The Health Care Blog

Defending the benefits of prevention

By Merrill Goozner Last February, the New England Journal of Medicine ran a potentially misleading review of the cost-effectiveness of illness prevention strategies that may have led many casual readers (such as the editors of the Washington Post Health section)...

E-patients can and will revolutionize health care

By Susannah Fox By taking advantage of new online health tools, e-patients and health professionals now have the ability to create equal partnerships that enable individuals to be equipped, enabled, empowered and engaged in their health and health care decisions....

Analyzing the benefits of PatientsLikeMe social network site

By John Grohol Two research papers were published this month on the Health 2.0 Web site, PatientsLikeMe. PatientsLikeMe is arguably the only "real" health social network online today, because it allows patients to share actual data that matters with one...

Real transparency in a socialist nirvana? UK releases hospital death rates

By Michael Millenson In yet more evidence that the transparency revolution is worldwide and not merely a product of American capitalism, comes news that in the UK death rates for specific types of surgery at NHS hospitals are to be...

CBO assesses return on investment of HIT

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn The return on investment of health care information technology isn't uniformly positive, according to a recent analysis from the Congressional Budget Office titled, Evidence on the Costs and Benefits of Health Information Technology. The underlying rationale for...

AHIP & Health 2.0 -- caveat whatever the Latin is for movement

By Matthew Holt Last month, the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans sponsored a seminar on Health 2.0 with Lynne Dunbrack at IDC Health Industry Insights and Roy Schoenberg from American Well. Any resemblance in Lynn's presentation to the talk...

Vision for hospital's future HIT

By John Halamka The role of the chief information officer is very operational -- keeping the trains running on time, ensuring budgets are sufficient and aligning IT resources with the needs of stakeholders. One other important task of the CIO,...

Using studies to prove virtually anything

By Matthew Holt This one is great. A British academic has shown that e-breaks — allowing workers to use the Internet for “personal” reasons — actually improve productivity. A game company paid for the study, but then again the RAND...

Athena announces payer rankings

By Matthew Holt AthenaHealth has announced its rankings on the best and worst payers in health care. Athena CEO Jon Bush discussed the PayerView rankings on the CNBC Squawkbox with Ron Williams, CEO of Aetna, the No. 1 ranked fastest...

Caring.com & Trusera -- two Health 2.0 newbies talk

By Matthew Holt Two of the more interesting newcomers in the Health 2.0 scene gathered around the electronic watercooler, which is THCB's podcast series, to talk about what they're up to and why they are worth looking at. Andy Cohen...

Around the Web in 60 Seconds (Or Less)

By THCB Staff The WSJ Health blog: Police shoot a man with a Taser gun and inadvertently correct his heart beat. California proposed legislation would allow pharmacies to sell patient info to marketers. NYT Well: Childhood obesity rates level off....

Self diagnosis in military health care

By Matthew Holt Given how much cool stuff comes out of the military and eventually has an impact in real life (not to mention the $800 billion a year we’re spending on it), the MC4 (Medical Communications for Combat Casualty...

Microsoft Health Vault gearing up

By Matthew Holt Just a week after certain blogs (including this one) seem to have gone Google Health crazy, Microsoft gears up for its HealthVault Partners meeting next week in Seattle with both a $1.4- million increase in its BeWell...

Google Health -- A view from the Inside

By Robert Wachter Google Health launched last Monday, which sent the world’s Google-watchers into a tizzy. I serve on Google Health's Advisory Council – which met all day Tuesday – and so here’s a bit of inside dish, along with...

Let's talk about tax exemptions

By Paul Levy An excellent article by Stephanie Strom in Monday's New York Times covers what appears to be a growing controversy about the degree to which nonprofit organizations should or should not be permitted to be tax exempt under...

The Innovation xChange

THCB is proud to welcome our latest sponsor: Humana and ChangeNow4Health.com. This site would not be possible without the generous backing of corporate sponsors like Humana. So we'd like to thank them - as well as all of our other...

