Health Train Analytics

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.   - Harold Rosenberg *************************************************** This is my preface for today's stories It's the end of 2008, and between nodding off and consuming egg nog there are some interesting blog writings, analyses, and reports emanating from various congressional reports, foundations, and health care think tanks. If you are a pessimist the tanks are half empty or even empty, if you are an optimist the tank is half full.  If you are like most people, the 'tank' is meaningless and does not apply to the real world. There is a certain amount of common sense that is lacking in many things we now have to deal with...

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Content for 2008 Health Train Express

The end of 2008 certainly has been remarkable. What unexpected cataclysmic events await us in 2009? Will what we have experienced in 2008 give us a better understanding of other impending chaos, without our taking serious proactive measures, rather than retroactive reflexes.??? Read more at Health Train Express Monthly Content for Health Train Express—December 2008 Primary Care Interruption Express 2008 Denoument Brain Train and Fitness Transitions Transparency Bailout Cooling Down Throwing Money Consensus Transition Team Arogant Physicians (Surgeons) Hypoprimarenia And have a safe and blessed Christmas....

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Primary Care needs to get on the Health Train Express

Richard Reece MD of Medinnovation Blog is the rare breed of specialist (in his case, pathology) who waves the flag and cheers on the family physician, and general practitioner in their battle to survive.  Even I as an ophthalmologist will join his efforts and realize if primary care can be picked off then all of us are very vulnerable.  No specialist should be excited about the impending doom of PCPs and the secondary loss of patient access to healthcare in America.  The American College of Physicians has sent a letter to President-elect Obama via HHS Secretary designate Tom Daschle requesting a ten percent bonus for primary care physicians alloted from the economic stimulus package. Tom Daschle has been handed to our physician group without our input and/or comments. He...

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Health Train Interruption

Sorry I have been away the past week, moving from California to Georgia.  I've been looking for a 'retirement phase out" and appear to have found one.  Once I settle in I will be able to alot scheduled time to my newly acquired fondness of blogging. Known for it's peanuts and peaches and pecans ...

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Health Train Express--2008

The end of 2008 seems a good time to review the state of health information technology and the progress of Electronic Medical Record implementation. Much has not occured since 2003 when GWB appointed David Brailer MD as the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT). Initially, like all new things, ONCHIT attracted a great deal of publicity.  It stimulated the organization of CCHIT, a national certifying authority for producing interoperable information systems, assuring the compatibilty of different vendor offerings to move toward a goal of the National Health Information Network. During the ensuing years, the most successful vendors became CCHIT certified, but now without annual costs paid for by the vendorss...

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Health Train Express--Denoument

Today we are changing from the train to an airliner. I do my best 'creative thinking', or perhaps I become a bit delusional at 40,000 feet. Perhaps it is the reduced atmospheric pressure or  decrease in oxygen.  No matter...it is the end result here that is important rather than the science. An economic survey, or just reading the news tells us that financial institutions have failed.  Our industrial production base has changed, and what was once the bastion of middle class attainment, the automobile companies in the United States have tanked. As I fly over the United States I see Wall Street in ruin, empty houses, unfinished home construction, and a hole in the ground where the world trade center used to stand, the midwest...

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Brain Train Express

For those of you who have not noticed videogaming is a 3 billion dollar industry, and is fluorishing during hard times.  For one thing it has a lot of 'bang for the buck',  compared to theme parks, movies, and does not use any fuel. It also turns out that 16% of the gaming market has to do with health and fitness.  Yes,that's correct, you couch potatoes can use brain power as well as fitness training with interactive Wii (Nintendo) games. Here are some examples: Flaghouse   PE & RECREATION SPECIAL POPULATIONS ACTIVITIES FOR LIFE SENSORY SOLUTIONS FITBRAINS PHYSICAL FITNESS VIDEO TRAINING POSIT SCIENCE BRAIN FITNESS PROGRAM CLASSIC TRY AN INTERACTIVE DEMO HERE EXERCISE IN A BOX...

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Brain Train Express

For those of you who have not noticed videogaming is a 3 billion dollar industry, and is fluorishing during hard times.  For one thing it has a lot of 'bang for the buck',  compared to theme parks, movies, and does not use any fuel. It also turns out that 16% of the gaming market has to do with health and fitness.  Yes,that's correct, you couch potatoes can use brain power as well as fitness training with interactive Wii (Nintendo) games. Here are some examples: Flaghouse   PE & RECREATION SPECIAL POPULATIONS ACTIVITIES FOR LIFE SENSORY SOLUTIONS FITBRAINS PHYSICAL FITNESS VIDEO TRAINING POSIT SCIENCE BRAIN FITNESS PROGRAM CLASSIC TRY AN INTERACTIVE DEMO HERE EXERCISE IN A BOX...

