The Health Care Blog

Health Reform and Medicare: Part I

By THOMAS L. GREANEY Here’s a pop quiz on health reform: Which prominent Republican said the following: And if you don’t [oppose this health care legislation] and if I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are...

Swine flu, uninsurance and not-so fondly remembering the teenage years

By Matthew Holt We get sent lots of rants to our tips line, most of which we ignore in an amused jaundiced way. But this one I found very amusing. I'm not sure it's 100% accurate, but it is very...

Medicare Policy Might Discourage Proper Care for Hospital-Acquired Infections

By MAYA SEQUEIRA Medicare's recent policy of refusing to pay hospitals' additional costs to treat hospital-acquired infections fails to adequately incentivize prevention and proper treatment of these complications, associated with 99,000 deaths annually. A recent analysis by Peter McNair and...

To Change Health Care, Change Diabetes.

By DANA HAZA As we work to change health care in America, we must recognize the need to dramatically change diabetes. Twenty-four million Americans have diabetes at a cost to our nation of an estimated $218 billion for diabetes and...

Morons like us

By Matthew Holt I still read the articles every day that Google and the rest of my searches spit into my inbox. But as the sausage gets made I despair for the country. Not so long ago the NY Times...

Another Look: Incident Reporting Systems

By BOB WACHTER When the patient safety field began a decade ago with the publication of the IOM report on medical errors, one of its first thrusts was to import lessons from “safer” industries, particularly aviation. Most of these lessons...

HIV/AIDS: The Future Looks Promising, but What About Now?

By JONATHAN ROCHKIND After years of disappointing trial and error, a vaccine shows success in a clinical trial in preventing the transmission of HIV/AIDS. Granted, the trial shows a less than one-third success rate. Compared to the 85 percent success...

Will Victory on Health Care Reform Mean Defeat for the Democrats?

By JOE FLOWER Being a futurist is not really about making predictions, but people ask for them anyway. So here is one: The way things are trending right now, Obama and the Democrats will succeed in getting a reform bill...

Medical Data in the Internet “Cloud” – Data Privacy

By ROBERT ROWLEY, MD The concepts of “security” and “privacy” of medical information (Protected Health Information, or PHI) are closely intertwined. “Security,” as described in the second part of this series, has to do with breaking into medical data (either...

HIPAA's Broken Promises

By SUSANNAH FOX If you hate HIPAA, it’s your lucky day. Paul Ohm is handing you ammunition in his article, “Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization.” His argument: our current information privacy structure is a...

Catalyzing the app store for EHRs

By STEVE DOWNS and JOHN LUMPKIN, SVP, Health Care Group, RWJ Foundation Dr. Lumpkin serves as director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Health Group, where he is responsible for planning and program management. Prior to joining RWJ, Dr. Lumpkin...

Capitol Shortage: Can the Two Democratic Parties Get It Together on Health Reform?

By JEFF GOLDSMITH As an exceptionally grumpy American summer grinds to a conclusion, it is apparent that only a bipartisan solution will enable Congress and the Obama Administration to complete health reform. No, we’re not talking about co-operating with the...

Yet another reason to abolish the Senate

By Matthew Holt Ezra Klein, feeling a little soft, interviews Kent Conrad—he of the co-op feed stores for health care idea. My take on the interview is that I seriously believe Conrad's entire knowledge of health care comes from his...

What would actually work? Driving down the cost of health care

By JOE FLOWER If competition actually drives the cost of health care up rather than down, what would bring lower costs? What provisions in a “health reform act” would actually drop costs in health care? Let’s leave aside for the...

Interview: John White, Director IT, AHRQ

By Matthew Holt Last week I got to spend some quality time in Washington DC including moderating a panel looking at new research behind physician-patient communication at the annual AHRQ conference. AHRQ will play a significant role in comparative effectiveness...

Commentology: Obama and End-of-Life Care

THCB reader Molly Holmes wrote us to say: As a member of a hospital geriatric emergency team, I’m on the front lines of a major health care issue that need immediate attention. The costs of keeping a person barely alive...

