A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

explained in a new report from EY co-sponsored by the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the AHA Center for Health Innovation. Digital Transformation – Anywhere Care envisions “health care with no address, or bringing care to the consumer or patient rather than expecting the patient to go to the hospital” as a “vital sign” of health care’s changes going into the new year of 2021. COVID-19 accelerated a movement in which I’ve been involved for over a decade, known as “participatory health.” In its early phase in the U.S., Dr. Tom Ferguson identified the emerging role of the internet in

Yesterday, IQVIA presented their end-of-year data based on medical claims in the U.S. health care system tracking the ups, downs, and ups of the coronavirus in America. IQVIA has been tracking COVID-19 medical trends globally from early 2020. The plotline of patient encounters for vaccines, prescribed medicines, foregone procedures and diagnostic visits to doctors begs the question: in 2021, will Americans be “sicker,” discovering later-stage cancer diagnoses, higher levels of pain due to delayed hip procedures, and eroded quality of life due to leaky guts? Here are a few snapshots that paint a picture for greater morbidity and potentially more “excess

When it comes to patients, health care providers have been hit hard in two ways in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hit #1 has been the direct negative impact of the coronavirus on health care volumes and patients not utilizing hospitals and doctors’ services, avoiding physical encounters in health care sites Hit #2 has been the negative impact of patient experience for those health consumers who sought health care services during the pandemic — and had a negative response to the encounter. Accenture explored this phenomenon in their latest report, Elevating the Patient Experience to Fuel Growth. In the

Two in three U.S. consumers skipped or delayed getting in-person medical care in 2020. One in 2 people had a telehealth visit int he last year. Most would use virtual care again. The coronavirus pandemic has mind-shifted how patients envision a health care visit. Today, most consumers prefer the idea of getting health care at home compared with going to a doctor’s office. Most Americans also like the idea of recovering at home instead of at a medical facility after a major medical event, according to the report, Health-at-Home 2020: The New Standard of Care Delivery from CareCentrix. COVID-19 has

While 85% of people are open to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, over one-half of them would want to wait some time to observe if after-effects developed in people who took the jab, according to a new study from Acxiom, the data analytics-marketing company. Not all people are as enthused about getting a coronavirus vaccine at all, Acxiom discovered: in fact, those hardest hit by the virus — Black people — would be the least-likely to want to get a COVID-19 vaccine, discussed in in Vaccine Hesitancy in the U.S., a survey the company conducted among 10,000 people in the U.S.

Most psychologists in the U.S. treated more patients in the first six months of the coronavirus pandemic, shifting their practices to telehealth platforms. These therapists got more referrals and saw fewer cancellations, and one-third treated patients who lived in a different state from their practice site, according to Patients with Depression and Anxiety Surge as Psychologists Respond to the Coronavirus Pandemic from the American Psychological Association (APA). For this study, APA polled 1,787 licensed psychologists (both members and non-members in the Association) in the U.S. between late August and early October 2020. This year, APA has published four reports on

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated health care providers’ and plans’ investment in digital technologies while reducing capital spending on new physical assets, we learn in Building resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. What must be built (or truly re-built), health care leaders believe, is first and foremost trust, followed by financial viability to ensure long-term resilience and sustainability — for the workforce, the organization, the community, and leaders themselves. For this report, Deloitte interviewed 60 health care chief financial officers to gauge their perspectives during the pandemic looking at the future of

In the 2018 mid-term elections, U.S. voters were driven to polls with health care on their minds. The key issues for health care voters were costs (for care and prescription drugs) and access (read: protecting pre-existing conditions and expanding Medicaid). Issue #2 for 2018 voters was the economy. In 2020, as voting commences in-person tomorrow on 3rd November, U.S. voters have lives and livelihoods on their minds. It’s the pandemic – our physical lives looming largest in the polls – coupled with our fiscal and financial lives. Health is translating across all definitions for U.S. voters in November 2020: for

