The Health Care Blog

We the Consumers

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE There has been much talk lately about the Consumer movement in health care. The health insurance industry has given us the Consumer Driven Health Care (CDHC), which has gained much traction in the marketplace in the form...
November 7, 2009 in Consumers | Permalink | Comments (32)

Change The Rules and Get Your Labs

By Phil Marshall In 1999 Caresoft developed a consumer web portal called the Daily Apple. The Daily Apple wasn’t all that unique or different than other health portals, until in May of 2000 they began helping consumers download their lab...
October 19, 2009 in Consumers, Electronic Medical Records, Health 2.0, Policy, Policy/Politics, Technology | Permalink | Comments (4)

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...
September 14, 2009 in Conferences, Consumers, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1)

Explaining Runaway Costs: The Lobster or the Salad?

By BOB WACHTER Have you found yourself ‘splaining to friends and family why the healthcare system is so damn expensive? I’ve been teaching health policy for a couple of decades, and I’m surprised that my two favorite stories haven’t yet...
July 28, 2009 in Bob Wachter, Comparative Effectiveness Research, Consumers, Costs | Permalink | Comments (52)

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...
June 22, 2009 in Consumers, Electronic Medical Records, Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, Technology | Permalink | Comments (17)

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,...
June 22, 2009 in Brian Klepper, Consumers, David Kibbe, e-patients, Electronic Medical Records, Policy, Policy/Politics, The Industry, Transparency, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (8)

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...
June 17, 2009 in Annals of Journalism, Consumers, Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, Technology | Permalink | Comments (3)

Bringing Patients into the Health IT Conversation About "Meaningful Use"

By DAVID C. KIBBE and BRIAN KLEPPER The Obama health team at HHS and ONC are gradually establishing the rules that will determine how approximately $34 billion in ARRA/HITECH funds are spent on health IT over the next several years....
May 21, 2009 in Brian Klepper, Consumers, David Kibbe, Electronic Medical Records, Google, Health 2.0, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, Marketplace, Policy, Policy/Politics, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (35)

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Continuity of Care Record Gains Ground As A Standard

By BRIAN KLEPPER We live in a time of such great progress in so many arenas that, too often and without a second thought, we take significant advances for granted. But, now and then, we should catalog the steps forward,...
April 10, 2009 in Brian Klepper, Consumers, David Kibbe, Electronic Medical Records, Google, Health 2.0, Personalized Medicine, Policy, Policy/Politics, Technology, The Industry, Transparency, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (21)

Google Health sharing--simple but potentially important

By Matthew Holt Today late afternoon PST Google flipped the switch on an important change/add to Google Health. Recently they’ve been adding more and more little features, such as printing & graphing, and in the last month getting CVS retail...
March 4, 2009 in Consumers, e-patients, Electronic Medical Records, Google, Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, Physicians, Technology | Permalink | Comments (11)

Yelp: The Backlash Begins...

By Matthew Holt There's a pretty serious article about Yelp, which has become the dominant player in restaurant and service reviews in the SF Bay Area, in a local alternative weekly The East Bay Express called Yelp and the Business...
February 21, 2009 in Consumers, Health 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (4)

Podcast: Blues VC fund invests in Phreesia

By MATTHEW HOLT I’ve been following Phreesia since it was two guys in an apartment trying to figure out how to make the patient check-in at the doctors office a better and more useful experience. Today they announced an $11m...
February 17, 2009 in Consumers, Health 2.0, Physicians, Technology | Permalink | Comments (8)

The AMA Wins a Round Against Accountability and Patient Information

By Brian Klepper On January 30th, a 3-judge DC appeals court overturned a lower court decision that would have forced public release of Medicare physician data. Writing for the majority in a split 2-1 judgment, Circuit Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson...
February 6, 2009 in Brian Klepper, Consumers, Current Affairs, Health Plans, Policy, Policy/Politics, Quality, Technology, The Industry, Transparency | Permalink | Comments (12)

The anti-Dimitriy!

