HealthNex

Smarter Healthcare Channel via GBS Video Studio

With healthcare reform taking centerstage in Washington in the weeks and months ahead, we wanted to share this section of clips in the IBM Global Business Services Video Studio, which debuted with the launch of IBM's new consulting organization, Business Analytics & Optimization.

Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Media
IBM Global Business Services
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

Are medical costs the leading cause of U.S. bankruptcies?

The 60 Second Science Blog, from Scientific American, reports:

"Analyzing data from 2,314 randomly selected 2007 (pre-mortgage-meltdown) bankruptcy filings revealed that most of those who had claimed bankruptcy because of medical expenses had health insurance, owned homes, were in their mid-40s and had middle class incomes. "

The Patient Centered Medical Home: Blogger Briefing (MP3 Audio)

Download Patient Center Medical Home (MP3)

The Patient Centered Medical Home: Blogger Briefing on new white paper from IBM's Institute of Business Value, and IBM Healthcare & Life Sciences.

With:

• Dr. Paul Grundy, Director, IBM Healthcare Transformation
• Jim Adams, IBM Center for Healthcare Management
• Ed Mounib, Healthcare Lead, IBM Institute for Business Value

Smarter Healthcare on ibm.com

Health Record Banking Advances

(reblogging this interesting update on health record banking, the idea of all patient data flowing to an account they, not doctors, control)

Channel:

Source: Patty Enrado, NHINWatch.com

Date: February 2, 2009

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Sometime during the next two months, through grants totaling $1.7 million, the Washington State Health Care Authority, or WSHCA (pdf), will launch three consumer-controlled health record bank pilots in the communities of Bellingham, Spokane and Cashmere.


WSHCA’s efforts are part of a movement toward implementing health record banking, or HRB, systems, said William Yasnoff, MD, PhD, managing partner of NHII Advisors and founder of the Health Record Banking Alliance.

Frontline Docu: Sick Around the World

I watch Frontline's Sick Around the World documentary last night and really recommend it to all as a sober examination of the healthcare issues that are such a high priority in America today.

Here's a preview below.  You can watch the whole program online.

What I found most insightful about T.R. Reid's reporting was the clear and practical way he looked at the pros and cons of the national health systems in the U.K., Japan, Germany and Switzerland.  Even more impressive was learning how Taiwan went about reinventing their healthcare system by drawing on the best elements of programs around the world.

I certainly hope we can follow such a practical process to turn around the fragmented U.S. healthcare situation, which the Harvard-trained architect of the Taiwan program noted is not a system, but rather a market. Finally, I know that the politics of healthcare is a hot-button issue, and that many Americans are very wary about the role of government in healthcare (even though we are already a quasi-nationalized system via the Veterans Administration and Medicare/Medicaid). 

What I liked most about this investigation is its positive and constructive tone: what can we learn from the rest of the world, and how can we be smart about the evolution that most Americans hunger for?

IBM Advocates for Patient-Centric Healthcare

Happy New Year, HealthNex readers. One of my resolutions is to pump up the volume on posts for this important topic. To that end, I want to call out to my IBM healthcare colleagues to step up and help feed the beast. Towit, here is a recent article from IBM's w3 intranet, on some of our efforts to catalyze change in healthcare.

Step into an emergency room in any major U.S. city and you will get a glimpse of the bureaucracy that cripples the nation's healthcare system. Or visit a favela in Sao Paulo and you will see that access to basic healthcare services is virtually nonexistent.

Today’s strained, often inequitable healthcare systems threaten economic and social instability in some parts of the world. Governments and non-governmental organizations must confront the deficiencies in their healthcare systems surrounding primary care, disease management and medication costs.

IBM is a strong proponent of an integrated, public-private approach that will render healthcare more accessible and affordable while also making the key stakeholder — the patient — the focus of care. Already we are partnering with local, regional, national and federal governments to make patient-centric healthcare a reality.

Putting a broken system back together again

In the United States, IBM has been working with President Bush and the U.S. Congress to address a fragmented healthcare system. In early 2006, IBM's Dr. Jane Barlow and Ivo Nelson testified before two separate U.S. congressional subcommittees, calling for a new paradigm that makes healthy outcomes the essential part of any healthcare system.

Ned McCulloch, IBM Governmental Affairs, observes that a more functional system would give patients and doctors a complete picture of the patient's health, including medical history, lab results, hospitalizations and medication.

"The will to create this patient-centric healthcare model is fundamental," says McCulloch, "but equally important is creating interoperable IT infrastructures that connect hospitals, agencies, research institutions — just about everyone who has a hand in shaping healthcare for individuals and populations."

