HealthContentAdvisors

Good examples of employers (Pitney Bowes) that are saving $$ on health insurance by offering incentives for healthy behavior. Employers may be the key reforming health care–with or without policy reform. But, they are awfully quiet in the policy debate.

Teamsters protest Whole Foods at Penton’s Natural Products Expo in Boston.

The future of cardiovascular medicine is here. It combines top-notch clinical resources with robust, future-oriented IT infrastructure and digital image management technology.

2-day event sponsored by IOM about using evidence from medical practice to improve learnings about cancer treatment. Includes sessions related to outcomes data and patient-generated data on social networks.

How doctors are adapting to growing number of e-patients who research their conditions and are well-read in medical matters.

New app converts ICD-9 codes to ICD-10 codes and has an iPhone version.

Short-term ROI horizon for health insurers hampers their investment in wellness and education programs with long term results.

Elsevier’s Procedures Consult Online Training suite is now available for iPhone & iPod touch through partnership with Modality, which distributes mobile learning apps for several medical publishers.

Gawande, Gruber, and others on health care costs.

Very interesting: Humedica, a Boston area start-up, launches with $30M in 1st round funding from Bain, General Catalyst, NorthBridge and Leerink Swann. Several Leerink folks are on management team. Humedica plans national healthcare analytics business based on data from EMRs.

Elsevier to award CEUs to reviewers of its Journal of EB Dental Practice.

Bids for 49% didn’t meet company’s target, so entire company may be for sale. There should be more interest for majority ownership, but expected price is probably still too high.

Bank set up by Blue Cross/Blue Shield to manage HSA accounts to fold. Started in 2007; only achieved 2% of expected volume. I didn’t even know it existed.

Excellent points about how paying for routine care via insurance distorts market mechanisms (I’m applying my own analysis and terminology). But, having an intermediary that blocks and distorts price and cost information prohibits rational market mechanisms from working. See this article for an alternative model.

Good article that describes UK site that focuses on helping consumers interpret health articles. Mentions Bazian.com.

John Halamka discusses the question of whether to wait until more details have been worked out about meaningful use of EHRs before moving forward with implementation plans. He suggests getting started early in order to meet requirements when they come due.

Reports on how NPDB is used and indicates that most hospitals don’t report errors or misconduct by the doctors practicing there.

Dell joins other computer hardware firms in expanding into bus. services with planned acq. of Perot Systems. Will help Dell in healthcare market. Expect more M&A activity with other firms involved (or trying to buy their way into) health IT.

FDA to publish a survey on usage of social media by Pharm. Notice will be published today in Fed. Register. Here is an overview of what to expect by John Mack.

Good points made about EBM. As I like to say, we have some work to do in improving state of EBM, but it beats the alternative of not basing diagnoses and treatments on available evidence…

Brief review of Health IT Stimulus Summit sponsored by Health Data Management.

Review of Dr. Margaret Hamburg’s remarks from a recent speech where she emphasized need for more resources for regulating drugs to keep up with growth in research activity.

Good profile of Innocentive, a Boston area company headed by former Hoover’s CEO Dwayne Spradlin. Innocentive provides marketplace to bring together inventors and companies that seek solutions (largely life science companies). Companies post challenges they want solved; inventors post their fees for executing. Company’s goal is to improve the research process.

This is a very interesting move. Scientific news feed direct from major universities. See: www.futurity.org.

MDVIP respresents one of the new breed of physician practices that charge fixed fees for primary care, wellness & preventive care and offer more access to patients. Fees are far lower than typical high-deductible insurance premiums, but patients still need catastrophic coverage and have to pay for lab fees, etc. This new model of primary care, along with retail clinics, will be the major disrupters in healthcare delivery in US. Note, key reason cited for creating the new model: admin o/h expense of insurance claims processing.

Darin Steward of Oregon Health & Sciences Univ. writes very good overview of PHRs and coves the concept of “infodemiology” without using the term!

Librarian Loren MccRory questions the longevity of current for-fee subscription databases sold to public and academic libraries. With more good info available for free, why should libraries continue to buy “big deal” subscriptions of unknown value to their audience?

Atty General Jerry Brown unveils site that tracks prescription drug use to help physicians with durg interractions and to spot possible illegal drug abuse.

Dirk Stanley, MD, writes of his hospital’s experience with “Jedi Informaticists”, a special breed of clinical specialist who has crossover skills in health IT, healthcare analytics, and a workflow process mindset. Sounds like a systems analysts with subject specialty to me. He’s right that individuals with these crossovers skills are critical to successful EMR/EHR implementation and adoption. The right “Jedis” will see the big picture and focus on key success factors.

