The Health Care Blog

The affordability factor must accompany discussions on health care coverage

By Charlie Baker Charlie Baker is the president and CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc., a nonprofit health plan that covers more than 1 million New Englanders. Baker blogs regularly at Let's Talk Health Care. I was in a...

Readers respond to the primary care crisis

By Sarah Arnquist Two recent posts by Matthew and Bob Wachter on the crisis in primary care sparked great debates in the comment sections. Matthew's inference that Medicare's bankruptcy will be fast upon us if everyone with brain cancer received...

The $2,500 question

By Craig Stoltz There's some peculiar numerology going in the presidential candidates' health reform plans. John McCain proposes that every American receive a $2,500 tax credit ($5,000 for families) to help them afford health insurance bought in the private market....

SEIU's questionable election strategy

By Paul Levy Several months ago, I mentioned the large sum of money being spent by SEIU on political races throughout the country. Now, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal questions the legality of the manner the SEIU is...

Health apps for the iPhone

By THCB Staff US News and World Report has a useful story listing five health widgets for the iPhone. Absolute Fitness. For $14.95, users can keep a food and exercise diary, monitor nutrition and weight goals, and track and graph...

Wal-Mart launches telemedicine business

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn Leave it to Wal-Mart to continue to grow its franchise in health through yet another revenue center. This time it's telemedicine. The company will pilot telemedicine through retail clinics in Houston, and will be trademarked as Walk-In...

The result of the primary care crisis

By Matthew Holt Over at Spot-on I'm writing about the primary care crisis in partial response to the great stuff from Bob Wachter last week on THCB and also from Maggie Mahar and Brian Klepper. Hopefully, it's a primer for...

Herd immunity -- vaccinations protect us all

By Sarah Arnquist I'm currently in the masters in public health program at Johns Hopkins University and am taking my first course in epidemiology. I have my first midterm tomorrow and among the many concepts the professors want me to...

From Description To Action: The Future of Health 2.0 Tools

By Brian Klepper Last week, The Health Care Blog ran two articles about new wiki sites that will develop and continuously update medical information. A wiki is a “content collaborative” that allows anyone (or anyone authorized by the site) to...

If McCain chooses Romney as a running mate, Obama's health plan is off-limits to attacks

By Robert Laszewski Mitt Romney seems to be at the top of the list when it comes to speculation over who John McCain will pick for his vice presidential running mate. I am not sure if that is what John...

MedSphere CEO talks about big goals

By John Halamka I had lunch recently with the CEO of MedSphere, Mike Doyle, to learn about the company's plans for OpenVista. The idea is simple -- take the the publicly available code from the Veterans Administration clinical information system,...

Friday frolicks in Nawlins

By Matthew Holt I'm in New Orleans taking the day off (shhh…wife is sleeping, don't wake her yet!). Yesterday I gave a talk about Health 2.0 to a very confused looking group of state legislators at the National Conference of...

Knol and web publishing challenge medical journals' stronghold

By Bob Wachter Yesterday, Google launched Knol, immediately branded as Google’s answer to Wikipedia. As health care adviser to the project, I’ll say a few words about Knol, but focus on how it – and other forms of electronic self-publishing...

Medicare could pave the way for national reform

By Maggie Mahar A frequent contributor to THCB, Maggie Mahar's work has appeared in the New York Times, Barron's and Institutional Investor. A fellow at the Century Foundation, Maggie is also the author the increasingly influential HealthBeat blog, one of...

Century Foundation launches group to study Medicare reform

By THCB Staff The Century Foundation announced this week the creation of a working group to create a blueprint for Medicare reform. Maggie Mahar, award winning journalist, author of the HealthBeatBlog and regular THCB contributor, will direct the group of...

Around the Web in 60 Seconds (Or Less)

ABC: A Rhode Island man arrested this week for drunk driving had a potentially lethal blood-alcohol level at the highest ever recorded by police. LA Times: Physicians and entrepreneurs team up to launch Medpedia -- a Wikipedia for medical issues....

