August 2015 - The Health Care Blog

Are You Going to Have to Outsource to Get It Done?

By MICHELLE CAVANAUGH, RN, CPC It’s mid-July, just two and half months out from the ICD-10 transition deadline. It’s clear now that there will not be another delay. It had also appeared that there wouldn’t be any concessions on the part of the Centers...

Published Tue, Aug 04 2015 6:00 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Kareo, Michelle Cavanaugh, Outsourcing

ACA Database: The High Price of Specialty Drugs Is (Literally) Killing Me

By THCBist Joyce J wrote in with this to say after reading Steve Findlay’s post on Medicare’s 50th Anniversary last week. “Just yesterday, I was on my last and final rant relative to the price of not only specialty drugs, but also Tier...

Published Sat, Aug 01 2015 5:57 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, ACA Database

How Independent Practices Can Leverage Google’s Growing Mobile Ad Formats

By JOHN SUNG KIM Google’s stock price recently jumped by nearly 15% in a single day based on results that showed its intensive push into mobile ads is starting to generate meaningful revenues. This is important for doctors as recent stats from the company...

Published Thu, Aug 20 2015 12:28 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Tech, John Sung Kim

Moving From Spaced Repitition to Spaced Learning

By RITESH PATEL Medical education is dynamic and constantly adapting to the needs of society. With new technological advances, scientific discoveries, and healthcare policies arising each day, the amount of information medical students are required to...

Published Mon, Aug 17 2015 6:30 AM by THCB

Filed under: Uncategorized, Spaced Repitition, Learning, Osmosis, Medical Education, Picmonic

Don’t Repeal the Cadillac Plan Tax – Replace It

By JOHN C. GOODMAN Beginning in 2018, high-cost, private sector health plans will be subject to a special levy, popularly known as the “Cadillac plan” tax. Under a provision of the Affordable Care Act, health plans must pay a tax equal to 40 percent of...

Published Wed, Aug 26 2015 8:37 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, ACA, Cadillac Tax, Employer-based care

The New Laws for Hope(lab)

By MATTHEW HOLT Hopelab, which is funded by the Omidyar eBay fortune, has for near a decade produced games to promote kids’ health, like Remission for kids with cancer, and Zamzee, promoting activity for all children. But the real impact on the...

Published Mon, Aug 17 2015 11:21 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Matthew Holt, hopelab, Kids Health, Remission, Zamzee, Margaret Laws, CHCF

Did the Wellness Industry Just Admit Fraud?

By AL LEWIS and VIK KHANNA Hopefully at least a few of you have lamented –we’ll settle for “noticed” — our absence from The Health Care Blog for the last six months. There are two reasons for that. First, in the immortal words of the great philosopher...

Published Fri, Aug 14 2015 8:42 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB

Is Your Marketing the Love Child of Warren Harding?

By Gordon Andrew After nearly a century of fighting for the legitimacy of her “love child” daughter, the long-time mistress of President Warren G. Harding, was recently vindicated by new DNA testing. The tenacity of Nan Britton and her family...

Published Fri, Aug 14 2015 9:52 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB

Dan Burton explains what Health Catalyst does!

By MATTHEW HOLT I’m steadily getting all those interviews I did 3+ months ago at HIMSS up onto THCB. (For those of you not paying attention we had a bunch of tech issues at THCB needing a big change and had to forswear videos for a while. But we’re...

Published Mon, Aug 03 2015 12:58 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Health 2.0, Matthew Holt

Does Prevention Save Money? Yes No

By JOE FLOWER Or…it’s complicated. The New York Times today published a story titled, “No, Giving More People Health Insurance Doesn’t Save Money.” A piece of the argument is, as the author Margo Sanger-Katz puts it, “Almost...

Published Thu, Aug 06 2015 4:55 PM by THCB

Filed under: Uncategorized

ACA Database: HIE Enrollment Requirements

By THCBist Frank writes: I hope someone can help me understand the requirements for HIE enrollments. I’m on the front line at a hospital as a patient advocate charged with enrolling admitted patients into the portal. I get very little information...

Published Sat, Aug 08 2015 12:05 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Frank Comstock

Whose Privacy Policies Do We Know More About? Facebook’s or US Health IT Systems’?

By DEBORAH PEEL, MD The Evolution of Facebook’s Privacy Policy Today a new online journal, ‘Technology Science’, went live. Harvard Professor Latanya Sweeney is the Editor in Chief and Publisher. The project is funded by the Ford Foundation. Harvard...

Published Wed, Aug 12 2015 10:35 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Technology Science, Jill Steinman, Jennifer Shore, Patient Privacy Rights Trust Framework

Genetic Tests May Identify Predisposition To Addiction

By TERRY M. BENNETT, MD If ever there were an under-discovered, under-researched and under-treated epidemic, this is it. The Jessica McCassie case was all over the news this week, but a brief review of other publications, including your own, produced...

Published Wed, Aug 12 2015 6:47 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Methadone, Terry M. Bennett, Suboxone

How Stanford Med Got “Work-Life Balance” Wrong

By KAREN SIBERT, MD Did it ever occur to some of today’s physicians that many people work awfully hard and complain a lot less than they do about “burnout” and “work-life balance”? Did it ever occur to them that “work-life balance” is the very definition...

Published Mon, Aug 24 2015 8:58 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Workplace Wellness, Karen Sibert, Stanford Medicine

What’s the Definition of Interoperability? A Conversation With EXTREME’s Adam Wright

By LEONARD KISH Adam Wright of Partners and colleague Dean Sittig asked themselves, with all the talk about information blocking and interoperability happening in congressional hearings this year, “How should we actually define interoperability...

Published Thu, Aug 13 2015 12:53 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Leonard Kish