The Health Care Blog

Implementing a Modern Hospital Website

By JOHN HALAMKA Over the past two years, I've witnessed a transition in modern website design from plain text and static information to multimedia centric and interactive. I've written about the new BIDMC website we implemented to meet patient expectations...

The Myth of Prevention and EHR’s?

By SCOTT SHREEVE I was just referred this article which I found to be thoughtfully crafted. Abraham Verghese is a Professor and Senior Associate Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University. I found the article interesting,...

Rantology: Cannon on Freedom or Power?

By Matthew Holt Ah-ha. Michael Cannon has now replied to me and it basically comes down in his mind to me being a crypto-fascist Stalinist wanting to break the will of the American people mediated through its representatives, the health...

Unions May Get a Pass on Health Care Benefits Tax

By ROBERT LAWSZEWSKI There is a major bipartisan effort going on in the Senate Finance Committee to reform the health care system. Reportedly, one of the elements of that effort may be a tax on "gold plated" health insurance benefits...

Health 2.0 NYC Chapter Meetup, July 9th

Once again we are looking forward to an exciting and packed event on July 9th. So RSVP early and please make it firm. Before we get to the agenda, I urge everyone to explore and endorse "A Declaration of Health...

The Message Is The Medium

By MERRILL GOOZNER Emory University psychologist and political consultant Drew Westen in the weekend Washington Post offers a troubling view of the public's role in health care reform. While reform's reality involves complicated technical issues like insurance exchanges, public plan...

THCB Marketplace Beta Now Open

Go take a look: www.thehealthcareblog.com/marketplace

A little more on insurers, and reform means more of the same

By Matthew Holt In the comments on my piece on Michael Cannon (which Michael has not commented on sadly, as I was hoping for a nice fight! Michael has replied here and I'll reply back on Monday), everyone’s favorite insurance...

And in reply to the ABC Obamamercial...

By Matthew Holt Stephen Colbert’s Republican Health Care Infomercial. Quite wonderful. Can’t get it to embed but here’s the link

A Costly Wrinkle in the Merged Market

By CHARLIE BAKER One of the more controversial elements of health care reform in Massachusetts is the so-called “merged market.” In most states, individual health insurance is bought and sold under one set of rules, and small group insurance (for...

The EHR TimeBar: A New Visual Interface Design

By RICK WEINHAUS, MD The EHR TimeBar functions as a high-level overview of the patient record, as a query device, and as an intuitive navigation tool. Each EHR file (event) for the patient is represented by an icon. The set...

Data to the People

By GREGORY PARK I have been a strong proponent of the creation of a National Health Record (NHR), but will it increase the quality of care for each citizen? Without 100 percent compliance by all healthcare providers the establishment of...

Commentology: National Health Information Networks; What is the Benefit?

Gregory Park from DB Technology, wrote in to say this about National Health Information Networks: "I was wondering where is the debate on the real benefits in NHINs. What is the benefit exactly? The way that I see it, most...

Health Wonk Review: Confederations Cup Edition

Up at the Healthcare Economist. Daniel Gilden's piece over here leads off, as it should!

McAllen: A Tale of Three Counties

By DANIEL GILDEN Introduction The challenge of constraining costs while maintaining or enhancing the quality of medical care is vividly brought to life by Atul Gawande in his recent widely-read New Yorker essay. The anecdotal evidence presented in the article...

In which I play Obama, answering Michael Cannon

By Matthew Holt Last night I was busy spending two hours of my and my business partner’s time buying health insurance for our massive 4 person company. That means doing a multi-factorial equation between premiums, co-pays, deductibles, out of pocket...

Paul Starr: way more eloquent than me

By Matthew Holt You recall my piece about whether the public plan would be set up to be adversely selected against like historically Medicare has been. Well this week Paul Starr did a rather better job on the same topic.

It's Not Just Doctors in Short Supply

By STEVEN A. WARTMAN, MD, PhD and WILLIAM F. OWEN, JR. MD Policy-makers involved in healthcare reform are making a mistake in disproportionately emphasizing our current doctor shortage while neglecting serious shortages of care providers in other fields of health....

