The Health Care Blog

Perhaps Obama will have to do rather more than he says he will

By Matthew Holt I feel like Mrs Miggins in my favorite comedy show, Blackadder. It’s the scene when Blackadder says “The hustings are down, the candidates have spoken and after the madness of a general election, we can return to...

Can Health Plans Explain Why They Aren't Re-Empowering Primary Care?

By Brian Klepper & David Kibbe Sometimes a whisper is more powerful than a shout. Here's a cartoon from Modern Medicine that shows a Medical Home counseling session between a primary care physician (PCP), a specialist and the health plan....

Health Wonk Review Is Up!

Over at Health Blawg, David Harlow has a special and particularly entertaining "Samhain" edition of Health Wonk Review. Pull out your costumes and head on over for some treats!

Pitfalls of VIP Syndrome

By Sarah Arnquist Slate has an article today by two doctors discussing VIP syndrome in health care and how it can lead to worse care for the rich and powerful, such as Sen. Ted Kennedy, who following a diagnosis of...

McCain's health plan likely going down with him

By Robert Laszewski John McCain would reform the American health care system by providing big tax incentives for it to transition from being employer-based to one built on a system of individual responsibility. He would do this by eliminating the...

Safeway uses incentives and transparency to improve employee health

By Scott Shreeve In this interview on “The Business Case for Health 2.0," Ken Shachmut, Senior VP Strategic Initiatives, Health Initiatives, and Health Re-engineering at Safeway, shares is thoughts on some of the highly impressive results that the company has...

The inconvenient truth

By Sarah Arnquist The Los Angeles Times ran a great series last week called "Shedding Risk" in which it detailed through compelling human stories the erosion of the health insurance market. It's definitely worth finding the time to read. Matthew...

e-Patient Dave tells his story

By Matthew Holt In the Connected Health conference at Partners I sat in on a great session in which e-Patient Dave (Dave deBronkart) and his physician, Danny Sands described his use of listservs, the Internet, email and BIMDC’s PatientSite and...

The latest on technology-enabled DM

By Matthew Holt I sat in on another session at Connected Health about A Progress Report on Medicare’s CMHCB (Care Management for High Cost Beneficiaries) Pilot. This is the medical group alternative to Medicare Health Support operated via providers not...

Be careful what you wish for

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. The show is pretty much the same - every time. Public sector entity gets...

Entering the era of participatory medicine

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn I've returned from a week of Health 2.0 immersion on the west coast. The top-line finding: we've entered the period we can call Participatory Medicine. For some, like the pioneering Gilles Friedman of ACOR, this is nothing...

Will a $5,000-tax credit be the silver bullet to solve health care?

By Shuka Kalantari If Senator John McCain becomes U.S. president he plans to give each American family $5,000 to pay for health insurance premium costs in the individual market. Individuals would get $2,500 for the same use. How does McCain...

Make your voice heard!

For the next week, you have a unique opportunity to make your voice heard on health information privacy issues, their impact on the Health 2.0 movement, and how best to build public trust in these technologies. The National Academy of...

Some more reflections on Health 2.0

By Matthew Holt It’s late at night and I’m red-eye-ing it to Boston to the Partners Center for Connected Health Symposium. Just like at Health 2.0 last week there’s going to be about 1,000 people there. And while originally the...

Firefighters attack McCain's health plan

By Shuka Kalantari The International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) recently launched a campaign in support of Senator Obama for president -- and an attack on Senator McCain's health care plan. The commercial features four firefighters. "Our job is to risk...

A Fantasy Brought to You by the New York Times: Medicine Without Risk

By Maggie Mahar Sometimes I agree with New York Times’ editorials. Sometimes I don’t. But I rarely learn much from them. To my mind, the problem with the form is that it encourages opining without evidence. So, I admit, I...

Renewing SCHIP will be first order of business for Congress in 2009

By Don Johnson The first order of business for the new president and congress in 2009 will be renewing SCHIP, the children’s health program, Credit Suisse notes. Stocks likely to benefit: Amerigroup (AGP), Centene (CNC), Molina Healthcare (MOH) and Wellcare...