It is said that a picture tells a thousand words. This picture tells an even quicker story that can save lives: “Masks work.” The backstory: Kansas Governor Laura Kelly issued a mask mandate on July 2, 2020. The rationale: That was two days before Independence Day, the holiday weekend when she and state public health officials anticipated health citizens would abandon their personal efforts to physically distance and cover faces to avoid contracting or spreading the coronavirus. This was the message directly communicated to U.S. residents by the White House Coronavirus Task Force that week before Independence Day. The backlash: 

Every company is a tech company, strategy consultants asserted over the past decade. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed that every company is a health and wellness company now, at least in the eyes of consumers around the world. In The Wellness Gap, the health and wellness team at Ogilvy explores the mindsets of consumers in 14 countries to learn peoples’ perspectives on wellness brands and how COVID-19 has impacted consumers’ priorities. A total of 7,000 interviews were conducted in April 2020, in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America — including 500 interviews in the U.S. The first chart illustrates

2020 will be remembered for disruption and dislocation on many fronts; among the major blips in the year will be it remembered as the largest funding year for digital health recorded, according to Rock Health’s report on the 3Q2020 digital health funding. This funding record (“already” before year-end, tallied by the third quarter as Rock Health notes) was driven by “mega”-deals accelerated during the public health crisis of COVID-19. In the third quarter of 2020, some $4 billion was invested in U.S. based digital health start-ups adding up $9.4 billion in 2020….so far. This is $1.2 billion more than two

In May 2020, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) re-visited the acronym, “PPE.” As OED evolves the definition of PPE, the wordsmiths could borrow from OSHA’s website, noting that PPE, “is equipment worn to minimize exposure to hazards that cause serious workplace injuries and illnesses. These injuries and illnesses may result from contact with chemical, radiological, physical, electrical, mechanical, or other workplace hazards. Personal protective equipment may include items such as gloves, safety glasses and shoes, earplugs or muffs, hard hats, respirators, or coveralls, vests and full body suits.” Perhaps Definition 3 in the OED could be updated by a blog

On February 4th, 2020, in a hospital in northern California, the first known inpatient diagnosed with COVID-19 died. On March 11th, the World Health Organization called the growing prevalence of the coronavirus a “pandemic.” On May 25th, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died at the hands of police in Minneapolis. This summer, the Dixie Chicks dropped the “Dixie” from their name, and NASCAR cancelled the confederate flag from their tracks. Today, nearly 200,000 Americans have died due to the novel coronavirus. My new book, Health Citizenship: How a virus opened hearts and minds, launched this week. In it, I

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed deep cracks and inequities in U.S. health care in terms of exposure to COVID-19 and subsequent outcomes, with access to medical care and mortality rates negatively impacting people of color to a greater extent than White Americans. The pandemic has also led to economic decline that, seven weeks before the 2020 elections in America, is top-of-mind for health citizens with the virus-crisis itself receding to second place, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation September 2020 Health Tracking Poll. KFF polled 1,199 U.S. adults 18 years of age and older between August 28 and September 3,

“This surge of people experiencing acute behavioral health problems…has the potential to further impact the healthcare system for years to come,” a report from McKinsey expects looking at the hidden costs of COVID-19’s impact on U.S. health care. The coronavirus pandemic has taken a toll on Americans’ mental health, with anxiety and depression growing as a side-effect to worries about the virus itself, the long Great Lockdown in much of the country, and the economic recession that has particularly impacted women and people of color. I covered depression impacts due to COVID-19 here in Health Populi yesterday, and wanted to

McKinsey invites us to Meet the next-normal consumer in a recently-published research report describing changing consumer behavior responding to the COVID-19 lockdown and aftermath. The report gives us insights into the next-normal health consumer, which I’ll discuss in today’s post. Note the massive digital shift every person living in a country touched by the coronavirus has experienced, illustrated in the first graphic from the report. Tele-work, tele-education, ecommerce, and streaming entertainment all grew so fast within a matter of a few weeks. And telemedicine, McKinsey points out, was adopted at a rate of ten times growth over 15 days, the