Op-Ed: A Social Democrat Weighs in on a Government Health Plan

By DAVID HANSEN I was born into a Berkeley family of Social Democrats—my father studied Swedish economic policies—then I trained in social-democratic Economics in Scandinavia, before cutting my career teeth in a Norwegian Labor Party think tank. I thereby personify...

More bad press for Insurers. Will anyone care?

By Matthew Holt Jon Cohn notes that Wendell Potter, a former PR executive with Cigna and Humana. will be appearing before a Senate Commerce Committee today. Note the word “former”. Trudy Lieberman has an interview with Potter where he repeats...

The bleedingly obvious

By Matthew Holt It makes no sense for small businesses to provide health insurance to employees. This testimony from a small business owner to the House Tri-committee yesterday shows it. (Same is true for all employers but none save Ron...

Bringing the Prius into American Medicine

By MICHAEL MILLENSON President Obama has repeatedly promised that providing every American affordable access to quality health care won't cost more money than we'll save through reform, but he's recently raised the stakes even further. Health care reform, he has...

A Declaration of Health Data Rights

By Matthew Holt THCB & Health 2.0 are happy to be a small part of a very important declaration, made today by a mix of patients, physicians, technologists and concerned citizens. It's a Declaration of Health Data Rights, and it's...

A Dream of Reason

By BRIAN KLEPPER and DAVID KIBBE The dream of reason did not take power into account...Modern medicine is one of those extraordinary works of reason...But medicine is also a world of power. -Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine,...

“Meaningful Use” - If You Have to Define It, Is It?

By BRIAN BAUM I have a good friend at Duke University - Dr. Ed Hammond. (Ed has been involved in advancing electronic health information for quite some time - probably longer than he'd like to remember.) Ed once told me...

Time to Revisit Wyden-Bennett?

By ROGER COLLIER With the Washington insiders at politico.com reporting this weekend that health care reform appears to be in “real jeopardy,” and the Senate Finance Committee so uneasy that they have decided to delay reform bill markup until after...

Opening Physicians' Notes to Patients

By STEVE DOWNS Today’s Boston Globe ran a story (page one, no less!) announcing our grant to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to run a three-site demonstration of opening up physicians’ notes to patients. That’s not just making labs, drugs,...

Your AHIP Quiz Question of the Day

By Matthew Holt This is something that's been puzzling me for a few weeks. We all know that insurers are very good at making sure that they insure healthier risks than average. In the individual market they do this openly,...

Eight Signs that Wellness and Prevention have become Health Reform Priorities

By DAVID R. WILLIAMS Health care reform alone won’t make America healthier. We’ve seen this basic message as recently as yesterday, in Ezra Klein’s piece for the American Prospect, “Wealth-Care Reform.” At the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build...

How Relevant is the American Medical Association?

By RAHUL PARIKH, MD Like most doctors, I was busy seeing a full schedule of patients when President Obama addressed members of the American Medical Association at their annual meeting in Chicago. The speech was billed as a crucial confrontation...

The Dumbest Thing I Have Ever Seen An Insurance Company Do

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI And, I’ve been in the business for 37 years. First, let me stipulate we really need a system of universal care where everyone gets to have insurance. But we don’t yet so certain rules are unavoidable until...

The State of Meaningful Use

By MICHAEL PAINTER Is it possible that the State Department is technologically bolder than the HIT Policy Committee? On Tuesday, that committee convened by the Office of the National Coordinator as required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act released...

Five Truths About Health Insurance: Public, Private, or Cooperative

By JON GLAUDEMANS In the debate over whether health reform legislation should include a public plan or cooperative, too much has been said about the general objectives of such an approach – expanded choice, level playing field, benchmark for competition,...

Back to the Drawing Board?

By ROGER COLLIER The current congressional approach to health care reform of adding ever more fixes without changing the underlying system looks increasingly shaky. What are the some of the indications? The public plan has generated enormous opposition—and not just...