Medicine meets Wiki

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn There's a new wiki in the health social media town, Medpedia. Among the most popular online sources for health information is Wikipedia. Millions of people search Wikipedia daily for insights into medical conditions, drugs, and procedures. Medpedia...

Sharing more than they intended -- future doctors on Facebook

By Sarah Arnquist The Facebook/MySpace generation is now graduating from medical school, and their profiles along with much embarrassing personal information has been indexed in cyberworld for many to see. The Associated Press wrote an interesting story about how researchers...

Communication 101: Shedding power imbalances to protect patients

By Katie Fiebelkorn Westman Katie Fiebelkorn Westman is a registered nurse at an acute care hospital in the Minnesota Twin Cities. She is working toward a clinical nurse specialist degree, focusing on improving patient care quality. The Joint Commission’s recent...

California kids may face triple whammy, leading to more uninsured

By Sarah Arnquist After years of seeing decreasing numbers of uninsured children, California is poised to go the other direction. For years, child enrollment in private health insurance plans decreased as companies scaled back on health care costs by increasing...

Health Wonks unite

The bi-weekly review of the best from health bloggers is up over at Health Business Blog.

The math is wrong

By Paul Levy I have great respect for Jim Stergios and the Pioneer Institute he heads. The Institute has been an important force in Massachusetts public policy debates for many years. But I think Jim has the wrong policy prescription...

CCR Symposium: Current and Future Uses for Health Data Exchange

The Massachusetts Medical Society will hold a symposium next month called the "Current and Future Uses for Health Data Exchange." Adam Bosworth, former VP of Google Health and CEO of his new start-up, Keas, Inc., will be the keynote speaker....

Obama health plan, silliness

By Matthew Holt Enter David Cutler. Result is more silly meaningless numbers It is truly worrying when the single most sensible quote in the whole damn article comes from AEI’s Joe Antos. How is this worth the NY Times’...

Cost containment is the missing link in Obama's health plan

By Robert Laszewski Barack Obama’s health care plan follows the Democratic template—an emphasis on dramatically and quickly increasing the number of people who have health insurance by spending significant money upfront. The Obama campaign estimates his health care reform plan...

Doubtful McCain's health plan would accomplish any real cost savings

By Robert Laszewski John McCain is now the presumptive Republican nominee for president. As a result, what he thinks about health care policy will be out front in the presidential campaign this fall. McCain’s thinking couldn’t be more different from...

Information therapy goes beyond evidenced-based info

By Joshua Seidman Joshua Seidman is the president of of the Center for Information Therapy that aims to provide the timely prescription and availability of evidence-based health information to meet individuals’ specific needs and support sound decision making. I had...

Mega Life parent "hurt a lot of people"

By Matthew Holt Is this what Blackstone, Credit Suisse & Goldman Sachs want said about their investment? "The severity of their actions certainly warranted that level of penalty. They hurt a lot of people," says Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler,...

Health Systems' Ferocious Challenges

By Brian Klepper Lately, I've had interesting discussions with a thoughtful exec. at a major Western health system about the ferocious challenges facing hospitals and health systems. Her organization's internal conversations at the moment are centered, in part, on what...

Using professional societies to advance participatory medicine

By Daniel Hoch Dan Hoch is a neurologist based at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. An early developer of online resources for patients, Dan helped found Braintalk. Professional medical societies are not quite like...

Good and bad health consequences of high gas prices

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn The price of gas is a headache for every consumer. But the health impacts of high fuel prices go beyond that metaphorical symptom. Consider medical supplies and home health. But it's not all bad news: on the...

Primary care crisis is HERE

By Bob Wachter I recently heard from a UCSF physician who was flabbergasted when he sought an appointment in our general medicine practice and was told it was “closed.” Turns out we’re not alone: there are also no new PCP...

Determination of need rule only goes partway

By Charlie Baker Charlie Baker is the president and CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc., a nonprofit health plan that covers more than 1 million New Englanders. Baker blogs regularly at Let's Talk Health Care. I usually spend some...

