Physicians Cite Cost and "Not Being Ready" As Key Barriers to EMR Adoption
Two news stories this week highlight the fact that, even with a health reform bill signed and sealed by the President of the United States, and with $20 billion of ARRA stimulus funding on the books, electronic health records adoption will probably be slower than the go-go forecasts of one year ago. The head of Accenture’s clinical transformation practice was interviewed by Information Week this week. Dr. Kip Webb explained the results of an Accenture survey of small practices that found a “substantial number” of physicians in practices smaller than 10 doctors would not begin the process of EMR adoption. On the upside, Accenture
The health care cost blame-game
71% of Americans are worried about how to pay for rising health care and insurance costs. 6 in 10 Americans blame increases in the cost of health premiums on the profits of insurance companies and prescription drug manufacturers. 1 in 2 Americans point to hospital prices as the cause of higher health costs. Only 18% of people blame their own higher use of medical services as a prime cost of health care cost increases. This Harris Interactive/Health Day survey, Nearly Half of Americans Worried About Rising Health-Care Costs, examines Americans’ health care cost concerns and who’s to blame for them. In
Health costs for smaller companies grew twice as fast as for larger firms in 2009
Inflation in the U.S. fell by 0.4% in 2009, the first such annual decline in the Consumer Price Index since 1955. At the same time, health care costs for American employers grew 7.3% per capita in 2009. As the chart health spending increased nearly 5%, with employers’ costs increasing even more quickly over the year. This was especially twice-as-onerous for small and mid-sized companies whose costs grew much faster than for larger companies, whose rate of increase actually fell in the year. These sobering statistics were calculated by Thomson Reuters and published in Helathcare Costs Rise More Than 7 Percent
Diagnosis: sicker people have less Internet access
While 2 in 3 American adults with no chronic health conditions go online to access health information, only 1 in 2 chronically ill people seek health information online. This irony here is that those who most need access to online information, support and tools don’t use them as much as people who are healthy. “The Internet access gap creates an online health information gap,” say Susannah Fox and Kristen Purcell of the Pew Internet & American Life Project in their landmark report, Chronic Disease and the Internet. It’s not that sicker people aren’t interested in accessing health information; it’s that
Are Americans all Europeans now?
Ted Kennedy spoke from the grave on Monday 22nd March, saying through the earthly voice of Nancy Pelosi that the passage of health reform was “the great unfinished business of our society.” Universal health coverage has been part of developed Europe for decades, and those countries spend a lot less overall and per capita on health care with arguably at least as good outcomes as the U.S. I’ve spent the past week in Europe, and while I was away, 219 Democrats voted in favor of health reform for America. I’ve had the opportunity to read various Euro-papers and listen to
Most Americans have self-rationed health care due to cost in the past year
The health care cost crisis has hit at least 1 in 2 American families, based on the latest Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll. KFF found that 30% of Americans have had trouble paying medical bills in the past 12 months. Challenges paying for health care increase if you’re black, Hispanic, earning under $40,000 a year, or….in poor health. There are two angles on dealing with the costs of health care dealt with in the KFF poll. First, looking to the government to regulate health costs: 42% of Americans said the government doesn’t regulate the cost of health insurance
The new consumer frugality in health care
The middle class in America is barely hanging on, and increasingly uninsured. the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s report on the continued erosion of health insurance in the U.S. talks of the recession’s toll on average Americans and employers’ ability to cover their health. Furthermore, two consecutive years of economic downturn in the U.S. have driven two years of downturn in consumer spending. This has led to consumers trading off a balance of price, brand and convenience which Strategy& (previously Booz & Company) calls The New Consumer Frugality. In their latest report detailing consumer spending trends in 2,000 random American adults, Booz
A Renaissance for U.S. health care: broadband as the canvas
I’m in a country this week where 66% of health providers have adopted 9 of 14 critical electronic health applications, according to a study from The Commonwealth Fund. According to the same study, only 26% of U.S. providers have opted into these functions. As I amble across cobblestoned and craggy streets, looking up to frescoe’d facades on 500 year old palazzi, church domes and the bluest sky ever, the signs of the Italian Renaissance are everywhere in walkable Florence, Italy. But it’s not all art and architecture, gelato and chianti for me this week. It’s also the techno-reality
Learning from Detroit: costs above coverage and the elastic demand for health
Cost and personal income are the key determinants of whether a Michigander seeks medical care. As the chart shows, cost is the #1 reason uninsured people in Michigan didn’t seek medical care for 55% of the uninsured. But for nearly 1 in 3 insured Michiganders, cost is also the key determinant in whether people go for medical care. These findings price elastic demand for health services were uncovered in the Cover Michigan survey, conducted by the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation (CHRT), a partnership between the University of Michigan and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBS MI). The
Data security is Job 1 for health managers thinking mobile
As more health workers go mobile, whether telecommuting or as home health road warriors, managers are concerned, first and foremost, with mobile security as the top ranking required component of mobile user management tools. Data security in general ranks highly int he minds of health managers, 90% of whom told Forrester that this was a critical or high IT security priority as they were entering 2010. In a survey conducted for Fiberlink, a communications company, Forrester found that 89% of health care organizations have some employees working out of the office at least one day per week, and 87% of
Flipping cancer the bird: can pop culture cure cancer?
