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Podcast (but not mine): I discuss ACA, HIPAA, consumerism in healthcare

Longtime readers know how I’ve railed against how the mainstream media’s coverage of healthcare reform in general and the Affordable Care Act in particular, notably the fact that Obamacare addresses a lot more than just insurance coverage. I’ve also railed against how hospitals have used HIPAA as an excuse not to give patients copies of their medical records, when, in fact, the privacy rule says the exact opposite, something HHS finally saw need to provide guidance on just this month.

Those of you who have followed me to MedCity News know that I’ve also been covering the Get My Health Data effort since the beginning last summer — and its roots in the HHS decision to water down “patient engagement” requirements in the Meaningful Use EHR incentive program nearly a year ago.

With this in mind, I knew exactly what I was going to talk about when an old college friend, Missouri lawyer and published novelist Dale Wiley, asked me to be one of the first guests on his new podcast, the Dale Wiley Show. We talked for a good half hour, and probably could have gone on for longer, and I am especially grateful he let me talk about multiple system atrophy, the rare disease that took my dad’s life in 2012.

I do have to take Dale to task for picking a photo of me with my face bandaged from my injury at the 2011 HIMSS conference. He told me he picked more for pixel size than for aesthetic quality. Ah, well. I’m probably due for a new professional headshot anyway.

Click here for the iTunes link to the Dale Wiley Show. Music fans will especially like it, as Dale formerly ran an indie record label and knows a lot of people in the business.

January 18, 2016 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Health Wonk Review for the holidays

The final Health Wonk Review of 2014 is up (actually, it’s been up for five days, but I’ve been buried with deadlines until this morning), courtesy of Julie Ferguson  and the Lynch Ryan Workers’ Comp Insider blog. My Forbes.com post on the recent reality checks for healthcare wearables makes this biweekly review of the best of the healthcare blogosphere. (I also did a follow-up, featuring an ESPN “Sport Science” segment sponsored by Fitbit.) FWIW, the comments have been closed on the LinkedIn Digital Health Group item about my original post.

There isn’t much else in the realm of health IT in this edition of HWR, but there are some interesting discussions about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including an important question from Peggy Salvatore: To whom is accountable care actually accountable to? Yep, ACOs are right there in the Affordable Care Act, lest you think the Obamacare law is only about health insurance coverage.

Enjoy the recap, and enjoy the holidays, whichever ones you celebrate. I’ll see you in January.

December 23, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

More health IT comedy means the public is taking notice

I often share jokes and humorous videos here, sometimes because a product is worthy of ridicule, but also to illustrate how some health IT is going mainstream. I’m going to do it again today because two things happened in the last week that I had not seen before.

First, though Stephen Colbert has made fun of digital health and fitness products before, last week he took it upon himself to do so on consecutive nights.

On Sept. 8, he took down the forthcoming Pavlok fitness bracelet, a product that sends an electrical jolt to the wearer’s arm as a reminder to exercise. It also debits the user’s bank account and posts an embarrassing message on Facebook. No, really. “When you’re in a dark place, alone at home, out of shape and too tired, overweight or depressed to work out, it’s probably because you weren’t getting enough public humiliation,” Colbert said.

 

A night later, Colbert, like the rest of the world, was talking about the Apple Watch. After cheering wildly about the announcement, Colbert asked, “What does it do?” He then showed a picture of himself from high school and said it was finally cool to wear a calculator watch.

 

Then, on Friday, no less than America’s Finest News Source, The Onion, got into the act with its “American Voices” feature, in which common people (actually, the same five or six headshots recycled for years with different names and occupations) give their fake opinions on a newsworthy topic. That day, the subject was, “Patients Making Record Number Of Telehealth ‘E-Visits’ With Doctors,” with a reference to an actual Deloitte study on that very topic.

As one “commenter” said, “Until doctors can email me painkillers, I don’t see the point.”

 

September 16, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Podcast: Greenway Health CEO Tee Green on interoperability, consumerism and more

Health IT vendor Greenway Health recently finished its rollout of a cloud-based EHR to all 8,200 Walgreens stores in the U.S. When I was offered the chance to interview CEO Wyche T. “Tee” Green III about this, I decided to take it a step further.

In all my years of covering health IT, I’ve never met nor even spoken to Green, so I figured a podcast was in order. After all, I had written a piece for Health Data Management earlier this year about how pharmacies are reshaping themselves as true healthcare companies. (This interview also comes in the wake of CVS Caremark ending its sale of tobacco products and changing its name to CVS Health.)

