HelloMD helps patients with cash jump the line for better treatment
Mark Hadfield, HelloMD CEO and founder
http://healthbb.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/hbdew0017-david-e-williams-interviews-hellomd-founder_ceo-mark-hadfield.m4a
Mark Hadfield makes no bones about the fact that the US is moving to a two-tiered medical system, where those with the means to pay more get better, faster treatment. His company, HelloMD helps in-demand doctors –mainly specialists– opt out of the third-party reimbursement system and serve the more lucrative, cash-paying patients.
In this podcast interview, Hadfield describes how his company is addressing the high end of the market. He explains how Hel...
Source: Health Business Blog - July 15, 2014 Category: Health Managers Authors: David Williams Tags: Entrepreneurs Patients Physicians Podcast concierge medicine Source Type: blogs
The Strategic Future of the SENS Research Foundation
As I've noted in the past, attention and investment given to research tends to come in waves. Longevity science has been building from the 1970s in a series of growing waves, each lasting ten to fifteen years. That is long enough for new ideas to arise, a few organizations to be founded, networks established, research accomplished, and the groundwork laid for the next cycle to begin. The faces are generally different each time around: new entrepreneurs and researchers pick up the torch with each decade, putting their own spin on things and building their own flavor of progress. Insofar as longevity science goes the wave st...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 11, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Activism, Advocacy and Education Source Type: blogs
Aiming to Remove the Senescent Cell Contribution to Aging and Age-Related Disease
As the years pass ever more of your cells fall into a state of senescence. This is a response to the age of the cell itself, its internal damage, surrounding levels of metabolic waste, the presence of cell-damaging toxins, or other signals that indicate a potentially raised risk of cancer. Senescent cells do not divide or do much else to support the tissue they are a part of, but rather emit a range of potentially harmful chemical signals that encourage other nearby cells to also enter a senescent state. Senescent cells sometimes self-destruct, or they can be removed by the immune system, but the immune system has its own ...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 10, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
First Opinion: Online doctor consults for the masses (podcast interview)
Hey doc, let’s chat
http://healthbb.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/hbdew0014-david-e-williams-interviews-first-opinions-vikram-bakhru1.m4a
The dominant trend in primary care is toward large group practices where more and more patient encounters are with NPs, PAs and other professionals rather than MDs. Co-pays are rising, and so-called patient-centered medical homes are leveraging electronic health records in the pursuit of “population health.”
Against this background, First Opinion, an iOS app, is going more or less in the opposite direction. The company allows users one free text-based consultation a mont...
Source: Health Business Blog - June 17, 2014 Category: Health Managers Authors: David Williams Tags: e-health Patients Physicians Podcast Source Type: blogs
Engineering a Loss of Function PCSK9 Mutation to Reduce Cardiovascular Disease Risk
The advent of efficient techniques for gene editing such as CRISPR is moving us into an era in which all sorts of beneficial enhancements to human biology become possible. The regulatory establishment is exceedingly conservative with regard to genetic alterations and will vigorously resist all such treatments, of course, but gene therapies with good evidence of beneficial effects will become available via medical tourism in the same way as stem cell treatments did more than a decade ago. Myostatin knockout is a good example of a possible target of benefit to basically healthy people as well as those suffering age-related f...
Source: Fight Aging! - June 11, 2014 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Stem Cell Transplants as a Treatment for Degenerative Disc Disease
Researchers review the evidence from animal studies suggesting that stem cell transplants are a beneficial treatment for degenerative disc disease. This is a treatment that has been available via medical tourism for some years now, though it is still only just entering clinical trials in the US:
Stem cell transplant was viable and effective in halting or reversing degenerative disc disease of the spine, a meta-analysis of animal studies showed, in a development expected to open up research in humans. Recent developments in stem cell research have made it possible to assess its effect on intervertebral disc (IVD) height. N...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 10, 2014 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Implications for the NHS of inward and outward medical tourism: a policy and economic analysis using literature review and mixed-methods approaches
National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) - The study examined the implications of inward and outward flows of private patients for the NHS across a range of specialties and services. It found that the past decade has seen an increase in both inward and outward medical travel. Europe is both a key source of travellers to the UK and a destination for UK residents who travel for medical treatment and that the economic implications of medical tourism for the NHS are not uniform.
Report
NIHR - publications (Source: Health Management Specialist Library)
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - February 4, 2014 Category: UK Health Authors: The King's Fund Information & Knowledge Service Tags: NHS finances and productivity NHS measurement and performance Source Type: blogs
Healthcare leaders face unintended consequences of reform
by Jonathan H. Burroughs
To say the roll out of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) has been difficult is a gross understatement. It is a classic study in mismanagement, poor planning, poor judgment and administrative hubris.
