Healthcare is this Year’s Political Football - AAPS | Association of American Physicians and Surgeons: By Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD Healthcare is the political football of the midterm elections. But unlike the game of football, there are no rules. And the goal is to win – not for the benefit of the team (the voters) but to gain status and power. Politicians are looking for a sound bite that …
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Saturday, February 16, 2019
Healthcare is this Year’s Political Football from the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
Healthcare is this Year’s Political Football - AAPS | Association of American Physicians and Surgeons: By Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD Healthcare is the political football of the midterm elections. But unlike the game of football, there are no rules. And the goal is to win – not for the benefit of the team (the voters) but to gain status and power. Politicians are looking for a sound bite that …
How Virtual Reality Will Transform Medicine -
If you still think of virtual reality as the province of dystopian science fiction and geeky gamers, you had better think again. Faster than you can say “Ready Player One,” VR is starting to transform our world, and medicine may well be the first sector where the impact is profound. Behavioral neuroscientist Walter Greenleaf of Stanford University has been watching this field develop since the days when VR headsets cost $75,000 and were so heavy, he remembers counterbalancing them with a brick. Today some weigh about a pound and cost less than $200. Gaming and entertainment are driving current sales, but Greenleaf predicts that “the deepest and most significant market will be in clinical care and in improving health and wellness.”
Another success came in the wake of 9/11. Psychologist JoAnn Difede of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center began using VR with World Trade Center survivors suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and later with soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.
How Virtual Reality Will Transform Medicine - Scientific American: Scientific American is the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology, explaining how they change our understanding of the world and shape our lives.
Thursday, February 14, 2019
Robot wars, Competition is heating up
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Three years later, in 1996, Guthart was working at a startup called Intuitive Surgical, which had licensed technology from the institute, SRI International. Intuitive launched a robotic surgical helper, branded da Vinci, in 1998. The da Vinci would go on to change surgery in the same way the iPhone has transformed cellphone use.
Today, nearly 5,000 da Vincis are in operating rooms, used in one million surgeries per year. Intuitive went public just after the tech bubble peaked in 2000, and still the stock ended the decade 17 times higher than at its IPO. Why? Because, until now, Intuitive has had the business to itself. The price tag on a da Vinci is about $1.5 million. Plus, it sells about $1,900 in replacement parts per operation. The company’s 30% net profit margin eclipses Microsoft’s.
But Intuitive might not be alone in the operating room much longer. Read more from Michela Tindera on Forbes.
Speaking of robotic surgery, Johnson & Johnson announced Wednesday that it plans to spend over $5 billion to boost its robotics program, buying startup Auris Health for about $3.4 billion in cash, plus additional milestone payments of up to $2.35 billion.
Today, nearly 5,000 da Vincis are in operating rooms, used in one million surgeries per year. Intuitive went public just after the tech bubble peaked in 2000, and still the stock ended the decade 17 times higher than at its IPO. Why? Because, until now, Intuitive has had the business to itself. The price tag on a da Vinci is about $1.5 million. Plus, it sells about $1,900 in replacement parts per operation. The company’s 30% net profit margin eclipses Microsoft’s
Guthart, 53, has been chief executive since 2010 and is sitting on $315 million worth of Intuitive stock and options based on February 13 closing prices. But now he’s going to have to work a little harder. Medtronic, a medical-device maker with sales eight times Intuitive’s, and Verb Surgical, a partnership between Johnson & Johnson and Alphabet, are expected to enter the surgery robot market in the next year. They’re likely to compete on price. And these heavyweights are also making inroads into Intuitive's future markets: J&J announced Wednesday that it would pay $3.4 billion in cash for Auris Health, a rival robotics startup with a device to perform lung biopsies.
Robot wars | Anti-aging pills | Medicare buy in
Doctors 4 Patient Care
Watch this informative video
There are many commonly beliefs of why healthcare is so expensive. Our current system is a carefully orchestrated financial system actually run by insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and a gordion knot of intermediaries, such a authorization procedures, networks of providers and a host of other parasitic organization.
