The Health Care Blog

Good grief! Will this derail the latest reform push?

By Matthew Holt Daschle failed to pay $128,000 in taxes Didn’t he complete that ridiculously long form about his past that the Obamanations wanted? Daschle may not have had a drunken picture of himself on Facebook but answering away not...

Consumer-Driven Health Care: Promise and Performance

By Robert Laszewski I am always struck by the difference between the salesmanship of health plans offering consumer-driven health products and the reality of the data. James Robinson and Paul Ginsburg have an article in the January 27th edition of...

Report Shines Light on Long-Term Care Spending in Medicare

By Anne Tumlinson Several contributors to THCB have commented that long-term care tends to get short shrift in healthcare discussions. New research might help to make a case for why we can no longer afford to demote this critical issue...

Commentology

Intermountain CIO Marc Probst had this response to John Halamka's post "Five reasons for Hope" "As a CIO in an integrated delivery system I have had my eyes opened to see the wisdom and benefit of following proven informatics principles....

Moving forward on SCHIP

By Jocelyn Guyer The Senate passed its version of legislation to renew the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) Thursday, bringing the bill very close to its long overdue White House signing ceremony. The new bill is expected to cover...

Uwe Reinhardt on why Canada is better

By Matthew Holt The master interviewed. (including transcript) Don’t worry—he only talks this way to piss off John Goodman, Stuart Browning and Newt Gingrich.

And in today's scuttlebutt--Sutter pay grades

By Matthew Holt A little birdie contacted me leading me to wonder, what did the former CEO of Sutter Health Van Johnson do to get paid $5.6 million for working for a “part year” in 2006? (See page 100 of...

Five reasons for hope

By John Halamka Over the past decade as a CIO, I've had successes and failures. I've learned about leadership in a crisis , how to resolve disputes, and how to serve my customers/employees/superiors . As I watch the first few...

Calendar: The Smartest (Healthcare) Guys in the Room

Filed under possible sleepers we're-keeping-an-eye on: Alex Gibney, the Academy-award winning film maker behind the widely acclaimed "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" will show segments of his newest film, a feature length take on Maggie Mahar's "Money-Driven Medicine"...

At Families USA, progressive optimism reigns

By Sarah Arnquist As an annual meeting of progressives should start, the Families USA conference of health advocates began in Washington D.C. this morning with applause and cheers of the announcement of President Obama's imminent signing of the Lilly Ledbetter...

A Transparent Health Record

By Adrian Gropper, MD Transparency, in the form of a complete, patient-centered and accessible health record is a policy principle that can drive the next wave of health care innovation. Investing exclusively in institutional EHRs will further stifle efficiency, innovation...

How to read articles about health and health care

By Alicia White If you’ve just read a health-related headline that’s caused you to spit out your morning coffee (“Coffee causes cancer” usually does the trick) it’s always best to follow the Blitz slogan: “Keep Calm and Carry On.” On...

A whole lot more Medicaid, but there's a catch

By MATTHEW HOLT It looks like the stimulus package is going to spend a whole lot more on Medicaid AND subsidize the purchase of COBRA for laid off workers. Unlike the “let them eat cake” brigade who’ll decry this as...

A tale of two pilots

By Bob Wachter The pilot of the US Airways flight that crash landed safely in the Hudson River earlier this month after taking off from Laguardia Airport is rightly being praised as a hero. But how significant of an accomplishment...

The New Science of Vascular Disease

By William H. Bestermann M.D. Vascular disease and the conditions that produce arterial problems consume roughly one- third to one-half of the $2 trillion annual spend in American health care. The science and systems exist today to dramatically improve the...

CEOs' Urgent, Shared Commitment to Change

By Gary S. Kaplan A few weeks ago, I joined five of my peers in health care leadership throughout the country to help launch Health CEOs for Health Reform, a coalition dedicated to transforming health care and creating a more...

The Virtual Health Home

By Don Kemper The virtual health home is the “other half” of the patient-centered medical home. Some might say it’s the better half. Though related in purpose, the two “homes” differ dramatically in perspective. While both place the patient at...

The British are revolting!

