The Health Care Blog

QUALITY: Medicare Health Support--Done and more or less dusted

Recently the targets on Medicare Health Support were changed to make them more financially favorable to the DM companies running the projects. Everyone inside the DM industry has known that MHS has not been doing too well for some time...

POLICY: Plumpy'nut - Brian

The NY Times ran an important op-ed yesterday by Susan Shepherd, a pediatrician and medical advisor to Doctors Without Borders. The core of her message is that as the farm bill progresses through Congress, we should focus not only on...

HEALTH 2.0/TECH: Collective intelligence in AthenaHealth

Scott Shreeve has spent much of his career promoting open source as a way to harvest collective intelligence. But (irritated by a description from a knocker) he’s done a great job at defining one shining example of a network that...

THCB Reader

The Omnimedix Institute's JD Kleinke wrote in to comment on the thread triggered by last week's news on the dossia project, a story that came out when Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott revealed new details of the retail giant's plans to...

HEALTH PLANS: WellCare...killing health care some more?

After last Fall's FBI raid the top management at Wellcare resigned on Friday. The board is hoping that the new CEO, former United executive Charles Berg, will right the ship. After all who could we trust more than the WellCare...

INTERNATIONAL: Kidneys stolen from kidnap victims

This made me feel ill: Kidney thefts shock India.

PODCAST/HEALTH 2.0: Interview with Tony Miller, Carol

One of the most interesting new Health 2.0 companies is Carol--a Minnesota start-up that is aiming at the heart of the health care system. It's trying to create "care packages" that will in the end (if it works) change how...

POLICY/INTERNATIONAL: The new health care system in the Netherlands

It would be great if we could get the US to a system of health insurers competing over the right things. With a universal individual mandate that worked, risk adjustment between insurers, and social solidarity mixed with market incentives --...

POLICY/POLITICS: Health insurance without health care by Claudia Chaufan

Claudia Chaufan teaches sociology of health and medicine and health policy at UC Santa Cruz,. and is Vice President of California Physicians Alliance, the California Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, which argues for a single payer system....

POLICY: Shannon Brownlee is da man!

It's been really great getting to know the new voice of the Dartmouth school, Shannon Brownlee. She's interviewed in her local paper about the concept that the American health care system delivers More money, but less health. Hopefully we'll have...

QUALITY: Can coughing save your life? Not in Shanghai

So one friend sent me this cool urban legend powerpoint about how coughing saves your life during a heart attack. The About.com page I’ve linked more or less debunks it, but another friend had a much better repost: I ride...

Families USA Health Action 2008: An Alternative Plan - Brian

A wonderful meeting (Full disclosure: They brought me in to blog my impressions.), The Families USA conference that ended Saturday brought together some impressive Congressional politicians - Nancy Pelosi, Tom Daschle, Ken Salazar, Blanche Lincoln - and true health care...

Families USA Health Action 2008: Berwick on Everything Health Care - Brian

One of the pleasures of the Families USA Health Action conference was that the speakers represented a nice blend of top politicians and genuine health care experts. Tony Fauci MD, the wonderful head of NIH's National Institutes for Allergies and...

QUALITY: A nice recommendation from the IOM

Ironically after I spent last week sitting in with the Dartmouth crowd, on Friday the IOM (despite having a lack of Dartmouth folks on this committee!) came out with a recommendation for a New National Program To Evaluate Effectiveness of...

TECH: Shawn Jenkins, BenefitFocus interview

Last year I interviewed Shawn Jenkins, the CEO of BenefitFocus. This is a really interesting company, and most of you know it — if at all — from the partnership Health 2.0 has had with icyou (headed by the wonderful...

TECH: An Anonymous Bit of Cynicism, by Anonymous

Sometimes THCB’s anonymous contributors really stick the boot in—I got this email last week after Wal-Mart Dossia progress was announced. Twenty-odd Wal-Mart employees (including the VP of benefits / former CIO) are piloting a ten-year-old PHR system (built by Children’s...

BLOGS: Is #1 health blogger Amy Tenderich too famous?

I don't know, but this week she's in Newsweek. You’ll see more of Amy at the Health 2.0 conference…and we think she’s wonderful too!

