April 2011 - The Health Care Blog

The Kaisingers link up

A while ago at an IOM meeting I mis-spoke and called Geisinger, “Kaisinger” and it kinda sounded right. Well now those two Epic users with another similar Epic user (Group Health) have teamed up with Mayo (home grown IT) and InterMountain...

Published Wed, Apr 06 2011 9:51 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: HIT, EHR, micro, EMR, Kaiser Permanente

Ryan’s Proposal For Medicare

By MAGGIE MAHAR Representative Paul Ryan (R. Wisconsin) thinks he has found a solution to Medicare inflation. The cost of Medicare has been spiraling for years, thanks to the climbing cost of virtually every product and service in our health care system...

Published Wed, Apr 06 2011 12:27 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB

More EMRs for all

Today’s been a big day in Health IT. First Kaiser Permanente has opened a very flashy Center for Total Health in DC. I took a tour today and lots of it is focused on the use of and extension of their Epic-based medical record (including adding lots...

Published Tue, Apr 05 2011 2:37 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: micro

Medicare, Medicaid Get Squeezed in Ryan Plan

By MERRILL GOOZNER Everyone agrees that controlling health care costs is the key to bringing long-term federal budget deficits under control. Government spending on Medicare for seniors and Medicaid for the poor has grown nearly twice as fast as the rest...

Published Tue, Apr 05 2011 2:13 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Medicare, Merrill Goozner, Medicaid, Ryan-Rivlin plan

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

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

Medical Loss Ratio: Putting Percentages and Politics Aside

By CONNIE HARVEY The Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) policy written into the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) requires health insurance companies to deliver more direct value to consumers by mandating that they spend a higher percentage of...

Published Tue, Apr 05 2011 2:11 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Insurance companies, Affordable Care Act, Connie Harvey, Medical Loss Ratio

Medical Loss Ratios – Again!

By ROGER COLLIER A new study, reported in the American Journal of Managed Care, seems likely to add more heat to the continuing medical loss ratio controversy. The Accountable Care Act effectively mandates that health insurers achieve MLRs of 85 percent...

Published Mon, Apr 04 2011 5:47 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Affordable Care Act, MLR, American Journal of Managed Care

Why Primary Care Parity Matters

By PAUL FISCHER, MD After an exciting and challenging day of caring for patients and teaching students, a third-year medical student on his family medicine rotation says to me, “I really like what you do, but I just cannot afford to go into family...

Published Mon, Apr 04 2011 1:17 PM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, primary care, Paul Fischer

Another Swing at the Windmill of VAP

By MARYA ZILBERBERG, MD Sorry, folks, but I have been so swamped with work that I have been unable to produce anything cogent here. I see today as a gift day, as my plans to travel to SHEA were foiled by mother nature’s sense of humor. So, here...

Published Mon, Apr 04 2011 9:11 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: prevention, Marya Zilberberg, Uncategorized, VAP, VRSA

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

The ACO Rules & Privacy

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE One day before the first of April, HHS published the much anticipated rules defining the creation and operations of Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) spanning 429 pages of business regulation, analysis of various options available...

Published Sun, Apr 03 2011 9:10 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, ACOs

Time for Toto to Pull the Curtain Away from Patient-Centered Medical Homes

By AL LEWIS Patient-Centered Medical Homes in statewide populations have unstoppable momentum and major constituencies in support of them, so valid analysis of their outcomes is probably as futile as it will be unwelcome. However, the math speaks for...

Published Sun, Apr 03 2011 7:33 AM by The Health Care Blog

Filed under: THCB, Patient Centered Medical Homes, North Carolina Community Access, Al Lewis

First Impressions of the Medicare ACO Rule

By VINCE KURAITIS On March 31, CMS released the long-awaited “Medicare Shared Savings Program: Accountable Care Organizations” document (ACO Rule). Read the details here (strong suggestion: unless you’re working on your PhD in ACOs, start with the fact...

Published Sun, Apr 03 2011 3:00 AM by The Health Care Blog