70,000 young Americans between 15 and 39 years of age are diagnosed with cancer every year. This population falls in a gap between pediatric and adult cancer. Newly-diagnosed young adults often find themselves in a no-patients’-land, confronting a lack of targeted clinical trials and knowledgeable clinicians in local health markets.The National Cancer Institute says that survival rates for this group of cancer patients haven’t improved in over 30 years.That’s definitely cause to flip cancer the bird, and that’s exactly what the young actor, Zac Efron, has done.Efron is photographed with a young cancer patient, Emily Hobson, to focus on Stupid
Rent, Buy or Wait? A post-mortem of HIMSS ’10
It’s been a year since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the HITECH Act got the president’s signature. Since then, there have been countless meetings of standards-setters, CIO experts and medical informatics pros, all opining on the meaning of “meaningful use,” the criteria for certifying electronic health records and the vision for a Nationwide Health Information Network. As they asked in “Seasons of Love” from Rent, “525,600 minutes…how do you measure a year?” The chorus’s response: “In cups of coffee, in inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife.” And 525,000 journeys to plan. That’s about the number of physicians
Designing for meaningful use
In the crush of crowds on the vendor floor at the HIMSS10 exhibition this week in Atlanta, booths are strategically designed with Pantone-matched colors and icons and clever taglines. Sales teams are festooned in corporate logo-emblazoned polo shirts (orange is popular this year). Colorful banners exclaim this year’s HIT mantras: lots of “HIE spoken here!” and “We are connectivity.” With all the thought and dollars allocated to health information technology sales and marketing, I wonder how much the line item known as “design” gets? As I spend a lot of time with pharmaceutical companies in the past two decades, I’m
The self-evident market for mobile health
Two-thirds of physicians own smartphones, Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint, told the standing-room-only crowd at HIMSS as he kicked off the first keynote session of the 2010 annual meeting. With the emergence of the 4G network in 2010, we’ve got the infrastructure for delivering remote care with the kind of image quality even the most eagle-eyed radiologist will require, according to this telecomms CEO.Other parts of the world that spend a much lower percentage of GDP on health care have leapfrogged the U.S. in mobile health. Globally, there are more mobile phones adopted than PCs, TVs, and cars combined. Mobile
Of Hummers, HIMSS and Health Care: context for a week of HIT in Atlanta
Rest-in-peace, Hummer. Last week, GM announced that after 18 years, the gas-guzzling icon of car excess would be tossed to the proverbial scrap heap. The Tale of the Hummer provides a useful parable for American health care, especially for context this week as the annual HIMSS conference kicks off. (Please skip to the end-note to learn more about HIMSS, for those Health Populi readers unfamiliar with the acronym or organization). Why did GM send the Hummer to its resting place? There are several factors that eroded the demand for the Hummer: among them, First, the price of gas, generally trending
Jane joined host Dr. Geeta "Dr. G" Nayyar and colleagues to brainstorm the value of vaccines for public and individual health in this challenging environment for health literacy, health politics, and health citizen grievance. Click onto the Pfizer Value of Vaccines site and you can watch four episodes covering the challenges with adult vaccination, the employer and health plan member's journey to vaccination, reimbursement, and collaborating for proactive prevention.
I'm grateful to be part of the Duke Corporate Education faculty, sharing perspectives on the future of health care with health and life science companies. Once again, I'll be brainstorming the future of health care with a cohort of executives working in a global health care enterprise.
Jane will be working with EU- and UK-based clients in September and October 2026, collaborating with stakeholders in digital health, public/community health, retail health, and growing opportunities for health-at-home. Stay tuned to her updates here on Health Populi on-the-ground as she lives the digital nomadic work-life in Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and in London.