Health Care Strategist

An article in a recent issue of Hospitals & Health Networks magazine told the story of Sharp Healthcare reducing its self-pay writeoffs by $3.4 million through using a website from the Foundation for Health Coverage Education . From the article: "In 2008 and 2009, Sharp HealthCare saw a $3.4 million drop in self-pay net revenues. The region's increase in unemployment inversely aligned with cash collection, says Gerilynn Sevenikar, vice president of patient financial services for the San Diego-based system. "In an effort to stop the bleeding, Sevenikar reached out to the Foundation for Health Coverage Education, a San Jose, Calif., nonprofit that helps people nationwide find health insurance. The two organizations began an initial 30-day trial in which all self-pay patients entering four Sharp emergency rooms were given the FHCE eligibility quiz, a tool that asks patients without insurance five questions to help determine their eligibility for public or private h...

From the New England Journal of Medicine:  "Escaping the EHR Trap — The Future of Health IT." Authors Kenneth D. Mandl, M.D., M.P.H., and Isaac S. Kohane, M.D., Ph.D. offer a devastating critique of health IT's current state: Even as consumer IT — word-processing programs, search engines, social networks, e-mail systems, mobile phones and apps, music players, gaming platforms — has become deeply integrated into the fabric of modern life, physicians find themselves locked into pre–Internet-era electronic health records (EHRs) that aspire to provide complete and specialized environments for diverse tasks. We believe that EHR vendors propagate the myth that health IT is qualitatively different from industrial and consumer products in order to protect their prices and market share and block new entrants. In reality, diverse functionality needn't reside within single EHR systems, and there's a clear path toward better, safer, cheaper, and nimbler tools for manag...

As of today, and assuming you haven’t already given enough of your life to the social networking juggernaut, you can double down with a share or two of Facebook’s common stock.  Now I’m not a licensed investment advisor so I can’t tell YOU what to do. But I will tell you what I’M going to do. One word: FLEE. Listening to CNBC while driving to an appointment yesterday, I heard a commentator rave about this “historic investment opportunity,” saying something like: “Even at this valuation level, Facebook’s stock is cheap.  With that huge behavioral database, they'll find a way to monetize their 900 million users...” Notice the choice of language.  It's not “They've FOUND a way..."  It's "They'll FIND a way..."  In the future.  Someday.  Hopefully. But the future's a tricky thing.  All along, I’ve assumed the right sequence of events is this: Find a way to make money (i.e. a business model.) Make money (i.e. prove that your business ...

The Social Media Imperative View more presentations from Mayo Clinic

A major teaching hospital (that shall remain nameless because I don't belive in giving the terminally clueless even more attention) has a Twitter account with 1,200 followers. So far so good. Yet this hospital follows NOBODY. That's right. Apparently in the vast Twittersphere, there's absolutely NOBODY from whom this organization cares to hear. Nobody whose thoughts and ideas matter nearly as much as the hospital's own. It's as if they're saying "We're not about listening. We talk, you sit up straight and pay attention.  We're about US and that's how we like it!" How smug. How institutionally narcissistic. How utterly last century-ish. I wonder what they find unclear about 'social media' - the 'media' or the 'social?'

Fox News: "Facebook users heap baggage on Spirit Airlines after dying vet refused refund." That we're living in the age of the Facebook mob assures Spirit Airlines that they'll lose far more in business and customer goodwill than the $197 refund would've cost. And somehow I doubt that many of Spirit's customers are, today, saying "Thanks for looking out for us and keeping fares low." More likely they're saying "What a bunch of clueless chumps." There's following policies and procedures to the letter, and then there's doing the right thing. Frequently the two converge. Not this time. UPDATE:  The chump caves .

"Clinic retailers like Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Safeway, Kroger, Target and Rite Aid are beginning to see major growth opportunities and new business models that actually make economic sense," according to Hammerle, the founder and chairman of Health Resources, Ltd., based in Tampa. "Many in the healthcare field talk about 'creating medical homes,' but fail to recognize that patient homes and well-established channels of service already exist," said Sanders, one of the founders of the ATA, chairman of a conference panel and an internationally-known pioneer in the field of telemedicine. "Healthcare providers have largely failed to knock on those doors or use established channels of distribution and low cost technologies to serve patients better at far lower costs to all," he noted. "The next round of growth will electronically link large numbers of clinics, pharmacies and independently-owned and operated primary care clinics to a small number o...