By Matthew Holt The BBC (British Band of Communists) has created an appalling piece of propaganda suggesting that the American health care system is an unfair mess. And they’re not exactly too polite about the rest of America, including setting...

Is Medicare backpedalling on evidenced-based medicine?

By Merrill Goozner Note: This post first appeared at Gooznews.com Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal carried stories today on Medicare's expansion of the number of drug-listing compendia that can now be used to justify reimbursement...

Heard around the Web

Rating hospital quality Healthgrades.com released findings today from a national study that identified 270 hospitals, out of 5,000, where patients are on average 27 percent less likely to die and 8 percent less likely to suffer a major complication (adjusting...

The Siren Song of Public Programs

By Roger Collier Although details of their 2008 health care reform plans vary, there is significant consensus among the new Washington heavyweights—Obama, Daschle, Baucus, and Clinton. Their common proposal: we should expand Medicaid and offer an under-65 version of Medicare...

Please, do not ban reference-based pricing

By Rick Peters, MD & Karl Luber, MD We were stunned (yes, we're naïve and idealistic) to read in The Kaiser Family Foundation newsletter and The Wall Street Journal article last week that CMS (surprise) and the now former the...

Announcements: Nudging people to better health with innovation

Are you helping people make better health choices? If you care about encouraging choices that promote healthy living, we want to hear from you. Ashoka’s Changemakers is collaborating with the Pioneer Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to launch...

Commentology

Mitch came to the defense of Sanjay Gupta in the thread on Maggie Mahar's post "Doubts About Gupta for Surgeon General. "I guess I see this differently. One, Gupta is one of the most respected surgeons in the country in...

Advert: The Haas Business of Healthcare Conference

The Haas Business of Health Care Conference provides an interdisciplinary forum where cutting-edge information and innovative approaches to health care are shared. This is the only event of its kind on the West Coast where health care industry professionals will...

Dr. George Lundberg for Surgeon General

By Brian Klepper The report that Mr. Obama's Surgeon General choice might be neurosurgeon and CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta produced an upwelling of strong opinion, particularly in the medical community. Some argued that Dr. Gupta has clearly demonstrated...

A Shout Out to Our Sponsors

According to ConnextionsHealth, growing losses of individual and group plan members are eroding acquisition costs, profitability and competitive advantage at all major health plans, making member retention a strategic priority for 2009. At some health insurers, member turnover is running...

Trackers - you can use Zume yourself at last (and others too)

By Matthew Holt In this piece I’m slightly pulling CEO Rajiv Metha’s chain (but he’s an Arsenal fan so he can take it). At any rate the Zume Life beta program is open and it works on the iPhone (as...

It's the platform, stupid

By Scott Shreeve I read with interest a recent article by my favorite health care reporter, Joe Conn, who has long time interest in the commercial success of the VistA Electronic Health Record system developed by the VA. VistA has...

The Truth About Health IT Standards – There’s No Good Reason to Delay Data Liquidity and Information Sharing

By David C. Kibbe & Peter Neupert Now that the Obama administration and Congress have committed to spending billions of tax payers’ money on health IT as part of the economic stimulus package, it’s important to be clear about what...

Nomination for U.S. Surgeon General

By Richard A. Lippin, MD This is a reprint of the letter originally posted to Facebook. Dear President Obama and Former Senator Tom Daschle: As a physician leader in the medical specialty Preventive Medicine for 30 plus years, I am...

Rationing -- how will it be spun?

By Sarah Arnquist The House of Representatives' $825-billion stimulus package proposed last week included $1.1 billion to fund comparative effectiveness research -- research that evaluates two or more medical technologies or treatments to see which is most effective. This is...

When You’re a Wonk, You’re a Wonk All the Way

Folks at the Health Affairs blog are proudly highlighting a Business Week snippet about incoming health reform czar and HHS Secretary Tom Daschle. The magazine quotes a friend talking about Daschle’s intensity this way: “He really does unwind by reading...

Healthcare Reform Should Include Connected Health and Participatory Medicine

In response to President Obama's call for recommendations on health care reform, the Center for Connected Health, a division of Partners HealthCare, convened an online Community Health Discussion in December, to explore the opportunities and advantages connected health, population management...

