Monday Digest for Health Train Express

And here is the top of the blogosphere news for Monday, January 31, 2011 Dr Val   5 million dollar fine for Doctors asking questions about Guns in the home The Health Care Blog  A Medical Student’s Dilemma Dr Wes   Carding Doctors? Dr A  Social Media to Traditional Media, or why you should participate Health Policy and Communications Blog Rise of the Tea Party Machine Life as a Healthcare CIO   Cool Technology of the Week Medinnovation   Health Reform and Pay-for Performance,Not So Fast, Macduff ! Wall Street Journal Health Blog   Six Health-Care IPOs Planned For This Week Disruptive Women in Health Care   Who’s a Medical Doctor? Kevin MD   Marcus Welby...

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Health Reform—The Nail on the Head

  Richard Reeces, author of Medinnovation reveals that two Democrats his the health reform nail on the head. In his blog Reece elaborates:  “Patrick Caddell, former pollster for Jimmy Carter, and Douglas Schoen, Democrat pollster, strategist, and author of The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, say bluntly and succinctly give three cogent reasons why the health reform law has failed to impress the American people.” Number One, the law is “anti-democratic.” It received no Republican votes, and three sneaky deals – the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker Kickback, and the Connecticut U Con – made it possible. Its passage did not pass the smell test. If you believe in democratic bipartisanship and consensus,...

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Health Train is changing Tracks

  The Big Switch I spent the past several days reviewing the content of my blog over the past six years.  It amazed me that I don’t remember writing a lot of what I read.  It seemed unfamiliar and I wondered who wrote that stuff. Perhaps some other writers experience this phenomenon whereby one does not want to own what one wrote some time ago. My blogs have changed considerably and I estimate most of it is not really original, much is cut and pasted, some is repeated with attribution. The most I have to offer to my readers is my time. I am not seeing patients anymore and have a volume of time to read many things, sit back ponder, pontificate.  Those who can do, and those who can’t either teach or write. Both of those...

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World Economic Forum

    The World Economic Forum is live today via video streaming from Davos,Switzerland.  Many health care related interviews with Bill Gates, Tony Blair and others.   http://www.weforum.org/    Other issues regarding Information Technology, and World Health, Global Social Media Networking.   LIVE STREAM...

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Observations

  The Medicare web site,  Medicare.gov offers a “Physician Compare” section.  The stated goal is to be ‘patient centric’ to meet consumer needs.  This section supposedly  offers a means to search for physicians to compare their demographics and expertise as well as certifications.   I researched the site extensively for multiple providers who I know personally.  The amount of information was minimalistic, demographics, specialty and degrees, ( no mention of subspecialty) medical group name (if any) with no mention of hospital affiliations. There was no mention of re-certification status, when licensed. The main features most notably displayed was if the provider accepted assignment. (apparently an indicator...

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Pharma Crisis ??

  Today’s WSJ reports that Pharma is being squeezed from all sides. 2011 Looks Tough For Drug Companies  (clickable)   Despite past news of huge billion dollar profits for Pharma, the ecosystem for pharmaceuticals has gradually eroded leaving   pharma in a less tenable position.  Pressure is mounting with health reform measures, while pharma has been hit hard by restrictive formulas, and the emergence of ‘generics’.  Generics, once looked upon with suspicion and doubt have take over a large part of doctor prescribing habits.  Doctors have been forced to prescribe generics by limitations of their patient’s plans and their formularies.  Most generics are tier 1 (a classification of drugs in each...

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Algo Men to the Rescue

  When all else fails, do a study. President Obama reigns supreme in this area.  Algorithms sound impressive, not like Algo Gores. This is what higher math is for…to prove the discontinuities of existence, the universe or whatever you are plagued with in modern times. Algos are supposed to make decision making easier with a formula or diagrams directing a ‘machine’ (computer) to make stem choices. (Best stem I have had was on an apple (not the computer) President Obama will soon be appointing a new Czar. The algorithm Czar who will be the final arbiter of algoland.  The AlgoCzar will reign over health care, politics, economics, defense, security, foreign policy and the Rest rooms. You can read the entire article at...

