April 2011 - The Health Care Blog

Full employment for health futurists?

I’m not quite as convinced as some that there’s too much difference in the amount of consulting being requested and required by health systems now compared to in years past. After all it wasn’t so many years ago that APM made every hospital...

Published Sat, Apr 02 2011 10:36 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Hospitals, ACOs, micro

Accountable Care Organizations and Antitrust

By TIM GREANEY There’s a new PSA test in health care. Hopefully it will prove more reliable than that other one. In conjunction with the unveiling of the long-awaited ACO regulation by HHS, the FTC and Department of Justice issued a Joint Policy Statement...

Published Mon, Apr 04 2011 6:04 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, HHS, ACOs, FTC, DOJ, PSA, Tim Greaney, Antitrust

Unintended Consequences

By STEVE SANDERS Joe is a guy that never really cared about his health. He is overweight, according to any objective standard, and always attributes this to “bigger muscles” (it isn’t). He dutifully comes in once a year, but admittedly only because of...

Published Tue, Apr 05 2011 7:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Quality, primary care, Medical Home

To get the MU money, just a test

When ONC lunched the meaningful use program paying doctors up to $44,000 or more to adopt electronic medical records, I wondered–”how would they know?” Then I was told there would be a test. But I misheard, it’s not a test. Instead...

Published Tue, Apr 19 2011 8:57 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Matthew Holt, micro

Interview: RelayHealth

It’s video week on THCB! We’ve had some technical difficulties, so for the next couple of days we will be showing some great interviews from companies who attended HIMSS or World Health Care Congress. Matthew Holt interviews Jim Broadbender...

Published Wed, Apr 20 2011 1:10 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB

Controlling the Medicare Budget – Two Feasible Proposals

By ROGER COLLIER How to slow Medicare’s escalating costs has been the big health care policy issue this month, with Republicans and Democrats offering competing proposals, each part of broader plans for reducing the federal deficit—projected to be $1...

Published Wed, Apr 20 2011 8:37 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Medicare, Obama, Roger Collier, Paul Ryan, IPAB

The Science and Religion of Patient Safety

By BOB WACHTER, MD The patient safety world was set abuzz this week by yet another article, this one in Health Affairs, that seemed to offer additional “evidence” that hospitals are even more dangerous than we previously thought (and we already thought...

Published Tue, Apr 12 2011 2:15 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Bob Wachter, Hospitals, Patient Safety, IHI, Preventable harm, Harm

“Trust Us” Just Doesn’t Cut It

By PAUL LEVY I apologize in advance if some of you are tired of hearing about Massachusetts and its experience with different payment models for health insurance. I write about this, not only because it is interesting locally, but also because people...

Published Wed, Apr 13 2011 12:14 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Massachusetts, Global payments, Capitated payments

Health 2.0 Show TODAY

Don’t forget that there’s a Health 2.0 Show, our free online hour long show at 10 PST/1pm EST. Today (Thursday). Register here for FREE. We’ll be taking a look back at some highlights from the Health 2.0 Spring Fling, and have brought back...

Published Thu, Apr 14 2011 9:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: micro

Three Formulas

By MERRILL GOOZNER During the last election campaign, Tea Party-backed Republicans across the country rode to power on a tidal wave of advertising attacking health care reform as a cut in Medicare. It is. If efficiency programs like the accountable care...

Published Fri, Apr 15 2011 8:16 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Medicare, Obama, Merrill Goozner, Paul Ryan, Medicare costs

Interview with Andy Cohen, CEO, Caring.com

A couple of weeks back Andy Cohen, CEO and Founder of Caring.com stopped by Health 2.0’s offices to give us an update on the site. having established itself as a (Andy would say the) go-to site for caregivers needing to figure out what to do when...

Published Fri, Apr 15 2011 5:07 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Health 2.0, Elderly, caring.com

Summary of CMS Proposed Rule on Accountable Care Organizations

By JORDAN T. COHEN (Second in a series. See Part 1 and Part 3.) CMS recently released the proposed rule that will regulate PPACA’s Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). The MSSP relies on the accountable care organization (ACO) model in order to generate...

Published Mon, Apr 18 2011 8:57 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: CMS, Tech, Affordable Care Act, MSSP rules, MSSP, Jordan Cohen

Cato’s Cannon on Medicaid–Right but Wrong, again

One of my sparring partners, Cato libertarian whizz-kid Michael Cannon, has a new column out about Medicaid and why block grants would stop a big problem. He’s right about the problem. Because states get a matching (and in some cases way more than...

Published Mon, Apr 18 2011 8:16 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Matthew Holt, micro

Why ACOs Won’t Work

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI First, I think Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are a great idea. Just like I thought HMOs were a good idea in 1988 and I thought IPAs were a good idea in 1994. The whole notion of making providers accountable for balancing cost...

Published Thu, Apr 07 2011 8:07 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Robert Laszewski, THCB, ACOs, Incentives

The evolution of THCB

It’s been a couple of months since we moved THCB to Wordpress and added the channels you see at the top. As you may have noticed there have been some teething troubles, and for all its power Wordpress does have some problems. We’re still working...

Published Sat, Apr 09 2011 3:29 PM by The Health Care Blog