Health 2.0 speaker says 'find a way to build a business model'

“Health 2.0 has the promise to change the healthcare industry,” the conference’s opening keynote speaker Mark Smith, president of the California HealthCare Foundation, told the audience on Monday.

Smith also asserted that health reform is necessary for innovation and vital to the success of Health 2.0 entrepreneurs’ business model because the current system is set up to pay for volume.

[See also: 11 health IT startups go for the money.]

Launched in 2007, Health 2.0 stages an annual conference focused on innovation and on tools aimed at helping consumers manage their health and connect to care providers.

California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF), a nonprofit grant-making philanthropic organization, has set up an innovation fund so companies can “innovate, spread and change the world,” Smith said. The fund was created, he said, because “I’m tired of seeing successful pilots die on the vine.”

Despite the success of a grant-funded pilot, academic entrepreneurs often move onto the next grant opportunity, according to Smith. CHCF hopes its efforts will help entrepreneurs “try to find a way to build a business model.”

[Q&A: Todd Park on the bridge between HHS' Health Data Initiative and meaningful use.]

The good news is that technology is maturing and policy to support these initiatives is evolving, Smith said. The bad news is that technology is not the obstacle. Rather, guild rules, payment rules and culture are the obstacles. The other bad news is that the industry is running out of time, he said. Despite widespread bipartisan agreement that the system is broken and needs to be fixed, the cost of healthcare is continuing to escalate and the fiscal future of the country relying on healthcare reform.

Smith offered areas of opportunities for innovators:

• Solutions should address cost, but they shouldn’t merely shift cost. Until reimbursement reform eliminates the “perverse incentives” for payment, entrepreneurs need to understand which stakeholder’s money is being saved.


• Entrepreneurs should innovate in a way that makes the healthcare system more convenient for patients. They need to understand, however, that the value proposition of patients may “represent a threat to the existing order,” Smith said. He cited Kaiser Permanente’s shift of educating and marketing its electronic health record system from the providers to the patients because the EHRs delivered value for patients.


• Solutions that enable rapid learning for providers addresses the under-learning problem that currently exists because there is so much data being generated that is taking providers too long to consume. Being able to turn massive data into information and then learning “is a big priority,” Smith said.


• Finally, the enrollment of the uninsured – numbered around 35 million – beginning in 2014 creates huge challenges for payers. Solutions will be called on to address when and how the newly ensured will want to sign up.

“Health 2.0 is on the verge of taking off,” Smith said, because of the mature technology. Affordability, accessibility and improved quality and outcomes will drive Health 2.0 solutions, he concluded.

10 Hilarious Medical Transcription Errors

Medical transcription is a very important process when it comes to the business of saving lives. Those are the seemingly indecipherable notes on your patient sheet that your doctor will look over to help decide which medicines and treatments you will need to become a functioning human being again. Unfortunately, a lot of these notes are written in haste and words can be misspelled, forgotten, or switched around.

You might be shocked to hear that doctors goof up on those notes, especially when receiving wrong doses or entirely wrong medicines can do much more harm than good. While medical transcription errors are best avoided, not all of them spell doom for a patient. In fact, a lot of them are hilarious. Here are some of the best medical transcription errors that have found themselves leaked onto the Internet.

Transcription Error: The patient was breathing heavily with no signs of respiration

Hmm. This sounds like the kind of case that only House M.D. could solve, with a mixture of snark and common sense. I guess the twist ending would be chest spasms without lung compression. Or House would just call whoever wrote this note an idiot.

Transcription Error: The baby was delivered, the cord clamped and cut and handed to the pediatrician, who breathed and cried immediately

Doctors spend years and years in school, learning how to do doctor things. After these years and years of school, they have to go through years of on the job training. This is quite understandable, as anybody with a decent chance of being elbow deep in somebody’s intestines should know what they are doing. The downside of this is doctors don’t learn sentence structure. Or this was just the world’s most emotional M.D.

Transcription Error: Exam of genitalia reveals that he is circus sized

This is the type of note that we all wished our doctors would write for us. Forget those cheesy pick-up lines. Whenever you are at the bar you would just pull out this official documentation from your doctor, show it to the woman of your choice, and have the night of your life. This is of course assuming that the note is accurate, which this example certainly wasn’t. It was just the best accidental compliment of that patient’s life.