News Stories Explore "Political Sincerity" of Health Care Proposals

By Christopher Weaver Health care returned to its rightful place - relative to public opinion - in media coverage over the last few weeks, displacing the war in Iraq and the economy as the number three election issue, according to...

Health care at risk

By Jacob Hacker Jacob S. Hacker is Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Center for Health, Economic, and Family Security at U.C. Berkeley. He is also a Fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington D.C. Health reform...

Health 2.0 -- the morning after...

By Matthew Holt The stage is down, the cameras are gone, more than 1,000 people have headed home (other than the 50 or so at the Healthcamp which is happening right now) some reflections in stream of consciousness fashion…. I...

Liveblog Health 2.0: Health-Management Tools for Consumers

By Craig Stoltz What sort of digital tools are available to health consumers to help them manage the healthinfosphere–and [not to put too fine a point on it]–their health? Kevin Noland, CEO, ADAM iPhone app: the Adam Health Navigator. Puts...

Health 2.0--Day 2, 3 Health 2.0 CEOs

By Matthew Holt So it’s Day 2 and I’m taking 2 minutes that I don't have to comment on an amazing morning. Jon Bush from AthenaHealth was interviewed (sort of!) by Chris Lawton. He is absolutely hilarious — anyone who...

Sermo and Bloomberg announce strategic partnership

By Sarah Arnquist Sermo and Bloomberg announced a new partnership Thursday at Health 2.0 to provide financial investors with instant access to medical information via The Healthcare Exchange. Sermo CEO Daniel Palestrant said this partnership will allow investors to tap...

Engage With Grace

By Sarah Arnquist If there was something you could do to improve end-of-life-care in the United States, and it only took two minutes, and everybody did it, would there be a transformation? Alexandra Drane, president of Eliza Corp., and Matthew...

Stay young, keep your brain fit

By Alvaro Fernandez A spate of recent global news coverage on cognitive fitness and "brain training" reflects a growing interest in innovative interventions to keep our brains sharp as we age. This interest is very timely, given an aging population,...

Pumped up findings: Do publishing practices distort science?

By Sarah Arnquist The credibility of scientific journals and the findings has come under attack multiple times this month via accusations of unethical editing and artificially pumped up findings. PloS Medicine -- an open-access journal -- published an essay suggesting...

Health 2.0 Liveblog: Consumer Information Aggregators

By Craig Stoltz Five companies that are leaders in making consumer data, including personal health records, available. Web MD: Just did a deal with Wal-Mart, making WebMD personal health records and tools available to employees. Proof that health technology adoption...

Health 2.0 Liveblog: Clay Shirky

By Craig Stoltz Author of “Here Comes Everybody,” NYU Interactive technology/culture prof: Health 2.0 keynote address. “More is Different”: As groups aggregate, they create not just more knowledge, but a different, more valuable kind of knowledge….this affects healthcare innovation in...

Health 2.0, LLC, Launches Health 2.0 Advisors

Health 2.0 Advisors is an advisory service formed by four Health 2.0 thought leaders: Matthew Holt, Brian Klepper, Michael L. Millenson, and Jane Sarasohn-Kahn. The new service, in close collaboration with Edelman, will integrate data from Edelman’s Health Trust Barometer...

Health technology need not go to backburner during economic downturn

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn In the past several months, there's been some wringing of hands and some pronouncements of glasses-half-empty concerning health reform and technology innovation. For us glass-half-full types, here's something to consider... Roughly 15,000 physicians in the state of...

Ethics of the genetic testing marketplace

By Hsien-Hsien Lei Fresh on the heels of the launch of the deCODE BreastCancer genetic test last week, Dr. Arthur Caplan, renowned director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, said in an article for MSNBC.com that breast cancer...

Ready or not, it's time for Health 2.0!

By Matthew Holt Tonight the party starts, the beautiful (and not so beautiful) people gather, and the shows under way—and that’s just the Health 2.0 team! There’s also 900 + speakers, guests, media, volunteers and the community is buzzing. Wall...

An Impending Hanging: Will Health 2.0 Be Compromised By The Economic Downturn?

By Brian Klepper Nothing focuses the mind like an impending hanging. -- Samuel Johnson I've been preparing for tomorrow's 3rd Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco, where I'll join my pals Matthew, Indu Subaiya, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn and Michael Millenson amid...

