healthcare industry

Oct 31 2011

Why is business expected to pay for healthcare in the US?

By admin healthcare industry, healthcare price transparency

I’ve asked this question frequently over the years, starting in the ’80s, continuing to today … and I’ll keep it up until someone realizes that it’s a failed paradigm. What we have here, kidz, is what happens when a society decides that socialism is anathema, but doesn’t empower and educate its citizens about how to take responsibility for themselves in ways that will keep them healthy, productive community members. Business started picking up the tab for healthcare during World War II, when stiff wage controls made it impossible for defense plants to give their employees raises. In place of more money, they started to pay for health insurance – which state and federal government were more than happy to turn into mandated employee benefits over the next 20 years. What happened then was predictable: three generations have been out of touch with the true cost of healthcare, and the true cost of their choices about their health. If you’re a good little American consumer, you do whatever your television tells you to do: eat this. Buy that. Otherwise the terrorists win! Three generations of disconnection from the real costs of our medical care have delivered us an epidemic of obesity – thanks to plentiful empty calories, courtesy of agri-business, and our willingness to beach ourselves on our sofas, in our SUVs, or at our computers, the better to receive more messages about what we should buy and eat. Health insurance costs have skyrocketed as we’ve become a nation of couch potatoes. Companies are scaling back their employee health benefits as those costs continue to rise, putting more and more people in the un-insured or under-insured bucket. Is that rise in healthcare costs, which in turn drives higher premiums, combining with the federal mandate that all companies offer employees health insurance…

Oct 24 2011

#1 patient rule in #occupyhealthcare: be responsible for yourself

By admin e-patients, healthcare industry

Healthcare providers are waking up and realizing that they need to partner with their patients to get better outcomes for their facilities and practices, and for their patients. As Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) get more and more press, the healthcare delivery side is the entity being held accountable. Patients must step up to the bumper on accountability, too. Two phrases have entered the medical lexicon thanks to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a/k/a “healthcare reform.” PPACA is not actually healthcare reform, it’s health payment reform, but I digress. The two phrases are “patient-engagement,” and “patient-centeredness.” Doctors are being told that they must engage with patients, and offer care centered on their patients’ needs … but that engagement and centeredness message is not being simultaneously driven toward patients. Therein lies an opportunity for #fail. Patients need to take responsibility for their health, their actions, and their care. I’m not saying that we should shut up, sit down, and do what we’re told. What we must do is ask questions, work to understand the answers, and then do what is in our own best interest, health-wise. That does not include ignoring instructions to cut down on salt or saturated fats. It most certainly does not involve living on drive-thru meals and expecting a prescription to resolve your expanding waistline or blood sugar numbers. In this month’s HealthLeaders, Joe Cantlupe talks about how doctors are making more robust suggestions to their patients, with the goal of turning medical care into a true partnership between patients and providers. Healthcare providers need to step up and work with their patients, turning healthcare into a team sport. Patients MUST step up and take responsibility for their choices as well as a full share of decision-making. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …

Oct 18 2011

Healthcare: It’s time for us to #arabspring this b*tch

By admin healthcare industry

I had the opportunity to speak at a digital pharma marketing conference – DTC Perspectives’ Marketing to the Digital Consumer – last week. “DTC” is Direct To Consumer, by the way. I was representing the patient voice, at the invitation of my friends at the health activist community WEGO Health. It was terrific for several reasons – connecting with other healthcare social media peeps in pharma, meeting and mingling with some powerful voices in pharma leadership, learning more about the regulatory environment that pharma marketers work in – but the biggest “wow!” that day happened between my ears. I realized that pharma – and healthcare in toto – is desperate for its own #arabspring. A complete re-alignment of the entire system, driven from the bottom up, that will benefit all players: pharma, health systems, clinicians, researchers, patients … people. All of us. This epiphany arrived courtesy of a combination of factors. First, I felt a little like a zoo animal, since I was the only one at the conference wearing an Official Patient sign. I found that amusing, since everyone in the room is a patient at some level, even if they’re only seeing a doc once a year for a check-up. I’m not even a pharma consumer who’s on a buffet of drugs, although I do take a fat handful of supplements every morning. Why are patients seen as exotic creatures by pharma, and by most of the healthcare industry? Patients = people, people. Treat us like … people. Second, since I also wear a PR/media/content-creator hat, I saw that they were making a real effort to understand how they could take advantage of social media as a direct-marketing tool. They were approaching this as an industry with a huge regulatory oversight burden, from the FDA to the US…

Sep 21 2011

Digital Patient Bill of Rights: check!