I also had a lot of questions about interoperability issues in health IT and the many criticisms that lately have been heaped on both EHR vendors for perceived usability problems and the federal Meaningful Use EHR incentive program. The timing couldn’t have been better.

Podcast details: Interview with Greenway Health CEO Tee Green, recorded Sept. 8, 2014. MP3, mono, 128 kbps, 25.5 MB. Running time 27:51

1:00 Walgreens rollout and EHRs for “retail health”
3:20 Future expansion to Walgreens Healthcare Clinic locations
4:15 My own experience with lack of interoperability at a CVS MinuteClinic
5:30 Achieving EHR interoperability
7:30 Frustration with slow progress on Meaningful Use
10:30 Data liquidity
12:30 Update on CommonWell Health Alliance
14:25 Addressing criticisms that vendors are hindering interoperability
16:30 EHR usability
18:10 Greenway Marketplace app store
22:15 Patient engagement and slow start to Stage 2 Meaningful Use
24:10 Dealing with the rise of consumerism in healthcare

I’ve been kicking around in my mind the idea of hosting a regular podcast, perhaps as frequently as weekly. If so, what day of the week would you prefer to hear a new episode?

September 12, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Video: StartUp Health co-founder talks Health Datapalooza on CNBC

Unity Stoakes, co-founder and president of entrepreneurship academy StartUp Health, was in Washington this week for Health Datapalooza. Tuesday morning, with the Capitol dome serving as a picturesque background, he appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to talk innovation in digital health. Stoakes used more than a couple of buzzwords, such as “revolution” (see my commentary for Forbes on Apple’s just-announced HealthKit mocking the notion of a revolution) and “creative destruction,” and CNBC added a few more, like “disruptive” and “tectonic shift”

But he did temper the enthusiasm with a reality check. “To be quite honest, there’s a lot of uncertainty,” Stoakes said when asked about who the losers would be in the new healthcare world. Have a look, and share with your friends outside of healthcare so they get a bit of a sense about what digital health is and where true healthcare reform might come from.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In case you missed it, I interviewed Stoakes last month for a story in Healthcare IT News about breaking down data silos in digital, mobile and “connected” health.

June 5, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Podcast: Owen Tripp, CEO of Grand Rounds

Yesterday, Grand Rounds, a San Francisco-based startup that makes an “outcomes management platform” for large employer groups, introduced Office Visits, an online service that helps consumers find “quality” physicians close to home. I’ve long been skeptical of any claims of healthcare quality or any listing of “best” physicians or hospitals, so I invited Grand Rounds co-founder and CEO Owen Tripp on for a podcast to explain what his company is doing.

He told me that a proprietary algorithm helps Grand Rounds “recommend with confidence” the top physicians among the 520,000 medical specialists the company graded nationwide, based on numerous publicly available data sources and some self-reporting. Of those more than half a million specialists, only about 30,000 meet the company’s criteria for recommendation, which shows, at the very least, that Grand Rounds is highly selective.

Based on this interview, I think the product has a lot of potential. It’s nice to see ratings based on outcomes data and not squishy criteria like “he is a great doctor,” as parodied in The Onion this week (“Physician Shoots Off A Few Adderall Prescriptions To Improve Yelp Rating”).

At about 18:30, the conversation reminds me of another recent podcast, with University of Rochester neurologist Dr. Ray Dorsey. It turns out that Dorsey is among the 1,000 or so medical advisors to Grand Rounds.

Podcast details: Interview with Owen Tripp, co-founder and CEO of Grand Rounds. MP3, stereo, 128 kbps, 23.8 MB, running time 26:04.

1:00 “Safety” vs. good outcomes
2:20 “Downright terrifying” facts about choosing doctors
4:15 Story behind Grand Rounds
5:30 Algorithm for measuring physician quality that he says has shown about a 40 percent lower rate of mortality on common cardiac procedures
7:10 Data sources, including some self-reporting
8:35 Care coordination services Grand Rounds provides for patients
9:50 Why the direct-to-consumer market is so difficult in healthcare
12:00 Care teams
14:00 Availability and scope of service
16:15 When patients should travel for care and when they should not
18:15 Elements of telemedicine
19:35 Importance of asynchronous communication
21:45 Target market and why he sees the $200 fee as a bargain for patients
23:35 Managing patient records and other data
24:35 Company goals

April 9, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Digital health at the Mid-America Healthcare Venture Forum

In case you haven’t seen the official announcements or caught my tweets, later this month I will be moderating a panel at the Mid-America Healthcare Venture Forum, an event being put on by MedCity News, April 22-23 at the J.W. Marriott hotel in Chicago.

