February 2010 - The Health Care Blog

ONC to Discuss Provider Engagement on Tomorrow's Webinar

Health 2.0 and the Health 2.0 Accelerator have teamed up to bring you a conversation with members of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. Dr. Hunt, medical officer in the Office of Provider Adoption and Support, will... Read More...

Published Wed, Feb 17 2010 1:32 PM by The Health Care Blog

No Country For Young Nurses

By OLGA KHAZAN The nursing profession takes a certain dedication to love. After all, most office jobs don't involve standing for 12 hours at a time, scarfing a bite of lunch between "clients" or handling gallons of bodily fluids on... Read...

Published Fri, Feb 19 2010 4:24 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Nursing

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

Should the Feds Certify EHR Usability?

By ROBERT ROWLEY, MD In an interesting turn, the Commerce Department’s National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) says it is looking to develop standards for evaluating ease-of-use of health IT systems. This raises some questions about the...

Published Fri, Feb 19 2010 3:20 AM by The Health Care Blog

PatientsLikeMe buys ReliefInSite

By Matthew Holt Some news in the world of Health 2.0 today where the worlds of patient communities and tracking tools come ever closer. (Those of you following my Health 2.0 “bubbles” chart know that “social networks” and “tools” are... Read More...

Published Tue, Feb 16 2010 10:09 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, Consumers

The President’s Proposal

By MAGGIE MAHAR You might be wondering why I haven’t written about the President’s Health care bill. The reason is that I have very little to say. This, I realize, is unusual. But the truth is that the president’s proposal... Read More...

Published Tue, Feb 23 2010 6:28 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Obama, Maggie Mahar

DNADirect bought by Medco: Consumer genomic counselling goes mainstream?

By Matthew Holt Ryan Phelan started DNADirect to expand the power of genetic testing to everyone, using the Web. She’s been ploughing a tough furrow but been making some real progress in the last few years, including getting an investment... Read More...

Published Mon, Feb 08 2010 2:25 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Technology, Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, Consumers, Personalized Medicine

The White House Healthcare Summit - Democrats 0 Republicans 0

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI There is politics and there is policy. On the policy front what we saw today was the same exchange of the old talking points we have watched for a longtime. No progress was made toward any kind... Read More...

Published Thu, Feb 25 2010 3:14 PM by The Health Care Blog

Uwe and Heritage agree: we need a tax-funded universal pool

By Matthew Holt When you’re at a party and someone explains to you that they just read a great article in the NY Times explaining why Peggy Noonan doesn’t understand basic math, and you know that they’re referring to Uwe... Read More...

Published Mon, Feb 01 2010 1:06 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Policy/Politics, Matthew Holt, Policy, Health Plans

EHR Redux

By by DAVID C. KIBBE It's time to revive the discussion of electronic health record software in light of the new federal regulations that define criteria for meaningful use and also set criteria for the EHR technologies that must be... Read More....

Published Sun, Feb 07 2010 7:53 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Electronic Medical Records

Plan B

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI With word that the House is likely to take up the repeal of the health insurance industry anti-trust exemption it is now clear the Democratic leadership has begun Plan B. It is also clear that this is... Read More...

Published Fri, Feb 05 2010 6:19 AM by The Health Care Blog

Why Calculators Are the Future of Healthcare

By THOMAS GOETZ Want to know the future of medicine and healthcare in one sentence? For my money, it goes like this: The real opportunity in healthcare is to combine our personal data with the huge amount of general biomedical... Read More...

Published Fri, Feb 05 2010 5:35 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Thomas Goetz

Collecting Patient Info in Haiti Using the iPhone

Dr. Elizabeth Cote, from Harvard Humane Initiative collects patient data at Fond Parisien, Haiti using iPhone and iCharts from www.CareTools.com. The developers were kind enough to customize the form in less than a week to support fields and info required...

Published Tue, Feb 02 2010 5:50 AM by The Health Care Blog

President Obama on Bipartisanship

By MERRILL GOOZNER As in, he spent a large part of his briefing in the White House press room talking about the fate of the health care reform bill. Here's what he had to say about the summit with Republican... Read More...

Published Tue, Feb 09 2010 8:05 PM by The Health Care Blog