By admin cancer, e-patients, healthcare industry, participatory medicine

A group of about 20 passionate e-patients, including e-Patient Dave his own self and yours truly, gathered around a biiiiig table on Monday in Philadelphia to talk about what an e-patient Bill of Rights might look like. I have to give a shout-out to my buddies at WEGO Health, particularly Jack Barrette, Bob Brooks, and Natalia Forsyth One conclusion: don’t call it the e-patient Bill of Rights. Since we’re talking digital healthcare, let’s call it the Digital Patients Bill of Rights. That conclusion was reached hours into the discussion, which ranged over topics from chronic conditions like diabetes, HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and fibromyalgia to acute illness like cancer. We had about four hours to hammer out a first-principles statement, and Mark Bard of the Digital Health Coalition deserves the Cat-Herding Nobel Prize for keeping a group of vocal, passionate, diverse e-patients on task. To lift directly from the Klick Pharma blog (Klick was one of the sponsors of the event, along with Pixels & Pills, Health Central, Care Coach, Kru Research, Radian 6, Red Nucleus, Think Brownstone, Verilogue, and a who’s who of health media sponsors): “After an intense four hours, we were able to reach consensus on the following key messages as a foundation to a Digital Patient Bill of Rights: Shared access to my data Attitude of collaboration and overall respect The patient is the largest stakeholder Transparency and authenticity across all areas Voice of the patient is a legitimate (clinical) source The right to efficient communication with providers who utilize the technology that we need” It’s a start. A damn good one. The Klick Pharma blog post also has a full list of all the e-patients who participated in the conversation. It was quite a day. Some of my thoughts about the conversation, and the event: Those dealing with chronic conditions have an even deeper need to be activist e-patients. They also have a greater level of knowledge, and can be true leaders in this on-going discussion. Each healthcare…

Sep 12 2011

“Screw it, let’s do it.”

By admin healthcare industry

The headline on this post is the title of Richard Branson‘s business memoir. The full title: Screw It, Let’s Do It: Lessons in Life and Business. The link will take you to the book on Amazon, so you can just do it and buy the book. I had the opportunity to literally see Branson in action on Friday, 9/9/11 at Richmond Unite’s #DSRPT11 conference right here in River City (Richmond VA), which also featured some other visionary thinkers who exhorted the crowd in attendance to get out of their business comfort zones and create some disruption. Richard Branson has disrupted many industries: music, aviation, travel, mobile, broadband, just to name a few. He talked about his failures (Anybody here remember Virgin Cola? Yeah, me neither.), and was anxious to convey the message that his “screw it, let’s do it” rallying cry became even more important to him because of those failures. There is only do, or not do. There is no try. Thanks, Yoda. The other big thinkers on the stage all shared the same ethos – look beyond what you perceive as your borders, whether those borders are physical, mental, geographical, or just imaginary. If you have an idea, chase it down and make it real. If you fail, get up and chase the next idea. Immobility is your only enemy. One of the speakers, Harry Singer, said two things during his presentation that really stuck with me, and with other folks I talked to at #DSRPT11: Don’t ask why, figure out how Don’t tell them what it is, tell them what it does The first is something we should teach children from birth, and keep on teaching them and each other throughout our lives. The second is a titanium nugget if you’re in sales or marketing: what your product…

Aug 22 2011

How far would you go for medical treatment?

By admin healthcare industry

No, not how far you’d go in the Denzel Washington/John Q/hold-a-hospital-hostage sense. In the get-on-a-plane-toward-care sense. Medical tourism has seen an exponential rise with patients in the US as health care costs and the number of uninsured patients have risen over the last 15 years. In a TIME magazine piece in 2006, Curtis Schroeder, CEO of Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok – somehow, I don’t think he’s Thai – said that in 2005 their census of US patients rose 30% (to 55,000). That trend has continued, even with the advent of “health care reform” – health insurance reform, really – since health care costs have continued their hockey-stick rise, with no end in sight, for two decades. 50 years ago, patients from across the globe saw health care in the US as the holy grail. Now, US patients are traveling to Costa Rica, Thailand, Mexico, New Zealand, even Cuba to get access to high-quality, low-cost care. US companies have started to explore medical tourism, and some are offering incentives to their employees – incentives including getting to pocket some of the savings gained from traveling abroad for treatment. Not enough, however, to make medical tourism a healthy industry here in the US of A. An August 2011 article in Workforce Management includes a story about a nurse in Louisiana (irony is our favorite thing here at Mighty Casey Media) who traveled to Costa Rica a few years ago for dental work, including oral surgery. She paid $2,700 out of pocket for what would have cost her $10,000 at home, with her employer covering $1,500 of her care expenses. Her net cost for the procedures was $1,200, plus her travel expenses – which travel was negotiated and arranged by a broker, Companion Global Health Care Inc. I’m sure that, even after travel expenses,…

Jul 27 2011

Data, Data, Who’s Got My Data?

