Medical Bankruptcies

I will give credit to the Health Care Reform Now blog for leading me to this article in The Indianapolis Star, but I think it is a sad reality.
“More and more of the middle class is finding out that even if they have jobs and insurance, they can be wiped out by medical events that [...]

Three Sad Healthcare Stories

First, I think this is a very disappointing article about workplace violence in the healthcare industry.  I certainly could believe (unfortunately) in the verbal violence since people are very emotional about their healthcare and often stressed over the financial implications and unintuitive processes.  But, this story has some scary statistics which are an issue at [...]

Brand Prices Up; Generics Down

For those of you who are interested in this type of stuff, I think the AARP Watchdog reports (Brand Report, Generic Report) which track prescription drug prices over time are pretty interesting.  (Note: This is for drugs most commonly used by Medicare recipients, but I think you’ll get the point.)

Sell Your Captive PBM - Why?

I was a little surprised by the quote from Lisa Gill from JPMorgan Chase about why health plans should sell their in-house PBMs (Pharmacy Benefit Management):
“I think it makes a lot of sense for PBMs [pharmacy benefit managers] to be sold or spun off as a stand-alone business. The only time it will make sense [...]

A Few AIS Quotes Of The Day

I have a few more to post, but I often find their quotes interesting (www.aispub.com).
“Specialty medications require significant education for patients to feel confident self-injecting and achieve a successful outcome. For many patients, injecting a medication into the skin or muscle can be very intimidating. Because of the expense and the complexity of the medication, [...]

A Few Blog Entries About The Think Different Event

We wrapped up the road show this week in Hartford and NY.  I missed both events to be at client meetings on the west coast (and now down south).  But, one of the presenters and someone who was in the audience posted entries on their blogs about the event:

James Taylor on his blog Smart Enough [...]

Giving Out Your CEO’s E-mail

From the perspective of soliciting feedback, how many companies post their CEO’s or anybody’s real e-mail these days? Sometimes you can’t even find a number to call on the website. You simply get some generic form to fill out and get feedback. You sent it into the black hole and wonder if [...]

Wisdom Of The Crowd – Socializing Wellness

You probably caught the articles last year about how obesity seemed to spread throughout social networks. Now, in an article in the Washington Post (5/27/08), they talk about another example of research showing that smoking is similarly affected by social networks. Theoretically, this research could have significant implications for using social media (i.e., [...]

NCPA Survey on Adherence

I have been talking a lot about adherence lately (or lack of). A friend sent me the results of a survey of 1,000 adults by NCPA (National Community Pharmacy Association) from October 2006. This is now the 3rd study I have read this week with different results. Of course, they all used [...]

Variance In Children’s Healthcare

I think state-by-state variance in basic statistics is fascinating. It seems like we should have standardized around some fundamentals by now, but the variances continue to be significant.
In a recent report out by The Commonwealth Fund, it showed some wide variation:

Only 46% of kids visit the doctor and dentist at least once a year [...]

Pavlovian Response To Sound

We recently got a new dog (a Tibetan Terrier), and we decided to start training the dog using the clicker method.  I kiddingly commented that it would be great to have something like this to train people.  Apparently there already is such a method, and it can be used as a teaching method for autistic [...]

Deloitte Survey Of Health Care Consumers II

I posted an entry about a month ago about the Deloitte study that was out about consumer segmentation. That was from reading their website.
After someone sent me the PDF on their study, I finally read it on my flight to San Francisco today. It is full of lots of interesting facts based on their [...]

Our First Think Different Event

Today was our first Think Different event in Boston. This is a road show we are doing around our new positioning and how health care companies need to get outside the box to improve the effectiveness of their communications. It has four external speakers plus our CEO.
[Spoiler Alert: If you are attending an [...]

Groups And Microsegments

When I was listening to Kinney Zalesne (Microtrends author) present this morning at our Think Different event, there were several things that crossed my mind:

Which micro-trends am I part of?

How much micro-targeting is too much?

Will consumers self-identify into groups?

Without going back to the whole book, I can think of several micro-trends with which I associate:

Marathoning
Stay-at-home [...]

Book Review: Health Care Reform Now!

Health Care Reform Now! A Prescription For Change is the latest book by George Halvorson (CEO of Kaiser Permanente). I have been talking about it and using quotes from it for a few months. I finished the book a few weeks ago and figured that I better carve out the time to capture [...]

