Healthcare Spending After the Recession

May 12, 2009 | by

Yesterday, the American Medical Association (AMA) and five other major groups representing doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and union members delivered a letter to President Obama pledging to cut the U.S. growth rate for healthcare spending by 1.5 percent each year from 2010 through 2019 [1]. The coalition’s efforts are intended to supplement upcoming legislation aimed at decreasing healthcare costs for families, businesses and the government.

The savings — an estimated $2 trillion over the next decade — would come from changes in the public-private partnership and include:

  • Administrative standardization, simplification and transparency.
  • Aligning quality and efficiency incentives among providers to reduce over- and under-use of healthcare.
  • Encouraging coordinated care and adherence to evidence-based best practices and therapies.
  • Reducing the cost of doing business by developing technology and regulatory reform.

Although the proposed health expenditure savings is small, experts say it’s significant [2]. The very fact that health industry leaders have stepped forward to voluntarily restrain costs is itself encouraging; these are the same groups that opposed the healthcare reforms proposed by President Clinton in the 1990s.

I.O.U.S.A. One Nation Under Stress and In Debt

January 11, 2009 | by

I.O.U.S.A. is a documentary directed by Patrick Creadon that examines the rapidly growing U.S. national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens. The film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival; last summer, it was screened at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions last summer, earning significant acclaim from critics and audiences alike [1].

This weekend, I.O.U.S.A. is making its television debut on CNN. You can catch it this afternoon, Sunday, January 10th at 3 p.m. EST. The broadcast will be hosted by Ali Velshi and Christine Romans, co-anchors of CNN’s weekend business roundtable program Your $$$$$.

I wrote about Healthcare Costs and the Looming U.S. Budget Crisis last summer here on Highlight HEALTH. I.O.U.S.A. follows now former Comptroller General David Walker and Robert Bixby, Executive Director of the Concord Coalition, on their cross-country Fiscal Wake-Up Tour to talk to the American people about the country’s debt problem. The movie further underscores the need for immediate reform of Americas major entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

According to the I.O.U.S.A. movie website [2]:

Wake up, America! We’re on the brink of a financial meltdown. I.O.U.S.A. boldly examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens. Burdened with an ever-expanding government and military, increased international competition, overextended entitlement programs, and debts to foreign countries that are becoming impossible to honor, America must mend its spendthrift ways or face an economic disaster of epic proportions.

Throughout history, the American government has found it nearly impossible to spend only what has been raised through taxes. Wielding candid interviews with both average American taxpayers and government officials, Sundance veteran Patrick Creadon (Wordplay) helps demystify the nation’s financial practices and policies. The film follows former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker as he crisscrosses the country explaining America’s unsustainable fiscal policies to its citizens.

With surgical precision, Creadon interweaves archival footage and economic data to paint a vivid and alarming profile of America’s current economic situation. The ultimate power of I.O.U.S.A. is that the film moves beyond doomsday rhetoric to proffer potential financial scenarios and propose solutions about how we can recreate a fiscally sound nation for future generations.

Creadon uses candid interviews and his featured subjects include Warren Buffett, Alan Greenspan, Paul O’Neill, Robert Rubin, and Paul Volcker, along with the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s own David Walker and Bob Bixby of the Concord Coalition, a Foundation grantee.

Pointedly topical and consummately nonpartisan, I.O.U.S.A. drives home the message that the only time for America’s financial future is now.

If you’re concerned about America’s impending financial disaster, you owe it to yourself (and your children) to see this movie.

References

  1. ‘I.O.U.S.A.’ Makes TV Debut on CNN. Documentary.org 2009 Jan.
  2. About the Movie. I.O.U.S.A. the Movie. Accessed 2009 Jan 11th.

2008 Presidential Candidates on the Issues of Biomedical Research and Healthcare

October 23, 2008 | by

A major determinant of America’s health and competitiveness in the world is progress in the life sciences. Over the past twenty years, the life sciences have had a tremendous impact on human health through the understanding of the molecular basis of disease and the development of new diagnostics, therapeutics and other medical products. Given the significance of biomedical research on healthcare, I felt it was important to highlight the 2008 presidential candidates’ positions. A number of online resources are discussed in this post and listed at the end of the article. With the election less than two weeks away, it is paramount that voters know where the presidential candidates’ stand on these essential issues.

