January 2011 - The Health Care Blog

Seeding the Cloud

By ALEX ESPTEIN The newest new future of computing is floating your way. Lie back on the grass and enjoy. It is The Cloud. Not the corporate Cloud that is the trademarked provider of Wi-Fi services in Europe. But the... Read More...

Published Mon, Jan 31 2011 10:12 PM by The Health Care Blog

Physician Executives Should Not Ignore How Smartphones Will Transform Healthcare

By KENT BOTTLES Physician executives who ignore smartphones and their healthcare applications will miss the most important disruptive technology trend in the next five years. Physician executives who understand how smartphones will transform the industry...

Published Mon, Jan 31 2011 10:11 PM by The Health Care Blog

Fighting Compassion Fatigue

By VIPAN NIKORE, MD Six months down. Six to go. I am officially halfway through what people have told me will be one of the most challenging years of my life. I’ve rotated through Cardiology, Primary Care, Gastroenterology, General Medicine,... Read More...

Published Mon, Jan 31 2011 9:00 PM by The Health Care Blog

Judge Vinson’s Tea Party Manifesto

By MARK HALL, JD On first read, the most striking aspect of Judge Vinson’s ruling today is not its remedy — striking the Affordable Care Act in its entirety — but the impression one gets that the opinion was written... Read More...

Published Mon, Jan 31 2011 6:17 PM by The Health Care Blog

Insurers Flat Foot Their Way Into the Social Media Era

By DAVID WILLIAMS A couple of related pieces caught my attention today: @HealthPlan: How insurers use social media and Insurers are scouring social media for evidence of fraud. Slowly but surely health plans and other insurers are stepping into the.....

Published Mon, Jan 31 2011 5:00 PM by The Health Care Blog

The Safety of HIT-Assisted Care

By JOHN HALAMKA, MD I was recently asked by an Institute of Medicine committee to comment about the impact of healthcare information technologies (HIT) on patient safety and how to maximize the safety of HIT-assisted care. "HIT-assisted care"...

Published Mon, Jan 31 2011 10:15 AM by The Health Care Blog

A Medical Student's Dilemma

By LIBERTAD FLORES I remember joking with Dad about how he'd outlive us all. He had gone vegetarian 10 years before I was born, never smoked, took vitamins, and asked for a designated driver after his annual Heineken at the... Read More...

Published Mon, Jan 31 2011 7:01 AM by The Health Care Blog

The Price of Marginal Thinking in Healthcare Policy

By MARYA ZILBERBERG, MD I find it fascinating how our brains have this propensity to latch on to what is at the margins at the expense of seeing the bulk of what sits in the center. This peripheral only vision... Read More...

Published Mon, Jan 31 2011 6:45 AM by The Health Care Blog

Victims of Health Care Reform

By JOHN GOODMAN, PhD Who will be hurt the most by the health reform legislation Congress passed last year? Answer: The most vulnerable segments of society: the poor, the elderly and the disabled. That's right. Virtually everyone in Congress who.....

Published Mon, Jan 31 2011 5:01 AM by The Health Care Blog

Electronic Medical Records Attack Hospitals

By MICHAEL KIRSCH, MD Readers know of my criticisms of the electronic medical record (EMR) juggernaut that is oozing over the medical landscape. Ultimately, this technology will make medical care better and easier to practice. All systems will be integrated...

Published Sun, Jan 30 2011 1:47 PM by The Health Care Blog

Some EHR vendors losing out as market evolves

By DAN FOMES Electronic health record (EHR) software vendors aren’t churning out profits like you might expect. You’d think that the Federal subsidies for EHR implementation would create a rising tide that lifted all boats in the EHR software industry...

Published Sun, Jan 30 2011 10:49 AM by The Health Care Blog

Defining a Maturity Model for HIEs

By JOHN MOORE Before entering the convoluted healthcare IT sector, I had worked in the manufacturing sector both as an IT analyst and in corporate strategy for Europe’s second largest enterprise software company. In those many years I learn quite... Read...

Published Sun, Jan 30 2011 8:39 AM by The Health Care Blog

Can Good Care Produce Bad Health?

By AMY BERMAN For those of you who haven’t yet heard, I have recently been diagnosed with Stage IV inflammatory *** cancer. This rare form of *** cancer is known for its rapid spread. True to form, it has metastasized... Read More...

Published Fri, Jan 28 2011 5:35 PM by The Health Care Blog

Crowdsourcing, Price Formation, and Health IT

By JOHN R. GRAHAM From the perspective of the average patient, going about his life unconcerned about health policy or economics, what is the most frustrating characteristic of U.S. health insurance? Surely, it is the madness of the billing cycle:......

Published Fri, Jan 28 2011 10:54 AM by The Health Care Blog

Fixing The Failure At Physician Compare

By MICHAEL MILLENSON The launch of Medicare's Physician Compare website at year-end should have been a watershed event in the long campaign for health care transparency and patient empowerment. Instead – and it pains me to write this – Physician....

Published Fri, Jan 28 2011 7:08 AM by The Health Care Blog