April 2011 - The Health Care Blog

Are Decision Support Tools Turning Doctors into Idiots?

By DAVID WILLIAMS A HealthLeaders article by Gienna Shaw notes that some physicians are reluctant to use computerized decision support (CDS) tools because they fear losing the respect of patients and colleagues. There’s some evidence to support this concern...

Published Thu, Apr 21 2011 8:03 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Physicians, David Williams, CDS, Decision support

The Tufnel Effect

By PSYCH GRIPE In This Is Spin̈al Tap, British heavy metal god Nigel Tufnel says, in reference to one of his band’s less successful creations: It’s such a fine line between stupid and…uh, clever. This is all too true when it comes to...

Published Thu, Apr 14 2011 4:27 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB

Booth Tour: Philips Health Care

Matthew Holt’s tour of the Philips Health Care booth at HIMSS. Your guide is Dale Wiggins, CTO of Philips Health care. Tweet this Share on Facebook Read More...

Published Wed, Apr 20 2011 1:01 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Tech, HIMSS 2011, Philips

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

Filed under: micro

To the Barricades!

By DAVID DRANOVE Last week, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan unveiled his plan to save Medicare and Medicaid. Supporters hailed the plan as revolutionary; critics decried the plan as revolutionary. For something so revolutionary, it sure is based on some...

Published Mon, Apr 11 2011 1:51 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Medicare, David Dranove, Paul Ryan

A Case for Self Insuring Small Business

By MICHAEL TURPIN During the course of 2009, an alarming trend line was broken. For the first time ever, more employers under 50 employees were not offering medical insurance to employees than those who continued to provide employer sponsored healthcare...

Published Fri, Apr 08 2011 4:23 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Michael Turpin, Healthcare costs, Self-insuring, Private sector, Medical cost shifting, Small Business

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

Trump wants Canadian health care?

He may be the new darling of the tea-party, and he may be obsessed with Obama’s birthplace, but the putative leading dark horse outsider for the Republican nomination Donald Trump apparently prefers socialized medicine! Here’s what a conservative...

Published Sat, Apr 16 2011 8:07 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: micro

Inspiration, spirit, connection, optimism–Health 2.0 Spring Fling

By Matthew Holt It’s been crazy post Health 2.0 Spring Fling in San Diego, I tried do my wrap of highlights and feelings from this Health 2.0 before the plane touched down last week, but I never quite finished them. So with a little hindsight, here are...

Published Fri, Apr 01 2011 12:28 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Health 2.0, Patients, Tech

Minor League Report Cards

By DAVID DRANOVE I was pleased to see the Chicago Tribune carry an op-ed piece this week by my friend and colleague Michael Millenson. The gist of the piece was that information about hospital quality is readily available online and we should use that...

Published Sat, Apr 02 2011 3:37 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Quality, Risk adjustment, Leapfrog, PROMIS, Healthgrades, Inside Baseball, Hospital Compare

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

Invalidated Results Watch

By MARYA ZILBERBERG, MD My friend Ivan Oransky runs a highly successful blog called Retraction Watch; if you have not yet discovered it, you should! In it he and his colleague Adam Marcus document (with shocking regularity) retractions of scientific papers...

Published Tue, Apr 05 2011 4:12 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Research, Marya Zilberberg, Scientific data, Ivan Oransky, Retractions

Bureaucrats vs. Entrepreneurs

By JOHN GOODMAN I used to think the biggest obstacle to getting agreement about health care reform was ideology (socialism vs. capitalism). Then I decided it was sociology (engineers vs. economists). I now am inclined to believe it is psychology (bureaucrats...

Published Tue, Apr 19 2011 10:29 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, John Goodman, Healthcare reform, Entreprenuers

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