Around the Web in 60 Seconds (Or Less)

By THCB Staff USA Today: Examines individual health policies and concludes they leave many behind. USA Today: A record number of babies were born in the USA in 2007. Is this the next baby boom? CNN: Teen pregnancies up for...

Marketplace: New magazine for "Amateuer Economists"

The online magazine Amateur Economists launched this month to explain the factors that influence how people and organizations make choices for non-economists. The expert writers will explore current economic issues their respective fields, such as health care, law, politics, literature...

Should a surgeon be punished for wrong-site surgery?

By Paul Levy During these couple of weeks following our wrong-side surgery, a number of people have asked me if we intend to punish the surgeon in charge of the case, as well as other people in the operating room,...

Birthing turf wars

By Vijay Goel This spring, the American Medical Association decided to support a legislation "that helps ensure safe deliveries and healthy babies by acknowledging that the safest setting for labor, delivery, and the immediate post-partum period is in the hospital"...

Governors saddled with health costs

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn The National Governors Association (NGA) met in Philadelphia this week, where my City of Brotherly and Sisterly Love is witnessing some sobering discussions about health care. On the one hand, Bill Clinton called in his opening keynote...

Investigative journalism is good for the nation's health

By Sarah Arnquist Despite seemingly never-ending reports of layoffs in American newsrooms, a new model of investigative journalism has emerged and health care falls squarely into its areas worthy of significant scrutiny. ProPublica is a nonprofit, investigative journalism organization that...

AHIP starts smoking astroturf

By Matthew Holt Let’s say you ran a lobbying organization that may (or may not) be staring into a political storm. And say that you’d just lost a battle with opponents within the health care industry that you thought you’d...

Is Meaningful Health Care (Or Any Other Kind Of) Reform Possible?

By Brian Klepper Those who wait, ever hopefully, for real health reform might want to take a deep breath and take stock of a few realities. First, think about the fact that when the Democrats retook Congress, they tweaked but...

Commonwealth puts the boot in, again

By Matthew Holt Veteran THCB readers shouldn’t need too much reminding about this, so I'll spare you the blow by blow documented here over the years. Here's the bottom line. Any time you do a trans-national study on health care,...

Hospital rankings for positive press or for real?

By Sarah Arnquist Hospital & Health Networks magazine announced America's "100 Most Wired" hospitals for 2008 this week. You can compare this list to the list of "top hospitals," as recently ranked by U.S. News and World Report. Hospital &...

Interview with Trizetto & Eliza

By Matthew Holt Due to poor planning on my part, this morning I was up scandalously early to talk with Gene Drabinksi, who runs the CareAdvance unit of Trizetto, and Alexandra Drane, President of Eliza. Last week they announced a...

Health IT supporting our troops

By John Halamka I spent yesterday in Washington with Major General Elder Granger, Deputy Director in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. We discussed electronic health records, personal health records, decision support, and interoperability. Here's...

The managed care roller coaster

By Maggie Mahar & Niko Karvounis Niko Karvounis tracks the health care system for the Century Foundation. Maggie Mahar is an award winning journalist and author. A frequent contributor to THCB, her work has appeared in the New York Times,...

State telemedicine networks: a modern anachronism

By Scott Shreeve I continue to read with interest articles describing new telemedicine projects. I just don’t get it. What are these guys doing? You don’t need a telemedicine network fraught with complicated hookups, poor screen quality, and difficult communication...

The Two Ted Kennedys

By Matthew Holt I’m up at Spot-On explaining the Ted Kennedy Medicare miracle to the masses and suggesting that there are some real long-term problems that won’t be so easy for the Dems to solve later. As ever come back...

It's all about the billing

By Sean Neill Sean Neill is a South African-born, British-trained anesthesiologist, who recently relocated to Midwestern USA. He blogs regularly at OnMedica about his cross-cultural experience, frequently pointing out oddities of American health care. Having arrived to see the last...

Already counting down to the next physician fee cut

By Robert Laszewski Robert Laszweski has been a fixture in Washington health policy circles for the better part of three decades. He currently serves as the president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates of Alexandria, Virginia. You can read more...