April 2011 - The Health Care Blog

Feds on the Web: Medicare relaunches caregiver site

I’ve been impressed by the efforts of CMS and others in the Federal government to develop helpful websites. Medicare has just relaunched its Caregivers website. It’s got a nice variety of stories, links and resources–including links...

Published Mon, Apr 25 2011 10:20 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Matthew Holt, micro

Of Zebras, Rare Diseases, and Google

By RICHARD REECE, MD When you hear hoof beats behind you, don’t expect to see a zebra. Medical aphorism on the rarity of rare diseases A rare or “orphan” disease affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. There are more than 6...

Published Tue, Apr 26 2011 5:41 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Physicians, Richard Reece, Jerome Groopman, Rare diseases, Cyberchondriacs, Orphan diseases

ACO Rules: Where’s the Beef?

By PAUL LEVY I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it. Last week, CMS announced proposed regulations about setting up Accountable Care Organizations. Here’s the statutory background and the theory of the case, as set forth in the March 31...

Published Tue, Apr 05 2011 2:03 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Medicare, Paul Levy, Hospitals, CMS, ACOs

American Well goes mass market

American Well has been the leader in creating an online marketplace where consumers and physicians can actually process care. They’ve done it via health plans using the basic health plan billing and coverage infrastructure, and that’s been...

Published Tue, Apr 19 2011 10:45 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: Health 2.0, Matthew Holt, Tech, micro

ACO Fairy Tale Faces a Rumpelstiltskin Moment

By MICHAEL MILLENSON The ACO fairy tale is drawing perilously close to an unhappy ending. The government’s long-awaited draft regulations on Accountable Care Organizations have brought a dose of ugly reality to a concept that’s always seemed...

Published Tue, Apr 19 2011 11:04 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Michael Millenson, ACOs

Interview: Cisco

Matthew Holt interviews Frances Dare and Kaveh Safavi from Cisco. Tweet this Share on Facebook Read More...

Published Wed, Apr 20 2011 1:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB

Controlling the Medicare Budget — Time to Fast Forward to 1999?

By ROGER COLLIER The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the government deficit will exceed one and a half trillion dollars this year, with federal health care annual expenditures expected to hit the trillion dollar mark by 2012. The largest federal...

Published Wed, Apr 27 2011 5:13 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Medicare, IPAB, National Bipartisan Commission of the Future of Medicare

THCB Live: Oracle

Matthew Holt interviews Marc Perlman and Kris Joshi of Oracle about their role in health care, and what Oracle is making of the changes in the health IT scene. The interview was at the HIMSS conference this past February. Tweet this Share on Facebook...

Published Wed, Apr 27 2011 5:53 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Tech, HIMSS11, Oracle, Perlman, Joshi

Are We Entering an Era of Political Cooperation on Medicare?

By DAVID E. WILLIAMS There’s a chance that we’re starting to see a convergence of opinion on Medicare among Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. I know the recent bickering makes this seem like an odd contention, but consider the following: In recent...

Published Fri, Apr 29 2011 6:00 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB

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

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