The panel is called “Opportunities (and Challenges) in Digital Health. Per the official description: “Digital health — and its business models — are coming of age. Promising young companies are integrating into healthcare and, in some cases, beginning to find exit partners. But that’s also meant new scrutiny from everyone from investors to the FDA. Learn about the challenges, opportunities and promising new markets in digital health.”

Panelists include: Amy Len, director of Chicago-based accelerator Healthbox; Julie Kling, director of mobile health at Verizon Wireless; and Jack Young, who heads the Qualcomm Life Fund for Qualcomm Ventures. I’ll just be there to keep order, and, of course, to cast my usual, skeptical eye on the field and continue to wonder why investors are throwing so much money at me-too fitness trackers and countless direct-to-consumer products that don’t stand a chance in an industry where nearly everything is paid for by third parties. Or at least that’s my thought at the moment, until we have our conference call next week. :)

The session is scheduled for Wednesday, April 23, at 8:55 a.m. CDT. The hotel is located at 151 W. Adams St. in the heart of the Financial District. Years ago, I worked about two blocks west of there, so I know it’s about 40-45 minutes away from me by public transit, and I’m not a morning person. This could get  interesting. (If any MedCity people are reading this, I’m kidding. I’ll be there on time. Hopefully.)

Our session follows a keynote from James Rogers, chairman of Mayo Clinic Ventures. After the panel is a break, then breakout sessions featuring presentations to investors from startups in digital health, medical devices and pharma/biotech. I hope I don’t prematurely burst anyone’s bubble with too much of a reality check. But, in honor of this week being the 25th anniversary of the release of the great Gen X satire, “Heathers,” I offer this quote from the movie: “Heather told me she teaches people ‘real life.’ She said, real life sucks losers dry.”

Wait, was that too cynical?Let me just say that the panel just got another thing to talk about today, as the FDA, FCC and ONC just released their proposed health IT regulatory strategy, as called for by the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act (FDASIA). To nobody’s surprise, they recommend a “risk-based framework” to regulation of health IT and digital health. Now to figure out if there are any details people should be concerned about…

In the meantime, you can register for the conference here.

April 3, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

eHealth Initiative ‘2020 Roadmap’ panel needs consumers

This press release showed up my inbox on Tuesday:

eHealth Initiative Launches 2020 Roadmap Process

Framework to Change the Future of Nation’s Healthcare System

March 25, 2014, Washington, D.C. – The eHealth Initiative (eHI) announced the launch of the eHealth Initiative 2020 Roadmap, a public-private collaboration that will help guide the  transformation of the nation’s healthcare system by 2020. With the help and support of a  wide array of leading healthcare associations, organizations, and federal agencies, 2020 Roadmap will propose key policy recommendations to implement at a federal level and actions for the private sector to help transform healthcare.

“Health reform calls for transformation to a value-based interoperable system, but there is no direction on how to transition from our current work processes and systems. Clinicians, payers and providers are in dire need of leadership to help transform delivery systems and control cost,” said Jennifer Covich Bordenick, Chief Executive Officer of the eHealth Initiative. “The goal of our new initiative is to craft a multi-stakeholder solution that coordinates the efforts of both the public and private sector so that we can make this transition successfully.”

The 2020 Roadmap will be developed over the next six months through a series of surveys, webinars, executive roundtables, and events with key constituencies; the outcome will be a consensus on how to shape the future of our healthcare system.  Individuals are welcome to complete surveys, participate in upcoming events, and provide general feedback. A new survey is currently being fielded to gather information from the industry.

The 2020 Roadmap will focus on recommendations that:

•        Identify a sustainable glide path for meaningful use;

•        Promote interoperable systems;

•        Transform care delivery; and

•        Balance innovation and privacy.