THCB Reader Mail (from Maggie Mahar & Jeff Goldsmith)

Frequent THCB contributor Maggie Mahar responds to Matthew's post last week on decision aids: "Too often, "patient satisfaction" is based on trivial things that have little or nothing to do with the quality of care. For example, a patient may...

POLITICS: Whisper it quietly...

But some on the left are begging to realize that health reform, post an assumed 2008 Democratic victory, is still a very, very big assumption. On liberal blog Daily Kos, DemfromCT uses the recent polling data from Bob Blendon's group...

Families USA Health Action 2008: Anthony Fauci on Global Health - Brian

I first met, heard and came to admire Tony Fauci several months ago at the Aspen Health Forum. Dr. Fauci heads the National Institute of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In addition to his spectacular medical contributions,...

Families USA: Tom Daschle on Health Care Reform - Brian Klepper

Former Senator and Majority/Minority Leader Daschle gave the opening address on the 2nd day of the Families USA Health Action conference. Mr. Daschle has a new book coming out in March on America's health system and our past efforts to...

QUALITY: Decision aids in the real world

Most of this morning at the FIDMD meeting has been largely technical stuff about setting up decision aids. Shannon Brownlee suggests that the name should be changed to “personalized medicine” which has been nicked by the bio-tech crowd for now....

QUALITY: The sociology & economics of practice patterns & decision aids

More from Matthew at the FIMDM conference David Jones, Harvard medical historian on revascularization Why do you need a randomized clinical trial (RCT)? From the 1960s surgeons could show that CABGs opened veins (removed plaque) so why was there a...

POLICY: The Lessons of '94

Ezra Klein, who I think is hanging with Brian Klepper at Families USA — where Don Berwick is hopefuly showing the link between system reform and insurance reform Friday— has a nice article out on the The Lessons of '94....

QUALITY: Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making research conference

While Brian is hanging with the politicos down in Washington DC, I’m in Boston at a meeting looking at the research funded by the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. This is the group that looks at practice variation and...

Concierge Medicine From A Doctor’s Perspective - David R. Donnersberger, MD, JD

Call it boutique medicine. Retainer medicine. Platinum care. Evoking the pastoral image of a sturdy black doctor’s bag and spectacles, concierge medicine is a small but growing trend among over-worked and over-booked physicians. The practice essentially offers a limited number...

TECH: Google Health getting closer

Those purists who spend their time pondering Google's next move have found a login page for Google Health.... Here's what it says Google will do (no, the page itself doesn't work!) With Google Health, you can: Build online health profiles...

Nancy Pelosi's Health Care Address - Brian Klepper

The featured highlight address at the opening session of the Families USA conference is by Nancy Pelosi, Congress' first woman Speaker. In person, Speaker Pelosi clearly comes across as a brilliant and warm woman, a friend of Families USA, and...

The Families USA Health Action 2008 Conference - Brian Klepper

Along with other familiar voices like Maggie Mahar and Ezra Klein, I'm in DC today writing from the Families USA Health Action 2008 conference. Families USA is a progessive (liberal) consumer advocacy organization dedicated to universal coverage, driven by mobilizing...

HEALTH 2.0: NorthEast mixer is tonight

So if you’re in Boston and want to find out more about Health 2.0 tonight, come to the Cambridge Marriottwhere the first Health 2.0 “local chapter” is having a networking mixer with speakers and panel. And yes I’m the speaker...

HEALTH 2.0 San Diego Update

If you're thinking of attending Health 2.0 San Diego on March 3-4, there is still time to sign up for a pass, although like last time we are closing in on a sellout well in advance of the conference. Come...

TECH: Best headline ever?

Experts: Internet Helpful, But Not a Replacement for Doctors One wag who sent me this noted that it was not very likely that doctors would think that they were replaceable by the Internet, or any one else for that matter....

HEALTH PLANS/HOSPITALS: Not a smart move

There's been a lot of discussion about a potential health care score a la FICO score. The right way to do this would be some way to reward providers/plans whomever for doing whatever it takes to improve a population's overall...