Unfortunately, something akin to the PPACA was necessary and yet its unanticipated consequences have created unexpected challenges for healthcare leaders.
1. Insurance reform
In more than 29 states, one or two insurance entities make up more than 70 percent of the states' market share. For instance, New Hampshire's health insurance exchange consists of a single entity,...
Source: hospital impact - November 27, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Patients Encouraged to Travel for Surgical Procedures by Their Employers
The cost of many surgical procedures is now so steep that some employer health plans are willing to fly patients to a distant hospital for care. This was the basis for medical tourism which continues to this day and involves travel to another country like India or Singapore. The major difference with medical tourism was that the patients were generally uninsured and seeking lower cost procedures abroad. However and as I noted five years ago, the competitive aspect of medical tourism is now beginning to spill over to the U.S. with bids for surgical procedures solicited from hospitals in collaboration with their health...
Source: Lab Soft News - November 8, 2013 Category: Pathologists Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Medical Consumerism Quality of Care Source Type: blogs
Medtronic Begins to Develop a Portable Kidney Dialysis Device in India
Medtronic is one of the most successful medical device manufacturers in the world. When it cuts a deal to develop a portable kidney dialysis device in India with one of the most successful hospital chains there, you pay attention (see: Has This Medical Leader Hit Health Care's Biggest Jackpot?). Here are the details from a recent article:
Medtronic...is the world's largest pure medical-device maker, but this stable stock has also impressed investors with amazing growth in 2013. Shares of the company are up more than 34% in 2013. Medtronic's a powerful player in the cardiology market and more, but this com...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 16, 2013 Category: Pathologists Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Medical Research Source Type: blogs
We Need a Revolution in the Pharmaceutical Drug Industry! By Rabbi Dr.
Shmuly Yanklowitz
Imagine you live in a small village in Africa and your child is dying of a treatable disease. It is brought to your attention that the drug used to treat your child's disease costs less than $1 to produce but you would have to pay more than $1,000 to purchase it (an amount that is impossible for you to pay). Tragically, you watch your child die as you are consumed with grief, confusion, and resentment for global pricing structures.Of course, pharmaceutical drugs cannot be free. Companies need incentives to conduct research and to increase research and development. Without this incentive, unfortunately, we cannot be assured...
Source: PharmaGossip - October 16, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
KevinMD: Fall speaking 2013
I am honored to be offered the opportunity to share my social media journey to health care audiences at conferences nationwide. It’s truly enlightening to meet, and learn from, a diverse array of individuals, each with a different perspective of social media’s place in health care.
This fall, I will be speaking at conferences in Boston, New York City, and Las Vegas.
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Bronx, NY
Friday, October 18, 2013
Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary
Boston, MA
Thursday, October 24, 2013
World Medical Tourism & Global Healthcare Congress
Las Vegas, NV
Sunday, November 3, 2013
I am cu...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 30, 2013 Category: Family Physicians Tags: Potpourri Source Type: blogs
Medical Tourism Downsides
A patient comes into the hospital with dizziness and trouble breathing.
The story about how he developed those symptoms was a little more involved.
The patient needed some major work done on his teeth. He was having a lot of pain and couldn’t take it any longer. So he sold his favorite Harley Davidson motorcycle and had about $6,000 available to fix his teeth. After calling around to multiple dentists and clinics, the best price he could get to have all of the work done in the US was about $14,000. He read about medical tourism in a newspaper article, so he made some phone calls and sent some e-mails and found a place ne...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - September 20, 2013 Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: WhiteCoat Tags: Patient Encounters Source Type: blogs
A Selection of Recent Stem Cell News
Stem cell research forges ahead these days on too many fronts to keep up with more than the high points. It's still enormously, unnecessarily expensive and time consuming to bring perfectly serviceable cell therapies into clinical practice in the US, so the medical tourism market continues to grow. The bulk of practical experience in the use of early stage stem cell therapies is at this point distributed to less regulated parts of the world, I believe. Work in the laboratory continues to advance in leaps and bounds, meanwhile, ever further ahead of what government regulators are willing to let pass their increasingly ridic...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 21, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Rerun: Happy 3rd birthday to the Health Business Blog
The Health Business Blog is on vacation this week and re-running some classic posts. This one is from March 2008, the third birthday of the Health Business Blog.
—–
The Health Business Blog is three years old, with close to 1700 posts and counting. For the first and second birthdays I picked out my favorite post by month, and I’m continuing that tradition today.
March 2007: Eye-popping generic pricing disparities
Retail prices for a 30 day supply of generic Zocor (simvastatin) ranged from $6.97 at Sam’s Club to $131.99 at Rite Aid. Can you imagine seeing price differentials like that for any other pro...
Source: Health Business Blog - August 20, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: dewe67 Tags: Announcements Blogs Source Type: blogs