Health Plans mark it up and pass it on

By Matthew Holt Buried in a quick notice in BusinessWeek was this paragraph: Health insurance companies have plenty of critics. Now they have one more: Leemore Dafny, an assistant professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Insurers argue that...

Cerner immune to economic troubles, apparently ...

By Matthew Holt Gathered at at hobnobbing summit in Tokyo, executives from high technology companies planned recently for economic troubles. And, apparently, troubles are mounting because consumers are running out of money, having to spend it on rising gas and...

New in EMRs (chortle, chortle)

By Matthew Holt Here are a couple of sites worth a look. First, brand new EMR player Extormity. Second, the new standards accreditation body Seedie. Don't forget to read the fine print.

A Google Health Clinical Exam

By CRAIG STOLTZ Not one more pixel need be spilt about the issues of privacy, security, HIPAA, metastatic data, third-party crashers, or corporate imperial overreach raised by the debut of Google Health. Let’s just snap on the latex gloves and...

Google Health beta -- What's really new and different?

From his role as Director of Health IT for the AAFP, co-creation of the CCR and with his involvement behind the "NDA firewall" with the Google Health team, David Kibbe probably has a better vision than most about what's new...

Florida makes health insurance more affordable. Maybe.

By Donald Johnson Donald E. L. Johnson, a former editor and publisher of Health Care Strategic Management and a former editor of Modern Healthcare, has been writing about health care business, insurance, stocks and politics s since 1976 and has...

Why no e-Prescribing in the ED?

By PAUL LEVY As previously reported, we have a wonderful system that permits doctors to order prescriptions online, allowing patients to pick them up directly from their preferred pharmacy. Recently a friend of mine went to our BID~Needham Emergency Department,...

Penalties are like kissing your sister

By Matthew Holt The LA Times said it best: John Terry's late slip-up ruins night for Chelsea's fans. Another perfectly good football/soccer match ruined by a penalty shootout. It used to be that important finals that ended in a draw...

American Cancer gets hip on uninsurance

By Matthew Holt The American Cancer Society is focusing all its marketing budget this year on the issue of uninsurance and is trying to get the message out in new ways to new audiences. Here’s one using rap/poet MIKE-E.

Against Obama, polls show McCain lags on health care

By Robert Laszewski The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll on health care should give John McCain reason to be concerned. The early May poll asked voters, "Regardless of whom you may support, whom do you trust more to handle health...

Google Health finally up and open for business

After a long time in discussion, Google publicly launched Monday its free online personal health records. The operation first made headlines a couple of months ago when Google announced it at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). I...

Humana's competition for change

By Jen McCabe Gorman Health benefits heavyweight Humana Inc. (HUM – 11.5M members) recently launched ChangeNow4Health, an ambitious, optimistic coalition inviting anyone to submit ideas to fix America’s ailing health care system. The top three entries receive a $10k prize,...

The Technology Hype Cycle: Why bad things happen to good technologies

By Robert Wachter Fresh on the heels of my recent bar coding epiphany comes another “unintended consequences” article. It turns out that the whipsawing that accompanies the adoption of new technologies is completely foreseeable, the “Why doesn’t this thing work...

Going off the Grid - The Rise of 'Direct Practice' Medicine

By Scott Shreeve Grid (grĭd) n. 1. Something resembling a framework of crisscrossed parallel bars, as in rigidity or organization 2. An interconnected system for the distribution of electricity or electromagnetic signals over a wide area, especially a network of...

Malpractice premiums fall in Massachusetts

By THCB Staff Bay State doctors paid lower malpractice insurance premiums on average in 2005 than 1990, according to a new Health Affairs study. The study clashes with popular beliefs frequently touted by sponsors of legislative efforts to cap damage...

Wishing for a smart health search

By Dan Kogan Health care consumers today want to use the Web to find information online about doctors, specialists and care in general. And they want it to be useful. Unfortunately, in the vast health search space based mostly on...

Jay Parkinson readying for re-launch

By Matthew Holt In an interview in MDNG, Bill Schu wonders whether Jay Parkinson has sold out. Not really, but we love him because he’s got that confidence thing down: On the June 1 launch of Hello Health “ It’s...

