The Health Care Blog

Health 2.0: Beneath the Hype, There's Cause for Real Hope

By MICHAEL MILLENSON Health 2.0 is a trend accompanied by both buzz and buzzwords. That worries some advocates for the poor, underserved and just plain old and sick. Will those groups be left behind in the latest information revolution? The...
October 24, 2009 in Health 2.0, Michael Millenson | Permalink | Comments (2)

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...
September 12, 2009 in Michael Millenson, Quality | Permalink | Comments (5)

Betsy McCaughey’s Infected Advocacy

By MICHAEL MILLENSON A while back, before her stardom on Jon Stewart, the PR wallah for Betsy McCaughey--she of the death panels--emailed me offering an interview about the evils of Obamacare. After I took her up on the offer, the...
September 3, 2009 in Michael Millenson, Reform | Permalink | Comments (10)

Can a Collection of Official Statements Be Called a “Blog”?

By Michael L. Millenson American Medical Association president, J. James Rohack has begun sharing his thoughts on the U.S. health care system, health reform and other issues affecting patients and physicians in a new blog, according to the AMA. There’s...
August 27, 2009 in AMA, Michael Millenson | Permalink | Comments (0)

GOP to Uninsured: Drop Dead

By MICHAEL L. MILLENSON “We are now contemplating, Heaven save the mark, a bill that would tax the well for the benefit of the ill.” No, that’s not Senate Minority Leader John Boehner, Rush Limbaugh or any of the other...
July 16, 2009 in Annals of Journalism, GOP, History, Michael Millenson, Wall Street Journal | Permalink | Comments (16)

Fantasy League Baseball -- Beltway Series Edition

By MICHAEL MILLENSON Bob Laszewski’s Health Care Affordability Model has the same connection to the reality of the current battle over health care reform as a Fantasy Baseball League does to the actual outcome of a major league baseball game;...
July 10, 2009 in Affordability Model, Michael Millenson, Policy/Politics, Reform, Robert Laszewski | Permalink | Comments (12)

A Second City Warning to Obama

By MICHAEL MILLENSON For all those Obama-ites confident that they won't make the same mistakes pushing health care reform that the Clinton administration did, might I suggest a trip back home? Just a few minutes into the Second City comedy...
July 8, 2009 in Michael Millenson, Obama administration, Policy/Politics | Permalink | Comments (8)

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...
June 23, 2009 in Michael Millenson | Permalink | Comments (6)

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...
June 19, 2009 in Michael Millenson | Permalink | Comments (4)

Obama vs Hillary at the AMA

By Michael L. Millenson Sixteen years and two days after then-First Lady and Health Care Czar Hillary Clinton went before the American Medical Association’s House of Delegates to sell her vision of national reform, President Barack Obama is treading the...
June 15, 2009 in Michael Millenson, Policy, Policy/Politics | Permalink | Comments (16)

Workers Ungrateful for Empowerment to Pay More

By MICHAEL MILLENSON American workers sure are ungrateful. A new report by the National Business Group on Health (NBGH) says that 27 percent of insured workers are skipping health care treatments to avoid co-payments, 20 percent of employees are not...
May 28, 2009 in Michael Millenson | Permalink | Comments (23)

Humor: Voluntary Cost Control? Never Mind!

By MICHAEL MILLENSON Health Care Stocks Hurt as “Promise” Spooks Investors NEW YORK – Major health care stocks plunged today as investors worried that a series of voluntary actions the industry pledged in order to control costs represented a serious...
May 12, 2009 in Humor, Michael Millenson | Permalink | Comments (3)

RFID EMR Pioneer Says “RIP”

By MICHAEL MILLENSON When Harvard Medical School and CareGroup CIO Dr. John Halamka agreed to place his medical information on an RFID chip and have it implanted it in his arm, he triggered an instant global spotlight on this unusual...
May 8, 2009 in Electronic Medical Records, Michael Millenson, RFID | Permalink | Comments (19)

Commentology:

Microsoft's, Bill Crounse, said this about David Kibbe's article, "The Parable of the Wicked EMR." "Excellent, well written piece, David. Thanks for sharing your insights. It is important to not only meet the regulatory and privacy requirements associated with health...
April 30, 2009 in Commentology, Michael Millenson | Permalink | Comments (0)

Medicine's Missing Foundation for Health Care Reform

By LAWRENCE L. WEED & LINCOLN WEED Preface by Michael Millenson: Lawrence L. Weed published a seminal article in the Archives of Internal Medicine on using the medical record to improve patient care back in January, 1971. To give you...
April 28, 2009 in Medicine, Michael Millenson, Technology | Permalink | Comments (12)

Health 2.0 vs. Ix Therapy

By MICHAEL MILLENSON I was staring at the program cover for the special joint conference between Health 2.0 and the Center for Information Therapy going on here in Boston when a sudden realization jumped out at me: both of these...
April 26, 2009 in Michael Millenson | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like Us, Personalized Medicine is More than Its Genes

By MICHAEL MILLENSON For those familiar with the famous Gartner Hype Cycle, the page one New York Times headline, “Genes Show Limited Value in Predicting Diseases” spawned an uncontrollable urge to mark an “x” by the spot where the Peak...
April 20, 2009 in Michael Millenson | Permalink | Comments (4)

An Economics Lesson From Erectile Drugs

By MICHAEL MILLENSON The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that hospital and pharmaceutical companies have been pushing through large price increases in the first quarter of 2009 even as most businesses struggle just to stay above water. (And later Wednesday,...
April 19, 2009 in Michael Millenson | Permalink | Comments (4)

Dennis Quaid Overlooks Too Much

By Michael Millenson Anyone who cares about patient safety has to be grateful to Dennis Quaid for the way he and his wife Kimberly reacted to the near-death from a medication error of their twin baby girls. Using his celebrity...
April 6, 2009 in Michael Millenson, Patient Safety | Permalink | Comments (3)

Those Goody Goody Canadians Not So Good

By MICHAEL MILLENSON C’mon admit it: you’re sick of hearing how those goody-goody Canadians provide comprehensive health care to all, while we let an estimated 22,000 Americans die each year (http://www.urban.org/publications/411588.html ) because they don’t have coverage. Or the way...
March 19, 2009 in Michael Millenson | Permalink | Comments (12)

Commentology

Michael Millenson had this response to a commenter in the thread on his recent post looking at web sites that offer the public data about provider performance. (' Just OK Quality or the Best? ') "Why does HealthGrades get so...
February 24, 2009 in Commentology, Michael Millenson | Permalink | Comments (1)