Envisioning 2.0

Health Wonk Review #5

Welcome to the fifth edition of the Health Wonk Review. This growing bi-weekly carnival is designed to highlight the best health policy-related blog posts of the previous two weeks. It was inspired by the work of Nicholas Genes who founded the weekly medical blog gathering, Grand Rounds.

After much cajoling and sucking up, I was able to convince the estate of the late, great Albert Einstein to provide some archival photos for this edition of the Review. It turns out that Einstein predicted that the Health Wonk Review would one day spring into existence and had someone photograph him writing pithy statements about health policy on his trusty blackboard. These photos appear below for your viewing pleasure.

Technology/IT

Calling All Bloggers: Dmitriy Kruglyak of The Medical Blogging Network was tapped to speak at the 2006 Consumer Directed Health Care Conference and Expo, taking place this May about the impact of blogs on consumer driven healthcare. In this post he issues a call for case studies of bloggers who are using this technology to take more responsibility for their healthcare. Click here to learn more and to submit a case study.

Blogposium and Consumer-Driven Healthcare: Jack Mason has gathered together a number of healthcare bloggers to participate in the first Blogposium, a three-day virtual conference designed to add content to the Clincial Informatics Wiki. In this post, Trapier Michael of Marketplace.MD schools readers on the history of consumer-driven healthcare.

The Virtual House Call: Dr. Paul Grundy, IBM’s Well-Being Director, introduces a new service CIGNA has launched, Physician webVisits, which will enable some California patients to access a type of “virtual house call” for non-urgent health issues. Yet another service that will help patients navigate this new world of consumer-driven healthcare.

The Business Of Healthcare

Healthcare vs. Health Insurance: At InsureBlog, Bob Vineyard explains the difference between health *insurance* and health *care,* and looks at how providers often get stuck by both systems.

The Gulf Between Words & Action: Dr. Roy Poses highlights the actions of the Leapfrog Group’s member companies, which are providing generous retirement benefits to managers while cutting health plans of other retirees.

TBTAM Issues A Warning: The Blog That Ate Manhattan warns that pharmaceutical companies are using the Together Rx program to gather sensitive health information and use it for marketing purposes.

Ending The War Between Clinicians & Finance Folks: Hospital Impact brings up an age-old hospital management issue: why clinical and financial leaders constantly butt heads, and what one CFO did to bridge the gap at his hospital.

Wal-Mart Offers Health Insurance, What Does This Mean?: Kate Steadman of Healthy Policy takes a look at Wal-Mart’s recent announcement that it will loosen the eligibility requirements for part-time workers to obtain health insurance.

Politics, Policy and Economics

MA Health Reform Knowledge: Tapped From The Source: John McDonough, who leads Healthcare For All, Massachusetts’ leading consumer health advocacy group, introduces his organization’s blog. He says: “We cover MA health reform like a glove, and if folks want an up close and personal look at the dynamics of this new MA health reform law, we suggest our site.” This post was based on his advocacy coalition’s fast analysis of the reform law hours before the final legislative vote. This is just one example of many health reform posts to be found on his group’s blog, A Healthy Blog. (Side note: McDonough is also featured in my recent report on healthcare blogs.)

Will The Real HSA Fan Please Stand Up?: Matthew Holt of The Health Care Blog wonders what the HSA fans really mean, and asks if the real HSA fans will please stand up. Meanwhile, he describes his own surreal Dickensian trip through the individual insurance market at Spot-on in a Tale of Two Underwriters.

You Can Do It — If You Try: Marcus Newberry of Fixin’ Healthcare describes a project in Finland that demonstrates how a determined, well-conceived public health intervention influences health related lifestyle and population risk factors and leads to reduced disease rates and improved health.

Cato Dead Wrong On Mass Plan: David Williams of the Health Business Blog talks about why the new Massachusetts health care plan is a whole lot better than the Cato Institute would have you believe.

We Want Transparency . . . Except In Medicare: Joe Paduda of Managed Care Matters talks about a contradiction that “could only arise from inside the Beltway.” He says: “The Bush Administration is avidly promoting consumerism as the cure for health care’s ills, yet refuses to release provider outcomes data from Medicare databases, citing an apparently weak prohibition against such disclosure.”

Malpractice Law Needs Fixing: This post from Jason Shafrin of Healthcare Economist reviews two academic papers which analyze the incidence of malpractice suits in the United States. The papers find that 3-5% of all hospitalizations are due to doctor error. It is surprising, however, to see that that only 3% of people who do suffer a negligent iatrogenic injury sue their doctor. Further, since so few people who suffer negligent injuries sue, over half of the caseload in the court system today is due to frivolous malpractice lawsuits.

Beyond Category

Finally, we end this edition with a few posts that are “beyond category.”

The WTC and Worker’s Comp: The World Trade Center Health Registry is currently tracking some 71,437 people who worked at ground zero, and while health effects are expected to take 20+ years to be fully evident, deaths from respiratory diseases are surfacing. Julie Ferguson of Workers Comp Insider discusses the limitations of workers compensation in addressing these and other toxic exposures.

Bloggers: Let’s Link Up: Dr. Steve Beller of Curing Healthcare presents a proposal for linking communities of healthcare blogs with wikis. Dr. Beller’s idea is to organize a community of blogs and wikis focused on helping to solve the healthcare crisis through news feeds, conversations and knowledge-sharing that increase people’s understanding, spark innovation, provide decision-support, and mobilize grass-roots efforts.

That’s it for this edition of the Health Wonk Review. I hope you enjoyed it. Joe Paduda at Managed Care Matters will host the next event. Be sure to visit the Health Wonk Review Web site to learn more about this event and submit a post.

This entry was posted on April 19, 2006 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Health Policy, Health Wonk Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.