A Remedy for Healthcare Organizations

By PAUL LUNDY, VP, Xerox Global Services The switch to electronic health records can be a daunting task. To make the shift less painful, healthcare organizations should first consider taking control the number of documents flowing through the organization –...

Aneesh Chopra, talks Health 2.0

By Matthew Holt Aneesh Chopra is the Obama Administration's Chief Technology Officer. He'll be giving keynote speech at the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, Oct 6-7.

"Reform" Means Higher Costs, Not Lower

By JOE FLOWER A reader asks: "If the current bill passes are my health insurance costs likely to go up, down, or remain about the same?" If the form that I believe most likely to pass actually passes (insurance reforms,...

Health Care Outlook Not Improving

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mon) released his much-anticipated healthcare proposal Wednesday morning. The next big test for a health care bill in 2009 (notice that I did not call it health care reform) will come in Senate Finance....

Limited English Proficiency Shouldn’t Mean Limited Health Care

By CHANIN BALLANCE It’s impossible to know exactly what shape healthcare will take for Americans as Congress and President Obama struggle with reform measures in the coming months. But one thing is certain: Those who have limited English proficiency will...

Commentology: Government vs. Corporate Bureaucrats

Bob Bourque of Los Alamos writes: Do I want government bureaucrats deciding on my health care? You bet I do! Because the other choice is to have corporate bureaucrats deciding on my health care. I have some control over the...

You're Invited to the Practice Fusion Health 2.0 Afterparty

RSVP: http://www.pingg.com/rsvp/7p88637s56fy4a7pf Connect with your Health Care Blog team at the Health 2.0 conference afterparty! Practice Fusion is hosting drinks and giveaways for all Health 2.0 conference attendees and anyone else interested in learning about the latest innovations in healthcare....

Medical Students Want You to Know

By MICHELLE SNYDER How many of us can remember a world without cell phones? Today’s medical students would undoubtedly be among that group. So it is no wonder these future physicians rely heavily on technology as they embark on their...

Obama’s Medicare Half-Truth

By AUSTIN FRAKT Obama was called a liar during his recent address to a joint session of Congress. Actually, he was not fully truthful about the implications of cuts to Medicare. Obama repeated that his health reform plan includes payment...

Balancing Consistency and Innovation in Healthcare

By DAVID SHAYWITZ Our healthcare system is now facing a problem that has plagued business leaders for years: how do you balance consistency and innovation? The drive for consistency in healthcare is based upon the fundamental observation that physicians across...

What if I Had to do HIT All Over Again?

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE This post is aimed at serving as an interlude to the "public option/death panels" discussions. No matter what healthcare reform bill, if any, is passed this fall, HIT will be part of the program. Four short years...

A little ain't enough, or is it?

By Matthew Holt I've been so buried in the run up to Health 2.0 that I haven’t had a chance to add to the deluge of electrons about the bills in Congress, Obama’s speech, the several hundred amendments to Baucus’...

Health care reform: econo-think, democracy and sustainability

By LAWRENCE W. ARRINGTON Bill Moyers Journal recently interviewed Wendell Potter, who spent much of his career in corporate communications for health insurance giants CIGNA and Humana. Every American concerned about affordable and quality health care and the American political...

Good News for Uninsured Children Should Jumpstart Health Reform

By JOCELYN GUYER In 2008, the number of uninsured children in the United States hit the lowest level in two decades. If Congress weren’t in the middle of a fierce debate on health reform, there would be time for everyone...

Advance Directives 101 – Do Not Call 911

By RICK PETERS This is the first in a series of posts on the nuts + bolts problems we face in health care. As I stated in my post initiating this effort, my goal is sidestep the current health care...

Health 2.0 Conference (Oct 6-7) latest

By Matthew Holt We’re getting into the short strokes for Health 2.0. The conference is going to be in a new bigger venue (SF Concourse) with more, bigger screens and no one sitting more than 65 feet from a screen....

The Chairman's Mark - Good Ideas, Potentially Fatal Flaws

By ROGER COLLIER So, at long last, Senator Max Baucus has released his Chairman’s Mark draft health care reform bill for discussion by the full Senate Finance Committee. The 223-page draft bill is generally consistent with the “Framework for a...