Doubts about Gupta for Surgeon General

By Maggie Mahar Editor's note: Maggie wrote this originally as a comment to Brian Klepper's post, but we thought it worthy of its own headline. I vote for Dr. Lundberg--who I know, admire and trust. I am troubled by Dr....

Cats & dogs: Can we find unity on health care IT change?

By Matthew Holt Those of you paying attention for the past few days might have noticed on the one hand a sense of optimism and unity as Barrack H. Obama, somewhat somberly, began his presidency. Meanwhile, over the past few...

Strategic Implementation of the NHIN

By Kepa Zubeldia In the last few weeks, it has become evident that a National Health Information Network (NHIN) has the political support necessary to become a reality and to help the health care system progress to a twenty-first century...

Online communities helped psoriasis sufferers

By Matthew Holt In one of the first articles of this type I've seen published in a mainstream medical journal, in this case the Archives of Dermatology, there's some evidence that being in an online community helps patients. This study...

Johns Hopkins professor presents on improving patient-physician communications

WHO: The Herschel S. Horowitz Center for Health Literacy at the University of Maryland School of Public Health hosts guest speaker Debra Roter, DrPH, as part of their ongoing Speaker Series. WHAT: Dr. Roter, a Professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg...

The greatest health care IT generation

By John Halamka In Washington, Healthcare Information Technology policy planning is accelerating at a pace that is faster than at any time in history (at least my 30 years in healthcare IT). Over the past few days, the House Ways...

Five "Shovel-Ready" Health Care Reforms

By Brian Klepper & David C. Kibbe Microsoft Health Vault's leader Peter Neupert has a wonderful blog post that makes two important points really well. One message is that health care reform is about the outcomes, not the technology. We...

Op-Ed: Jump-Starting Health IT - Best $20 Billion You’ll Ever Spend

By MARK LEAVITT An Open Letter to President Obama and the Congress Please accept my heartfelt congratulations for recognizing health information technology (IT) as one of the most promising targets for public investment at this crucial moment. As a (formerly...

Health 2.0 Meets Ix--Earlybird pricing ends tonight at midnight

It’s possible that you were distracted by certain events happening yesterday. But it’s time to focus on the job at hand, and in the world of Health 2.0 that means the upcoming Health 2.0 Meets Ix Conference. Today is the...

A Buried Medical History — 20 Years to Adopt a Critical Prostate Cancer Tool

By Michael Millenson My father is in his late 80s, so it’s not surprising that he’s had a brush with prostate cancer. That’s why the Los Angeles Times’ obituary of Donald F. Gleason, the Minnesota pathologist who invented the “Gleason...

The Importance of Being Charles Grassley

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI The extension and expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program SCHIP has now passed the full House and the Senate Finance Committee and is on its way to the full Senate. After minor differences between the...

Commentology

Bev MD emailed us in jest in response to "A Shakespearean Approach to Health care reform" "Whew, from your post's title I thought you were going to say, "First, let's kill all the doctors." The thread on David Kibbe's post...

Why It is Inevitable that the Debate over Health care Will be Partisan

By Maggie Mahar In a post earlier this week, Bob Laszewski reported that “the extension and expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) has now passed the full House and the Senate Finance Committee and is on its...

Job Post: Social/New Media Director

Chandler Chicco Companies is seeking a Social/ New Media Director with a solid understanding of the pharmaceutical/healthcare industry who will partner with the agency’s senior staff to identify and execute on new/social media strategies. Chandler Chicco Companies represents six companies...

Ceasefire reached in Boston

By Paul Levy A dramatic cease-fire was announced over the weekend. No, not the one in the Mideast, but rather in the health care market in Massachusetts. As documented in this Boston Globe story by Scott Allen and Jeff Krasner,...

An Interview with Matthew Holt

By RICHARD REECE With an Introduction by Brian Klepper "Here is a treat for regular readers of THCB and, certainly, for everyone who has come to know Matthew. Below, the erudite retired Pathologist, fierce physician advocate, health care chronicler and...