It's my honor to be associated with  Mercy Medical Center – North Iowa , a Top 100 Hospital in the nation according to Thomson Reuters, a healthcare information firm. Though I can't take any of the credit, having been here only a short while, this is the ninth year Mercy – North Iowa has been named to this list, making it the only Iowa hospital to have achieved this level of success. Furthermore, Mercy – North Iowa is one of only 15 hospitals in the nation to have made the list for nine or more years. This award recognizes hospitals for being a reliable provider of high value and effective care to patients and the entire community. According to Thomson Reuters research, the 100 Top Hospitals have higher survival rates, keep more patients complication-free, and have lower expenses — all while maintaining financial stability. Thomson Reuters Healthcare estimates that if all Medicare inpatients received the same level of care as those in the 100 Top Hospitals: More...

...that we think pizza is WAY healthier than it really is! From Massive Health (via Forbes Magazine): "Massive Health Analyzes 1/2 Million Meals to Understand Our Eating Habits [Infographics]." "Over the past 5 months, Massive Health has collected over 7.68 million food ratings from people in 50 countries through The Eatery , an iPhone app that helps users track and analyze their eating patterns. Today, they are releasing some of their key findings about when people eat, where people eat, what they eat, and who they eat with, as a series of infographics. For more information about the company and to see the infographic detailing at how people think they eat (and how healthy they actually eat) click here . "Key Finding on When We Eat We eat 1.7 percent less healthy after each hour that passes in the day Breakfast is the healthiest meal of the day. Dinner is 15.9 percent less healthy People who eat breakfast eat 12.3 percent healthier during the day On th...

Today's story is about the power of social media and a global company's quick response.  From USA Today: "Starbucks de-bugs its menu offerings." Recently, Starbucks began coloring its Strawberry Frappucinos with cochineal extract. Sounds innocent enough, except cochineal extract is made by crushing the shells of cochineal beetles. Bugs. And so a vegan barista tipped off a vegan blogger who alerted PETA who.. .you get the idea. And now that yummy pink color comes from lycopene, a natural, tomato-based extract. (Of course several species of beetles co-habitate with tomatoes, presumably making it into our food chain at some point, but that's another story for another day and another blogger.) At least one consultant thinks Starbucks acted quickly and decisively. "That's pretty quick when it come to companies making major changes in ingredients," says management strategist Barbara Brooks. "They were aggressive and didn't set up a commi...

Well, maybe a snide comment or two. In the news today: Fox News: Hospitals are making progress in reducing the spread of care-related infections . Reuters and CBC News: Meanwhile, thanks to the vaccination-averse among us, cases of measles hit a 15-year high in 2011 and a whooping cough outbreak is expanding in Canada's Fraser Valley. WTVG: Another reason to exercise: lower Alzheimer's risk . And from the Commonwealth Fund (via U.S. News & World Report): "One in four working-age Americans went without health insurance for at least some time in 2011. And the majority of those people—nearly 70 percent—lacked coverage for more than a year..." Finally, from CBS News: researchers successfully grew hair on a bald mouse . So many things I could say, but for now I'll just thank all those researchers hard at work on such an important medical mystery. I mean, c'mon, why work on things like CANCER when there's toupee-wearing mice out there needing our hel...

...healthcare costs get slashed. Who says old folks don't use computers? From Reuters: "Graying America gets wired to cut healthcare costs" ...Marilyn Yeats, 79, is suffering from congestive heart failure and uses a personal healthcare computer, Connect, provided by the health insurer Humana Corp. She calls it My Little Nurse for helping her keep track of her blood pressure, weight, temperature and whether she is taking her medicines on time. "It rings me up every morning at 10 am, and there I am, on my machine measuring myself, and if I have gained weight, it asks me additional questions. I say it is like having your own nurse come into your house every day." said the Naples, Fla., resident. If these programs succeed, home technologies could help slash billions of dollars from the nation's $2.6 trillion healthcare bill by keeping elderly people in their homes for longer and out of expensive hospitals and nursing homes. Again, pay attention to the gr...