Health Reform: A Poetic Update (With apologies to Judy Collins)

By MICHAEL L. MILLENSON Come hear the rich Speak of the poor. Of the price tag for coverage And its CBO score. Where are the clowns? Don’t you love talk About health care reform? Of fearing bankruptcy from illness No...

Ezra says pusillanimousity has won

By Matthew Holt Now he's no longer a young punk but an insider of the first order Ezra Klein has come up trumps and got an early copy of the latest Senate Finance committee legislation/trial balloon. It’s not going to...

Matthew went to Redmond, Pt 4: Nate McLemore

By Matthew Holt My final interview from my trip to Microsoft was with Nate McLemore, who is Director of Business Development for the Health Solutions Group and also involved in Microsoft’s policy & lobbying work. Nate talked about Microsoft’s role...

We Need Southwest Airlines!

By ROGER COLLIER Can price competition cut health care costs? There are lessons to be learned from the airline industry. Over thirty years, per capita health care costs, adjusted for inflation, have increased two and a half times. In the...

Meaningful meaning? (with UPDATE)

By Matthew Holt The first draft of “meaningful use” came out early yesterday, and I was struck by two things. First, probably influenced by the NCVHS recommendations and the Consumer Partnership for e-Health (See Update), the work-group included a lot...

What Technology is Needed to Improve Care: EHRs or Registries?

By RICHARD SCOVILLE I spent a couple of days last week (June 10-11) at a conference co-sponsored by the HRSA Center for Quality and the NIH National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities at which twenty of the highest-performing...

Rant: THCB transforms the New York Times, makes offer!

By Matthew Holt Just a few years ago The New York Times was on its last legs, printing Judy Miller’s re-mouthing of Cheney’s lies, holding back the wiretapping story until after the 2004 election, and generally spouting a lot of...

Op-Ed: On Health Reform, Obama Faces a New Foe: Other Democrats

By HARRIS MEYER Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington is a prime reason President Obama will have a hard time getting health care reform passed this year. Let me explain this seeming oddity. At a news conference on May 27...

An Open Letter to Dr. David Blumenthal

By RICK WEINHAUS, MD Below is a slightly expanded version of a letter I recently sent to Dr. Blumenthal, the new National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, and the members of the new national HIT Policy Committee. Dear Dr. Blumenthal:...

The Journal of Participatory Medicine

By Matthew Holt ePatientDave and Giles Frydman have been working on the Society of Participatory Medicine for a while and Alan Greene MD will be the first President. Now there’s a editorial board for the Journal of Participatory Medicine. The...

Beyond the Beltway – How Most of America Sees Health Reform

By BILL KRAMER What are people saying about health reform beyond the beltway and outside the health wonk debates? I’ve been meeting with Rotary Clubs and local Chambers of Commerce during the last several months, and they’re talking about different...

Decoding “The Social Life of Health Information”

By SUSANNAH FOX The Pew Internet/California HealthCare Foundation report, The Social Life of Health Information, is packed with new findings from a survey of 2,253 adults, including 502 cell-phone interviews, conducted in either English or Spanish. We spent a bundle...

The Road from McAllen to El Paso

By HAROLD S. LUFT Dr. Atul Gawande has provided a chilling description of the problems facing true health reform in his recent New Yorker article. In The Cost Conundrum he describes how medical care is provided in McAllen, Texas, which...

Clinical Groupware: When Not-As-Good Is Actually Better

By DAVID C. KIBBE In a February 13, 2009 blog post I introduced the idea of Clinical Groupware as a low cost, modular, and cloud computing alternative to traditional electronic health record technology for physicians and medical practices. Central to...

President Obama Addresses the AMA

President Barack Obama spoke today at the American Medical Association’s (AMA) 158th annual meeting in Chicago on the need for health care reform. View more news videos at: http://www.nbcchicago.com/video.

FDA Regulation of Tobacco Called 'Death Sentence'

By MERRILL GOOZNER Legislation headed for President Obama's desk that would give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over tobacco was called a "death sentence" for agency morale by longtime FDA observer Jim Dickinson, editor of FDA Webview (subscription...