Published by Wiley with support from Aetna, Navigating Your Health Benefits is available for free.

Very helpful presentation by John Moore of Chilmark Research on state of personal health records (PHRs).

Malamud’s preso was a big hit; here’s the video.

MD describes why current system with 3rd party payers doesn’t lend itself to price transparency. Dr. Jindal suggests patients examine their EOB statements and note how much goes to doc v. insurance co. IMO, EOB statements are purposely designed to confuse, not explain and they impede transparency in pricing.

HealthLeaders writes about Data Advantage’s Hospital Value Index and suggests that hospitals have to adapt to increased scrutiny and pay-for-performance measures.

Just learned about Harvard’s suspension of funding for its Div. of Primary Care. Wow!

JAMA now requires independent review of data analysis in industry-sponsored research and has seen a dramatic drop in commercially-funded submissions.

Good comments on security as process not product.

Richard Boulderstone chairs global committee (with members from 50 countries) to provide access to scientific information through WorldWideScience.org.

RWJF rebuts comments about high health care costs being a direct function of poverty. Issue is far more complex and poverty only explains a small portion.

Alphabet soup of health IT standards described in this article. Although technical, it includes some very important points about data standards that allow interoperability.

New study indicates ghostwriting prevalent even in top journals. Systems for requiring transparency in reporting relationships between industry and the research it funds are required if trust in scholarly medical publishing is to remain. Industry funding is needed, but researchers and other readers need to know who funded the research.

Dr. Kent Bottles, who heads the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement (CSI), writes on how fear motivates and why fear tactics have become so prevalent in our current political environment. All in relation to health care reform.

EBSCO opens up a sliver of its health info to the world for H1N1 info.

Harold Miller outlines critical payment reforms needed to put US healthcare system on track.

More evidence of trend toward increased mergers among hospitals and physician groups.

Retail clinics like CVS MinuteClinics expand their services to include treating chronic diseases such as asthma. Driver of expansion=need for more consistent revenue.

Indepth article on “infodemiology”, a term to describe analyzing online data to extract intelligence on public health trends. I like the term & used it at last year’s Health Content event.

Great list of data content built on open government data. I’ll check out Govpulse, which article says turns Federal Register into something more useful (sorted and searchable by dept and geography).

Nice opinion piece that focuses on issue of improved evidence base for medical care. To those that oppose evidence-based medicine, my comment is: “do you prefer the opposite?” As this article points out, patients don’t know that half of treatment is not based on objective scientific research.

New site from FDA/USDA provides a central place to find info on food safety, recalls, etc.

List of lists for twitter feeds that cover women’s health. 10 lists in total. mostly good.

This brings back old memories. Superior Capital, a MI PE company, buys National Archive Publishing, which was spun off from UMI/ProQuest (x years ago). National Archive includes XanEdu, the coursepack group, and microfilm, the original UMI product line.

pMDsoft, “an elegant EMR front-end” announces interfaces with additional EMR, EHR and other health IT systems.

Information Week brief article on premilinary certification for health IT by CCHIT, in advance of full requirements for meaningful use (MU) from ONC by year-end.

Written by a designer, but article homes in on the business models for ebooks.

CMS’ guidance pertains to states and HIEs.

FDA launches real-time reporting of food safety issues by manufacturers & other industry players.

Pharmavite, mfr of Nature Made vitamins & supplements, to offer vitaminID program to consumers. VitaminID provides individualized vitamin/supplement programs for consumers via a website enabled for ecommerce (of course). Newsletters & online chat with a dietician are included.

Guardian lists top 100 tech media companies in UK.

A nice post that provides list of online anatomy resources. Good to find another medical librarian on Twitter.

David Rothman reviews new Gilbane Group report on ebooks.

AHRQ is in process of releasing version 1.0 (from beta) of Common Formats for submitting patient safety information.

LEO Pharma, a privately-held pharma company specializing in dermatology & critical care will acquire Peplin, a public Australian company fo US$287.5 million in cash.

Response to Ignagni’s editorial in NEJM, which expresses why health insurers are against a public plan.

Robert Fogel, prof. of economics at University Chicago Booth School of Business, writes that demand for healthcare is driven by increases in income. In short, people with high incomes have more disposable income and are willing to pay both a higher absolute and higher relative amount of their income on health care. So, as income increases, a household wants to spend a greater % of income on healthcare. Conclusions written in the AEI piece center on the positives of this phenemenon: demand drives innovation in healthcare and other related industries benefit, too. Problem is that with the current level of income disparity in the US, only the wealthy can afford the healthcare innovations and the steadily increases in overall healthcare costs that accompany them.