In the COVID-19 era, most U.S. consumers believe they have an obligation to share personal health information to stop the spread of the coronavirus. However, only 44% would be willing to share their personal data with a national database, a MITRE study learned. Only one-third of Americans would be willing to share their temperature, 29% their location, and one-fourth information about their chronic conditions. The Harris Poll conducted the study among 2,065 U.S. adults 18 and over in mid-June 2020 to gauge peoples’ perspectives on health data and privacy. Three-quarters of people in the U.S. believe that data privacy “is a

The COVID-19 pandemic hastened digital transformation for both the health care industry and for individuals — as health consumers, patients, caregivers, and health citizens. Two new reports from Accenture update our understanding of the changed health consumer in the context of both “home: and the health care ecosystem. These reports are Accenture’s annual Digital Health Technology Vision 2020, and an analysis of the firm’s Wave 7 of consumer research, answering the question, How will COVID-19 change the consumer? The 2020 tech vision for health is summarized here, tying to Accenture’s previous two years of forecasts. This year, the five pillars

Welcome back to my ABCovid-19 Journal, which I created/curated in the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic. This week, I’m sharing all the letters of the alphabet with you which reminded me keywords and themes emerging as we were learning about this dastardly public health threat beginning early in 2020. In today’s Health Populi blog I bring you letters “K” through “O,” continuing through the rest of the alphabet tomorrow and Friday while I’m on a lake-side holiday that’s good for mind, body, and spirit. K is for Kirkland, Washington state In the U.S., one of the earliest hotspots for

My friends… It’s time in this pandemic journey that I take a full week to re-charge and bask in the midst of nature, a lake, farm-to-table food, wine-making, and the love of and therapeutic time with my wonderful husband. My gift to you all this week, 10th – 14th August, is to share with you pages from my “ABCovid-19 Journal” that I created/curated in the first weeks of the coronavirus pandemic. We all have our hacks for managing stress and discomfort, and in the first weeks of COVID-19, this was my life-saver. Journaling is one of my self-care strategies; think

This week, announcements from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and Withings further bolster the case for the private sector bolstering public health in this pandemic…and future ones to come beyond the Age of the Coronavirus. Since the pandemic emerged, CTA has been reaching out to members and stakeholders to be a useful resource for the consumer electronics industry and its customers. Digital health resources have been an especially useful touch point for CTA’s constituents (including me, as a member who is active with the Association). On 27th July, CTA announced the Association’s launch of the Public Health Tech Initiative. In

The worse of the coronavirus pandemic is yet to come, most Americans felt in July 2020. That foreboding feeling is shaping U.S. parents’ concerns about their children returning to school, with the calendar just weeks away from educators opening their classrooms to students, from kindergarten to the oldest cohort entering senior year of high school. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s July 2020 Health Tracking Poll focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic, return-to-school, and the governments’ response. KFF polled 1,313 U.S. adults 18 and older between July 14 to 19, 2020. The first line chart illustrates Americans’ growing concerns about the coronavirus, shifting

With growing coronavirus case hotspots in southern and western states, more Americans perceive the pandemic is worsening this summer, shown by a Gallup poll published 20 July 2020. Gallup titles the analysis, Americans’ social distancing steady as pandemic worsens. The first table organizes Gallup’s data by demographics, illustrating a significant gap between how women perceive the exacerbating pandemic compared with men. In early June, roughly one-third of both men and women saw COVID-19 was getting “worse”; five weeks later, in the second week of July, men and women’s perceptions were 12 points apart with more women concerned about the situation

“And please…please…please wear a face covering,” Dr. Jerome Adams, the U.S. Surgeon General pleaded on June 30, 2020, during a speech to U.S. Public Health Workers. [You can fast forward to second #42 to hear Dr. Adams’ impassioned plea to his fellow Americans. s Wearing a mask or face covering reminds me of an early economics lesson from Adam Smith: that actions I take that are good for you can be good for me. “In addition to caring about our own well-being, we also naturally care about the well-being of others,” Ryan Patrick Hanley wrote in his assessment of Adam

