October 2015 - The Health Care Blog

Jeremy Hunt: Britain’s Anti-Machiavellian Health Secretary

By SAURABH JHA, MD Britain’s health secretary wants to uncharm his way to a revolution. To galvanize support for a seven-day National Health Service (NHS), which the NHS was before Jeremy Hunt’s radical plans, and still is, he asserted that thousands...

Published Fri, Oct 30 2015 2:30 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Saurabh Jha

How doctors became Subcontractors?

By MICHEL ACCAD, MD In our healthcare system, the “middleman” is not who you think During my recent podcast interview with Jeff Deist, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, I remarked that third-party payers are not, in fact, intermediaries...

Published Fri, Oct 30 2015 10:32 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, MICHEL ACCAD

Uber’s Surge Pricing May not Lead to a Surge In Drivers

By LAUREN KIRCHNER Uber has long stirred controversy and consternation over the higher “surge” prices it charges at peak times. The company has always said the higher prices actually help passengers by encouraging more drivers to get on the road. But...

Published Fri, Oct 30 2015 2:42 AM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Lauren Kirchner

Practice Data Points

Chelsea Clinton & US Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy at Health 2.0 Fall Conference 2015

By VANESSA MASON Chelsea Clinton got the 9th Annual Fall Conference on the right foot sharing the numerous successes of the Clinton Foundation including improving school lunches, providing antiretroviral therapy to millions of people living with HIV worldwide...

Published Thu, Oct 29 2015 4:12 PM by THCB

Filed under: Uncategorized, Health 2.0 Fall Conference, Chelsea Clinton, U.S. Surgeon General

ACA Open Enrollment Round 3: The Going Gets Tougher

By STEVE FINDLAY The third ACA health insurance exchange open enrollment period begins Nov. 1, and things look iffy. The Obama administration this month reduced the estimate of new enrollees for 2016—possibly to lower expectations but also because signs...

Published Thu, Oct 29 2015 4:12 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Steven Findlay

Who Is to Blame for Health Care’s Problems? A Tale of Two Narratives

By JEFF GOLDSMITH What to do about the seemingly inexorable rise in health spending has been the central health policy challenge for two generations of health economists and policymakers. In 1965, before Medicare and Medicaid, health spending was about...

Published Wed, Oct 28 2015 1:32 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Jeff Goldsmith

Sex, Lies and Cheeseburgers

By AL LEWIS Number of deaths attributable to eating processed meat, according to the World Health Organization (WHO): 34,000 Number of people struck by lightning annually: 240,000 And yet the WHO generated a huge headline by saying that eating red and...

Published Wed, Oct 28 2015 7:18 AM by THCB

Filed under: Uncategorized

Is Health IT Finally Ready to Tackle Last-Mile Analytics?

By DAN HOUSMAN I have spent several years working with specialty medical offices like oncology centers, diabetes clinics, IPAs (Independent Practice Associations), and disease advocacy groups seeking to build health care data warehouses and analytics...

Published Tue, Oct 27 2015 1:20 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Dan Housman

Healthcare’s Deadly Data Problem

By LEONARD D’AVOLIO I have read with interest the ongoing conversation about the ProPublica Surgeon Scorecard in THCB and beyond, not because I believe this latest effort at measuring quality will have a significant effect on patient care, but because...

Published Mon, Oct 26 2015 5:19 PM by THCB

Filed under: Uncategorized

Pink is The New Black

By DAVID EICHLER, MD Pink is the new black this October, which marks the 30th anniversary of National *** Cancer Awareness Month. NFL players are clad in bright pink shoes and wrist bands. American Airlines employees are wearing pink uniform accents and...

Published Mon, Oct 26 2015 5:00 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, David Eichler

Defining Interoperability: An Interview with Grahame Grieve

By LEONARD KISH Grahame Grieve is a long-time leader within HL7 and one of the key drivers behind FHIR. He chats with Leonard Kish about what’s been happening and what’s ahead for interoperability. LK: First tell me how you got into standards… it’s kind...

Published Mon, Oct 26 2015 4:39 PM by THCB

Filed under: Uncategorized, Interoperability, FHIR, Leonard Kish, Graham Grieve, HL-7

The Writing Is On the (Healthcare) Wall

By ANDY DELAO For the past few months I have been traveling around the globe. In my travels I have been talking to “leaders” from Ministries’ of Health, Insurance Companies, Hospitals, Physicians, and Professional Societies. In many of the...

Published Mon, Oct 26 2015 12:02 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB, Andy Delao

Why Health Care Providers Should Publish Physician Ratings

By ASHISH JHA, MD Early efforts to publish performance data about doctors and hospitals usually required a strong external force, such as pressure from a state department of health. But that’s changing. Some leading health care systems are now publishing...

Published Sat, Oct 24 2015 12:07 PM by THCB

Filed under: THCB

Stop Calling Them Patients!

BY JIM PURCELL We have a healthcare system that is provider-centric indeed. Why else would we call the consumers of their services “patients?” Perhaps because they have to be patient. Patient because they have to wait long after their appointed hour to...

Published Fri, Oct 23 2015 10:25 AM by THCB