The Health Care Blog

TECH: Community for Connected Health

We'd like to welcome aboard THCB 's latest sponsor, Cisco's Community for Connected Health. Connected Health’s core focus is to provide value to caregivers, end-users, CIOs and other IT professionals through education, interaction and access to Cisco healthcare and technology...

BLOGS: Health wonk review

Up at The Sentinel Effect.

POLICY/POLITICS: The cautious approach

I have another of my occasional pieces up at the Guardian’s Comment is Free site, trying to make sense of American health care for an international audience. I take aim at how the cautious nature of the main Democratic front-runners...

THCB Reader mail

In response to our post announcing Health 2.0 San Francisco, Matt Guldin writes: Regardless of whether or not we go to a single-payer system, move to a consumer-directed health care world, or stay pretty much status quo, the administrative and...

THCB Sponsorships

AND NOW ... A word from our wonderful sponsors! Just a reminder that it would be impossible for us to publish THCB without the kind assistance of our advertisers. Putting out regular email updates, organizing podcasts, patrolling the bulletin boards...

TECH: A robot train (very cute)

Aethon (whom I interviewed at HIMSS) make the TUG, an autonomous robot which moves stuff around hospitals. And for children's hospitals, they’ve made a rather more fun version named JR. Go read the story of how JR came to life...

TECH/HEALTH2.0: Healthcamp2

I was sick on Saturday plus had had certain domestic issues arise after telling my fiancee that I was planning on abandoning her for work on a Saturday that was, err, unpaid. So I missed HealthCamp2. But it looked pretty...

PHARMA: I guess Crawford's lucky he's not Chinese

Lester Crawford's incredibly undistinguished tenure at the FDA ended in weird pseudo disgrace. on the other hand these guys think that his fate could have been much worse.

CONSUMERS: Diabetes Mine: Would You Believe... Doug Burns Going to Trial? WITH UPDATE

#1 healthcare blogger Amy Tenderich is hopping mad about a diabetic arrested for being hypoglycemic, and she's rallying the Type 1 diabetics to the cause. Go over and read it — Diabetes Mine: Would You Believe... Doug Burns Going to...

TECH/PODCAST: Interview with Bob Fisher, CEO of Foresight

Here's the transcript of the recent podcast with Bob Fisher from Foresight. The original interview is here and a 7 minute cut down version is up on Foresight's site too. Matthew Holt: This is Matthew Holt with the Health Care...

HEALTH2.0: PR slop busted, but not really!

Over at NDDB.net, which is in the physician rating game, there's a rather grumpy post about Steve Case from RevolutionHealth on Good Morning America. Other that they're competitors, I'm not quite so sure why NDDB is so grumpy. I think...

TECH: Put this one down in the somewhat bizarre category

A NY Times op-ed, no less, exhorting physicians to adopt VistA. I assume this means that Scott Shreeve & Fred Trotter's phones will be ringing off the hook. Now I know this is a good idea and all that, but...

POLICY: OMG--WalMart are the good guys!

Forget anything you ever knew about health benefits. WalMart are the good guys! In fiscal year 2006, Wal-Mart spent about $4.8 billion on employee benefits – a cost made higher because many hires arrive with unattended health needs, according to...

PHYSICIANS/CONSUMERS List prices for doctors?

Healthcare Partners, the biggest physician group to emerge from the carnage of Southern California physician group implosion in the late 1990s is now putting a list price out for some procedures. Why? "It feels like the right thing to do,"...

HOPSITALS/POLICY: Spending on health care is good for the economy, really!

Hospital boom adds billions to Arizona economy Arizona's hospital construction boom will create a windfall for the state's economy by creating 14,900 jobs each year and add $2.6 billion in wages over that five-year period, according to a study commissioned...

PHARMA/POLICY: War on drugs a loser

A major Canadian paper is saying something rather sensible--"War on drugs a loser".

OFF-TOPIC: Wanna be ethnographed?

IFTF is looking for some volunteers to be ethnographed. Not as painful as it sounds—actually rather fun I did it a few years back.. They are currently recruiting for a new research study called "Boomers in the Next 20 Years"....

