MedSentry: Adherence for complex drug regimens (podcast)
https://healthbb.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/hbdew049-david-e-williams-interviews-medsentry-ceo-adam-wallen.mp3
Medication adherence is a tough challenge, especially for high-risk patients, whose complex drug regimens often feature more than a dozen pills. MedSentry is rolling out an end-to-end closed loop adherence system for this population. Although it’s not a large group, it is responsible for a disproportionate share of medical costs.
In this podcast interview, CEO Adam Wallen and I discuss the following:
(0:11) Adherence is a big problem in healthcare. What does it mean? What’s the nature of the p...
Source: Health Business Blog - September 16, 2016 Category: Health Management Authors: dewe67 Tags: Devices Entrepreneurs Patients Pharma Podcast Source Type: blogs
LBJ would think walking meetings are pretty lame
Don’t talk to me about walking meetings
The Wall Street Journal continues to go soft on us. I just read about “walking meetings,” which are just what they sound like: conducting meetings while walking around. According to the Journal, these meetings are great for combating obesity and diabetes, and improving creativity. With meetings, phone calls and emails taking up more than 90 percent of the workday for some people (consultants like myself included), the Journal touts studies purporting to show the benefits of wandering around at work.
Walking meetings aren’t really new. Kaiser’s Dr. Ted ...
Source: Health Business Blog - September 14, 2016 Category: Health Management Authors: dewe67 Tags: Amusements Culture Research Source Type: blogs
Health Wonk Review: Back to School Daze
Ah Labor Day! A final blush of summer before jumping back to work and into the school year. Here’s a pretty serious set of posts as you settle back in to the fall routine.
The opioid epidemic
Managed Care Matters tells tales from the front lines of the opioid epidemic. Not pretty. Not pretty at all.
Health Affairs Blog shares insights on the development of a “safe space and medical monitoring to prevent overdose deaths” in Boston. This excellent post describes the observation and treatment facility (which is not a supervised injection facility) and lays out five policy lessons learned to date.
Insurance ...
Source: Health Business Blog - September 8, 2016 Category: Health Management Authors: dewe67 Tags: Blogs Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Dr. Joshua Newman, GM for Healthcare at Salesforce, discusses telehealth solution
https://healthbb.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/hbdew048-david-e-williams-interviews-salesforce-chief-med-officer-joshua-newman.mp3
Joshua Newman, MD –Salesforce’s Chief Medical Officer
I really like Salesforce’s Health Cloud approach to patient engagement and am excited to see the company add telehealth to the platform. I caught up recently with Dr. Joshua Newman, who is Chief Medical Officer for Salesforce and also General Manager of Healthcare and Life Sciences.
In this podcast interview we discussed the following:
(0:12) How has the rollout of Health Cloud gone since our last discussion about a year ag...
Source: Health Business Blog - September 6, 2016 Category: Health Management Authors: dewe67 Tags: e-health Patients Physicians Podcast Health Cloud Salesforce Source Type: blogs
Are men comfortable with female physicians? Other factors to consider
Nuzzel showed me that my friends have been sharing a new athenainsight: Are male patients comfortable with women doctors? The post uses athenahealth billing data to demonstrate that male patients are less likely to return to female physicians than they are to male physicians, but for female patients the sex of their doctor doesn’t make a difference.
Athena’s conclusion is that men may be “less enthusiastic than women about seeing physicians of the opposite” sex. The article links to a Quora exchange, where all the respondents indicate that as patients they are equally comfortable with women a...
Source: Health Business Blog - September 2, 2016 Category: Health Management Authors: dewe67 Tags: Culture Patients Physicians Source Type: blogs
EpiPen may still be too cheap
Good stuff, cheap
Pick up a newspaper or surf the web and you’ll find story after story taking Mylan to task for EpiPen pricing practices. The list price of a 2-pack has soared from about $100 to $600 over the past decade. The price is deemed too high and the rate of increase is considered particularly unconscionable.
Let me offer a brief counterargument:
EpiPen is worth the price. A $300 pen regularly rescues children from anaphylactic shock that would otherwise be fatal, offering them the chance to live to 100 instead of dying at 10. (About 20% of patients need a second dose, which is why these devices ar...
Source: Health Business Blog - August 26, 2016 Category: Health Management Authors: dewe67 Tags: Pharma Policy and politics Source Type: blogs
Surprise, surprise! Exchange customers are price sensitive
Uh oh. Another big national health plan, Aetna has decided to pull back from the individual health insurance marketplaces (aka exchanges) deciding they can’t make money because customers are focusing on price, not brand name. The headlines give a sense of it:
Cost, Not Choice, Is Top Concern of Health Insurance Customers —New York Times
Customers’ Laser-Like Focus on Plan Prices Is Causing Concerns in Health Insurance Market – Kaiser Health News
The articles quote insurance executive and experts claiming that “price competition has turned out to be much more cutthroat than anyone expected&#...
Source: Health Business Blog - August 18, 2016 Category: Health Management Authors: dewe67 Tags: Economics Health plans Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
