The folks at HIMSS are claiming that the 2012 conference in Las Vegas a couple months ago set a world record for the most tweets at a health conference. (I’m checking to see who keeps such records.)

By the numbers, according to HIMSS:

• The #HIMSS12 hashtag was used 28,434 times.
• HIMSS12 averaged 167 tweets per hour.
• HIMSS12 was mentioned 33,247 times in social media, more than double HIMSS11 (which itself was more than double HIMSS10).
• The keynote by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone generated 7,595 tweets, beating out the 7,047 tweets from Dr. Farzad Mostashari’s keynote.

This infographic from HIMSS tells more of the story about the whole conference.

I am not surprised Brian Ahier and Regina Holliday had so much influence on social media at the conference. Ahier moderated the Meet the Bloggers panel I was on.

I was, however, surprised to the breakdown of mobile devices accessing the HIMSS conference’s mobile site. Apple with 70 percent sounds right, particularly when you consider how many iPads were in evidence, but I would have guessed Android would have more than 14 percent share because it’s so popular for smartphones and BlackBerry more than 2 percent because a lot of enterprises still use that platform. I guess I’m one of the few people left in health IT with a BlackBerry.

UPDATE, Friday, April 27: It was healthcare social media consulting firm Symplur that tracked the tweets and announced the record. There’s more data here, though my head starts spinning when someone discusses stuff like slopes of equations.

Remember James C. Tyree, the University of Chicago Medical Center board member who died last year from a preventable medical error at the very same hospital he was on the board of? His estate has reached a $10 million settlement with the prestigious teaching hospital for “alleged negligence,” the Chicago Tribune reported.

As I previously wrote, Tyree died from an intravascular air embolism, the result of an improperly removed catheter. That just happens to be one of the National Quality Forum’s so-called “never events.”

Tyree, as chairman and CEO of  financial services firm Mesirow Financial, was pretty well-off. He also should have gotten VIP treatment at U. of C. Medical Center since he was a board member. Yet his money and connections could not save him from a preventable error that really should never happen.

Think about that the next time someone tells you that having health insurance automatically gives you access to good care and that the wealthy get better care than the rest of us. Health insurance just means the insurer will help pay the bills — and often the bills rise (as does hospital revenue) — when there’s a preventable error, as seems to be happening with my own father this week. (He’s still in the hospital, though the pneumonia has subsided.) Being a VIP at a teaching hospital just means you might get faster service, more — not necessarily better — care and perhaps direct supervision from executive faculty, not just residents and the occasional attending physician.

Poor quality is epidemic in American healthcare. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Kudos to David Doherty of Ireland-based telehealth provider 3G Doctor for this summation of the problem, which he tweeted in response to the post about my dad:

In 2012 where else but the sickcare industry do you make more money by failing http://t.co/pUOebYho Hope Dad gets well soon @nversel

April 23, 2012 3:46 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@mHealthInsight

mHealth Insight

Keep spreading the word: It’s quality, stupid.

My dad, who already was dealing with a serious health issue, was hospitalized a week ago with what turned out was a urinary-tract infection. That cleared with antibiotics in a couple of days, but then he developed a fever, so he could not be released. While we were waiting for that to subside, he developed a hospital-acquired infection, namely pneumonia. He’s still in the hospital and the hospital is still able to bill Medicare for all these extra days — plus the physical therapy he will get in a rehab center that the hospital owns once he’s discharged because being in bed for a week is a serious setback to his original condition.

If anyone thinks the U.S. has the “best healthcare in the world” and that good insurance will get you good care, think again. Please pass this link around and share your own stories in the comments section so we can help spread the truth about quality deficiencies and perverse financial incentives.

The newest edition of Health Wonk Review is up at Brad Wright’s Wright on Health policy blog, and Wright uses last week’s Masters golf tournament as his theme. He conveniently picks 18 posts to highlight from around the blogosphere (what, no 19th hole?). At the sixth tee, he gets to my post about the questionable media policy at TEDMED.

I’m even more flabbergasted now that I’ve learned others who might be considered “trade press” — really bloggers, not what might be termed traditional publications — got credentialed, too. I guess you have to know someone. Jay Walker reportedly has said he wants to make TEDMED the Davos of healthcare, and Davos is all about elitism. That’s OK, I went to Bellagio and the fancy-schmancy PR firm TEDMED hired to keep riffraff like me away did not.

