. California, meanwhile losing a major...

PODCAST/TECH/QUALITY: Don Kemper podcast

Here’s the transcript from the recent podcast with Don Kemper. Interesting stuff from a real pioneer. Matthew Holt: So welcome to another THCB podcast. Today we're very lucky to have Don Kemper, who is the President, CEO and certainly the...

POLICY: Healthcare crisis countdown

The Christian Science Monitor has a pretty interesting article about how the healthcare crisis countdown may lead to a big debate in health care politics either 2008 or later. My guess is much later, but it's a matter of timing....

TECH: McKesson Buys Per-Se Technologies

McKesson is buying Per-Se Technologies . Per-Se was the result of a series of roll-ups in practice management and hospital billing companies, which bought the “switch” part of NDC two years ago. McKesson itself has quite some experience buying technology...