Security specialist in UK writes about NHS plans to manage their Healthspace program(me), which offers summary medical record info to patients. Google Health & Msft HealthVault are under consideration to replace HS.

Excellent presentation that provides into to Twitter and overview of how hospitals and other healthcare providers are using Twitter.

Nice example of how one MD uses a white board to explain his diagnoses to patients (and their parents) and then suggests they capture via camera-phone.

Rodale includes articles & some covers on Obamas in all of their health magazines: Prevention, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, and use cover w/ Michelle Obama & children to launch Children’s Health.

Short (3:32min) video that describes Mark Twain St. Joseph’s Hospital’s award from Avatar International for exceeding patient satisfaction. Avatar Int’l is a research firm that carries out satisfaction surveys for healthcare providers, including HCAHPS.

Google custom search that searches over 2,800 US hospital websites. Tools are there, but it still takes effort to aggregate good content. Thanks Ed!

Pfizer to pay $1.3B in criminal penalty related to marketing practices for Bextra and another $1B in civil fines related to other drugs. HHS held a news conference with Secy Sebelius to reinforce the seriousness of their intent to enforce penalties against pharma companies that violate regulations.

Great title that drew me in! Good post, too. Big issue with hashtags on Twitter is that there is no standardization and no easy tools for deciding what tag to use. Plus, longer hashtags take up too many of the precious 140 characters. I hardly ever use them. Best use at this point: conferences.

WaPo writes about how social media use will change public health communications. Describes “infodemiology”, where analysis of online messages can provide data about such things as spread of flu.

Practice Fusion EHR can now integrate lab results data from Quest Diagnostics. Another small step in integration & interoperability.

Dr. Abraham Verghese offers his thoughts on importance of listening to patients and the power of framing information about our current health system in stories that people can relate to.

Article questions why CVS’ stock price hasn’t benefited more from its position as PBM, pharmacy and MinuteClinic provider.

Suit filed on Aug 21 says merger of Pfizer & Wyeth should be stopped because it will drive up drug prices and b/c it depends on gov’t bailout funds to finance the deal.

NYTimes offers some background on how Forest Labs used paid consultants to push Lexapro to extend life of Celexa whose patent had expired.

Report on recent seminar at UC Berkeley on Google Books Settlement. To read.

Article cites some evidence that taxes on sugary drinks & junk food would help reduce obesity. Bottom line: incentives work.

According to latest Pew study, 47% of internet users seek info abt doctors, and 1/3 of that 47% looked for rating or ranking info. However, very few posted ratings or reviews.

CDC plans to dismantle the National Center for Health Marketing, which promoting health information via social media. Role will continue but not as centralized group.

Article reviews methodology used to project costs of chronic disease/conditions.

Wow! Raytheon to acq. BBN, which is best known for having developed ARPAnet.

Good article that posits that solution to slowdown in productivity in pharma industry will require an open-access approach to chemical research that focuses on biological processes and the biological role of the drug target (usually a protein) under investigation. In essence open access chemical biology will allow cross-discipline research.

Don’t know if I tagged this yet. Bweek offers case study of 6 sigma implementation at Moffitt Cancer Center to improve efficiency.

CareFusion, a spinoff of Cardinal Health launches on S&P 500.

Very thoughtful post on what model is optimal for doctor/patient interaction. Dr. Bottles raises the concern that focus on EBM and patient choice de-personalizes care. Post also reminds me of my frequent comment that buying healthcare is not like buying a car (as some like to say); however, healthcare consumption is somewhat similar to maintaining a car–finding a good mechanic, doing reg. maintenance, etc. Choices are more complex for lifetime care than for single transaction. Bottles comments about target marketing are important, too. It’s difficult to pre-identify and serve groups of similar healthcare consumers as consumer product companies try to do in their marketing. Biggest issue in the US healthcare system IMO: providers typically don’t work as a team which hampers collaboration and makes it difficult to promote styles of care to consumers/patients.

Greenway, a EHR vendor, partners with McKesson’s RelayHealth to provide access to RelayHealth’s Virtual Information Exchange platform. This is an extension of partnership between the companies to further access to lab results, radiology reports & transcribed documents to Greenway customers via VIE platform.

Good case study of how one provider org. analyzed workflow and broke down the implementation of EHRs into manageable pieces.

Westborough, MA-based eClinicalWorks partners with Correctional Medical Services (CMS) to provide its EMR solution to correctional facilities affiliated with CMS.

More initiatives to improve hospital quality performance, which I see as the major focus of health care industry change in 2010-2011.

Link to CBO report that analyzes effects of health reform plans on Medicare Part D.

Good list of online health info sources for patients/consumers to consult.

New paper describes better methods for disclosing potential conflicts of interest to participants in clinical trials.