QUALITY: Last name nepotism? DrGreene on the NY Times

So Indu & I invite Alan Greene and Sarah Greene out to dinner in Utah few months ago. Alan is famed pediatrician from drgreene.com. Sarah runs the NY Times Health page. And now Alan has his own column on parenting...

POLITICS: Another Zogby poll that's wrong (but understandably so)

Americans have been lying to pollsters for years, and here’s another example Question: The candidates for president have each proposed changes to the healthcare system in America. Generally speaking, on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being not at all...

HEALTH2.0: iMedix gets big nod...

iMedix, a really new start-up that combines search and community messaging in health care won “best start-up” in The Crunchies. The Crunchies is the latest Web 2.0 awards show run by a combo of Web 2.0 tech blogs including TechCrunch,...

Code Blue! Republicans leaning left on healthcare! Craig Stoltz

Craig Stoltz is a web consultant working in the health 2.0 space. He has previously served as health editor for the Washington Post and editorial director of Revolution Health. He blogs at Web 2.0 ... Oh really? I recently had...

POLITICS/TECH: Theocratic fascist scumbag rears ugly head in health care

Joe Paduda points us towards the latest adventures of the scummiest holier than thou corrupt theocratic fascist in recent American political history, who’s now raking it in overseeing corruption "prevention" in the implant business. Zimmer has been forced by one...

HEALTH PLANS: Brocade CEO goes to jail; what about McGuire?

I don't understand why the Brocade CEO is convicted of back-dating options for others and sentenced to jail while former United Healthgroup CEO Bill McGuire is somehow able to pay a small-ish fine relative to what he made and apparently...

POLITICS: On the vacuousity of the primary season

I am up at Spot-on ranting about how an endless beauty parade among candidates who agree with each other doesn’t help us figure out what we get come election time. Please read it and come back to comment if you...

PHARMA/TECH: Drug interaction checkers and more

I'm up over at the Health 2.0 Blog talking about my favorite drug interaction checker. Meanwhile if you (yes, that means you) want to write on the Health 2.0 Blog, please email me and let me know.

POLICY: Why you shouldnt be interviewed over the phone...

Apparently in an interview I had with journalist Thomas Day from Medill reports news service which showed up in this article I said: If you look at California and Blue Cross-Blue Shield, their biggest provider, they came out against the...

WSJ Editorial on Liver Transplants Cherry-Picks the Numbers - Maggie Mahar

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week that returned to the much-exploited story of Nataline Sarkisyan, the 17-year-old Californian who died before receiving a liver...

PHARMA: Talking of gotcha's...

Schering Plough is coming under multo criticism the last two days for sitting on data for up to a year that shows that the anti-cholesterol drug Zetia, when combined with Merk’s Zocor in the combo drug Vytorin, not only didn’t...

Four Big Trends - Brian Klepper

Several events and trends emerged over the last year that will reverberate throughout the health care marketplace in 2008 and going forward. While none of these dominated the trade press like some other issues - electronic and personal health records,...

POLICY: Do mandates matter? with UPDATE

Former Labor secretary Robert Reich has appealed to Democrats (in other words Paul Krugman and Obama's camp) to stop squabbling over healthcare mandates. Basically he says that Clinton would have to let some people who couldn't afford health care out...

QUALITY: Mental health--any ideas?

I was highly struck by something Dr David Sobel said in his great speech at the Ix Therapy conference last October—he suggested some 50% of primary care office visits are the result of background mental health issues. That sounds intuitively...

TECH: Telepresence--very cool & that's official!

I've mentioned a couple of times on THCB that Telepresence from Cisco is a really cool technology that had a big future in health care. But now it's official! Healthcare's coolest CIO, John Halamka has proclaimed it his Cool Technology...

HOSPITALS: Sunshine is the best disinfectant by Paul Levy

Our mail room staff called today to say that over 500 letters had arrived from the SEIU to doctors in the hospital. One of the doctors was kind enough to share his with me, a letter from Mike Fadel, Executive...

HEALTH 2.0: Health 2.0 NorthEast Networking Meeting

The Health 2.0 movement continues to grow and in the north-east it now has a new "chapter"! Mark Modzelewski, from Bang Ventures & Vince Caprio, from NYNBA, are organizing its first networking meeting on January 23rd! The meeting is from...