Hipster M.D. and Hello Health

July 17, 2008 | by

hellohealth.jpgHealth 2.0 physician Jay Parkinson, M.D. recently joined Myca, a Montreal-based company that aims to enhance access to consumer care while creating new efficiencies and revenue for doctors [1]. Prior to joining Myca, Parkinson’s Brooklyn medical practice combined house calls of the past with 21st-century technology. For a yearly fee of $500, Parkinson made an initial visit to his patients and offered two additional house calls as needed. Using IM, email and video chat, he would make himself available to his patients between the hours of 8 a.m and 5 p.m. weekdays for unlimited consultation. Parkinson used a web-based electronic medical record (EMR) system called Life Record to keep his medical records.

According to Parkinson, joining Myca didn’t compromise any of his ideals and was simply a natural progression of his practice [1]:

No innovation is going to come from within the industry. It’s going to come from outside the industry. There are 47 million uninsured who have to pay cash for healthcare, and there’s another likely 40 million that are going to need supplemental insurance. That’s a significant buying power that no one is even thinking about in the healthcare industry. I’m not anti-corporate. I’m just anti-stupidcorporate. I’m very much a businessman.

Links to articles describing Parkinson were included in a past edition of Medicine 2.0 here at Highlight HEALTH. Parkinson and his unique medical practice have been the focus of a great deal of discussion over the past year, both in the news and blogosphere.

Myca and Hello Health

Myca focuses on health and wellness applications, utilizing advanced communications and mobile devices to make it easy for consumers and health experts to connect. The company is expanding from the development of a mobile health application called MyFoodPhone Nutrition, which incorporates camera phone food journaling and video feedback services, to a broader platform for delivering healthcare services.

That broader platform is a healthcare service called Hello Health. A single communications and clinical information platform developed by Myca provides a solution to three top healthcare issues: access, high-quality medical care and cost management. The system offers patient and physician interfaces that extend far beyond a traditional EMR. For a monthly fee, members can access Hello Health doctors in the clinic or at home and by IM or video chat. Sound familiar? Following in Parkinson’s medical practice model, Hello Health incorporates several technological improvements only a company with resources like Myca could provide.

Interestingly, unlike many services that focus on physician quality and offer the ability to rate doctors, Hello Health will focus on patient satisfaction. According to Parkinson [1]:

It’s not going to be a rating system for doctors. It’s going to be private information based on your effort with your patients. To me, e-Bay is the model. They have one question they ask: ‘What is your satisfaction with the seller? Positive, negative, or neutral.’ It’s as simple as that. At the end of the month, you tally them up, and take the aggregate score, and the doctor will then make more or less depending on their average score.

If doctor scores decrease, Hello Health takes a larger portion of fees collected. This is the incentive that will drive a new model of practice, one that is more effective and takes advantage of technology. In an interview last month with the Wall Street Journal Health Blog, Parkinson described Hello Health as [2]:

… a neighborhood-based, Internet-enabled practice that sees you in person and communicates with you over the Internet. Patients become members for a Netflix-priced monthly fee and then pay fee for service. In-person visits, whether house call or in-office, will range from $75 to $150 cash. We will submit your claim to your insurance for you so you can be reimbursed but you pay cash up front.

As Alan Brookstone points out at CanadianEMR, complex diseases such as cancer likely won’t be as easy to manage using the Hello Health model of healthcare delivery. Nevertheless, for primary care, it streamlines service, provides accessible doctors, offers consumer convenience and may just be the next big thing in healthcare.

Hello Health should launch by the end of this month.

Additional details on Hello Health can be found on Jay Parkinson’s blog. More information on Hello Health Drs. Jay Parkinson and Sean Khozin can be found here.

References

  1. Jay Parkinson Sells Out? MDNG. 2008 May 12.
  2. Technodoc Jay Parkinson Says Hello to Franchising. Wall Street Journal Blog. 2008 Jun 9.

Living Healthy Isn’t Cost Saving, It’s Cost Effective

February 8, 2008 | by

There are a lot of good reasons for people to lose weight and to quit smoking. However, according to a new study published in PLoS Medicine, saving money on lifetime healthcare costs isn’t one of them [1].