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More on Jack

  My colleague and blog friend,   The Hospitalist   expanded better than I ever could about Jack Lalanne in his blog on Monday.  It’s worth reading. He was the original ‘health nut’. But he was ‘bolted’ down. He exemplifies the fact that we all die, but the journey to it can be a gradual slope of declining health, unhappiness, disability or a good quality of life until one goes over the cliff  suddenly. Jack,   the original ‘Juicer"’ did not need MLM,Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr,MySpace, or coupons from Groupon to spread his ideas So really, disciplined eating habits, exercise, avoidance of unhealthy stress counts more than blockbuster drugs and high tech enhanced hospitals. Accountable care...

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An Icon Passes

    For some of you the name of Jack Lalanne brings forth images of a ‘jumping jack’ on your TV screen, or memories of “Bally” gyms, the chain that Jack started. He was among the first to popularize weightlifting and his physical fitness techniques – including the fingertip press-up – formed the centerpiece of The Jack LaLanne Show, which ran on American television from the 1950s to the 1980s. Long before the age of celebrity exercise videos, LaLanne was telling people how to get fit. Jack left us yesterday at the age of 96 years.  The original 20th century beacon of fitness and preventive living he was a disciplined man, At the time a  version of Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Just a moment of science from us all...

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Health Care and Reform Film Festival

  “We” are going to introduce a new forum for ‘film” or digital productions regarding our health system.  Here is our “World Class” presentation.   img alt="" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('e77b557f-e9a3-4ab4-b033-76a5760dbbfa'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "";" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0y7PDFN8otuhDcSPuKGShU3ol8JCO99LfoY_auXt0GbIzpt4eq24fAJS5Zn9_WwMXqdnwqoMNpUTETG1i4NDxQZAW70bNvV3xwqKTrFwslknWF1QrwDVeR3-qXjo-V2-Q-IzhO5pAdWQ/?imgmax=800" style="border-style: none"> img alt="" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('b05637a9-f1be-41b1-aa1f-78423b5d961a'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "";" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj511-UdmvgX8GUnVmzXueYp7xyOP6TaWJw6rmoorULs1kUHqgnNB-SyyKf2Kd9x1Ft_I-gpCMtupL2kXHFgYqFC-SV9u9t-PKTOfnBBMNHrydKpVdV0Wi1U2a5IQ0pHMQjbvMkm9Gd09Y/?imgmax=800"...

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Study Looks For, Can’t Find Much Evidence of E-Health’s Benefits

  There is a bit of a new link on the right hand sidebar. Levin’s Shout Out. Expands the audience a bit. With the U.S. and the U.K. heading full steam towards electronic medical records and other health IT applications, how much evidence is there that they improve care? The Wall Street Journal speaks to this issue. Let’s keep it all realistic.  !!   del.icio.us Tags: daily shout,evidenced based medicine...

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Locomotives can only Pull So Many Cars

  Bird's eye view of more than a mile long rake as seen from Lowell's Observatory.(Arizona)     Clive Peedell in The Health Care Blog picks up today where I left off regarding the NHS in U.K.  He correctly identified that the NHS white paper is a plan to dismantle the NHS by allowing market forces to operate to disengage the NHS from health care bit by bit.  He call this task “creative destruction.”  This NHS will not fall overnight because the market’s invisible hand will destroy it in a piecemeal fashion, leaving the unprofitable areas of healthcare firmly in public sector hands. “The key policy levers enabling this to happen are: 1. The purchaser provider split, with GP commissioning consortia taking...

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Which Planet am I on?

