August 2008

Most Powerful?

Modern Healthcare's annual "100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare" list for 2008 has been published and includes healthcare IT vendors in the top three spots.

1) Steve Case, CEO/founder of Revolution Health

2) Eric Schmidt, Chairman/CEO of Google

3) Bill Gates

4) Hillary Clinton

5) Barack Obama

6) Ted Kennedy

7) Arnold Schwarzenegger

8) George W. Bush

9) John McCain

10) Newt Gingrich

These popularity/political contests are amusing. As a healthcare IT PR practitioner it’s good to see the vendors in the top spots, as it indirectly helps all our causes. Personally I think none of them deserve to be there.  Revolution, Google and Microsoft’s consumer health efforts are so early stage with virtually no users that they really should be in the low ‘teens.

No one seems to like Bush, but you can bet that doctors have privately thanked and rooted for him in not cutting Medicare reimbursement rates. That would put Bush from #8 to #1 no question. And Newt’s quasi-political think tank which charges vendors $50,000+ for representation is in many circles (as discussed by the Associated Press on occasion) a questionable operation.  I could go on. But most people will agree that in our own real world, the most powerful person in healthcare is your or your child’s very own doctor.

Posted by Shawn Whalen on August 26, 2008 at 12:07 PM
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Cloudy Outlook for PHRs?

According to market research firm Gartner, government ITexecutives should investigate the impact of personal health records (PHRs) and health information exchange programs.

PHRs, such as Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault and ActivePHR from ActiveHealth Management, are free and controlled by the consumer and could achieve a high degree of interoperability with clinical systems operated by healthcare providers and other third parties, says Gartner. Microsoft recently announced a pilot project with Kaiser Permanente to enable data transfers between consumers' medical records and Microsoft's HealthVault online health site.

Gartner says these publicly available applications are built on important characteristics of cloud computing - they are enormously scalable resources that offer services directly to end users and to other IT products through an application program interface (API). Gartner reports they have the potential to achieve several important benefits:

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Posted by Shawn Whalen on August 20, 2008 at 2:31 PM
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The Cost of National EHR

Government Health IT reported that full implementation of networked e-health records in U.S. doctors’ offices and hospitals could cost around $150 billion over eight years.

According to Robert Miller, a professor of health economics at the University of California, San Francisco, this $150 billion estimate is actually “manageable” because it amounts to less than a 1 percent increase per year in the nation’s total health care spending.

Miller said hospitals are further along the path toward implementing clinical information systems, partly because they get some boosts in revenues when they install EHRs. With hospital profit margins around 5 percent, most hospitals can afford it.

Miller’s projections call for hospitals to spend $35 billion to acquire and expand EHR systems and $55 billion in new operating costs over eight years. Financial incentives and reporting requirements are going to be key to getting useful data from EHR users, Miller said.

The Rand Corp. reported in 2005 that the total cost over 15 years would be $114 billion, an amount Rand said would be completely offset by cost efficiencies and other financial benefits of EHR use.

What you can do: HCIT PR practitioners may want to consider highlighting the ROI of their EHR solutions in contrast to all this talk about costs. For those vendors with low cost hosted solutions, take full advantage of this feature in comparison to the bigger and more expensive licensed solution vendors.

Posted by Shawn Whalen on August 15, 2008 at 12:30 PM
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Finally a Fine

Some past posts of mine have talked about the lack of HIPAA enforcement fines.  Finally a nursing home company in Seattle got fined.  The A.P. reported that Providence Health & Services was socked with a $100,000 fine and mandate to fix it’s security in light of past privacy complaints.

Providence failed to properly secure backup tapes, disks and laptops with electronic patient information, even after thefts of the tapes and laptops.

Providence agreed to revise its policy on transporting patient records improve training.

Posted by Shawn Whalen on August 9, 2008 at 12:46 PM
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Buzz Kill

Part Two on Corporate America's Abuse of the English Language

I've written before on this topic in my "Good Business Writing: An Oxymoron?" post, with some extra commentary from Gary Baldwin of HealthLeaders magazine (now with Health Data Management.) Today my colleague Brian Bogie weighs in on the topic, with some insights from Eric Wicklund of Healthcare IT News...

Companies have news they need to communicate to their constituents. This news is made up of new customer wins, product announcements, partnerships, recent hires, etc. The most common method of distributing that news is the humble press release. Tried and true, a well written press release can get the word out quickly and effectively. Unfortunately, a great barrier stands in the way of effective communication in a press release: buzzwords.

It’s not the buzzwords fault, really. In a culture of hype, the buzzword is royalty. It shows you are “with it,” you are “now,” and you are “happening.” Ok, really bad examples, but you get the idea. With business book titles leading the way for a real-time, paradigm-changing, seamless business consciousness, we all end up believing the hype. And we are all guilty of using them. Besides, isn’t the news about our client’s fantastic new technology, or the greatest partnership in the history of mankind that you just signed with Microsoft worthy of a buzzword or two? For that answer, I went to Eric Wicklud, managing editor of Healthcare IT News.

Eric was kind enough to give some thought to the overuse of buzzwords. A master craftsman when it comes to understanding and reporting on news of the healthcare technology industry, Wicklund has simple advice: just say no.

Illustration: Katy Hanlon

“Long-winded words are tossed about as often as acronyms in the healthcare field these days, making it difficult to conduct a normal conversation or read through an article without consulting some kind of reference guide,” says Wicklund.

Please follow the "Continue Reading" link below...

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Posted by Shawn Whalen on August 4, 2008 at 11:22 AM
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