December 2010 - The Health Care Blog

The Next Generation of Communities Part 1: Data Mining and Discovery Platforms

By Bianca Grogan After lunch on day 1 of the Health 2.0 Fall Conference in San Francisco, October 7-8, 2010, the attendees came back to the main stage to listen to a three part session called The Next Generation of... Read More...

Published Thu, Dec 09 2010 3:12 AM by The Health Care Blog

Bending the Curve, Beginning with Birth

By AMY M. ROMANO As I prepare for next week’s webinar on payment reform to align incentives with quality, I have been thinking a lot about how we pay for maternity care in this country, and the opportunities to rein... Read More...

Published Thu, Dec 09 2010 12:38 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: health care reform, Health care costs, Insurers

McAllen and El Paso Redux: New Evidence from the Insured Under-65 Population

By JON SKINNER Last year, Atul Gawande wrote in the New Yorker about the remarkable differences in health care spending for two Texas cities: McAllen and El Paso. In 1992, according to the Dartmouth Atlas, the two cities were essentially... Read More...

Published Tue, Dec 07 2010 5:42 AM by The Health Care Blog

The Tea Party Conservative Strategy for 2011

By ROBERT REICH Next week starts the new Congress, and with it the Tea Party conservatives. What’s their strategy? What will they rally around? They’ll grouse endlessly about government spending but I don’t think they’ll use any particular spending bill...

Published Fri, Dec 31 2010 5:24 AM by The Health Care Blog

Playing Tetris Cuts Flashbacks in PTSD

By GLENN LAFFEL, MD Flashbacks are vivid, recurring, intrusive and unwanted mental images of a past traumatic experience. They are a sine qua non of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Although drugs and cognitive/behavioral interventions are available...

Published Sun, Dec 26 2010 2:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Publicity is Cheap, Privacy is Expensive

By JOHN HALAMKA, MD When I was 18 years old, publicity was hard to come by. Media outlets were limited to newspapers with very high editorial standards, television with few channels and very limited news time, and a few high... Read More...

Published Thu, Dec 02 2010 4:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Privacy, John Halamka

Loser Pays

Tort reform is a hot-button issue among physicians. It distorts the practice of medicine by compelling doctors to order tests, the lack of which, might be used against them. It makes each patient a potential enemy. It forces doctors to... Read More.....

Published Fri, Dec 17 2010 7:34 AM by The Health Care Blog

Two Degrees of Freedom

By PAUL LEVY I don't often write about commercial ventures here, but from time to time, one that has a broader public service mission emerges. Here's the latest, recently announced. A company called Two Degrees is marketing a new, nutrition.....

Published Sun, Dec 19 2010 12:09 PM by The Health Care Blog

Social Security as a model for the Affordable Care Act’s future

"Check Back in a Generation to See if the Health Law Withstands Challenge" suggests the New York Times in an insightful piece that ran earlier this week, which suggests Social Security as a useful comparison. Social Security was enacted in....

Published Sun, Dec 19 2010 12:32 PM by The Health Care Blog

Using An App to Confront Your Metastatic Melanoma

By GEORGE D. LUNDBERG, MD If you or anyone else you know has had a malignant melanoma, you and that other person, and your respective physicians, should click http://therapy.collabrx.com to access the Targeted Therapy Finder--Melanoma (ttf-melanoma)....

Published Fri, Dec 17 2010 8:08 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Op-Ed

Healthy People 2020 Participates in the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge

Health 2.0 is excited to announce the first challenge for the 2011 cycle of the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge that will be live through the New Year! Healthy People 2020, launched on December 2, 2010, is the Nation’s leading health... Read More...

Published Wed, Dec 08 2010 11:05 AM by The Health Care Blog

Health 2.0 Developer Challenge Winner: Team Acsys

By Bianca Grogan In February 2010, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute released the inaugural County Health Rankings, the first project to rank the overall health of nearly every county in all...

Published Sat, Dec 11 2010 7:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

If I Ruled the World

By DAVID DRANOVE If you study previous attempts to reform healthcare delivery through the private sector, there is one common thread. These attempts all failed because of an absence of proper management information systems. We need integrated electronic...

Published Sat, Dec 04 2010 5:30 AM by The Health Care Blog

Three Ultrasounds

By Tarcia Edmunds-Jehu Sitting in an exam room I am watching my patient struggling to ask a difficult question that she clearly does not want to ask. After several attempts at starting and a few half finished sentences she finally... Read More...

Published Sun, Dec 05 2010 5:56 AM by The Health Care Blog

Slow Medicine

By KENT BOTTLES I have been thinking about the difference between slow medicine and UCLA medicine. It has made me realize how complex and difficult it is to transform American health care so that we lower per-capita cost and increase... Read More...

Published Sun, Dec 05 2010 7:30 AM by The Health Care Blog