Medco’s Trend Report

Medco’s Trend Report recently came out for 2008 (which looks back at 2007). Here are some of the graphs and information from it.
“Generic drugs have been a tremendous asset in controlling runaway health care costs,” Medco Chairman and CEO David B. Snow Jr. said. “Generic cholesterol medications have helped contain our drug trend to [...]

Silverlink HealthComm Behavioral Index

Although this new index was released in a story a few weeks ago, the official press release should be out this morning. It has been interesting to watch this transform from a concept to an initial survey with some data.
What is it? The Healthcomm Behavior Index is a quarterly survey of 1,000+ commercially insured [...]

Pharmacy Satisfaction Did You Knows

PharmacySatisfaction.com puts out a weekly factoid. They are very interesting and make some great points. I have talked about it before, but here is an updated list with the new factoids from 2008.

Independent drug stores continue to score highest in customer satisfaction, followed by food stores, clinics, and chain and mass merchandise pharmacies, [...]

Are You Doing Enough To Drive Generics?

From the Express Scripts Outcomes event a few weeks ago, here is an estimate of all the money left on the table by not increasing your generic fill rate in certain key categories.  Are you doing enough?

Utilization management programs - step therapy, prior authorization, quantity level limits?
Formulary coverage?
Plan design incentives?
Pharmacy incentives?
eRx messaging?
Web tools?
Patient communications?
Patient incentives?
Driving [...]

Poor Health Plan Satisfaction Due To Poor Communications

JD Power just finished their second annual National Health Insurance Plan Study which looks at member satisfaction.
“The study finds that the majority of health plan members rate their insurer lowest for the communications and information that are provided to help them understand their plan. Only 45 percent of members reported they fully understand how to [...]

College Grads On Work Hours

As you can tell, I have been slow on the posts lately…too much work. Today (for example), I have a breakfast meeting in Boston, an afternoon meeting in Minneapolis, and then fly to Phoenix for a morning meeting on Wednesday. Crazy day.
But, all this made the USA Today Snapshot in Section B catch [...]

Robot Animals

In the spirit of research, I found this an interesting article. It talks about using robotic squirrels to infiltrate the squirrel population and learn about their communication techniques, social queues, and survival instincts.
“Animals and humans are all affected by behaviors, body postures and signals from each other that we may not be aware of.” [...]

Surgery To Make You Taller

I read about this years ago, but I am still amazed by it.  Did you realize that there is limb lengthening surgery that you can undergo to grow taller?  And, that you can do it cosmetically?  It basically involves cutting your legs, breaking the bones, and then over months slowly stretching them by turning screws [...]

Drugs Down. Gas Up. Food Up.

With most of our good going up.  According to CNN, I heard them say this morning that gas is up $0.60 per gallon in the past year and earlier this week, they said that food is up 35% in the past year.  (Neither of these are scientific, but they make the point.)
That makes me wonder [...]

Drug Testing At 12…At Home

My local area paper - West NewsMagazine - has an article in the April 30th edition about Teens and Drugs.  I will save my comments for the end here, but I found it an interesting read.

The company they talk about is TestMyTeen.com.  They distribute one free kit to the parents through school and they charge [...]

Deloitte On Healthcare Consumers

Deloitte recently published their results from a survey of more than 3,000 Americans on healthcare.  Here were some of their high level findings:

93 percent of consumers say they’re not adequately prepared for future health care costs
79 percent say candidates’ positions on health care are likely to influence their presidential vote
46 percent place health care among [...]

What A Difference A Few Years Makes

Before a whole week passes, I need to capture my interview with Gene Drabinski from Trizetto. Gene is the President of Cost and Quality of Care. This was a fun interview where we just kicked back at the end of day two at the World Healthcare Congress and talked.
I haven’t spent much time [...]

Silverlink Coming To A City Near You

I am really excited about a new initiative at work.  We have pulled together a great set of speakers and are doing a road show around the country.
The speakers include:

E. Kinney Zalesne, co-author of Microtrends
Liz Boehm, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
James Taylor, Author on Enterprise Decision Management
Fred Jubitz, Former VP of Consumer Cards at American Express
Stan [...]

Commit. Don’t Just Try.

These were the words from Liz Murray (Homeless to Harvard) at the SMG Summit.  I am not sure of the context since I saw it in a summary in Chain Store Age this morning, but I think it is relevant in healthcare in so many ways.

Commit…don’t just try to build a focus on the patient.
Commit…don’t [...]

The Implication Of Choices

I have heard this theory many times, but I was glad to run across an article on it.  The basic point is that too many choices have negative implications on people.  In this article from Health Day News, it discusses a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology about the effect of [...]