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Health Train Express Transition

The gulf between the macrocosm of health policy planners and the microcosm of health care providers, ie physicians, grows wider day by day. Evidence of this abounds as other participants in the health process compete for a seat at the table of transition teams for the new Obama administration.   What does Tom Daschle really know about providing healthcare to that patient on the exam table? His choice was as an arbiter for political disagreements and an attempt to create the coalition to pass some type of health care legislation.  One cannot even begin to predict the outcome....whether it will call for a universal payor plan or another throwing of the dice in regard to reimbursement plans, or another game of insuring...

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Health Care Transparency and others

New buzz word "Transparency" is upon us all.  Wikipedia lists a number of industries, and uses for this term, however it does not list 'healthcare".  I am not sure what that means. Much of today's post will not relate to health train express, so I will link you to my posts over "there". ...

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Health Train Express Bailout 2018

Medpolitics has an  article written by  Paul Hseih MD regarding parallels between the home mortgage crisis created by 'universal home ownership' encouraged by not so wise financial market manipulations, and 'universal health care" as is being currently proposed by the Obama administration. Paul Hsieh, MD is the co-founder of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine. Are we at the beginning of a "Health Care Bubble"  destined to failure? More bubbles please!! del.icio.us Tags: health care bubble,obama health care,universal payer...

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Cool Down the Health Train Express

How would you like to become a popsicle? A cardiologist in Louisiana has developed a non invasive technique to cool down the body of patients with strokes, acute myocardial infarction, for any disease whose body temperature can rapidly be cooled (ie, within six to ten minutes) to produce hypothermia.  It has long been recognized that hypothermia slows down the metabolic processes and improves the liklihood of healing without further damage to vital organs such as the brain, heart, kidneys, and liver. This technique has been in use for decades for transporting donor organ tissues. The device, is demonstrated by Paul McMullen M.D., cardiologist at the Ochsner Clinic, named "THERMOSUIT HYPOTHERMIA THERAPY.  It is currently...

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Throwing Money at the Health Train

As long as we are at it, how about throwing  50 or 100 billion toward those underpriveleged hospitals and doctors.  This is a national crisis which undermines  the health and welfare of all.   Get it while the spigot is flowing.  Do we want cars or health?? iHealthbeat reports:  Lawmakers Consider Adding Health IT to Stimulus Package Congressional health care leaders are considering adding health IT provisions to an economic stimulus package being developed by aides to President-elect Barack Obama and congressional staff, Government Health IT reports. Congressional sources say that one strategy would be to attach the Wired for Health Care Quality Act to the economic stimulus legislation (McCloskey,...

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Health Train Express Consensus

While most folks have been tuned to the recent financial crises, industry bailouts, mortgage melt downs, there have been significant proposals from the health insurance industry, set forth by the American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), The Wall Street Journal reports: Ideas about how the U.S. can achieve universal health care are coming thick and fast. The insurance industry itself is stepping up to the nation’s suggestion box with another proposal. The trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, called for universal coverage, a more centralized insurance market and cost-reduction that would slow the growth of the nation’s ballooning health-care spending by 30% in five years. Consensus is emerging on universal healthcare,...

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President Obama's Healthcare Transition Team

Every physician and almost every potential patient has dealt with the chaos and inequity of our current non-system. It takes an enormous effort to navigate to and from a medical clinic, hospital, navigate forms, bills, and payments, what is covered, and what is not covered.  What used to be  a rather simple transaction between doctor and patient has degenerated into a blizzard of paperwork, information technology and more. While HIT is promoted as a 'cure' it also raises many questions as to expense, privacy and converting healthcare providers into data entry clerks who will utilize more time entering data than caring for patients. Healthcare transparency is upon us, and also health care policy planning.  Tom Daschle has the following to offer.  All of us should 'bury'...

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Arrogant,Abusive, and Disruptive on the Health Train Express

In today's email newsletters one from the New York Times caught my eye. This is old, but still disturbing news. The article fails to mention what steps hospitals, medical staffs, and others have initiated to curb these episodes.  Human behavior is at times unpredictable. What is also not mentioned is the disciplinary process, nor the response of the attending surgeon in their example. It is also very interesting the article mentions (as an afterthought) that the incidence of these 'outbursts' have diminished recently. Could this be attributed to the mandate of decreased hours for residents in training. It also does not attribute what the support staff did ,if anything, to enable this type of behavior.  Does the nursing supervisors,...

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