August 2010 - The Health Care Blog

A Bizarre Report

By JOHN GOODMAN I have been watching the release of the Medicare Trustees reports for many years and I have never seen anything as strange as what happened last week. Although these reports are normally carefully embargoed, Health and Human... Read More...

Published Tue, Aug 10 2010 9:03 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Medicare, John Goodman

Why I Don’t Accept E-mail From Patients

By Rob Lamberts, MD Dr. Wes (a cardiology blogger who all should read) wrote a very compelling post about technology and the bondage it can create for doctors.: The devaluation of doctors’ time continues unabated. As we move into our... Read More...

Published Mon, Aug 09 2010 5:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Patients, Rob Lamberts, E-mail

The Circle of Trust

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE Every day millions of Americans and billions of people around the globe are routinely accepting colorful pieces of paper in return for their labor and placing those hard earned possessions in modern glass buildings whose owners they...

Published Mon, Aug 09 2010 4:01 AM by The Health Care Blog

Waving goodbye to Wave

By PAUL LEVY Google recently announced that it was abandoning Wave, a multimedia social media collaboration tool. I'm sorry about this, as I thought it had great potential. That being said, I never used it, so perhaps I was typical.... Read More....

Published Mon, Aug 09 2010 2:09 AM by The Health Care Blog

EMRs, Checklists and Meeting Atul

By JONATHAN BUSH Recently, I got to shake hands with and also have lunch with doctor-writer extraordinaire Atul Gawande! He was nearly everything I had made him out to be. He wore a snappy blue blazer, a jumble of ID... Read More...

Published Fri, Aug 06 2010 4:48 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Atul Gawande, Jonathan Bush

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MinuteClinic’s hour may be at hand

By DAVID WILLIAMS Mark Perry draws an interesting inference from two news stories: a WSJ article that suggests consumers are using less health care and another that reports a big jump in MinuteClinic volumes. Consumers aren’t necessarily consuming less...

Published Thu, Aug 05 2010 7:18 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Patients, David E. Williams, Walk-in clinics

Should We Fear Genetic Testing?

By THOMAS GOETZ Though the prospect of learning about our DNA might seem wrapped in mystery and intrigue, genetic information is not so different from any other metrics we know about ourselves: Our age, our weight, our blood pressure. With... Read More...

Published Thu, Aug 05 2010 7:01 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Thomas Goetz, Genetic testing

HIT Trends Summary for July 2010

By MICHAEL LAKE This is a summary of the HIT Trends Report for June 2010. You can get the current issue here. E-prescribing. Two surveys re-confirm that while e-prescribing adoption is rapidly increasing, utilization continues to lag, particularly with...

Published Thu, Aug 05 2010 6:14 AM by The Health Care Blog

Public Is More Savvy than Harris Polltakers

By JOHN C. GOODMAN National Center for Policy Analysis President & Kellye Wright Fellow Are the nation’s polltakers part of a surreptitious plot to convince us that what’s good for us is bad and what’s bad is good? A new... Read More...

Published Wed, Aug 04 2010 12:58 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: health care reform, John Goodman

Adam Bosworth on the Keas Challenge and the 3 things still missing in Health 2.0

We caught up with Adam Bosworth, CEO of Keas this week who had some new updates on the Keas API challenge including the open authoring environment and a new feature which will allow for more social engagement on the site.... Read More...

Published Wed, Aug 04 2010 12:35 PM by The Health Care Blog

“I Like (Political) Science and I Want to Help People”

By BOB WACHTER, MD I thought I was an oddball in college. I've only recently learned that I was avant-garde. Right before beginning college in 1975, I decided I wanted to be a doctor. Being the first-born son – with... Read More...

Published Wed, Aug 04 2010 8:15 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Physicians, Bob Wachter, Medical Students

Docs and Insurers Posture on Report Cards, But Is Silence the Real Goal?

By MICHAEL L. MILLENSON Report cards are back in the news. The Washington Post (via Kaiser Health News) is warning about the difficulty of rating individual physicians. Meanwhile, spokesmen for the insurance industry and the doctor industry (a/k/a the...

Published Tue, Aug 03 2010 6:52 PM by The Health Care Blog

The New Rules for Insurance Appeals Under PPACA

BY KATHERINE MATOS On July 22, the Obama Administration released interim final rules that allow patient appeals of health insurance coverage decisions as required under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (”PPACA”) and Health Care and Education...

Published Tue, Aug 03 2010 5:23 AM by The Health Care Blog

Interview with Trisha Torrey

By Bianca Grogan At the Health 2.0 Goes to Washington Conference, June 7, 2010, Trisha Torrey who writes the Guide to Patient Empowerment for About.com, gave a backstage interview. She mentioned how excited she was to be at the conference... Read More...

Published Mon, Aug 02 2010 5:26 PM by The Health Care Blog