September 2010 - The Health Care Blog

Patients 2.0--A Free Meeting by & for Patients, Oct 6 in San Francisco

By Matthew Holt As part of Health Innovation Week and immediately before Health 2.0, We are having free meeting by and for patients to hear great stories about the revolution going on in patient activism online. Join us to plan... Read More...

Published Fri, Sep 24 2010 10:43 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, Consumers

New Study Proves Reducing Healthcare Costs While Improving Care Is Achievable

By DAVID WENNBERG, MD The results are in: population-based care management doesn't just improve patient satisfaction – it also can significantly reduce medical costs. It is widely known that chronic disease accounts for 75% of the total cost of healthcare...

Published Thu, Sep 23 2010 5:54 AM by The Health Care Blog

Accountability, Accountable Care Organizations, and Human Mindsets

By KENT BOTTLES, MD "Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was talking about before, and I think our culture is strong on that." - Steve Ballmer "I am responsible. Although I......

Published Wed, Sep 22 2010 10:00 PM by The Health Care Blog

Profit-seeking Health Insurers Seek Profits

DAVE DRANOVE No one who sees this headline should read any further. There is no news here. So why is everyone getting lathered up about it? Let me explain. Healthcare reform becomes official this week, as many of the provisions... Read More...

Published Wed, Sep 22 2010 7:42 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: David Dranove, Insurance companies

Risky Business

By PAUL LEVY At my annual physical exam last week, my primary care doctor employed a widely used web-based calculator to plug in cholesterol levels and other risk factors to estimate my likelihood of having a heart attack during the... Read More...

Published Wed, Sep 22 2010 6:30 AM by The Health Care Blog

Getting Our Money’s Worth

By JOHN GOODMAN The conventional wisdom is that extra spending on U.S. health care is producing very little marginal improvement in health outcomes. Another conventional idea is that we are wasting a lot of money on the elderly. Both notions... Read More...

Published Wed, Sep 22 2010 5:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Live Health 2.0 Code-a-Thon at Google, Oct 2

By Indu Subaiya & Matthew Holt Health 2.0 is thrilled to announce the kick-off to Health Innovation Week: our first official code-a-thon where developers of all skill sets will get together, learn more about the vast amounts of health data... Read...

Published Tue, Sep 21 2010 3:18 PM by The Health Care Blog

Mau-Mauing the Medical Loss Ratio

By JOHN GRAHAM Senator Max Baucus recently admitted that he never read the new health care law. But that hasn’t stopped him from trying to re-write it after the fact, in a way that would drive more health plans from... Read More...

Published Tue, Sep 21 2010 8:29 AM by The Health Care Blog

Petitioners Ask OSHA to Regulate Resident Physician Work Hours

By KATHERINE MATOS On September 2, Assistant Secretary David Michaels for Occupational Safety and Health received a petition requesting that OSHA regulate resident physician and subspecialty resident physicians. “Depending on the type of residency, physicians...

Published Tue, Sep 21 2010 6:51 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Physicians, Academic Medicine, Katherine Matos

Diffusion of EHR Innovation

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE No matter what your opinion of Electronic Health Records (EHR) is, you would probably agree that the concept of computerizing medical records represents an innovation of sorts. The spread of innovation, or its diffusion, has been...

Published Mon, Sep 20 2010 1:33 PM by The Health Care Blog

Because it's on the Interwebs, it must be true

By Matthew Holt Locally we're supposed to diss the SF Weekly because it's been trying to put the "genuine independent" local free weekly the SF Bay Guardian out of business and has lost a major lawsuit against it. But SF... Read More...

Published Mon, Sep 20 2010 1:44 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, Physicians, Patients, Consumers, Patient Safety

Vic Fuchs Speaks!

By Matthew Holt I was absolutely delighted that after several polite "maybe later" responses I was able to recently interview Victor Fuchs, the Henry J. Kaiser Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. Vic is best known as the "Father...

Published Sun, Sep 19 2010 1:20 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Policy/Politics, Matthew Holt, Policy, Economics, Dartmouth Atlas, PPACA

Five Big Ideas that Shaped Health Reform

By BILL KRAMER During the Great Health Reform Debate of 2009-10, much of the public discussion and media analysis focused on the political battles, the legislative process and specific elements of the health reform bill. We talked a lot about... Read...

Published Sat, Sep 18 2010 5:33 AM by The Health Care Blog

Google Hits Reset Button on Google Health

By JOHN MOORE Google Health has seemingly been stuck in neutral almost from the start. Despite the fanfare of Google’s Eric Schmidt speaking at the big industry confab, HIMSS a couple of years back, an initial beta release with healthcare... Read More...

Published Sat, Sep 18 2010 12:57 AM by The Health Care Blog

Sickening People

By ROB LAMBERTS I found the discussion around my recent post about treating colds very interesting. Sick people come to the office to find out how sick they are. Most people don’t want to be sick, and when they are... Read More...

Published Fri, Sep 17 2010 10:27 AM by The Health Care Blog