Several advisors representing different stakeholders are leading the 2020 Roadmap activities, including:

·         John Glaser, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, Health Services, Siemens (representing vendors)

·         Sam Ho, MD, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, UnitedHealthcare, Chair eHI Board of Directors, (representing payers)

·         Christopher Ross, MD, Chief Information Officer, Mayo Clinic (representing providers)

·         Susan Turney, MD, Chief Executive Officer, Medical Group Management Association (representing clinicians)

·         Micky Tripathi, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer, Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative (representing information exchanges)

·         Joseph Touey, Senior Vice President, North American Pharmaceuticals, Information Technology, GlaxoSmithKline (representing pharmaceutical manufacturers)

“The impressive caliber of individuals leading our effort reflects the importance of the 2020 Roadmap,” said Jennifer Covich Bordenick. “We invite all organizations to participate in this important process and bring the best thinking to the table.”

Visit the 2020 Roadmap webpage for more information at http://www.ehidc.org/2020-roadmapMore information about the eHealth Initiative is available online at www.ehidc.org.

###

About the eHealth Initiative: The eHealth Initiative (eHI) is a Washington D.C.-based, independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to drive improvements in the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare through information and information technology. eHI is the only national organization that represents all of the stakeholders in the healthcare industry. Working with its membership, eHI advocates for the use of health IT that is practical, sustainable and addresses stakeholder needs, particularly those of patients. www.ehidc.org .

What immediately jumped out at me was the list of advisors. I’m familiar with most of the names, and I am sure all are qualified to provide valuable input on how to promote interoperability and improve our nation’s broken healthcare infrastructure. But the notes on representation raise an important question: How come nobody is representing consumers?

It’s after hours as I read the press release and I post this commentary, but I’ve e-mailed the press contact to see if the eHealth Initiative has a good answer. I will report back as soon as I hear anything. In the meantime, consumer and patient advocacy groups should take Bordenick up on her offer to participate.

UPDATE, March 27, 11 am CDT: I’ve just received this response directly from Bordenick:

Please know that the news release just highlighted just a few of the individuals and groups that will be involved.  We absolutely welcome the representation and involvement of patient and advocacy groups, and any stakeholder groups who want to participate— that is one of the reasons we put the announcement out, and asked people to fill in contact info in the survey. We are at the very start of this process, so now is definitely the time to get engaged. We currently work with National Partnership for Women and Families, Center Democracy & Technology, American Cancer Society, and have just started work with Smart Patients, and many others. We expect all of these groups to continue working with us, and many others to join in the process.

So there you have it. As I said in the original post, consumers and patient advocacy groups should take Bordenick up on the offer. It sounds like she would appreciate it.

March 26, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Another PHR venture (yawn) brings in some big names

I normally shy away from stories about the crowded and, to this point, spectacularly unsuccessful field of untethered personal health records, but one got my attention this week because of the names it’s just attracted.

Box, a cloud-storage company that offers something similar to Dropbox or Google Drive, has hired former White House CTO Aneesh Chopra and former Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman to, according to VentureBeat, “help the company push into the notoriously tricky health care vertical.” That’s an understatement. (Full disclosure: I serve on the advisory board of Health eVillages with Tullman, but I’m not in regular contact.)

Those hires bring instant credibility, though not necessarily success, and shows, as I’ve said before, that untethered PHRs might stand a chance once providers start addressing the patient-engagement requirements of Meaningful Use Stage 2. Emphasis on “might.” To date, nobody has found a way to get more than a small handful of patients to control their own medical data via PHRs.

Chopra — who once was managing director of the Advisory Board Co. and led open-data  efforts as secretary of technology in Virginia prior to joining the Obama administration — and Tullman know the health IT business better than most, but I still cast a skeptical eye on any PHR company until they prove to me they can capture a market. None ever has.

Good luck, gentlemen. You will need it.

 

March 19, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Video: Farzad Mostashari on patient engagement, ‘physician ACOs’

As I alluded to earlier, I was leaving the press room one afternoon at HIMSS14, and there I see former national health IT coordinator Dr. Farzad Mostashari hanging around Gregg Masters and Dr. Pat Salber of Health Innovation Media. It turns out, Masters and Salber had just pulled Mostashari aside to do an interview on video, but they didn’t have anyone to interview him on camera, so they asked me right there on the spot to be the interviewer. Here is the result.

Mostashari, now a visiting fellow at the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institute in Washington, discussed how the years of searching for a business model to coordinate care and engage patients is finally starting to pay off. Always the champion of the little guy in healthcare, Mostashari also brought up the notion of physician-led ACOs, or, as he called it, the “Davids going up against the Goliaths.”

 

I had pretty much no preparation for this interview. It probably shows. I still think it worked out well.

Here’s a link to Salber’s post about the interview because I don’t want to steal page views. :)

March 14, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.