    A tweet arrived this morning from a twit friend. The NHS is rapidly unraveling in the U.K. according to this tweet.  Thank you to Mike Broad and The Health Care Blog Picture this scenario: Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “In order to meet rising need in the future, we need to make changes. We need to take steps to improve health outcomes, bringing them up to the standards of the best international healthcare systems, and to bring down the NHS money spent on bureaucracy. (Hmmmm?) Andrew Lansley's health and social care bill will abolish England’s 152 primary care trusts This sounds familiar. The controversial Health and Social Care Bill has been published, paving the way for GPs to control 80% of the NHS...

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TED MED 2010

  TED MED today released a series of videos from the October 2010 Conference. The conference kicked off with Steve Colbert’s enthusiastic opening speech to the conference.   One of the topics near and dear to me personally is the session on Lung Transplantation in Cystic Fibrosis.  One of the participants was a young woman who had received a pulmonary transplant and gave a wonderful inspiring opera recital.  Any trained vocalist can attest to just how much strength and stamina an opera singer must have to peform.  Truly an inspiring presentation: The first presentation is  Charity Tillemann-Dick whose personal story and the results of her pulmonary transplant are even more amazing! Dr. Shaf Keshavjee from...

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Are you a QR user?

  The 3 Rs ,  long the basis of educational dogma in the United States has been supplemented, and at times replaced by word processors, spelling and grammar checks and calculators capable of calculating algebraic, trigonometric, and calculus .. Add to this the spice of mobile apps, smart phones with cameras and the  QR code      Hold this up to your iPhone equipped with one of the  QR reader apps,   readily available at iTune for  FREE !  If it’s free, it must be free. There is also a web cam app available. Any digital camera and web cam is capable of reading these ideograms and with the proper software spit out the message in old fashioned plain English, French, German, or whatever....

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Pills and other Things on Health Train Express

                                                              Pill cap 2.0 ? It’s time for your medicine cabinet to become IT literate. Yes, plans have been developed, the hardware and software ready to go.  The carriers are dreaming big about subscriptions to a service that reads your medicine bottles over your bathroom sink. Gigaom   reports that at C.E.S. 2011  the activity about tablets was intense,   however there were other...

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Health Train Express and the Sleeper Car

  When I began this blog six years ago I had no idea how useful the title would be for my forum.  If you look at my several hundred posts I have been able to use train analogies for many of my issues with medicine and health care. The title today says it all for today’s blog posting. One of the largest, and ignored medical problems (sleep apnea) creates an enormous fall out of heart disease, hypertension, sleep disorder, depression, and not the least, marital dysfunction. At home monitoring technology offers much  to physicians and patients alike.  I am not referring to  EMR,HIT, Health Information Exchange or other in office  technology assist devices. Home monitoring devices are now entrenched firmly...

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ACOs, HMOs in Drag?

  assumptions December 1st, 2010 by Dr. Jesse Cole ACO models offer nothing that other ASOs--alphabet soup organizations--have not offered in the past. HMOs, PPOs, MPOs and more have all been tried and if not failed, at least have never lived up to the hype. There is no reason to believe ACOs will fare any better. But it's possible the ACO experiment will be more dangerous than its proponents care to admit. [More:] Let's start with the assumption that healthcare is so fragmented and inefficient that putting people in a hospital-based ACO will reduce costs. Where's the evidence for that? Do most people actually need a complex, multiprovider team to deliver their healthcare? The answer is no. Throughout their lives, most people...

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From iHealthBeat

  A brief visit to an excellent source of Health News Health Care Providers Identify Roadblocks to Meaningful Use On Monday and Tuesday, more than a dozen physicians and representatives of hospitals discussed challenges associated with meeting requirements under the meaningful use program, AHA News reports. Under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records can qualify for incentive payments through Medicare and Medicaid (AHA News, 1/11). Attendees spoke during a two-day meeting of the Implementation work group of the Health IT Standards Committee. The speakers were advanced users of EHRs, according to Modern Healthcare (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 1/12)....

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