Healthcare
Socializing Healthcare
Over the last five years it has become an accepted practice to “hang out” with your friends and family asynchronously using the internet. Initially, the available networking sites were fairly generic. Facebook.com served no purpose other than to connect anyone, anywhere, to share anything. LinkedIn.com narrowed their scope slightly by targeting professionals to connect and [...]
A recap of reactions to the Healthcare Stimulus in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA)
Two weeks after President Obmama signed the ARRA into law, there has been much discussion of the merits and pitfalls of the approach that is being taken by the government to stimulate progress in healthcare. Here are some thoughts in response to the discussion…
What will come from this period of HITECH ambiguity?
Of the interesting topics discussed during Thursday night’s Transforming Healthcare Summit 2009, I found a few simple words to be the most intriguing – “certified” and “meaningful use”. These are of course the terms used in the recently signed Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, to determine if a provider’s EMR implementation enables them to collect their share of the $19.2 Billion stimulus.
Medullan sponsors the Transforming Healthcare Summit 2009
Medullan was honored to be able to be a sponsor to the Transforming Healthcare Summit 2009 that was held at the Boston Seaport Hotel on February 26, 2009. We joined with organizer HIL Forum and other healthcare IT companies and organizations from both the public and private sector.
One Take on the Transforming Healthcare Summit 2009
The Transforming Healthcare Summit 2009 was a well attended event where many ideas were heard and explored. It was well moderated by Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe, with input from Peter Mueller, Valerie Fleishman, and Anne Marie Biernacki. The summit was a successful exchange of ideas about problems and possibilities for solutions.
Visiting the Boston Medical Center
Touring the Boston Medical Center yesterday, what stood out most was the human dimension in the delivery of care that is not easily understood through statistics. While it was impressive that more than 130,000 patients a year are seen in the emergency room, or that 1,600 families a month depend on the food pantry, or that more than 400 prescriptions a month are filled in the free pharmacy – many for chronic diseases, it is only in seeing the experiences that patients and providers go through that one can paint a complete picture of the work done at the BMC.
Fighting the Incentive War in Health Care IT Adoption
Software services in health care are challenged by an incentive model which lacks any ability to encourage participation by physicians, leaving Software as a Service vendors in HIT without a willing and necessary participant in the market. The solution might be for HIT firms to employ physicians themselves.
The future of collaborative health tools
With many health conditions (particularly outside disease management efforts), there’s a lack of a single coordinator of care. There’s been no tool that allowed the patient – the person most motivated to drive overall care coordination – to play this role, and no one else has stepped into the vacuum. One of the key areas of potential for collaborative networking/care management tools is that the patient may finally ascend to their rightful place in the overall coordination of their own care.
Embracing incremental change in solving the healthcare challenge
There are a huge number of people and organizations trying to solve the healthcare challenge. You can’t keep looking for the one, perfect solution – instead we must embrace a model of incremental and focused change.
