HealthcentricityBlog

Can Price Transparency Work?

Today's Wall Street Journal features another example of the emergence of Healthcare Consumerism.  The cover of the Personal Journal section has the article Patients Get New Tools to Price Health Care.  If you don't have a subscription to their on-line site, it basically outlines how many insurers and states are posting the costs of many procedures, such a hip replacement or baby delivery.  At Dartmouth-Hitchcock in New Hampshire they've posted the charges for 75 of their most common medical procedures.  More and more frequently, the real price is leaking into the public domain.  This will be good in the long run, though it will sure to create some confusion and cause information overload. 

Of concern though, is yesterday's NY Times front page article Wounds Salved, Clinton Returns to Health Care.  She claims to have learned much from her disastrous dive into the healthcare in 1993, and promises to be more moderate in her policy views.  That she has appeared with Newt Gingrich and seems to be in agreement with many of his views is a good sign, but probably not enough to overcome the bad memories of their presidency's attempt as implementing socialized medicine.  Consumers are far stronger and smarter than a decade ago, and the evolution of our system must truly be consumer-centric for the needed changes to happen.

Coming Soon: Consumer Health World

Skip Brickley and his team at Transmarx have begun planning for Consumer Health World 2006, scheduled for December 11-13 in DC.  They've just come off a pretty fantastic event earlier this month at the Spring 2006 CDHCC show in San Francisco.  This conference has become the premier platform for advocates of Healthcare Consumerism.  Newt was on hand via video feed, promoting his views and the work of his Center for Health Transformation - a hopeful voice who understands both government and the power of the citizen to really drive change in healthcare.   A diverse mix of academics, insurers, consultants, physicians, authors and the media gave an eclectic feel to the sessions.  Even Richard Branson's new venture - Virgin Life Care- was represented by Jackie Wilmot of Humana, as a way to motivate employees toward better health behavior.  And bloggers were lurking as well.  The irreverent Matthew Holt of The Health Care Blog was one of the few detractors from the theme of healthcare consumerism, and Dmitriy Kruglyak of The Medical Blog Network was there to announce his new venture - "the MySpace of healthcare."  Look for further updates on Consumer Health World 2006- it will be a good one! (Disclosure - I'm part of the CDHCC Advisory Board)

Moving Toward Personal Health Records...

Yesterday at the TEPR 2006 Conference in Baltimore, the exhibition hall was packed with Electronic Health Record (EHR) vendors, each promoting their unique functionality, efficiency, profitability and so on.  Their target customer is the large physician group practice or hospital system (seems that small practices and PCPs apparently aren't that keen on going electronic yet).  But the patient interface was an afterthought, if at all.  Richard Dick of You Take Control created quite a stir, though, in his presentations of the informed consent strategy and system he is employing with RHIOs and hospital systems across the country.  Later Reed Gelzer of Advocates for Documentation Integrity and Compliance told us that Dick had a brilliant concept as the gatekeeper of patient consent.  He's also convinced that the ultimate owner of the electronic medical record needs to be the patient.  Of course this puts an extra burden on the patient to be smarter, savvier and more knowledgeable about diseases, conditions and solutions.  The people we chatted with at Healthwise seem to be doing a great job promoting their mission of Information Therapy to consumers, claiming to reach about 1 in 10 US households.  Good thing, too, because if you haven't yet seen the May 29 cover story on Medical Guesswork in Business Week, check it out.  It's a pretty extraordinary look at the physician decision-making!  Another example of the importance of personal responsibility in healthcare.