Envisioning 2.0

For years, advocacy groups, physicians, public health officials and others have been crying out about the overuse of antibiotics and the growing threat of drug resistant bacteria. This month, their warnings are being heeded, but at great cost.

Today we learned that a 12-year-old boy died earlier this month from a drug-resistant bacterial infection, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA.

In fact, drug-resistant bacteria has become a major problem in hospitals and nursing homes, where providers and patients exchange opportunistic bacteria. In the past, I’ve been involved with public health campaigns designed to bring home the message that appropriate antibiotic use is a must. This effort was a modest success. The sliver lining to this tragedy is that people are more aware of the dangers of antibiotic resistant bacteria and will take steps to protect themselves and their families.

To read more about this subject on this blog and elsewhere, please click the following links.

Antibiotics, Clinical Trials & More: An Interview With The FDA’s John Powers, MD

Questions and Answers about Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in Schools (CDC.gov)

Antibiotic Roundup: (Fighting drug-resistant bacteria, Michigan Antibiotic Resistance Reduction Coalition)

I received an interesting e-mail recently from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). Earlier this year, the organization launched an in-depth Website focusing on health care reform. The site was useful before, but now it borders on indispensable. KFF has released a new tool that enables visitors to their Website to conduct side-by-side comparisons of the health reform plans of the presidential candidates. I played around with the tool this morning and found it very informative. (See screen shot of tool above listing the reform proposals of the major Democratic presidential candidates. Click to enlarge.)

This tool is a must-use for anyone looking to keep up with canidates’ competing proposals. Who knows which ones will get through the legislative meat grinder, but it’s fun to watch the debate!

Recently, academics and attorneys at George Washington University had this to say about efforts by insurance companies to rate physicians: “[D]one properly, physician rankings should not raise legal concerns, either for those who are pushing the standards, or those being measured.”

Insurers are not the only ones rating physicians, sites like RateMDs.com have exploded in popularity.  Clearly, insurers and patients want to choose physicians who are not only high quality, but personable and responsive.

Will this analysis change physicians’ minds about rating services?  Not likely.

Image Source: American Academy of Family Physicians

As readers of this blog may be aware, my firm Envision Solutions and Trusted.MD Network are currently fielding the second global survey of healthcare bloggers.

Since the launch of the poll in August, more than 110 bloggers have taken the survey. We are grateful for the support of everyone participating in this exciting project. We’d also like to thank everyone who has posted about the survey, including Cary Byrd and Jan Martens who maintain the Healthcare 100 and MedBlogEN listings of top health and medical blogs.

If you have not yet taken a few minutes to participate in the survey, please click here to do so.

Last month, I attended the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.  One highlight of the meeting was a video produced by my friends at Scribe Media illustrating the history of healthcare.  Great stuff.  Click here to view.