Advice to future nurses: ask questions, be proud

By Kim McAllister It's that time of year when nursing and medical students shed their label (and protection) of student and head out to the workforce with their new licenses. Over at Emergiblog, veteran emergency room nurse Kim McAllister shared...

Health care coverage restored -- good for patients, maybe too late for plans

By Matthew Holt Saint Lisa Girion (and I say that without a smirk on my face!) reports in the LA Times on the latest chapter in the story she started about the ongoing saga of the retroactive cancellations of health...

Bitter doc wants more respect for primary care

By Sarah Arnquist A primary doctor ranted anonymously this weekend on Kevin MD's blog about the lack of appreciation for primary care in his small Midwestern town and predicted its future demise. The doctor practices in a medical shortage area,...

More opportunity for online health management

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn Consumers, at least Californians, do a lot of looking for health information on the Internet -- but very little health management. California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) has taken a snapshot of Californians' use of the Internet in health...

Health wonk review

It's up at Jason Shafrin's Healthcare Economist.

New demands of 'Millennial patients'

By THCB Staff "Millennial patients are the first generation of Americans to grow up with the Internet as a pervasive part of their lives. ... They are amazed, bewildered, and ultimately angry with the inability to access their health care...

Millenson on doc rating

By THCB Staff And in our continuing efforts to send you everywhere else on the web but here (but still seeing the same authors), up at H&HN's Most Wired Magazine, Michael Millenson is writing about the still emerging and not-there-yet...

Implications of McCain's plan analyzed at Spot-On

By THCB Staff Over at Spot-On, Matthew predicts what would happen if Sen. John McCain were to win the presidential election this fall, and the Republicans took Congress, and they passed his health plan. Matthew describes the basic tenets in...

Health 2.0 Consciousness Dawns - Even In Jacksonville, FL!

by BRIAN KLEPPER Today, Matthew, Michael Millenson and I are converging at a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation conference on public reporting of health care pricing/performance information in Amelia Island, FL, three short barrier islands north of my home in Atlantic...

POST-MORTEM: California health reform

By Sarah Arnquist The debate over why health reform failed in California sparked up again following the release of a Field Poll in late April that found that nearly three-quarters of California respondents supported Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan. Following the...

A business plan to make pregnancy safer

By Sarah Arnquist India successfully test launched a ballistic missile last week that could strike Beijing on a moment's notice. Yet, 120,000 women here die annually giving birth. How does a country with the technology to produce nuclear weapons and...

Mind your manners

By Paul Levy Dr. Michael Kahn, from Beth Israel Deaconess' Department of Pyschiatry, has published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that suggests that doctors enhance their relationship with patients when they deal with patients in a...

THCB is proudly sponsored by

THCB would not be possible without the generous support of sponsors like Varolii Corporation. Actively engage patients with automated communications. Varolii can help progressively enroll and engage patients into DM&W programs. The result? Healthier patients and better operational returns. Enjoy...

iMedix: Social search that creeps me out

By Craig Stoltz Oh, geez. Deb21 wants to chat again. Here I am, trying to look up some information about tinnitus – a.k.a. ringing in the ears, a condition which has recently afflicted a member of my family – and...

Podcast with Silverlink and IncentOne

By Matthew Holt Those of you regular THCBers are by now probably bored with me going on about the problems (and opportunities) with incentivizing people in health care to do the right thing. So today Silverlink which does automated voice...

More on Physician Reimbursement, CMS, the AMA's RVS Update Committee (RUC)

by ROY POSES, MD (Note by Brian Klepper: At Health Care Renewal, Dr. Roy Poses, a Clinical Associate Professor at Brown University's School of Medicine, writes a consistently excellent blog on health care financial conflict . Both he and I...

Presidential candidates' health plans

By THCB Staff As a service to our readers, we've compiled all the presidential candidates' health plans in one place for you to easily access. Soon, we'll have a section of the TCHB devoted to the presidential race and health...