The Health Care Blog

And if you thought the requirements for Health 2.0 were tough...

By Matthew Holt For the Health 2.0 conference we look at lots of great technologies and put the people who make them through the wringer before and after we choose them. But apparently we're not quite as honorous in our...

Voila! Uninsured problem solved by not counting them

John McCain's health adviser John Goodman in the Dallas Morning News on solving the problem of the uninsured: "So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United...

Obama and Krugman -- almost mirror each other

By Matthew Holt I thought Obama was fabulous last night at the convention. He’s a great speaker, but also able to gently laugh with his audience. His introduction showed what a tough road he had. If the Republicans manage to...

Two Boston Health 2.0 companies show a little more

By Matthew Holt Two MD-run Health 2.0 companies in Boston had decent interviews recently in which they told a little more about themselves. American Well’s Roy Schoenberg was interviewed by Health Business Blog’s David Williams. It’s a long and thorough...

The mirage of a "nonprofit" health system

By Don Johnson Not-for-profit hospital monopolies are helping make health insurance unaffordable for millions of Americans. In its Thursday edition, The Wall Street Journal profiles the near monopoly that Carilion Health System has in Roanoke, Virg., and how it uses...

Checklists save money but adopted at glacial pace

By Charlie Baker For the past year or so, I’ve been listening to and participating in a conversation in New England and nationally about the rising cost of health care. It’s a sticky wicket, to be sure, with no obvious,...

Is John Goodman joking or just mean?

By Matthew Holt The uninsured numbers went down a touch because in 2007 Medicaid expanded. In 2008 they’ll go up as unemployment increases and S-CHIP coverage is cut. Really this doesn’t change too much. Right-wing nut jobs all over the...

Balloon Mania: Happy Birthday Health 2.0

By Scott Shreve Having been around for the beginning of the Health 2.0 movement, it is good to see the conference continuing into its sophomore year. A lot has and continues to happen regarding the ongoing health care innovations that...

Stanford Med School rejects industry funding for continuing education

By Sarah Arnquist Stanford University's medical school announced this week new restrictions on educational contributions by drug and medical device companies, which turn out to be among the strictest in the nation. The rules are an effort to limit industry...

Cost-containment missing piece of Mass. health reform

By Niko Karvounis Niko Karvounis tracks the health care system for the Century Foundation. This post first appeared on the HealthBeat blog, one of our favorite health care reads. The Massachusetts experiment in health care reform is all about expanding...

Health Reform Prospects Fade as Presidential Campaign Enters Homestretch

By Jeff Goldsmith Jeff Goldsmith is President of Health Futures, Inc, and a professor of public health sciences at the University of Virginia. As presidential aspirants geared up their issue analyses last fall, health reform ranked as the number one...

Two Blues, two different Health 2.0 approaches

By Matthew Holt Two of the better behaved and more innovative health plans (both non-profit regional Blues) have been taking different approaches to Health 2.0, user-generated content, communities and all that. BCBS Minnesota created a separate company called Consumer Aware...

Cisco's Frances Dare talks about Congressional action on health IT

By Matthew Holt Frances Dare is someone I've know for a long time in the health care IT world (sorry, Frances!). That means that she's seen the painfully slow developments in many aspects of health IT since the 1990s, and...

Comparing Biden's health reform plan to Obama's

By Craig Stoltz It's the time in the political season to make way too much of the impact a vice president can have on the presidential contest. So I hope you don't mind if I extend that amusing parlor sport...

In Online Health Content We Trust?

By Fard Johnmar Late last week, Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet & American Life project announced that the nonprofit had updated its statistics on the number of adult Americans using the Internet. Currently, 73 percent are Web users. Of...

Hello Health open for business

By Matthew Holt Hello Health, the clinic that Jay Parkinson has been promoting for a while, is open for business. If all the patients are as happy as the first patient, success is assured! The deal is that they’ve gone...

A few socialist musings for Monday

By Matthew Holt I just watched the closing ceremony of the Olympics, and the word is that state sponsorship of little known or cared about sports like swimming, gymnastics and cycling gets more medals and so should be encouraged. Bob...

Medical debt is increasing even for the insured

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn Four in 10 Americans had trouble paying for medical care in 2007, according to the Commonwealth Fund's latest study on medical debt. The study, "Losing Ground: How the Loss of Adequate Health Insurance Is Burdening Working Families,"...

The first one's always free....but will you buy a kid a bike?

By Matthew Holt Many times because I'm an independent consultant, blogger or general self-appointed health care know-it-all people want to talk to me. And I’m always happy to talk. Sometimes these conversations turn into business for me or THCB or...

Who'd be a pollster, eh

By Matthew Holt HSC says that the number of Americans going online for healthcare goes way up: In 2007, 56 percent of American adults—more than 122 million people—sought information about a personal health concern from a source other than their...

Merck's marketing for HPV vaccine trumps science

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 of the increasingly influential HealthBeat blog, one...

On Rural Doctoring: The Generalist's Mind

By Theresa Chan This is the second part of a series that first appeared on the blog Rural Doctoring, where Theresa Chan writes about her experience working as a family physician and hospitalist in a rural community in Northern California....

Reports on Gardasil study offer varying interprations

By Sarah Arnquist Merck's HPV vaccine, Gardasil, has received significant press in recent days, following a cost-effectiveness study published in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Depending on where Americans get their news, they received different...

Chastened and More Sober, Harry and Louise Return

By Brian Klepper On Tuesday, Ron Pollack of Families USA led a call with bloggers -- unfortunately, I couldn't be on it -- to discuss Harry and Louise Return -- the new health reform campaign sponsored by five prominent organizations:...