In lobbying for a transformation of the current U.S. healthcare system, McCulloch and IBM colleagues, such as Dr. Martin Sepulveda, vice president, Global Well-being Services & Health Benefits, begin their advocacy work by focusing on a problem that inhibits the development of a truly patient-centered model. One of IBM's recommendations is to create a reimbursement structure that primarily rewards providers for increasing patient health — instead of rewarding providers for seeing as many patients as possible, as is the case today.

"In the current Medicare statute, for example," says McCulloch, "the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services do not reward healthcare providers for sharing information that, say, would reduce medication errors. At IBM we're working to craft a solution that would reimburse providers for doing that."

Does anyone have any clout?

No one understands the shortcomings of the current U.S. healthcare system better than employers, who have collected metrics on quality from their insurers and providers. Working with IBM and other large employers, government agencies are now looking at the role that IT can play in reducing medical errors, integrating lab results, x-rays and medical history and encouraging patients themselves to take more responsibility for their wellness.

The impact that employers in Germany and France, for example, can have on reimbursement structures can be even more profound, especially as those governments pay for a significant portion of their citizens' healthcare. In China and India, where the individual shoulders more of the financial burden for healthcare than in the United States or Europe, the role that employers can play in reforming reimbursement structures becomes even more critical.

Johan Hjertqvist, president of Stockholm and Brussels-based Health Consumer Powerhouse, observed recently in The Wall Street Journal that two out of three European Union countries delay the introduction of new medicines into the reimbursement system. An integrated healthcare system could expedite access to these medicines — and ultimately facilitate more healthy outcomes.

Change or stay the same?

Governments are potentially the most influential agents of change and paradoxically the most stubborn in their commitment to healthcare systems they have created or inherited. Will they overcome their reluctance to legislate the changes necessary to implement an interoperable, standards-based healthcare system?

IBM is working with governments around the globe to help ask the questions — and shape the answers.

Healthcare legislation in the U.S. Congress

S.1418: Wired for Health Care Quality Act
Currently in conference with the U.S. House of Representatives, S.1418 would create grant authority for health information technology projects. It would require that federal agencies accept medical reports submitted via standardized electronic systems. This legislation received Senate approval on November 18, 2005.

HR.4859: Federal Family Health Information Technology Act of 2006
The bill would provide for the implementation of an electronic health records system under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. This legislation received approval from the U.S. House of Representatives on September 14, 2006.
 

Meetings Next Week: Citizens’ Health Care Working Group

Guest Blogger: Jessica Federer, Citizens’ Health Care Working Group

Just a quick reminder about our community meetings around the country  next week, your opportunity to voice your views on healthcare and be heard  by policymakers.

Encourage your friends, employees and networks to join us at the following community meetings, and visit www.citizenshealthcare.gov for evites, flyers and to register for events.

 

• 4/18 Eugene, OR
• 4/19  Sacramento, CA
• 4/19  San Antonio, TX
• 4/21  Billings, MT
• 4/22  Fargo, ND
• 4/22  New York, NY
• 4/25  Lexington, KY
• 4/29  Little Rock, AK
• 4/29  Cincinnati, OH
• 5/6    Sioux Falls, SD
• 5/6   Salt Lake City, UT

Be Heard On Healthcare: The Citizens’ Health Care Working Group

[In our continuing effort to be a nexus for healthcare innovation and collaboration, HealthNex welcomes Jessica Federer and her organization, The Citizens' Health Care Working Group, to our mix, and urge Americans to become part of the group's important efforts to listen directly to what Americans have to say about healthcare. ]

Guest Blogger: Jessica Federer, Citizens’ Health Care Working Group

What’s that you say? The President and Congress have to listen to what I think about health care? Normally, I wouldn’t believe it either, but thanks to some little known legislation in the Medicare Modernization Act, that’s now the case. The law created The Citizens’ Health Care Working Group  – a group of 14 individuals from various backgrounds - and charged them with asking Americans for their views on health care.

Even better, the law requires the President to respond to the Working Group’s recommendations, and designates five committees to hold hearings on them.  As a result, the American public is getting directly involved in this important dialogue.

Nothing like this has been tried before, but based on the incredible response that the Working Group has received from people across the country to date, this approach promises to be a great way to identify health care solutions and build consensus around them.

Now here is where you get involved. Before the Working Group makes its preliminary recommendations in June, they want to hear from as many people as possible. We’ve made it easy to participate- just answer the Health Care Poll at www.citizenshealthcare.gov or attend one of the many community meetings we are having across the country.

