July 2010

Open Source Medical Records

by Louise July 30, 2010

[...] In general, I’m a fan of as much transparency as possible in health care. I think that patients, doctors, and payers (both public and private health insurance) should have access to information related to treatment, diagnoses, and cost – as quickly as possible and as clearly as possible. Open source medical records is one step towards transparency, and I like that. [...]

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Cavalcade Of Risk – Colorado Rocky Mountain High Edition

by Louise July 27, 2010

We’re in the midst of a beautiful Colorado summer, and the words to John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High (one of our official state songs) were running through my head over the weekend. So this week’s Cavalcade is a tribute to all the beauty that Colorado has to offer. I’m including a few photos we’ve taken over the years, so not only will you learn all sorts of new stuff about risk and risk management, but you’ll get a virtual tour of Colorado at the same time [...]

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Weeding Out The Worst Health Insurance Policies

by Louise July 23, 2010

[...] The new regulations won’t have much of an impact on good-quality policies from reputable health insurance carriers. Those plans already provide solid coverage for essential services. But removing the worst policies from the market – or forcing them to improve their coverage – will protect consumers who might otherwise have bought those plans thinking that they were as good as all the other options. And that’s a good thing.

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If You Ever Get A Rock Stuck In Your Nose

by Louise July 21, 2010

[...] A lot has been said about over-utilization of health care lately, and the need to reduce both cost and utilization in order to make our health care system sustainable. But I have to wonder how many urgent care clinic front desk people would be willing to give out free advice like that, and how many would have just taken our insurance info and sent us in to see the doctor?

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Sharing Instead Of Duplicating

by Louise July 20, 2010

[...] some doctors are nervous about such a system because they fear that they would earn less money overall. But he goes on to point out that earning a little less money might be well worth it if your job is easier and you get to spend far less time repeating tasks that someone else has already done. In addition, there would be less paperwork (electronic or otherwise) for health insurance companies to process, which should result in lower administrative expenses.

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Standardizing Payments For Childbirth

by Louise July 19, 2010

[...] that could become the standard payment for all births, regardless of whether a c-section were performed or not. There would be no financial incentive for doctors to opt for c-sections, as they would no longer receive higher compensation for doing so. The tough medical malpractice environment that OBs practice in would likely provide more than enough motivation for them to continue to do c-sections when there was a true medical emergency, despite the fact that they would know there would be no additional compensation for the birth. [...]

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Resurrecting House Calls

by Louise July 16, 2010

[...] Private health insurance companies tend to take some of their cues from Medicare in terms of what they cover, so if Medicare eventually makes home visits more available, it stands to reason that people with private health insurance might also have access to house calls from doctors, even if they can’t afford to pay full price to a non-network provider.

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An Economist’s View Of Midwifery

by Louise July 14, 2010

[...] In addition, we have a malpractice system that provides a strong incentive for doctors to perform c-sections at the first hint of a problem. With a system like that, it’s hard to fault OBs for taking the c-section route, and intervening in general. We can wring our hands all we want about how we need to reduce the rate of c-sections and medical interventions during childbirth, but as long as our malpractice system penalizes doctors for avoiding c-sections, we won’t make much progress.

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Too Much Medical Care

by Louise July 13, 2010

[...] Much has been said about how we need to reign in health care costs in order for health insurance to be universally affordable. But we also need to figure out how to just use less medical care all around. We need to find ways to support health rather than react to illness (diet is a good place to start). And we need to question just how much we want our lives to revolve around medical intervention, pharmaceutical concoctions, and beeping machines. As Dr. Welch noted, some medical interventions are absolutely essential and worthwhile. But that is not the case for all medical care, and a “less is more” approach might create a healthier population and lower health care costs.

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