Instead of a symbiotic system where the host and parasite work together our system is parasitic. Eventually parasites injure or cause great harm, even death to the host.
By now if you watched the entire video you should understand. Ask your M.D. why he does not offer a direct pay model ?
Let’s Transform Healthcare! It’s time!
How many of us have had aging family and friends who were in and out of the hospital, treating chronic conditions, sometimes three or four times per year. But each time, they leave the hospital in worse condition than they entered. My mother suffered more than she needed to at the end of her life. Let’s change this!
Care coordination has long been cited as one of the most glaring gaps in our healthcare system. Medical errors (which includes coordination of care) are the third leading cause of death in the US!
Care coordination requires a significant amount of communication that is clear, timely, relevant, accountable and secure. In addition, proper authorization is also required to engage and share data across each patient’s “Community of Care” - including family members, physicians, nurses, and specialists. So, it’s easy to see how communications and accountability can break down and negatively impact outcomes.
My mother, and countless others like her, didn’t receive the reliable and accountable care coordination they needed for their chronic conditions from a health care system that was built for one-size-fits-all. Critical parts of the healthcare system are too loosely connected with plenty of communication gaps.
THE BUSINESS PROBLEM:
The world’s aging population is driving a strategic opportunity to improve the healthcare system in the US and worldwide by encouraging Telehealth, ‘aging-in-place’ or ‘at home’ care. In the US, Seniors become eligible for Medicare at age 65. Currently, there are 58 million Medicare beneficiaries in the US and 10,000 seniors per day become newly eligible for Medicare every day for next 20 years!
Monday, February 11, 2019
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION---IS THERE TOO MUCH OF IT ? And is it a war on normal people ?
Here in the country of health care dystopia, this may give you new feelings about disruptive technologies.
One of the main features of humanity is the search for better. Humans also attempt to control their environment including finances, employment and their health. The situation we find ourselves is not unique or new.
How many physicians have gone into non-clinical ventures or become serial entrepenurs either before or after experiencing burnout, or depression?
In the American Dream sweepstakes, Andrew Yang was a pretty big winner. But for every winner, he came to realize, there are thousands upon thousands of losers — a “war on normal people,” he calls it. Here’s what he plans to do about it.
Andrew Yang on SoundCloud
Andrew Yang is not famous. Not yet, at least — maybe he will be someday. But let me tell you his story. He’s 44 years old; he was born in Schenectady, N.Y., a city long dominated by General Electric, the sort of company that had long dominated the American economy. But which, as you likely know, doesn’t anymore. Yang’s parents had both immigrated from Taiwan, and met in grad school. His mother became a systems administrator and his father did research at I.B.M.; he got his name on 69 patents. Their son Andrew studied economics and political science at Brown, got a law degree at Columbia, and ultimately became a successful entrepreneur, with a focus on widespread job creation. In the American Dream sweepstakes, Andrew Yang was a pretty big winner. But along the way, he came to see that for every winner, there were thousands upon thousands of losers.
While most physicians (along with myself, have been quick to state, health care is like no other) it has fallen prey to constant propaganda about efficiency, automation, cost containment and catalytic innovation.
Catalytic innovation takes place not only in health care, it also takes place in society as a whole, influencing developing countries and impoverished nations..
The economist Joseph Schumpeter famously described capitalism as an act of “creative destruction” — with new ideas and technologies replacing the old, with nimble startup firms replacing outmoded legacy firms, all in service of a blanket rise in prosperity. The notion of creative destruction has for many decades been part of the economic orthodoxy. And it’s undeniable that global prosperity has risen, and not just a little bit. But Yang — like many others — has stopped believing in the economic orthodoxy of creative destruction. As he sees it, there’s just too much destruction; and the blanket rise in prosperity isn’t covering enough people. We’re living through what Yang calls “a war on normal people” — a war that Yang fears is getting uglier all the time. And that’s why he has taken to saying this:
Ref:
https://content.production.cdn.art19.com/episodes/ce5f03c5-8f78-4842-a52e-abf40bf00d77/e43c5458255bb7327032d0800d1f11fd5267005f9c2321d2ff1ebc62f441b6faadad76694d82a64ca9d0260deb25f1c5403b54a569ba57dbe47d9b67054ba795/PC%20ANDREW%20YANG%20MIX%20190108.mp3
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Teen Gets Vaccines During Measles Outbreak, Despite Mom's Belief : Shots - Health News : NPR
For Parents: Vaccines for Your Children
NPR's Denise Guerra contributed to this report and produced this story for broadcast.
