The Health Care Blog

Health 2.0 Tools: The power of Twitter

By Matthew Holt The power of Twitter is real kids, and not for what you think. Used properly Twitter is an information filter. Exhibit A is what happened to the Von Schwebers who run PHARMASurveyor. They were a huge part...
October 23, 2009 in Conferences, e-patients, Electronic Medical Records, evidenced-based medicine, Health 2.0, pharmaceuticals, Technology | Permalink | Comments (5)

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...
September 13, 2009 in California, evidenced-based medicine, Patients, Robert Laszewski | Permalink | Comments (7)

Op-Ed: The Unintended Consequences of “No Pay for Errors”

By BOB WACHTER Medicare’s policy to withhold payment for “never events” – the first effort to use the payment system to promote patient safety – remains intriguing and controversial. To date, most of the discussion has focused on the policy...
July 21, 2009 in Bob Wachter, evidenced-based medicine, Medicare, Patient Safety, Quality | Permalink | Comments (3)

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...
June 26, 2009 in Electronic Medical Records, evidenced-based medicine, Policy, Policy/Politics, Technology, The Industry, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (6)

Data-Driven Health Care: An Interview with Jerry Reeves, MD

An under-the-radar debate is occurring in health care between those who say data shows that practice variations across the land are “unwarranted” and those who maintain that such variation is inevitable given socioeconomic population differences and cost of practice differences...
June 8, 2009 in Dartmouth Atlas, Economics, evidenced-based medicine, Health Plans, Obama administration, Patient Safety, Physicians, Policy/Politics, primary care, Quality, The Industry, Transparency | Permalink | Comments (17)

Thomas Kuhn, Health Care Reform and Vascular Disease

By WILLIAM BESTERMANN The puzzle of improving care and reducing costs in American medicine and in vascular conditions (that is, diseases associated with blood vessel metabolism) in particular - these are responsible for 60 percent of all cost - has...
May 24, 2009 in Chronic conditions, evidenced-based medicine, Medicine, Obesity, Policy, primary care, Quality, Science | Permalink | Comments (8)

Following the Science To A New Era In Medicine

By WILLIAM BESTERMANN, MD "The current care systems cannot do the job. Trying harder will not work. Changing systems of care will." Crossing the Quality Chasm, Institute of Medicine, 2001 Medical leadership in the United States has not yet come...
April 20, 2009 in evidenced-based medicine, Physicians, prevention, primary care, Quality, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (4)

Five Recommendations for an ONC Head Who Understands Health IT Innovation

By David C. Kibbe, Brian Klepper and John Moore. Now that the legislative language of the HITECH Act -- the $20 billion health IT allocation within the economic stimulus package -- has been set, it's time to identify a National...
March 6, 2009 in Brian Klepper, Current Affairs, David Kibbe, Electronic Medical Records, evidenced-based medicine, Health 2.0, Physicians, Policy, Policy/Politics, primary care, public health, Quality, Technology, The Industry, Transparency, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (14)

Betsy McCraker misses the point, again

By Matthew Holt Not content with being the catalyst for the unleashing of a torrent of vitriol in the direction of those Milquetoast individuals who are in favor of better information systems in health care, in the mild expectation that...
February 23, 2009 in Electronic Medical Records, evidenced-based medicine, Policy/Politics, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0)

Op-Ed: Why the Senate should be abolished, Parts 34-36

By Matthew Holt Irrelevant small states with no people in them that exist by an accident of history are chronically over-represented in this country — both in the electoral college and most obviously in the Senate. And those states are...
February 5, 2009 in evidenced-based medicine, Matthew Holt, Policy, Policy/Politics | Permalink | Comments (22)

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...
January 21, 2009 in Brian Klepper, David Kibbe, evidenced-based medicine, Health Plans, Marketplace, Obama administration, Physicians, Policy, Policy/Politics, primary care, Quality, Technology, The Industry, Transparency, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (18)

Jack says cover the uninsured & spend less!

By Matthew Holt It’s no secret what the Dartmouth group’s solution for the health care system has been — reduce practice variation, get surgery and physician resource use rates similar to the Mayo Clinics' of the world, and take the...
December 18, 2008 in evidenced-based medicine, Health Plans, Physicians, Policy, Policy/Politics | Permalink | Comments (5)

Dispatches from IHI's quality forum

By Amanda Goltz Don Berwick is one of the leading lights of the health care quality world; an oft-quoted and published visionary who founded the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to spread the gospel of transformation and improvement around the world....
December 14, 2008 in evidenced-based medicine, Hospitals, Patient Safety, Quality | Permalink | Comments (2)

Nudging the value glacier

By Sarah Arnquist In just two years, seniors will spend a quarter of their monthly Social Security checks on Medicare out-of-pocket expenses, including premiums, co-payments and deductibles. Meanwhile, Medicare bookkeepers predict total health spending in the U.S. to increase from...
December 4, 2008 in Conferences, Economics, evidenced-based medicine, Medical Devices, Policy/Politics, Quality, Sarah Arnquist | Permalink | Comments (2)

Addressing an epidemic of overtreatment

By John Halamka & Rich Parker Health care costs in the U.S. are approaching 17 percent of the GDP and may be as high as 20 percent in the next few years. What is causing the US to have the...
December 3, 2008 in Economics, evidenced-based medicine, Policy, Quality | Permalink | Comments (6)

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)

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...
October 21, 2008 in Brian Klepper, Economics, evidenced-based medicine, Health 2.0, Online Communities, Quality, The Industry, Transparency, User Generated Content, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (3)

Evidence of a Need for Change

By THCB Staff The Health Care Blog regular Michael Millenson wrote a great piece recently in Miller-McCune Magazine on the necessity of practicing more evidenced-based medicine, and why it's not happening. Here is a powerful snippet but it's definitely worth...
September 24, 2008 in Economics, evidenced-based medicine, Patient Safety, Quality | Permalink | Comments (3)

The never ending stent-bypass debate

By Charlie Baker A new study - a big one ($50 MM) - was recently released that compared the short and long term effects of drug eluding stents to bypass surgery for patients with serious heart disease. The headlines --...
September 10, 2008 in Charlie Baker, evidenced-based medicine, Physicians | Permalink | Comments (2)

From Description To Action: The Future of Health 2.0 Tools

By Brian Klepper Last week, The Health Care Blog ran two articles about new wiki sites that will develop and continuously update medical information. A wiki is a “content collaborative” that allows anyone (or anyone authorized by the site) to...
July 28, 2008 in Brian Klepper, evidenced-based medicine, Health 2.0, The Industry | Permalink | Comments (0)

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)