POLICY: Hoggy on Reggie

For your weekend fun read—soon to be featured in THCB conservative—David Hogberg’s review of Reggie’s new book Who Killed Healthcare in The American Spectator. Hoggy of course thinks she’s too left-wing in that she’s in favor of an individual mandate....

TECH: A good use of Twitter?

I am really struggling to understand the point of Twitter. But maybe there is some use to it. Via #1 blogger Amy Tenderich, here's a diabetic recording his life on Twitter. Amy, will of course be at Health2.0. Maybe we’ll...

POLICY/POLITICS: Clinton gets a little more specific

Hillary Clinton made a major speech on health care yesterday. (Here's the full text). Her quick points. Pay for preventative services (although what she’s talking about you’d recognize as DM), use IT and EMR, use the primary care “medical homes...

TECH/CONSUMERS: Musings on IFTF, Health2.0 and social networking

I sat in a meeting today put on by my old colleagues at IFTF. (There are some other bloggers here, so there’ll be more about the meeting elsewhere). The room is filled with an interesting mix of techies, health care...

TECH/HEALTH2.0: The trademark for Health2.0

I’m at IFTF’s meeting today with a group discussion health new media. The Health2.0 term has been used alot and at Dmitriy’s urging I thought I’d clarify something. Yes I’ve trademarked Health2.0. No, I will not stop anyone using it....

TECH/PODCAST: Interview with Bob Fisher, CEO of Foresight

Foresight is a highly focused tech company working (mostly) deep in the transactional guts of payers and plans providing claims editing tools, business intelligence and a variety of other services. Recently they had a very convivial user conference in Carefree,...

HEALTH2.0/TECH: And in your Health2.0 moment of zen

I’ll be at an IFTF meeting today where they too are talking about Health2.0 but in the much wider context of a shift in bio-citizenry. Hey, they’ve got way high fallotin' since my days there as a grunge health care...

TECH/PODCAST: Generic Medical Devices, really? The interview with Richard Kuntz, CEO

This is the transcript of the interview with Richard Kuntz, the CEO of Generic Medical Devices—a start up making, well, generic medical devices. The audio is here Matthew Holt: This is Matthew Holt with the Health Care Blog, and this...

POLICY: Cynical quickie

Apparently the Brits are short of entrepreneurs in their health care sector. I’m sure Pete Stark thinks we’ve got a few extra here we can send them.

THCB: matthew@matthewholt.net is working again

My regular email is back up at last. Please go back to using matthew@matthewholt.net If you sent me email between Sunday midnight PST and Tuesday at 5.30pm PST it probably did NOT make it. If it’s important, please re-send it....

Abdullah and the Stonefish foot By Dr. Terry Bennett

Terry Bennett is the last remaining solo GP in Strafford county, New Hampshire. He attained national celebrity two years ago after a patient complained to the state medical board when he lectured her about her weight. After fighting off the...

TECH: Scott Shreeve, Health 2.0: From Concept to Reality

Scott is being a Health2.0 hero. He's all over the wiki for Health2.0, preaching the gospel at TEPR today and has a nice piece about the evolution of the concept on his blog called Health 2.0: From Concept to Reality....

POLICY: Eric Novack responds

Here is a fundamental problem with the debate that Matthew is having with Amy Ridenour and David Hogberg: Matthew (and single payer advocates generally) focuses his attacks on the general ‘injustice’ that might exist in the healthcare system. In the...

POLICY: Now I'm just messing with her

So Amy Ridenour actually almost did what I asked and went and answered the questions for the free-marketeers I posed in Spot-on. My email has been broken all day and I’m grumpy, so I thought I’d cheer myself up by...

POLICY: Doing my bit to piss off the unthinking right

Cool. I make an off hand remark about conservative think tanks and get them all riled up. Amy Ridenour, who has an interesting place in the panoply of right wing think tanks and influence peddling, prints an email I wrote...

TECH/PODCAST: Generic Medical Devices, really? The interview with Richard Kuntz, CEO

At a great meeting in Nashville last week Brian Klepper was explaining to us all how medical supplies were 40% of a hospital’s budget and how the margins on those devices were in the stratosphere. You’d assume that someone would...

TECH/CONSUMERS/THCB: Health2.0 Agenda Announcement!