Is an IOM v. CBO Smackdown Looming on Health-Reform Costs?

By TIM MULLANEY The U.S. can cut health-care spending by $250 billion a year within a decade, a congressionally chartered panel will say this month in a bid to show costs can be contained even if all Americans are insured....

Commentology: Improving Cost-Containment

Stephen J. Motew writes: Surgical specialists practice under a slightly more regimented reimbursement model predominantly due to the global period payment for surgical procedures. The total care of the surgical patient for any procedure, including pre-op evaluation, the procedure itself,...

Washington DC conference and party!

By Matthew Holt Wednesday morning I'll be at the AHRQ annual conference in Rockville, Maryland. I’m moderating a panel looking at “Experiences in Patient-Centered Care: Improving Coordination and Communication among Patients and Providers”. Given this is an AHRQ meeting there’ll...

Taxing Health Insurance Companies to Pay for Health Care

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI The Congress has investigated about every conceivable way to tax people to pay for the health care proposals—a millionaire’s tax, bigger taxes on home mortgages and charitable contributions, and a couple of dozen more ideas. Now Congress...

Health 2.0 Conference

Health 2.0 is right around the corner - be sure to register before it sells out! If you are a practicing physician and want a special opportunity to review Health 2.0 tools and attend the conference for free, apply here.

CCHIT's Latest Gambit

By GLENN LAFFEL Many of us have enjoyed a few good minutes of fun having our fortunes told by soothsayers who claim they can predict our future based on patterns of tea leaves in a cup or the playing cards...

CBO: HELP Bill's Public Plan Not Much Help on Costs

By MERRILL GOOZNER The green-eyeshade meanies in the Congressional Budget Office took another whack at the public plan today, at least the one contained in the health reform bill passed by the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions committee last...

Protest songs in health care?

By Matthew Holt A health care reform protest video that rocks! (Hat-tip to ePatientDave)

What Voters Really Think About Evidence-Based Health Care

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI I want to call your attention to an important survey done by the California-based Campaign for Effective Patient Care. They surveyed California voters on their understanding of evidence-based medicine. The bad news is that patients think their...

Groupon, Livingsocial, and digital norms

By PAUL LEVY Regular readers may have noticed that I am a bit of a social media junkie -- this blog, Facebook, Twitter -- but I am also intrigued by social media sites that are set up only for commercial...

Recently on THCB

10,000 US Physicians have something to say, and we're not wasting time by Dr. Daniel Palestrant What Obama Must Demand from Congress on Health Care by Robert Reich Public Still Backs the Public Plan by Merrill Goozner Not Really An...

Not Really an Option

By GARY NISSEN To: Executives leading U.S. Hospitals The public option appears to back in the national dialogue and I’m wondering how concerned you all are about that. After all, many of you have been quite successful at minimizing the...

Reminding Washington of What the Health Care Debate is About

By ROB DAY This summer, we witnessed countless demonstrations on the health care debate across the country. The media has broadcast and written about impassioned pleas from conservatives and liberals alike, each swearing, with an alarming level of certainty, that...

Joint Commission Apes Newt, Takes on IHI

By MICHAEL L. MILLENSON Not content with handing out demerits for bad behavior, the Joint Commission has launched an effort to help those who misbehave change their ways. As detailed in the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog, the mission of...

The Speech: Could this have been what he planned all along?

By BOB WACHTER White House Photo A conventional look at The Speech: Obama over-learned the lessons of Hillary-care; he gave Congress too long a leash; he lost control of the message; the wacko’s attacked with a barrage of Socialist/Nazi/Plug-Pulling-on-Grandma-isms; not...

Video: Obama addresses Congress on Health reform

TRANSCRIPT: Full text of Obama speech AUDIO: via NPR POLITICO: Opponent's "You Lie!" outburst may have unified Democrats. REBUTTAL: Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA)

Economist: "A huge step forward. With one exception ..."

A thumbs up: "Cleverly borrowing good ideas from both sides of the party divide, his proposals at least look like a plausible basis for agreement. The plan obliges everyone to take out health insurance while creating a tapering subsidy for...