By Matthew Holt Certain people have accused Health 2.0 of being a bubble. Others of us have responded that it's not. I don't think either side in that argument has claimed that health care needs a bubble. But Forbes columnist...
January 13, 2009 in Consumers, Health 2.0, Technology | Permalink | Comments (14)

Interview with Fred Goldstein, US Preventive Medicine

By Matthew Holt Last year US Preventive Medicine (USPM) caused a little splash with some full page ads in the Wall Street Journal proclaiming itself the future of preventative care. Since then the company, which has raised a significant chunk...
December 19, 2008 in Consumers, Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, prevention | Permalink | Comments (6)

ePatient Dave & his doc Danny Sands speak out

By Matthew Holt One of the most remarkable people I’ve met this year is Dave deBronkart, better known as ePatient Dave (fourth from left on top of the e-Patients.net blog). Dave has had a remarkable recovery from cancer and has...
December 18, 2008 in Consumers, e-patients, Electronic Medical Records, Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, Technology | Permalink | Comments (2)

PatientsLikeMe keeps getting more famous

By Matthew Holt Here’s the CBS News clip that ran about PatientsLikeMe last week Of course you’ve probably already seen the Business Week article about Health 2.0 which quotes Jane Sarasohn-Kahn and little ol’ me. Cathy Arnst did a nice...
December 9, 2008 in Consumers, Health 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Moving up the health care value chain

By Scott Shreeve Last week, I participated in a very cool live podcast with the ReadWriteWeb editor Richard Macmanus. While I am finishing up my commentary based on that experience, I did want to comment on another post by Richard...
December 5, 2008 in Consumers, Health 2.0, Scott Shreeve | Permalink | Comments (2)

Patients still choose docs based on word of mouth

By Sarah Arnquist Patients still choose where they receive care based on good old word of mouth and referrals from their doctors, despite numerous Web sites and initiatives aimed at giving them information to compare the cost and quality of...
December 4, 2008 in Consumers, primary care | Permalink | Comments (3)

Extracting more value from the health care dollar

By Sarah Arnquist Americans spend more money on health care than any other nation, but get far less in return, say multiple health care executives in Sunday's Washington Post. That's not news to readers of this blog, but probably is...
December 2, 2008 in Consumers, evidenced-based medicine, Policy, Sarah Arnquist, Technology, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (1)

A little more Engaging with Grace

Alex Drane talks about how she hopes Engage with Grace will become a viral movement of the good type!
November 9, 2008 in Consumers, Quality | Permalink | Comments (2)

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...
October 28, 2008 in Conferences, Consumers, e-patients, Health 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (7)

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...
October 23, 2008 in Consumers, Health 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (7)

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...
October 20, 2008 in Consumers, Patient Safety, Personalized Medicine | Permalink | Comments (4)

23andMe punk rock partying, price cuts and on vid on D

By Matthew Holt 23andme is having a gobbing party in NYC tonight—presumably at the Roxie. You didn’t know punk was back, did ya? Indu will be there (sadly I had to stay chained to the computer). But there’s a little...
September 9, 2008 in Consumers, Health 2.0, Matthew Holt | Permalink | Comments (2)

An international perspective on Medicine 2.0

By Neil Versel I'm here at the Medicine 2.0 Congress, a very international meeting put on by Dr. Gunther Eysenbach of the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, a project of the University Health Network and the University of Toronto. The...
September 5, 2008 in Consumers, e-patients, Health 2.0, Technology | Permalink | Comments (3)

Patients lost in the maze

By Sarah Arnquist Millions of patients are paying medical bills they don't actually owe after being confused about the practices of "balanced billing," according to a recent Business Week report. The story goes onto discuss how it's illegal for doctors,...
September 5, 2008 in Consumers, primary care | Permalink | Comments (8)

Another state gov't. misses the boat on patient-centered care and HIT

By Joshua Seidman Amid more data released that consumers are not using personal health records (PHRs) or don’t even know what they are, the state of West Virginia has launched a Web site designed to convince consumers of the merits...
September 4, 2008 in Consumers, Electronic Medical Records, Policy, Technology | Permalink | Comments (2)

Adam Bosworth speaks about Google Health, Keas and everything

By Matthew Holt After a long period of time I’ve finally wrestled Adam Bosworth to the floor and forced the microphone to his mouth. Adam of course is the software guru (he’s one of the originators of XML) who went...
September 3, 2008 in Consumers, e-patients, Electronic Medical Records, Google, Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, Online Communities, Technology, User Generated Content | Permalink | Comments (2)

Do membership practices offer privileges or just reserved for the privileged?