I am delighted to announce the line-up and agenda for Health2.0–User Generated Healthcare, which will be held on September 20th in San Francisco. After an introduction and summary of the Health2.0 report (from little ol’ me and my colleague Indu...

POLICY/FUNNIES: Finally a Cato proposal I can really endorse

This is a great idea--prostitution insurance. And presumably it would be hard to for most men to over consume—at least all at one time, if you get my drift.... On the other hand I did see some guy on the...

POLICY: Humphrey Taylor is a cynic

But he’s right of course and always very entertainingly so— read on to know why all health care systems are always in a crisis.

PHARMA: Rost--Pfizer's Indian problem

Peter Rost is running a story about potential murky dealings in Pfizer's subsidiary in India, which smack of (perhaps typical) corrupt practices in emerging economies. Essentially the story seems to be that local management ripped off shareholders, lone accountant raised...

HEALTH PLANS/POLICY: Bob L-- keeping you in touch on Medicare Advantage

While I’ve been running a little frantic over the Health2.0 Conference and some other stuff you’ll hopefully hear about soon, Bob Laszewski has been keeping you in touch with the latest on Medicare Advantage Funding. And somehow he managed to...

TECH: Virtual HIMSS show is up

HIMSS is having a virtual trade show…. it looks quite interesting, go take a look. It takes a minute to register, but looks quite interesting.

TECH: Exercise while working

The WSJ's Health Blog actually features something about health (normally it’s just about drugs). It’s about a doctor at Mayo who’s working with Steelcase to create a treadmill that you walk on while standing at a desk. While we’re talking...

POLICY/HEALTH PLANS: Marsha Gold, spoilsport communist!

At Health Affairs Mathmatica’s Marsha Gold takes a look at the expansion of Medicare PFFS plans. Those are the ones that our friends at AHIP are so keen on, because of all the benefits they bring to poor elderly seniors...

POLICY: DOJ/DEA insanity runs amok

Meanwhile over in the through the looking glass world of Federal drug policy--Ed Rosenthal has already been convicted & sentenced. Now he’s being tried again — double jeopardy—for performing not only laudable but actually legal activities in a city where...

POLICY/INTERNATIONAL: The best health care system in the world!

God Bless America. Zeke Emmanuel is a pretty prominent ethicist and with my former economics teacher/prof Vic Fuchs author of a not bad proposal for universal health care. He’s more famous as the least famous Emmanuel brother—the one who's not...

TECH/QUALITY: Are Employers the Future Leaders in Chronic Care Management

My article in Digital Healthcare & Productivity about the NYC meeting about remote monitoring and chronic care management is called Are Employers the Future Leaders in Chronic Care Management? As you may know I’m not that optimistic about the role...

TECH: A top 10 list from Quadramed

Health tech vendor Quadramed sent me this Top 10 list about Consumers and Health Information Technology 10. Health Information Technology Improves the Quality of Care Received 9. Health Information Technology is Critical in the Event of a Nation-Wide Emergency 8....

TECH: David Pogue inadvertently pimps Whoissick

Pogue's techy columns are usually great. This one is too, but he had missed WhoIsSick in his quest to Ask the Crowd to Spread the News about health care online. Of course we’re all over the Health2.0 phenom at THCB...

HEALTH PLANS: Blue Cross makes about-face on cancellations, with late afternoon UPDATE

Lisa Girion in the LA Times reports that one of the uglier pieces of health plan activities in recent years may be drawing to a close. Wellpoint’s Blue Cross of California unit has agreed that it will only rescind policies...

HOSPITALS: Most Innovative Acute Care Hospitals

My old employers and friends at FierceHealthcare are out with their Top Ten list of the Most Innovative Acute Care Hospitals.

POLICY: Podcast with Jon Kingsdale, Massachusetts Connector

Crossposted from the Worldhealthcareblog, this is the interview I did at WHCC with Jon Kingsdale, who created and is running the Massachusetts Connector--the organization at the center of that reform effort. Many of you have many opinions about what's going...

PODCAST/CONSUMERS/TECH: Interview with Joseph Kvedar, Partners' Connected Health guru

This is the transcript of the podcast interview I did with Joseph Kvedar, from Partners Center for Connected Health. Coincidentally this past Tuesday in NYC, the Center, along with Continue Health Alliance and others, sponsored a meeting about the use...