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death,” Martin Luther King, Jr., asserted at the second meeting of the Medical Committee for Human Rights in Chicago on March 25, 1966. This quote has been shortened over the five+ decades since Dr. King told this truth, to the short-hand, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.” Professor Charlene Galarneau recently enlightened me on Dr. King’s original statement in her seminal essay, “Getting King’s Words Right.” Among

The coronavirus pandemic has pushed people down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs toward our basic hunting-and-gathering survival mode: shopping for hygiene products for home and personal care, seeking out masks (both functional and fashionable), and building out our pandemic pantries with shelf-stable foods. In addition to the pure physiological need of food for survival, “Consumers have a greater focus on health and immunity. They also have a desire to exhibit more control,” Charlie Arnot, CEO of The Center for Food Integrity, said on the Professional Dairy Producers’ Dairy Signal webinar on consumer food trends during COVID-19. We’ve become a nation of

The 21st Century Cures Act emphasizes patients’ control of personal health information. ONC rules issues in March 2020 called for more patient-facing health tools and apps to bolster health consumer engagement and empowerment. But the emergence of the coronavirus in the U.S. revealed many weakness in the American health care system, one of which has been health inequities faced by millions of people — especially black Americans, who have sustained higher rates morbidity and mortality for COVID-19. There have also been digital health divides found in the COVID-19 pandemic, discussed in a timely essay in JAMA, Digital Health Equity as

The barbershop and beauty salon are important community touch points for health, wellness, and social connection in so many peoples’ lives. In my book, HealthConsuming: From Health Consumer to Health Citizen, I feature the black barbershop to introduce a chapter on “The New Retail Health.” In the COVID-19 pandemic, how we’re dealing with hair is a metaphor for personal control, for political statements, for mental health, and for overall well-being. Check out Geoff Coates’ (known as Sadochicken, from Vancouver) take on “how quarantine hairdos are lookin’,” here. Can you see yourself? I can (it’s the “Corona Bangs” style for me,

Stress is up, smoking increasing, drinking more alcohol….Americans are tapping into a variety of coping mechanisms in the coronavirus outbreak, with health on their collective minds. Toluna and Harris Interactive are collaborating on the COVID-19 Barometer, publishing biweekly data on consumers’ views on the coronavirus pandemic. The data here are a snapshot of consumers taken through the Toluna-Harris poll conducted among 1,047 U.S. adults between 9-20 April 2020. The first chart shows various life-flows Americans have adopted in April, all risk factors impacting peoples’ overall health status and mental well-being. There were demographic differences across these factors: more women felt

As the coronavirus pandemic’s curve of infected Americans ratchets up in the U.S., people are seeking comfort from listening to Dolly Parton’s bedtime stories, crushing on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s science-wrapped-with-empathy, and streaming the Tiger King on Netflix. These and other self-care tactics are taking hold in the U.S. as most people are “social distancing” or sheltering in place, based on numbers from the early April 2020 Kaiser Family Foundation health tracking poll on the impact of the coronavirus on American life. While the collective practice of #StayHome to #FlattenTheCurve is the best-practice advice from the science leaders at CDC, the NIAID

U.S. consumers were re-shapen by the 2008 Recession in two key ways: people took on more self-service DIY daily life-flows, seeking self-sufficiency and less dependence on institutions; and, consumers became more value-sensitive both in terms of financial value and personal values. As Americans confront the clinical and fiscal realities of the coronavirus in the U.S., the trust people feel with organizations, brands and information sources is shifting, a special report from Edelman explains. In Brand Trust and the Coronavirus Pandemic, Edelman focuses its trust lens on the pandemic and consumers’ shaken confidence in business and government institutions. These findings have

U.S. health care spending will grow to 20% of the national economy by 2028, forecasted in projections pre-published in the April 2020 issue of Health Affairs, National Health Expenditure (NHE) Projections. 2019-28: Expected Rebound in Prices Drives Rising Spending Growth. NHE will grow 5.4% in the decade, the model expects. But…what a difference a pandemic could make on this forecast. This year, NHE will be $3.8 trillion, growing to $6.2 trillion in 2028. Hospital care spending, the largest single component in national health spending, is estimated at $1.3 trillion in 2020. These projections are based on “current law,” the team

“Act fast and do whatever it takes,” insists the second half of the title of a new eBook with contributions from forty leading economists from around the world. The first half of the title is, Mitigating the COVID Economic Crisis.  The book is discussed in a World Economic Forum essay discussing the economists’ consensus to “act fast.” As the U.S. curve adds new American patients testing positive for the coronavirus, the book and essay illustrate the tension between health consumer versus the health citizen in the U.S.  For clinical context, as I write this post on 24th March 2020, today’s U.S.

