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 [...]

What is a Mail Order Pharmacy (Home Delivery Pharmacy)?

My most popular post ever is “What is a PBM?” which made me think that this is probably a relevant post for the average healthcare consumer.  And, given the historical push to mail combined with the current economy, you can expect mail order pharmacy (or home delivery pharmacy) along with 90-day retail pharmacy to be [...]

Are Involved Patients More Compliant?

This is a study from a few years ago from Harris Interactive and BCG that I found on the BioPlus website.  If I am interpreting it right, it would imply that those that are most involved in their healthcare are most likely to be non-compliant.  It doesn’t seem logical, but perhaps those are the people [...]

Burning Calories – How Many?

I was with a friend and was talking about how many calories you burn per hour. The instructor at the aerobic kickboxing class I have gone to on and off for years always says that I could burn up to 800 calories per hour in the class. When I am on the treadmill, [...]

Why Can’t I Go To Any Physician?

In pharmacy, there is a rarely used benefit structure called Therapeutic MAC (Maximum Allowable Cost).  What this does is say that in any class of drugs (e.g., cholesterol lowering drugs) there is a maximum amount of money that will be paid by the plan.  But the individual can get any drug.
That can be controversial since [...]

Would You Pay $100 To Be Told To Take Your Rx?

We know adherence is a serious issue that drives healthcare costs.  And, as I have talked about a little here and a lot with many of our pharmacy clients, it’s not a simple issue.  People aren’t adherent for a variety of reasons - cost, side effects, health literacy, or simply just forgetting (among others).
There are [...]

Dental Experience

I am a big believer in the fact that the experience matters for healthcare.  From my architecture days, this means physical space, sequence of events, bedside manner of the staff, clarity of communications, and processing of the claim (at the simplest level).  Everything that the patient experiences as associated with an event drives their satisfaction.
So, [...]

Genetic Art

I was reading about this company DNA 11 the other day, and I found it a pretty cool concept. They take your DNA and make it into art focusing on the 1% that is unique. According to the article in American Way magazine, prices ranged from $390 to $1,200 with 25 color options [...]

A Few New Blogs

I always enjoy coming across new blogs with interesting articles. Here are a few that I found yesterday and added to my blogroll:

The Health As Human Capital Blog (sponsored by a company described as “dedicated to providing better information for better decision-making in health care and business”
The Doctor Comes To You Blog about the [...]

LinkedIn Question On HealthComm

I think it was earlier this year when LinkedIn rolled out a new feature called questions which allows you to pose questions to LinkedIn users and get answers. I continue to like this tool, and it has been interesting to watch it evolve from a “startup” (when I joined there were less than 2M [...]

Tier Zero

Frank Koronkiewicz, the Director of Pharmacy, at Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania (BCNEPA) just launched a new plan where people can get 65 different generics focused on chronic diseases at no copay AND without any premium.  It’s called Tier Zero.

Frank has always been a progressive Director of Pharmacy.  We worked on several programs together at [...]

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 [...]

Diabetes or Depression: Which Comes First

Since many of us understand the risk of co-morbidities (i.e., two diseases that commonly exist together), I think it makes a lot of sense to ask this question.  Dr. Gupta from CNN had an article earlier this week on his blog about a study that was recently out on the relationship between diabetes and depression.

Those [...]

St. Louis - Less Beer More Health

Here in St. Louis there has been a lot of upset people about the potential buyout of Anheuser-Busch by InBev.  Isn’t that business?  Don’t the shareholders want to maximize their return?  Of course, we have lost several big companies to international entities which obviously changes the dynamics, charity support, and other things but isn’t that [...]

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.)

Why People Choose Mail Order Pharmacy?

I was looking for something else in the Express Scripts Drug Trend Report 2005 when I came across this study referenced on page 209. I should have remembered since I wrote this section (yes I was a contributor see page 332). This is a Morgan Stanley study which talks about why people choose [...]

Sprint Response

Just to continue on the Sprint story I posted the other day. The response time to get a live person was 5 days (but only 3 business days). I then received an e-mail and a voicemail message. Interestingly, when I call back the individual’s direct dial number (nice), her voicemail says “from [...]

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 [...]

Express Scripts Jumps Into Worker’s Compensation

Express Scripts has been in the Worker’s Compensation space for years now.  As I suggested several months ago (see #2), buying a worker’s compensation PBM makes some sense.  The margins are good, but it does require a different service model.
That being said, they jumped in last week with the announcement to buy the worker’s compensation [...]

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, [...]

George Paz (Express Scripts) on Adherence

Paul Levy who is the CEO of a hospital has a blog called Running A Hospital.  He posted a summary the other day of a presentation by George Paz who is the CEO of Express Scripts.  It has some good facts and there are several good comments on there about defining the terms in this [...]

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 [...]

Exercise Supercenter - Lifetime Fitness

Have you ever heard of Lifetime Fitness?  I didn’t until they started building this huge facility near my house outside St. Louis.  My first reaction was that somebody had the wrong business model.  A million square foot gym in this economy.  No way.
After an initial run in with an overly aggressive salesperson, my neighbors slowly [...]

More On Silverlink’s Think Different Event

I am now up in Minneapolis at our 4th Think Different event on how to engage the healthcare consumer.  I talked about the first few speakers the other day, and I finally had a chance to hear the other speakers present.  This week, I had the chance to listen to  James Taylor (of Smart (enough) [...]

GINA – A Good First Step For Personalized Medicine

Whether you are a patient or a health care company, I think you should be happy about this. GINA is the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 which was signed into law on May 21st. It is a good step in encouraging individuals to participate in genetic testing without worrying about that information [...]

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 [...]

When Would I Pay More – Z-Lists and Green

The other day, someone was talking to me about the Z-List at Harvard. Basically, Harvard will allow a certain number of students to come in if their parents give $1M. Makes sense, and it allow them to provide lots of other students with aid.
At the grocery store, we pay a premium for organic [...]

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 [...]