Transcription Error: Bleeding started in the rectal area and continued all the way to Los Angeles

That sounds terrifying. The specific level of terror depends on the distance between the patient’s rectum and Los Angeles, but it is arguable that the phrase “bleeding started in the rectal area” is terrifying enough on its own.

Transcription Error: She is numb from her toes down

Alright ladies, if these are the problems that you are seeing the doctor for then you have officially lost all rights to make fun of guys about refusing to see doctors. We at least wait until that numbness reaches our ankles. Tough guys will wait until it hits the knees. Or else the doctor forgot to address the serious matter of toes growing out of a woman’s forehead.

Transcription Error: Social history reveals this 1 year old patient does not smoke or drink and is presently unemployed

On second thought, this might not be an error. The news is always talking about how fast kids are growing up these days, what with all the hormones put in our cheeseburgers and all. Maybe doctors are actually concerned about alcoholic chain smoking infants. Maybe this medical transcription is proof that we will finally see a baby born with a glorious mustache.

Transcription Error: Patient called and left word that he had expired last week

This patient wins the award for most courteous zombie of all time. Of course the doctor probably meant that the patient’s health insurance or something had expired, but a polite zombie apocalypse is a far more interesting theory.

Transcription Error: On the second day the knee was better, and on the third day it disappeared completely

Everybody has memories of falling down and scraping their knee when they were little. You would sit there and cry over what was a horrific injury in your mind, but actually barely qualified as a boo boo. It was at this time a supposedly funny uncle or dad would joke that they had to amputate. After all, if you don’t have the knee it won’t hurt anymore. This is what happens when somebody gives that funny uncle/dad a medical license.

Transcription Error: Discharge status: Alive but without permission

It is not unheard of for doctors to get a God complex since their jobs are literally life and death. It is a little weird to see one so blatant about his need to control everything. Most doctors would be glad to see a patient breathing, let alone healthy enough to leave the hospital. It sounds like this doctor wants to track down this patient and take away his clean bill of health with his bare hands.

Transcription Error: The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to be depressed

Sherlock Holmes is not only the world’s greatest detective, but also the world’s greatest physician. His bedside manner leaves a little to be desired, though.

This article was originally posted at  http://ping.fm/7BBrs

Diabetes care improves with EHRs

Care for patients with diabetes improved appreciably when their physicians use electronic health records (EHRs) extensively, according to a recent study.

Physicians who participated in the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative from 2006 to 2008 significantly increased their ability to generate and use registries for laboratory results and medication usage. The more actively physicians used their EHRs, the more they used registries, particularly for care of patients with diabetes.

Researchers looked at the use of registries in the years immediately before and after the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative program installed free EHRs for participating physicians. In 2005, 44% of physicians could generate a laboratory results registry; by 2009, 78% could.

 

In the same period, the percentage of physicians who could generate a medication registry increased from 33% to 83%. The ability to generate a diagnostic registry remained stable at just under 90% for practices of all sizes.

 

The use of registries "is considered a measure of physicians' engagement with [EHR] systems and a proxy for high-quality healthcare," according to the researchers. Registries are lists of patients with specific health risks, diagnoses, laboratory results, or medications that enable physicians to assess their own quality measures. The ability to generate registries is one measure of meaningful use of EHRs used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

In another study looking at the role of technology in managing diabetes, use of a mobile application was found to reduce A_1C levels in patients with type 2 diabetes by nearly 2% over a 1-year period.

Participants received cell phones preloaded with diabetes management software and were asked to enter their blood glucose levels when they tested. The app analyzed the reading, sending a text message coaching the patient on ways to quickly moderate their blood sugar levels if they were too high or low.

The study involved 26 primary care practices with 163 patients. At the end of the year, patients who used the mobile app with provider decision support had a mean drop in glycated hemoglobin of 1.9%. Patients in a control group experienced a decline
of 0.7%.

This article was originally posted at  http://www.modernmedicine.com/modernmedicine/Modern+Medicine+Now/Diabetes-care-improves-with-EHRs/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/739113?contextCategoryId=44687