I had hoped to be in Washington next week to cover the TEDMED conference, but apparently I am either not important enough or don’t have enough money.

Earlier this week, I requested press credentials for the event, the first one since Priceline founder Jay Walker bought TEDMED from Marc Hodosh. I went through Rogers & Cowan, the boutique PR agency Walker hired to represent TEDMED, and got a rather terse and surprising response:

Due to TEDMED’s press badge policy that is available at www.tedmed.com, (also see attached), we are unable to provide press badges to trade outlets due to space constraints, and freelancers/contributors must be on assignment from national outlets with broad circulation. For these reasons, I regret that we are unable to provide you with a badge.

The policy that was attached stated, in part: “Due to space limitations we regret that we cannot accommodate trade journals, third-party research organizations, research analysts at financial services companies, or producers of TV/film projects that lack confirmed theatrical or network TV distribution plans.”

The publicist closed the e-mail with a cheery “best regards.” I read that as PFO. In any case, it seemed like a bizarre way to treat the very media people who know this industry the best. Sure, TEDMED wants coverage from mainstream, national media, and the Hodosh version last year — really, just six months ago — was featured on CNN and ABC, among others. But last year’s version also got coverage from the likes of Medgadget — clearly a trade publication if not merely a blog— and an outlet called The Daily Transcript, which bills itself as “San Diego’s only information company reporting and providing hourly and daily business news.”

I asked this publicist why Medgadget was allowed in last fall and what TEDMED is trying to hide by shutting out the trade press. People who cover healthcare technology every day know what questions to ask. We can distinguish between real news and overblown hype. National TV networks will fawn over the technology and shiny gadgets without asking the questions that need to be asked. It seems to me that the new TEDMED management doesn’t want someone raining on their parade with a reality check.

The story got more intriguing when I received this follow-up response:

Medgadget is a returning media partner.

We invite [a publication I write for] to present a media partnership proposal for the 2013 conference once this year’s event wraps up. Our media partnership commitments are finalized about 4- 5 months prior to each year’s conference, FYI.

I wish we had room to provide every reporter who applies with a press badge/seat, but it is just not possible.

Very sorry again that we cannot register you this year.

What this means is that trade press are more than welcome if they pay to play, but someone simply looking to cover an event without paying up is out of luck.

As for the claim that space is at a premium, TEDMED will take place at the Kennedy Center Opera House, capacity 2,294. TEDMED says to expect about 1,000 attendees. That leaves, oh, nearly 1,300 seats that trade press can’t have, unless they’re willing to become a “media partner.”

Sure, there’s a space crunch. I hope all the “adventurous thinkers and doers” (TEDMED’s words) find room to stretch out in a half-empty hall. At least the pesky trade press won’t be there to report on how freaking smart and innovative they really are.

I have railed more often than I can count against politicians and the national media for misleading or at least failing to inform the public on what health reform is all about. For me, it was quite refreshing to see an interview in the Washington Post with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), attempting to shed some light on the parts of reform that have nothing to do with insurance.

“The Affordable Care Act is mostly known as an insurance expansion, expected to extend coverage to more than 30 million Americans,” started the post by Sarah Kliff. “But … a big chunk of the law is dedicated something arguably more ambitious: an overhaul of the American business model for medicine. ‘This is a very significant piece of the bill that has received virtually no attention because it’s so non-controversial,’ Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told me in a recent interview.”

On Thursday, Whitehouse released a 52-page document outlining what he sees as the 47 changes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is making to how care is delivered. That doesn’t even count the reforms in the HITECH section of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act from a year earlier, by the way.

Health IT, of course, is a big part of reform.”The HITECH Act took important steps to restructure financial incentives to shift the pattern of health IT adoption. The HITECH Act’s Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments are encouraging doctors and hospitals to adopt and “meaningfully use” certified
electronic health records,” Whitehouse noted.

Also from that report:

Health information technology (IT) will radically transform the health care industry, and is the essential, underlying framework for health care delivery system reform. The ACA’s payment reforms, pilot projects, and other delivery system reforms are built with the expectation of having IT-enabled providers. In particular, the shift to new models of care, like ACOs, will rely heavily on information exchange and reporting quality outcomes. Indeed, the formation of ACOs is contingent on having providers “online” to transfer information and patient records, and report quality measures.

