health care costs
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Costly Testing and Lifestyle are Increasing Health Care Costs
Chronic disease and costly testing are two big contributors to health care costs in the United States, with many diseases being preventable and many medical tests being unnecessarily performed. Addressing both issues could produce much-needed savings, say health care professionals.
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Health Care Costs Traced to Data and Communication Failures
Most of us know about the insidious role of health care costs in holding down wages, in 
the fight by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker over pensions that tore the country apart, in crippling small businesses, and in narrowing our choice of health care providers. Not all realize, though, that the crisis is leaching through the health care industry as well, causing hospitals to fail, insurers to push costs onto subscribers and abandon the exchanges where low-income people get their insurance, co-ops to close, and governments to throw people off of subsidized care, threatening the very universal coverage that the ACA aimed to achieve. Lessons from a ground-breaking book by T.R. Reid, The Healing of America, suggests that we’re undergoing a painful transition that every country has traversed to achieve a rational health care system...
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Health IT Vendors Hiding the Onions from Interop and Open Platforms
Many existing vendors recognize the need to move open standards, open data and open interfaces (APIs) but while some are moving in the right direction, they are not there yet Others drag their feet knowing their current success relies on existing proprietary solutions, customer lock and their pseudo-ownership of customer data. Getting to the tipping point at which open platforms can really take off is going to require new players challenging the status quo and a willingness from the health and care community to help them successfully engage.
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Is Comparison Shopping the Future of Health Care? Silicon Valley Says Yes.
Whether it’s looking up restaurants on Yelp! or scanning Craigslist for apartment listings, Americans comparison shop for nearly everything online — everything except for health care. A recent survey found that we spend more time comparing value of dishwashers than doctors. Castlight Health wants to change that. Read More »
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NFC Forum Issues First Health Care Technical Specification and Two Candidate Technical Specifications
Personal Health Device Specification Supports "Connected Health" Solutions Read More »
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ONC Must End Opposition to Behavioral Health EHRs
Because our policy makers in Washington, DC, wield words as weapons, the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT has categorized behavioral health providers as “post-acute care,” thus excluding them from MU funding that has driven EHR adoption elsewhere. While the ONC has created one reality by lobbing definitions, behavioral health advocates are promoting THE reality of mental illness as acute and costly; as debilitating as any disease or condition, if not more so; and as a major co-morbidity factor exacerbating acute illnesses and driving up health care costs. Read More »
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Physician Burnout Is A Public Health Crisis: A Message To Our Fellow Health Care CEOs
The Quadruple Aim recognizes that a healthy, energized, engaged, and resilient physician workforce is essential to achieving national health goals of higher quality, more affordable care and better health for the populations we serve. Yet in a recent study of U.S. physicians, more than half reported experiencing at least one symptom of burnout—a substantial increase over previous years—indicating that burnout among physicians is becoming a national health crisis. Leadership is needed to address the root causes of this problem and reposition the health care workforce for the future. The authors of this paper—the CEOs of our respective institutions—are committing to do just that...
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Researchers Call For Open Access To Autism Diagnostic Tools
Most of the world’s children live in low- and middle-income countries. Yet few epidemiological studies of autism prevalence have been conducted in these countries, and little is known about how the symptoms of autism vary from culture to culture. Read More »
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Senator's Call For Reboot Of EHR Incentive Program Evokes Responses
The recent white paper released by six Republican Senators assessing federal progress promoting health information technology adoption and standards asked for reader feedback, and the healthcare industry responded. Read More »
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Soaring Generic Drug Prices Draw Senate Scrutiny
Some low-cost generic drugs that have helped restrain health care costs for decades are seeing unexpected price spikes of up to 8,000 percent, prompting a backlash from patients, pharmacists and now Washington lawmakers...
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The Big Get Bigger, Until They Don't
You may have missed it, but the Open Markets Institute released a report on what it calls "America's Concentration Crisis." The report begins bluntly: "Monopoly power is all around us: as consumers, business owners, employees, entrepreneurs, and citizens." As David Leonhardt wrote in his op-ed about the report, "The federal government, under presidents of both parties, has largely surrendered to monopoly power." Their associated data set details market concentration within 32 industries, several of which are health related. For example, in electronic health record systems, the top 3 firms account for 58% of the market, whereas in pharmacies/drugstores, the top 3 control 67% (and the top 2 alone have 61% share).
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The EHR Has No Clothes
Medical students returning from rotations at Veterans’ Administration Hospitals often rave about how good VistA is – something I have never heard with any other EHR. While I have not used it in clinical care, I have examined the demonstration client available on the web and been impressed by the simple, clean interface – quite unlike most other EHRs I have used or seen. Read More »
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Thomas Verbeck: Sharing Medical Data Saves Lives
As a former chief information officer with a long career in information technology, my focus has intensified since the Department of Defense announced plans to spend $11 billion on a new EHR system - one that can seamlessly exchange health data for the country's nearly 10 million employees, military personnel, retirees and their families. But the DoD's plan will fail. That's because most of today's EHR systems, including the bidder finalists, are designed only to work within their own system. That allows them to charge physicians and hospitals outside their system for access to your data. DoD can demand a system that seamlessly connects health data with civilian hospitals - or the VA - but it has failed to do so.
What Are the Real Consequences of ObamaCare?
If America has anything, it’s a disease care system that focuses on episodic interventions by health care professionals trying to salvage a patient from the ravages of chronic diseases, many of which are self-induced. It’s a system that does not focus on health maintenance, something that really would alter the nature of the country’s well-being. I would argue that using the same money we are spending on this ObamaCare nonsense to teach kids in elementary school how to eat, shop, cook, exercise, not use drugs or tobacco and to have safe sex would probably improve health in the country far more than this bill ever did or will.
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