Teen Gets Vaccines During Measles Outbreak, Despite Mom's Belief : Shots - Health News : NPR: Ethan Lindenberger had never received vaccines for diseases like polio or measles because his mom is anti-vaccine. Now he's 18, he's finally getting his shots.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
What You Eat Matters
Cardiac Arrest Survivors Have Better Outlook Than Doctors Think
Here Are California's New Laws To Address The State's Opioid Crisis - capradio.org
Here Are California's New Laws To Address The State's Opioid Crisis - capradio.org: About two-thirds of last year’s big pile of bills designed to tackle the opioid crisis became law. Here’s what they do.
Monday, February 4, 2019
Infographic: 5 fast facts about millennial patients
Today is the first Monday of February 2019. By now I have broken all my New Year's resolutions.
How have health providers and patients coped with changes?
Health providers have struggled to keep pace with electronic health records, and new tools such as outcome studies, data analytics, and a new 'buzzword' every other week.
Welcome to the World of Work, Gen Z
Millennials probably need go no further, unless you want a wrap up of your nascent years. For the rest of us, please continue to see how different your children are from you. Most of the changes are due to the advances in technology fed by the internet, social media, and a distrust of formerly established routes of communications, purchasing, and socializing.
Gen Z has now entered the workforce.
A key feature of millennial thought process is they want in now, and perhaps yesterday. This is also true of healthcare access.
Part of Gen Z development has been a parallel process in technology, also driven by Gen Y and Gen Z, both in development and users.
Resourcefulness is at the top of the list. I’ve collected hundreds of stories from parents who have children between 11 and 17. They talk about how their children use YouTubeto figure things out themselves, without adult direction and even if they cannot read. From fixing cars to building model train sets, they know how to find the answers and directions they need.
Health providers have struggled to keep pace with electronic health records, and new tools such as outcome studies, data analytics, and a new 'buzzword' every other week.
If you are still confused there are multiple references:
The Millennials
Millenials Rising
A Taste of Generation Yum:
How the Millennial Generation's Love for Organic Fare, Celebrity Chefs and Microbrews Will Make or Break the Future of Food
The Revolution Generation: How Millennials Can Save America and the World (Before It's Too Late)
The Millennial Narrative: Sharing a Good Life with the Next Generation
Where the Millennials Will Take Us: A New Generation Wrestles with the Gender Structure
Zero Hour for Gen X: How the Last Adult Generation Can Save America from Millennials
Beyond Age Rage: How the Boomers and Seniors Are Solving the War of the Generations
Infographic: 5 fast facts about millennial patients | Physicians Practice: Having trouble viewing? Click to download
Sunday, February 3, 2019
How your health information is sold and turned into ‘risk scores’ - POLITICO
THE HORSE IS OUT OF THE BARN
Companies are starting to sell “risk scores” to doctors, insurers and hospitals to identify patients at risk of opioid addiction or overdose, without patient consent and with little regulation of the kinds of personal information used to create the scores.HIPAA regulations appear to prohibit personal information from release to the public, so 'bare statistics' are only available, unassigned to a particular patient. It is unknown at this time what PHI is transmitted to a provider..
Companies are starting to sell “risk scores” to doctors, insurers and hospitals to identify patients at risk of opioid addiction or overdose, without patient consent and with little regulation of the kinds of personal information used to create the scores. Over the past year, powerful companies such as LexisNexis have begun hoovering up the data from insurance claims, digital health records, housing records, and even information about a patient’s friends, family and roommates, without telling the patient they are accessing the information, and creating risk scores for health care providers and insurers.