The list of community meetings is on our website, and I’d encourage you to read some of the news on these meetings to get an idea of what people are saying. There was a great piece in Philly.com this week, as well as articles in USA Today and the LA Times.

In a couple hours I will be flying to Des Moines, for our meeting there tomorrow. There’s another meeting in Philly on Monday, and Las Vegas on Tuesday. Details and online registration are on our site. I’ll also be posting information about other opportunities to participate….but for starters, answer the health care poll online, and encourage others to do the same.

So if you care about the transformation of healthcare, and want to be heard, this is your opportunity to be part of the innovation process.

IBMHealthNex

Blogposium is a Go: April 18-19

Jack Mason, IBM Strategic Communications, HealthNex Producer

The consensus from the health IT blogosphere is....let's do this thing! So mark April 18-19 on your calenders.

To reiterate: Blogposium will be a two-day, virtual collaboration among our circle of bloggers to show the world that together, we can do real and practical work. To make this cross-blog cooperative experiment a success, we'll keep the work and the objective relatively simple:

The Objective:  to help flesh out The Clinical Informatics Wiki started by Dean Sittig with a dozen or more new entries, so that this wikipedia-like resource will become more useful for all.

The Work:  In the next few weeks, each participating blogger will choose a topic related to healthcare IT  (I'll take on Biobanking, for example) research it, and prepare a first draft for an entry in the ClinfoWiki. Entries should include basic definitions, links to supporting material, etc.

April 18: Bloggers will post their first drafts on and all of us, as well as all our readers, will provide comments, suggests and edits on each other's work. Everyone should include links at the bottom of their draft to the preliminary drafts of fellow Blogposium participants, so that we will pass traffic and editorial eyeballs around.

April 19: Based on community input, bloggers will post their second draft, for ultimately inclusion in the wiki.

The beauty of this approach, we hope, is that each participant can draw on their particular interests or expertise, and contribute something of practical value with only a short commitment of time and effort. 

And if we can succeed with this fairly straightfoward effort, perhaps we can take on tougher assignments in the future, and demonstrate that a confederation of bloggers can be  a really useful engine, to paraphrase my 3-year-old's Thomas the Tank Engine obsession.

How to Participate:  Shahid Shah was kind enough to register people's previous interest in this collaboration. He's currently traveling. But in the expectation that he can create a similar registration page for people to declare their topics, that will be the plan.  Stay tuned.

How to Help:  First, spread the word to fellow bloggers who might have the kind of expertise to participate, as well as to the broader audience who can lend their collective intelligence to make our entries smarter and sharper.

Second, alert the media! This is by no means an exercise in self-promotion, but a public experiment to push the boundaries of what a ring of bloggers and readers can accomplish together. In this case, the greater the attention, the more productive this collaboration will be. For my own part, I will be working with my IBM colleagues to shine a light on this project.

Of course, if you have other thoughts on how to make this collaboration a success please add your comments hear or send them to me at healthnex@gmail.com

This should be an exciting and fun little piece of work for all of us. And given the enthusiasm so many of you have shown towards the idea of working together toward some common good, I'm proud to be connected to all of you.

Blogposium Countdown: t-minus 20 days and counting.

IBMHealthNex

Dr. Barlow Also Goes to Washington

Jane F. Barlow, MD, MPH, MBA,  IBM Well-being Director, Health Benefits Operations
Global Well-being Services & Health Benefits

Last week I had the privilege of representing IBM before the House of Representatives Federal Workforce subcommittee.  This committee has proposed legislation to make Personal Health Records (PHR) available to all 9 million federal employees.   In October 2005,  IBM made PHR's available to our US workforce, and  the committee was interested in learning about IBM's experience. 

We were the only employer represented.  The others invited to testify were health plans, vendors or consultants. [Read Jane's full testimony]

Most of the questions and comments concerned privacy and whether the PHR should be available on a voluntary basis if individuals want it, or if it should be "delivered" to all employees. The other major concern was around provider adoption of the PHR and electronic health records.  This is an important concern as providers are key to modernizing our healthcare systems in the US to reflect a patient-centric model enabled by technology.

This was my first time testifying  "on the Hill."  Thanks to Ned McCulloch and our Government Programs team, I was well prepared for this opportunity to represent IBM and tell the story about our efforts to lead in healthcare as an employer.

Your feedback on the testimony, or IBM's implementation of personal health records would be most welcome.

IBMHealthNex