February 2010 - The Health Care Blog

Acquisitions Creating White Hot Market for Healthcare IT

By JOHN MOORE Since the beginning of 2010 there has been a series of acquisitions in healthcare IT (HIT) market, which recently culminated in one of the largest, IBM’s acquisition of Initiate. Triggering this activity is the massive amount of... Read...

Published Fri, Feb 12 2010 1:42 AM by The Health Care Blog

Rating or Narrating, that is the question.

By Denise Silber This April 6–7, the Health 2.0 Europe conference will feature the many ways in which Web 2.0 tools are providing innovative solutions to, amongst others, our fundamental need for self-expression, known more recently as “user-generated...

Published Tue, Feb 09 2010 4:43 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Health 2.0, Physicians, Consumers

Who does PhRMA need next? Robin Strongin thinks she knows

By Matthew Holt I met Billy Tauzin last summer in Aspen and you couldn’t help but love the guy. He had that amazing Louisiana charm, and was helping PhRMA walk a tightrope between being the bad guys, and giving away... Read More...

Published Sat, Feb 13 2010 8:45 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Pharma

A 2.0 Interview with Berci Mesko, regional ambassador to Hungary for Health 2.0 Europe

By Denise Silber Dr Bertalan Mesko, or Berci to his friends, is a recently-graduated Hungarian medical doctor, with whom I had the pleasure of blogging about geriatrics at IAGG 2009. Berci was then just beginning his PhD in clinical genomics.... Read...

Published Thu, Feb 25 2010 2:31 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Technology, Health 2.0, Physicians

Chilmark Needs to Chill Out on CCR/CCD Findings

By VINCE KURATIS John Moore of Chilmark Research and I agree on things 90+ percent of the time. He even thanked me personally for our collegial relationship in a Thanksgiving Day essay on his blog. However…I can’t help but comment... Read More...

Published Mon, Feb 22 2010 10:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Todd Park--<i>Data Liberacion!</i>

By Matthew Holt Todd Park is CTO of HHS. What does that mean? And what is he doing? He gave a talk last week about it that I posted on, but here's Todd in his own words Read More...

Published Fri, Feb 12 2010 1:31 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Health 2.0, Policy/Politics, Policy

The Reagan-Era Health Reform That Scares Both Parties

By MICHAEL MILLENSON Twenty-seven years ago, President Ronald Reagan and a Congress split between Republican and Democratic control agreed to a radical new payment scheme for Medicare. The resulting legislation trimmed billions of dollars from the federal...

Published Tue, Feb 16 2010 5:01 AM by The Health Care Blog

Coming Short with Thinking

By ROB LAMBERTS I am mad at congress. I don’t care if they are Democrats or Republicans, I am sick of healthcare being treated as a political football. How much more of a crisis do we need before we actually... Read More...

Published Thu, Feb 04 2010 12:30 PM by The Health Care Blog

McAllen, TX As Outlier? Why Not Houston?

By MERRILL GOOZNER Or Lubbock? Or Oklahoma City? Or New Orleans? Or any of a dozen major and minor metro areas throughout the South? According to the Medicare Payments Advisory Commission, all of them have significantly higher usage rates and... Read...

Published Fri, Feb 19 2010 4:47 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Merrill Goozner, McAllen

A Look Inside: The Massachusetts Health Reform Law

By DAVID HARLOW The Massachusetts health reform law Part II, enacted in 2008 - laid the groundwork for cost control and quality improvement, as a follow-on to the initial legislation's emphasis on achieving near-universal coverage. The legislation...

Published Wed, Feb 17 2010 6:21 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Massachusetts

More of the Same, Only More Expensive

By SARAH PALIN The President has wrestled control of the health care debate away from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid by finally introducing his own plan. Unfortunately, the White House’s proposal includes everything we found untenable about the old Senate...

Published Thu, Feb 25 2010 10:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Sarah Palin

The Messy Business of Transparency

By NAOMI FREUNDLICH President Obama’s latest plan for health reform brought a flurry of commentary in the last two days; including divergent views on whether his commitment to "transparency" is helping or hurting the process. Yesterday, the...

Published Thu, Feb 25 2010 10:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Transparency

Bentley & Stanton: Two UK docs talk about Health 2.0

By Matthew Holt Last week in London I met with two of the brightest lights in the UK's community of physicians looking at Health 2.0. Annabel Bentley is the medical director and head of informatics at Bupa, the UK-based non-profit... Read More...

Published Wed, Feb 24 2010 8:22 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, Health Plans, e-patients, International

We Need a Doctor In the House -- And the Senate

By C.L. GRAY, MD Historically, practicing physicians have shunned politics. If our democracy is to survive, these times demand thoughtful solutions and difficult decisions. Few individuals are better suited to the task than the Hippocratic physician....

Published Fri, Feb 12 2010 1:42 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Physicians

Check Lists and Decision Trees versus Spontaneity and Imagination

By KENT BOTTLES The task of health care reform in 21st century America is to decrease per-capita cost of care and to increase the quality of care delivered to patients. It’s complicated. A famous Rand study concluded that Americans only... Read More....

Published Mon, Feb 01 2010 10:51 PM by The Health Care Blog