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Breaking news: Private-sector health groups agree to work with Obama

There’s some fairly significant news coming out of Washington tonight: A CNN Money report via Yahoo! says that six key private-sector health industry groups have agreed to participate in the Obama administration’s effort to reform healthcare by pledging to take $2 trillion in costs out of the system over the next 10 years.

“Six trade associations representing unions, hospitals, insurers and the drug industry have signed on to the commitment,” the story says. An Associated Press story says doctors are participating as well. Based on these stories, we can safely assume that coalition includes the AMA, AHA, AHIP, PhRMA and probably the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and the Service Employees International Union.

We’ll know for sure Monday when representatives from the six participating groups join President Obama at a press conference.

CNN reports that Obama will make reference to the AHIP-backed ad campaign that torpedoed reform efforts during the Clinton administration. “It is a recognition that the fictional television couple, Harry and Louise, who became the iconic faces of those who opposed health care reform in the ’90s, desperately need health care reform in 2009. And so does America,” Obama reportedly will say Monday.

Allscripts to sell drug-packaging division, but who’s the buyer?

Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions today announced an agreement in principle to sell one of its oldest assets, the Medication Services division. But the press release left out one minor detail: the name of the proposed buyer.

I’ve got a request in to the company, but if anyone else has any information, I’d love to hear it.

Allscripts has been prepackaging prescription drugs from its Libertyville, Ill., pharmacy facility (and former corporate headquarters building) for longer than it’s been selling electronic medical records, but medication services no longer is the central focus of the company.

“The proposed sale of our Medication Services business increases our focus on our core healthcare information technology businesses at a time when we expect electronic health records and electronic prescribing, along with our interoperability and connectivity efforts, to receive a substantial boost from the federal economic stimulus package,” CEO Glen Tullman said in the press release.

Allscripts says it will continue offering medication services through a co-marketing agreement. But, again, we don’t know who the company will be co-marketing with.

Bad data mining

Recently I received a flier in the mail from Bausch & Lomb, offering me a free sample of an over-the-counter allergy drug called Alaway (ketotifen fumarate ophthalmic solution). “Don’t suffer through another allergy season. Stop itchy eyes,” the mailer said.

How did Bausch & Lomb know I have hay fever? It could only be from my history of purchasing OTC decongestants like Claritin-D and Alavert-D (both are loratadine/pseudoephedrine combos). And the reason why drug companies know I was taking this medication is because federal law now requires a photo ID and a signature to purchase any products containing pseudoephedrine. (Thanks, meth heads, for inconveniencing millions of innocent people.)

Clearly, pharmacies are selling their pseudoephedrine purchase logs to pharma marketers. Some might call this legitimate use of my personal information for disease management purposes under the treatment/payment/operations exception to HIPAA. It feels more like a violation of my privacy.

Anyone else have similar thoughts?

CDS=Cat decision support?

I’m sure the national media are jumping all over a “Perspective” essay in the July 26 New England Journal of Medicine about a cat named Oscar (at right) at Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, R.I., who has “an uncanny ability to predict when residents are about to die,” the report says.

“His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families,” writes David M. Dosa, M.D, a geriatrician at Rhode Island Hospital.

According to an Associated Press/Yahoo story, Oscar recently received a wall plaque publicly commending his “compassionate hospice care.”

I guess if you don’t have advanced information systems with full clinical decision support, you rely on the innate talents of the animal kingdom. Hey, if a method works, don’t knock it!

When doctors actually do turn to computers, it’s often for educational purposes. For what it’s worth, Manhattan Research now has a ranking of the top 10 pharmaceutical product Web sites that primary care physicians are visiting in 2007:

Januvia

Singulair

Advair

Chantix

Adderall XR

Byetta

Gardasil

Vytorin

Avandia

Concerta

In other news, URAC has a new competition to reward best practices in consumer empowerment and protection, with a related conference. The organization is taking applications through Aug. 15 at www.urac.org/bestpractices/. The awards will be presented at the first conference, set for next March in Orlando, Fla.

And finally, we come to the self-flagellation section of this post. My latest feature story on personal health records is out.

Clout

In the days and weeks leading up to last month’s HIMSS conference, several people, probably hoping to get on my crowded dance card, noted that I was one of the more “important” journalists who covers health IT and healthcare policy. Flattering perhaps, but not exactly true. To me, importance in media is measured by audience size and influence. Based on a couple of recent stories, I really don’t have that much.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week how the price of generic drugs can vary so greatly from pharmacy to pharmacy. The story caught the attention of people all over America, including that of David E. Williams and his Health Business Blog, so much so that it’s generated extra traffic to my own blog the last couple of days. Why? Because I had essentially the same story nearly two years ago, first with this blog post from June 23, 2005, then in a story that ran in the Chicago Sun-Times on Sept. 19, 2005.

Now, the Sun-Times is a major daily newspaper in the nation’s third-largest media market, but it just doesn’t have the readership numbers or the cachet among national policy-makers as does the Journal. Still, I take pride in knowing that I had the story way early—in the same manner Detroit’s WXYZ-TV must have taken pride in having the same story a couple of years before I did.

The same thing happened on a smaller scale two weeks ago, when Government Health IT reported on the demise of the Santa Barbara County Care Data Exchange. That grabbed the attention of most of the healthcare trades nationwide, which is fine, except that Inside Healthcare Computing reported the news on Sept. 16, 2006. The archives are locked for subscribers only, but take my word, it’s there.

I didn’t write the story, though I am a frequent contributor to that publication. No matter, the target audience is more the CIO than the CEO or policy wonk. And guess which group has more clout on a national level?

Then there’s the matter of lifting the ban on cell phones in hospitals, something that’s also suddenly become a hot topic not only in the U.S., but in Britain as well. For the record, the Mobile Healthcare Alliance—a group that actually no longer exists—first put out a report at the 2004 TEPR conference, saying that the risk of hospital-systems interference from cell phones is manageable. Read my coverage here.

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Breaking news: Private-sector health groups agree to work with Obama

Allscripts to sell drug-packaging division, but who’s the buyer?

Bad data mining

CDS=Cat decision support?

Clout

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