By Scott Shreeve I have watched the meteoric rise of popular term “Medical Home.” While I personally dislike this phrase, it has caught on in the popular vernacular and looks like it is here to stay. In conjunction with the...
September 2, 2008 in Consumers, Physicians, Scott Shreeve, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (3)

Keep tabs on your digital footprint

By Susannah Fox Is it "disordered" behavior to Google your doctor? An article in JAMA suggests that doctors should be on their guard. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published an article about how doctors should be aware...
September 1, 2008 in Consumers, e-patients, Physicians, Susannah Fox, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

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...
August 25, 2008 in Consumers, Health 2.0, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (5)

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...
August 22, 2008 in Consumers, e-patients, Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, Technology | Permalink | Comments (4)

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...
August 22, 2008 in Consumers, Economics, Maggie Mahar, Policy, prevention | Permalink | Comments (5)

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...
August 22, 2008 in Consumers, prevention, Sarah Arnquist | Permalink | Comments (0)

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...
August 20, 2008 in Consumers, e-patients, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (3)

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...
August 20, 2008 in Consumers, Economics, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (2)

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,...
August 19, 2008 in Consumers, e-patients, Electronic Medical Records, Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, Policy, Policy/Politics, RHIOs, Technology | Permalink | Comments (11)

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...
August 19, 2008 in Bob Wachter, Consumers, Patient Safety, Quality | Permalink | Comments (5)

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...
August 18, 2008 in Consumers, Economics, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn | Permalink | Comments (6)

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...
August 15, 2008 in Consumers, Quality, Sarah Arnquist | Permalink | Comments (0)

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...
August 13, 2008 in Consumers, Economics, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn | Permalink | Comments (9)

Viagra prescribed more safely online than in regular practice?

By Matthew Holt Really? Can this be true? Well so says a bunch of academics writing in the Mayo Clinic’s journal. They looked at records of questionnaires taken and prescribing decisions made by a licensed, regulated online pharmacy called KwikMed...
August 8, 2008 in Consumers, e-patients, Health 2.0, Pharma, pharmaceuticals, Technology | Permalink | Comments (8)

Information therapy goes beyond evidenced-based info

By Joshua Seidman Joshua Seidman is the president of of the Center for Information Therapy that aims to provide the timely prescription and availability of evidence-based health information to meet individuals’ specific needs and support sound decision making. I had...
July 23, 2008 in Consumers, evidenced-based medicine, The Industry, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

Using professional societies to advance participatory medicine

By Daniel Hoch Dan Hoch is a neurologist based at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. An early developer of online resources for patients, Dan helped found Braintalk. Professional medical societies are not quite like...
July 22, 2008 in Consumers, e-patients, Personalized Medicine, Physicians | Permalink | Comments (6)

People with high-deductible plans make riskier decisions

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn People enrolled in high-deductible health plans tend to make more risky health decisions than those enrolled in lower-deductible plans, according to a study published in the July/August issue of Health Affairs. In Do Consumer-Directed Health Plans Drive...
July 14, 2008 in Consumers, Health Plans, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn | Permalink | Comments (5)

Health care financing confuses consumers

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn Consumers are interested in a variety of financial instruments to help them purchase health care. However, even when given a choice to shop for and eventual purchase insurance, millions of people don't. Consumers are confused about health...
July 9, 2008 in Consumers, Economics, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn | Permalink | Comments (3)

If California can't protect consumers, who can?

By Robert Laszewski Crazy as it sounds an Associated Press story from Thursday reported that the California Department of Managed Care "didn't even try to enforce a million-dollar fine against health insurer Anthem Blue Cross because they feared they would...
July 7, 2008 in Consumers, Health Plans, Policy, Robert Laszewski, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (1)

Consumer genetic movement: Cease and desist? How about understand and resist!

By Scott Shreeve I have been following health care consumerism for several years now. Particularly, the “Direct Access” or “Direct To Consumer” laboratory testing market. While analytic lab testing has led out in this area, genetic testing has received all...
July 2, 2008 in Consumers, Health 2.0, Policy, Privacy, Scott Shreeve | Permalink | Comments (1)

Google Health and the PHR: Do Consumers Care?

By Keith Schorsch Google Health’s unveiling last week and Microsoft’s HealthVault launch last October are important milestones in the evolution of Health 2.0. Both of these heavyweights have the resources and potential to improve the health consumer’s customer experience. I...
July 1, 2008 in Consumers, Google, Health 2.0, Online Communities | Permalink | Comments (28)