Whitehouse did discuss ACOs with the Washington Post, but there’s a reason why the interview appears on a page called the WonkBlog. This stuff is too complicated and wonky for the average person.

What isn’t complicated is explaining that throwing more money at a broken system, as the insurance expansion does, will not lower the cost of care. It also isn’t complicated to explain that tens of thousands of Americans needlessly die each year due to medical errors or low-quality care. Yet, more than a few defenders of the ACA have said that the insurance mandate would help guarantee “quality care” for millions.

Wrong!

The insurance expansion guarantees insurance coverage. It does not guarantee quality care. Whoever wins Friday’s Mega Millions drawing wouldn’t necessarily be able to buy quality care, either. Nor would Bill Gates, for that matter. You can’t get quality care unless you’re willing to address the causes of errors and adverse events. Period.

Sen. Whitehouse seems to understand that. I doubt too many other members of Congress do, despite the fact that a former colleague, the late Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), who had the “Cadillac” coverage so many people covet, died as a result of a medical error.

I saw an interesting article today on Smithsonian magazine’s Paleofuture blog, suggesting that an early radio and publishing professional may have predicted telemedicine as early as 1925.

According to the article, that person, Hugo Gernsback, predicted that within 50 years, by 1975, there would be a contraption he called the “teledactyl.” With this device, physicians would be able to see patients on a television screen (TV did exist in 1925, though it hadn’t reached the masses) and also “touch” patients with radio-controlled arms.

Gernsback wrote:

The busy doctor, fifty years hence, will not be able to visit his patients as he does now. It takes too much time, and he can only, at best, see a limited number today. Whereas the services of a really big doctor are so important that he should never have to leave his office; on the other hand, his patients cannot always come to him. This is where the teledactyl and diagnosis by radio comes in.

Here’s how Gernsback visualized it, on the cover of the February 1925 issue of Science and Invention magazine, which he published.

Incidentally, according to the Smithsonian article, Gernsback just a year later launched a new magazine called Amazing Stories, supposedly the first publication fully dedicated to science fiction. Clearly, though, there was more than a little truth in the 1925 forecast.

I’m not one to sell myself out, but I read a story in satirical newspaper The Onion today with the following headline: “This Article Generating Thousands Of Dollars In Ad Revenue Simply By Mentioning New iPad.” An excerpt:

“Furthermore, any subsequent mention of the new iPad in this article—as well as any mention of the fact that preorders for the device start today—is resulting in increased reader traffic and, thus, increased revenues for your company’s ad-based business model.” At press time, new iPad, new iPad, new iPad, new iPad, new iPad, new iPad, new iPad, new iPad, new iPad, new iPad.

Gotta love lame attempts at SEO! We’ll see if it works for me. ;)

As promised,  there is some video from the “Meet the Bloggers” panel I appeared on, and it comes to us from Dr. Chuck Webster of EHR Workflow Inc. and the EHR.BZ Report. (You may know him from his previous job as CMIO of EHR vendor EncounterPro, formerly known as JMJ Technologies.) Webster was there in the front row capturing parts of the session with a Bluetooth camera strapped to his hat.

The moderator is Brian Ahier and the panelist are, from left to right: Healthcare Scene boss and full-time healthcare blogger John Lynn; fellow Healthcare Scene contributor Jennifer Dennard (real job:  social marketing director at Billian’s HealthDATA/Porter Research/HITR.com); myself; and Carissa Caramanis O’Brien of Aetna.

Here are the results, hopefully in chronological order:

For the record, I do not use Google+. I have an account, and some readers have added me to their circles, but I have not posted a single word there. Google’s terms of service—both old and new—essentially gives the Don’t Be Evil company the right to use my content in any way it sees fit. From “Your Content in our Services”:

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services.

You can find more information about how Google uses and stores content in the privacy policy or additional terms for particular Services. If you submit feedback or suggestions about our Services, we may use your feedback or suggestions without obligation to you.

As someone who makes a living creating content, this scares me. Google effectively can steal and modify my content without compensation. No, thanks.

I also should give a belated shout-out to Joe Paduda of Managed Care Matters, who hosted last week’s Health Wonk Review. My HIMSS12 wrap made the review of healthcare news from the blogosphere.

The video from the Dell Healthcare Think Tank dinner at HIMSS12 last week, which I participated in, is now available. It’s long, but if you’re into health IT policy and healthcare reform, it probably is worth your time.