The number of diagnoses of people testing positive with the coronavirus topped 14,000 today in the U.S., Johns Hopkins COVID-19 interactive map told us this morning. As tests have begun to come on stream from California on the west coast to New York state on the east, the U.S. COVID-19 positives will continue to ratchet up for weeks to come, based on the latest perspectives shared by the most-trusted expert in America, Dr. Anthony Fauci. This report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, published March 13, 2020, forecasts a

In the midst of growing inpatient admissions and test results for COVID-19, Congress is working as I write this post to finalize a round of legislation to help Americans with the costs-of-living and (hopefully) health care in a national, mandated, clarifying way. Right now in the real world, real patients are already being treated for COVID-19 in American hospitals. Patients are facing health care costs that may result in multi-thousand dollar bills at discharge (or death) that will decimate households’ financial health, particularly among people who don’t have health insurance coverage, covered by skinny or under-benefited plans, and/or lack banked

Anne Case and Angus Deaton were working in a cabin in Montana the summer of 2014. Upon analyzing mortality data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, they noticed that death rates were rising among middle-aged white people. “We must have hit a wrong key,” they note in the introduction of their book, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. This reversal of life span in America ran counter to a decades-long trend of lower mortality in the U.S., a 20th century accomplishment, Case and Deaton recount. In the 300 pages that follow, the researchers deeply dive into and

Millions of Americans have to work 53 weeks to cover a year’s worth of household expenses. Most Americans haven’t saved much for their retirement. Furthermore, the bullish macroeconomic outlook for the U.S. in early 2020 hasn’t translated into individual American’s optimism for their own family budgets. (Sidebar and caveat: yesterday was the fourth day in a row of the U.S. financial markets losing as much as 10% of market cap, so the global economic outlook is being revised downward by the likes of Goldman Sachs, Vanguard, and Morningstar, among other financial market prognosticators. MarketWatch called this week the worst market

Economic development has historically built trust among nations’ citizens. But in developed, wealthier parts of the world, like the U.S., “a record number of countries are experiencing an all-time high ‘mass-class’ trust divide,” according to the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer. For 20 years, Edelman has released its annual Trust Barometer every year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, recognizing the importance of trust in the global economy and society. Last year, it was the employer who was the most-trusted touch-point in citizens’ lives the world over, I discussed in Health Populi one year ago. This year, even our employers can’t

My cousin Arlene got married in Detroit at the classic Book Cadillac Hotel on July 23, 1967, a Sunday afternoon wedding. When Daddy drove us back out to our suburban home about 30 minutes from the fancy hotel, the car radio was tuned to WWJ Newsradio 950, all news all the time. As soon as Daddy switched on the radio, we were shocked by the news of a riot breaking out in the city, fires and looting and gunshots and chaos in the Motor City. Two days later, my father, who did business with Mom-and-Pop retail store owners in the

It was the best of times, It was the worst of times, It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, … starts Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities.  That’s what came to my mind when reading the latest global health report from the OECD, Health at a Glance 2019, which compares the United States to other nations’ health care outcomes, risk factors, access metrics, and spending. Some trends are consistent across the wealthiest countries of the world, many sobering, such as: Life expectancy rates fell in 19 of the

The three winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics — Banerjee and Duflo (both of MIT) and Kremer (working at Harvard) — were recognized for their work on alleviating global poverty.” “Over 700 million people still subsist on extremely low incomes. Every year, five million children still die before their fifth birthday, often from diseases that could be prevented or cured with relatively cheap and simple treatments,” The Nobel Prize website notes. To respond to this audaciously huge challenge, Banerjee, Duflo and Kremer asked quite specific, granular questions that have since shaped the field of development economics — now