From InformationWeek.com: "Many Doctors Don't Take Social Media Beyond Marketing." Good article with some interesting ideas. I fear our social media strategy has been a mile wide and an inch deep - all things to all people to put it another way. It's time to build useful communities and solve real problems. It's time to get very serious, very targeted, very outcomes-focused and very conversational. It's time to think and act 'social,' and NOT like we're controlling the conversation (control that we've NEVER possessed, by the way. We just ACTED like we were in control, to our own detriment and that of our patients.) As a communications strategy, "I talk, you listen and do exactly what I say..." is a non-starter. So what should we do? "Healthcare organizations in the United States should learn from their peers abroad and expand the use of social media beyond marketing functions, suggests a new report from technology consultin...

Here's a hint: sponsor your local TV station's weather broadcast. How Young Adults Get News and Information About Their Local Communities View more presentations from Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project

The Daily Beast :   "...what if we are coordinating the wrong kind of care? What if our best practices are the wrong practices? Our toxic industrial diet, our sedentary lifestyle, chronic stress, and environmental toxins cause diabesity and its attendant downstream ills (often mislabeled as something else, such as hypertension, cancer, heart disease, dementia). Drugs and surgery are feeble, ineffective, costly, and often harmful treatments for lifestyle-induced illness. They are misguided efforts at best, dangerous at worst. Mounting evidence proves that the solution to lifestyle- and diet-driven obesity-related illnesses won’t be found at the bottom of a prescription bottle; they will be found at the end of our fork." [...] "Health it seems happens outside the clinic, where people live, work, play and pray. We need to rethink how we treat chronic disease. It is not only better medical management, which often just barely if at all staves off complications and death,...

(CBS News) "iPads not only make doctors feel more efficient at their jobs, the device actually improved their work flow according to a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine ." 75% of residents said iPads saved them about an hour each day. I'll bet physician loyalty and integration rank high on your hospital's agenda.  Yet what have you done lately to save YOUR docs an hour a day?  No, really, I'm asking!  Leave a comment... Or connect with me (Steve Davis) on Twitter @whatifwhynot .

A thought for today:  "Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form. " - Stephen Nachmanovitch

John Commins, for HealthLeaders Media:   Your Hospital is Not Invisible . "It doesn't matter if your hospital is in midtown Manhattan or Manhattan, KS. It doesn't matter how many licensed beds you have or how high you scored with HealthGrades. If you've got problems at your hospital—from labor disputes, to HIPAA violations, to dirty sheets—you'd better be prepared to have answers for the government, public advocacy groups, plaintiffs' attorneys, and the news media." Just ask 88-bed Sheridan (WY) Memorial Hospital.

Cheryl Clark, for HealthLeaders Media:   Patients Set to Unleash Feedback on Doctors . "Doctors should brace for an earful about scheduling difficulties, hour-long waits, perceived disrespectful attitudes, and unreturned phone calls. "I know doctors think these aspects of the care process are, in the big scheme of things, minor annoyances that have nothing to do with their skills in diagnosis and treatment. "But perceived mistreatment by physicians and their staffs may have an enormous indirect, much more subtle, impact on patient compliance, and ultimately on quality and outcomes. [...] "And I don't think doctors are at all prepared for this. They'll no longer be able to brush away a bad review as just another outlier on Yelp. In time, there will be a real cost associated with bad reviews. "Many physicians have no idea what CGCAHPS is, and that value-based purchasing is coming soon for them," says Patricia Riskind, senior vice president ...

 Buy Here  From David Houle and Jonathan Fleece blogging at KevinMD.com: "Why one-third of hospitals will close by 2020." Why?  Because hospitals are expensive, unsafe, "abysmal" at delivering customer care and poorly equiped to compete in the networked, transparent, not-so-distant future.  "One-third of hospitals gone in eight years."    Long-time readers of this modest little blog probably aren't surprised.  But I'll bet it's caught a few CEOs off guard, especially those fond of saying things like "I don't have to outrun the bear, just the other guys."  You know what I mean.  You've heard the joke.  Except it was never very funny and now, as strategies go, it might be deadly. (Houle and Fleece are the authors of " The New Health Age: The Future of Health Care in America." )