Overregulating patient safey

By Bob Wachter In responding to dysfunctional systems, America instinctively turns to “more regulation” (Exhibit A: today’s Wall Street). But regulation can, and often does, go too far, and – in patient safety – I believe that it now has....

Researchers question publishing ethics of leading economics journal

By Sarah Arnquist Update: The Harvard Health Policy Review site is back up with an apology and disclaimer for not seeking a response from the JHE editors. A Harvard Health Policy Review article that details two researchers' account of unethical...

You can lead a horse to evidenced-based medicine but ...

By Merrill Goozner Note: This post first appeared at Goozner's blog, Gooznews. A new important and depressing study appeared last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers who poured over Medicare records found that less than half...

Video games to revolutionize health and health care

By Douglas Goldstein The worldwide video gaming industry is a thriving business – with hardware and software sales reaching 43.5 billion in 2007 and projected to grow to more than 61 billion in the next 4 years. This growth isn’t...

MRIS: The good, the bad and the useless

By Christine Gray Note: This post first appeared at e-patients.net Gina Kolata's must-read article in last week's Science Times points out vast differences in the quality of MRI's as well as vast differences in the expertise of the radiologists who...

Personal health records and the law

By Bob Coffield The October edition of the Health Lawyers News, a publication of the American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA), contains an article I co-authored with Jud DeLoss, a principal in the law firm of Gray Plant Mooty, who blogs...

Finding 'Original Faith' but not in the health care system

By Paul Maurice Martin Thank you to The Health Care Blog for this opportunity to share my patient’s perspective on health care and how it has helped shape my new book, Original Faith: What Your Life Is Trying to Tell...

The toughest job in America

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn Today, the loneliest job in American isn't being the Maytag repair man. And the hardest job in America isn't necessarily the Presidency. It's being a state governor. Take Pennsylvania (the state I call my home). Governor Ed...

Do you have an Avatar?

By Robin Strongin THCB Note: This post first appeared at The Disruptive Women in Health Care Blog. There's lots more great posts. Check it out! If you don’t have an avatar, you may want to seriously think about creating one....

Innovations in second life

By Alice Krueger (SL: Gentle Heron) THCB Note: Alice Kreuger recently updated THCB about all the exciting things she's doing in Second Life on Virtual Ability Island. Here is a quick rundown. If you're unsure about second life, check out...

Tracking media coverage of health care

By Chris Weaver Headlines and A1 charts stuck with the stock market, Washington's changeling rescue proposals and the plights of anxious finance firms in the week between the Palin-Biden debate and John McCain and Barack Obama's town hall face off...

Health wonk review

It's up over at Managed Care Matters. In compiling this edition, Joe Paduda wrote, "This is perhaps the most serious, thought-provoking edition of HWR I've had the honor of hosting. There's a lot of meat here, so don't expect to...

Getting smarter and greener with electronic medical resources

By John Halamka I've described the iPod Touch as the next great technology for medical education, but the Kindle is also a device with great potential. We've recently implemented Kindle support for all our 20,000 educational resources at HMS. Our...

Health Care Reform: The Public Speaks (With Forked Tongue)

By Michael Millenson Who says Congress doesn’t accurately reflect the will of the American people? The public has spoken about health care reform, and the message is clear: “Whatever.” If you’re a politician who believes that soaring promises soothe voters,...

Microsoft Healthvault: Coke, Pepsi or Intel Inside

By Amy Tenderich This post appeared originally on DiabetesMine. When Microsoft launched its HealthVault application last year — the first major commercial Personal Health Record (PHR) system on the open web — the Wall Street Journal reported that “Consumers are...

Around the Web in 60 Seconds (Or Less)

By THCB Staff The consumer genetics company Navigenics has partnered with Scripps, Microsoft and Affymetrix in a landmark clinical study to assess the behavioral impact of personal genetic testing on people who choose to receive such screenings to identify their...

7-day countdown to Health 2.0

By THCB Staff The Health 2.0 conference is just a week away and with that comes the viewing of David Kibbe's documentary, "The Great American Motorcycle Tour for Health 2.0." Go check out his blog to get a taste of...