Two in three Americans believe their trust in each other has been shrinking. And most people connect the dots between that low level of trust and America’s ability to solve problems. It’s been well-documented that Americans’ trust in institutions, and especially government and media, has eroded over the past decade. I’ve tracked that social trend here in Health Populi each year since covering the Edelman Trust Barometer, which has traced the downward sloping curve on trust globally and certainly in the U.S. The precipitous decline in trust in America among fellow Americans is described in Pew Research Gr0up’s report, Trust

The rate of deaths due to unintentional injuries in the U.S. grew by 40% between 1999 and 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Three mortality line items make up this overall statistic: Deaths from motor vehicle traffic injuries Deaths from unintentional drug overdoses (that is, not including suicides which are defined as “intentional”), and Deaths due to unintentional falls. The line graph illustrates the macro trend on the top-line, with the three specific causes underneath. You see deaths due to falls, motor vehicle accidents, and drug overdoses increased over the eighteen years. Drug overdose death rates began

Looking at this photo of the 2020 Democratic Party Presidential candidate debater line-up might give you a déjà vu feeling, a repeat of the night-before debate. But this was Round 2 of the debate, with ten more White House aspirants sharing views — sometimes sparring — on issues of immigration, economic justice, climate change, and once again health care playing a starring role from the start of the two-hour event. The line-up from left to write included: Marianne Williamson. author and spiritual advisor John Hickenlooper, former Governor of Colorado Andrew Yang. tech company executive Pete Buttigieg, Mayor of South Bend,

“Health is now everyone’s business,” Shaheed Peera, Executive Creative Director of Publicis LifeBrands, said this week at the 2019 Cannes Lions awards. Shaheed also led the Health & Wellness jury at Cannes Lions 2019, the mission of which is to, in the words of the award’s portal, “celebrate creativity for personal wellbeing.” The Grand Prix Lions award for Health & Wellness went to IKEA for the company’s ThisAbles campaign. ThisAbles is a project pioneered by IKEA’s team in Israel, looking to improve everyday living for people with special needs through  well-designed IKEA products. IKEA collaborated with non-profit organizations to develop

Food insecurity ranks high on Americans’ greatest social health risks. In local communities, grocery stores are playing key roles in bolstering neighborhood wellness. Publix and other food chains, collaborating with the Produce for Kids program, are walking the talk on nutrition for local health citizens. Produce for Kids is associated with Feeding America, which works with local food banks and non-profits to help channel healthy food to children and families. Feeding America is a national network of over 200 food banks fighting hunger in America, serving over 46 million people and 60,000 food pantries, and advocating for legislation that addresses

Enlightened health/care industry and public policy stakeholders have begun to embrace and address social determinants of health. These are the inputs that bolster health beyond health care services: they include economic stability like job security and income level (and equity), education, and access to healthy food, food security, safe neighborhoods, social support, clean environments (water and air), and in my own update on SDoH factors, access to broadband connectivity. As physician leaders in the AMA, technology advocates from AMIA, and numerous health plans focus efforts on strengthening social determinants, what do people – consumers, patients, caregivers — think about these

Calls for universal health care, some under the banner of Medicare for All,” are growing among some policy makers and presidential candidates looking to run in 2020. As a response, the Chairman of the House Budget Committee in the U.S. Congress, Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), asked the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to develop a report outlining definitions and concepts for a single-payer health care system in the U.S.         The result of this ask is the report, Key Design Components and Considerations for Establishing a Single-Payer Health Care System, published on 1st May by the CBO. The report provides

“There’s a 15-year difference in the life expectancy between the richest and poorest Americans.” That’s the first sentence of Chapter 7 in my book, HealthConsuming: From Health Consumer to Health Citizen. This data point comes from research published in JAMA in April 2016 on the association between income and life expectancy in the U.S. (That’s endnote #399 in the back of the book, one of 519 notes I use to support the plotline). Today, the Brookings Institution convened a meeting on the funding for social determinants of health to address disparities, costs, and quality of healthcare in America. The overall