By admin e-patients, EHR, health records, healthcare industry, medical records

I confess that I’d happily get a barcode tattooed on my neck if it meant I’d never have to fill out another ****ing health history form in a doctor’s office. I’m totally serious. Paper records are so … 19th century. With the advent of the current iteration of “health care reform” (which is really “health INSURANCE reform,” but that’s a blog post for another day), much has been made of the importance of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems in building a national Health Information Exchange (HIE). Medicine = Acronym World. The Pentagon are pikers when it comes to fogging the battlefield with impenetrable letter-fication. 21st century health care certainly must involve a lot of easily-shared data, with health history and diagnostic information traveling literally at light speed between doctor’s offices, hospitals, and clinics. Not only does it speed care, it can ensure safety: the right record, with the right patient, makes the right care clear. The thorny-issue part is this: whose data is it, anyway? Doctors certainly need to have full access to all the data on patients they’ve treated. Hospitals have to keep records on the people they’ve treated on their wards, in their clinics, and in their ORs. Payers (insurers, Medicare, Medicaid, et al) need data access to pay claims, track demographics, and create statistical and financial forecasts. And patients must have access to their own data, at minimum to vet it for errors, at best to own a full copy of their health history since birth to share with providers and care-givers. I spent 8 months trying to correct an error on the report for the breast MRI I had in 2008 as preparation for my cancer surgery. The report said “family history of breast cancer.” NO. I was Patient Zero, there was NO family history of…

Jun 26 2011

Geography = Health. Really.

By admin healthcare industry

After [readacted] years on the planet, I have the great good fortune to have a huge coterie of friends and colleagues, and a lengthened view of all manner of topics. A convergence popped up to demonstrate that yesterday when a friend (and, full disclosure, a member of my extended family) shared this TED-MED Talk by GiS rock-star Bill Davenhall about the confluence of geography and health: It makes perfect sense – if you have to stop and think about it, perhaps you’re cognitively impacted by the ozone in YOUR geographic location. “The environment” is a phrase that we’re at risk of becoming deaf to, due to overuse. I challenge you to do two things: Look at the children in your life, and ask yourself if their surroundings are making it easier to grow up healthy and strong … or not. Ask your local hospital or health system if they’ve done any GiS (Geographic information System) health mapping of the areas they serve. Add a bonus for yourself, and take a tour of the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality to see what the impact of where you grew up, and where you live, is on your health outlook. And start asking your doctors to add “where do you live?” to their list of diagnostic questions. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Nov 23 2010

Did someone say “disruptive”?

By admin healthcare industry

I’ve been a disruptive woman for most of my life. Now I get to own that tag officially – I’ve joined the blogroll over at Disruptive Women in Healthcare. As of today, I’m the headline story 😉 It IS my story. And I’m stickin’ to it…

Nov 19 2010

The Story on Healthcare Reform…After 11/2/2010

By admin healthcare industry

I attended a great Disruptive Women in Health Care event last week: Health Reform After the 2010 Election – Assessing the Viability of Health Insurance in the Aftermath of the Mid-Term Elections. A big title, but it’s a big topic. In a series of panel discussions, a varied group of healthcare policy wonks and a smattering of journalists offered their perspectives on what the future of healthcare payment & health insurance reform is, given that control of the House is now in Republican hands, and the Senate super-majority won by the Democrats in 2008 is history. With the economy in the tank since before the 2008 election, and little to show for the massive injection of federal money to bail out the financial markets and the auto industry (other than a continuing 9+% national unemployment rate), it still seems quixotic that the Obama administration picked healthcare reform as its first big policy project. Dan Gerstein, a Forbes columnist and former legislative aide to Senator Joe Lieberman, said during the first panel discussion, “this was a perfect storm of bad execution on the part of the Democrats.” With the economy and jobs a much larger, and more personal, issue to most of the electorate, the 9 months it took to push the healthcare reform act through Congress took a big toll on the public’s perception of the Obama administration. Which, in turn, took a big toll on the Democratic Party’s results on Nov. 2. Now, whither healthcare reform? It seems that the watchword will be replace, not repeal. Nancy Johnson, who served 24 years representing Connecticut in the US House and is now a public policy advisor at Baker Donelson, said, “people are beyond parties now. Two things have gone fundamentally wrong: endless use of credit, which has led to fiscal…