Health Wonk Review

The biweekly compendium of the best of the health blogs is up over at Worker's Comp Insider.

Health 2.0 on icyou

Check out videos from past conferences and learn all about Health 2.0 at our very own channel on icyou, an online source filled with loads of useful health videos!

Personal genetic companies back in service

By Sarah Arnquist Two direct-to-consumer genetic testing firms, 23andMe and Navigenics gained approval from California regulators this week to continue providing clients access to and interpretations of their personal DNA. The NY Times reports this morning that, "The licenses, granted...

On Rural Doctoring: The Landscape

By Theresa Chan This is the first part of a series that first appeared on the blog Rural Doctoring, where Theresa Chan writes about her experience working as a family physician and hospitalist in a rural Northern California community. I've...

A.D.A.M. Marketing Manager

Job Posting: Marketing Manager – Healthcare and Technology A.D.A.M., Inc. is a pioneer in the use of innovative technology to help consumers better manage their health. Clients such as Google, Walgreens, The New York Times and The Cleveland Clinic have...

Back-to-school specials at the retail clinic

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn People have begun to ration themselves off of medical visits and prescription drugs, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). One in 5 Americans said they reduced visits to the doctor due to the slowing...

A.D.A.M. Product Manager $100-$110K

Job Posting: Product Manager – Healthcare and Content Solutions A.D.A.M., Inc. is a pioneer in the use of innovative technology to help consumers better manage their health. Clients such as Google, Walgreens, The New York Times and The Cleveland Clinic...

Health IT policy: the fur is flying

By Matthew Holt Some fur is flying in the rarefied world of health IT policy geeks this morning. Health Affairs has three articles. The first from Markle’s Carol Diamond, writing with Here Comes Everybody author and Internet guru Clay Shirky,...

Pay doctors for the value they offer patients

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 of the increasingly influential HealthBeat blog, one...

Health care in the YouTube era

By Bob Wachter August 11th was the 2nd anniversary of the epic implosion of George Allen's presidential campaign, the first defeat at the hands of YouTube. Two recent videos of unattended patients dying in ER waiting rooms leave me wondering...

Health care in the YouTube era

Video of the woman dying in the emergency room waiting room at Kings Hospital.

Connecting the dots between gas and health costs

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn Rite Aid, a top retail pharmacy chain, awarded its first Fill Up & Fuel Up gasoline gift cards this week. I've been writing about gas 'n health care since the inception of the Health Populi blog; see...

Health reform for ordinary folks

By Sarah Arnquist When it comes time to vote in November, will Americans know what they're voting for in terms of their health care futures? Will they understand what Barack Obama or John McCain's health proposals mean for them? Over...

A Primary Care Paradigm Shift

By Dr. Richard Reece Dick Reece is a retired pathologist and a prolific health care commentator with an active following, particularly among physicians. An astute, incisive observer, he is the author of 10 books; the latest is Innovation-Driven Health Care:...

Flacks peddle false "reality"

By Matthew Holt Such a pity that the NY Times has been so beaten up by the commies amongst us that it actually now feels that it has to point out where Peter Pitts and Janet Trautwein get their money....

Inappropriate ER use across the board

By Charlie Baker Charlie Baker is the president and CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. This post first appeared on his blog, Lets Talk Health Care. A few months ago, the New England Healthcare Institute (NEHI) issued a report on...

Prescribing a dose of healthy skepticism

By Sarah Arnquist Headlines declare wine is good for your health. So is a small bit of dark chocolate. Then, they say it's not. One day coffee is bad for you and the next it's good. We're bombarded with health...

Finding the best balance in health reporting

By Sarah Arnquist Starting with the first article they write, journalists learn to seek balance, objectivity and facts in their reporting. Balance often is translated into giving various viewpoints equal weight in an article. But do journalists always have to...

Health 2.0 for cancer trials

By Greg Pawelski Greg is well known to THCB readers as a long term commentator on the oncology scene with a keen interest in chemotherapy assay testing. Here he writes about a new type of clinical trial -- Matthew Holt...

The call for government EHR unification

By Scott Shreeve While on my VistA kick (here and here), I need to respond to several important errors of understanding in the recent press release hailed with a “Bravo!” from Fred Trotter. I also wanted to take the opportunity...

Personalities drive prescribing

By Merrill Goozner PharmaLive, the website that bills itself as the "Pulse of the Pharmaceutical Industry," recently ran this press release from PeopleMetrics, a marketing research firm. The group surveyed physicians to measure the effectiveness of sales representatives pushing atypical...

Health 2.0 guerilla activity at SXSW

By Matthew Holt In a fun piece of spontaneous local guerilla activity, Jay Drayer from CareFlash (based in Houston, Tx) who you’ll see at Health 2.0 this Fall, is also trying to get a Health 2.0 panel accepted at the...

Omnimedix still fighting Dossia owners

By Matthew Holt JD Kleinke and Omnimedix are still in business and still fighting a pretty serious lawsuit about the Dossia breakup. I talked with JD yesterday. The team is working on several super secret client projects, but it’s tough...

T-Shirt Health 2.0 conference ego surfing

By Matthew Holt So this is how fashion insurgencies start…Brian Klepper sent me this email. I assume they felt like the two Hollywood starlets who show up at the Oscars wearing the same dress! “So David Foster, Director of Product...

Health spending disconnect

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn There's a disconnect between who Americans believe is responsible for their personal health status, and who should pay for health care. On the first question -- personal responsibility for health choices -- 82 percent of Americans believe...

Voters shielded from high health costs don't see the residual impact

By Robert Laszewski The health care issue has a history of being named by voters as one of the biggest problems we face -- until the problem de jour comes along and pushes it off the list. In 2008, that...