Tag: Policy

We Freeze People, Don’t We?

Feb 27, 2024

By KIM BELLARD

Perhaps you’ve heard about the controversial Alabama Supreme Court ruling about in-vitro fertilization (IVF), in which the court declared that frozen embryos were people. The court stated that it has long held that “unborn children are ‘children,’” with Chief Justice Tom Parker – more on him later – opining in a concurring opinion:

Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself. Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.

Seriously.

Many people have already weighed in on this decision and its implications, but I couldn’t resist taking some pleasure in seeing “pro-life” advocates tying themselves in knots trying to explain why, when they legislated that life begins at conception, they didn’t mean this kind of conception and that kind of life.

John Oliver was typically on point, noting that the Alabama ruling was “wrong for a whole bunch of reasons. Mainly, if you freeze an embryo it’s fine. If you freeze a person, you have some explaining to do.”

The case in question wasn’t specifically about IVF, nor did the ruling explicitly outlaw it. It was a case about a patient who removed stored embryos and accidentally dropped them, and the couples whose embryos were destroyed wanted to hold that patient liable under the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The court said they could. Note, though, that neither the patient nor the clinic was being charged with murder or manslaughter…yet.

Although the Alabama Attorney General has already indicated he won’t prosecute IVF patients or clinicians, the ruling has had a chilling effect on fertility clinics in the states, with The University of Alabama at Birmingham health system and others indicating they were putting a pause on IVF treatments.

Justice Parker has long been known as something of a theocrat; as The New York Times wrote:

Since he was first elected to the nine-member court in 2004, and in his legal career before it, he has shown no reticence about expressing how his Christian beliefs have profoundly shaped his understanding of the law and his approach to it as a lawyer and judge.

His concurring opinion claimed: the state constitution had adopted a “theologically-based view of the sanctity of life.” Alabama is not alone. Kelly Baden, the vice president for public policy at the Guttmacher Institute, told BBC: “We do see that many elected officials and judges alike are often coming at this debate from a highly religious lens.”

Speaker Johnson has said:

The separation of church and state is a misnomer. People misunderstand it. Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote. It’s not in the Constitution. And what he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church — not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life. It’s exactly the opposite.

And here we are.

Many Republicans are backtracking on the ruling.

The Society for Participatory Medicine Presents a Creative Learning Exchange: Community Health Access and Equity

Sep 22, 2022

I’ve been on the board of the Society for Participatory Medicine for a few years and we are kicking off a series of “Creative Learning Events”. There’ll be two in the balance of 2022 and hopefully one a quarter thereafter. Should be great in-person AND online exchanges about getting participatory medicine into the hear of the health care system. Here’s details on the first one, October 20, in Boston and everywhere else!–Matthew Holt

Participatory Medicine is a movement in which patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals actively collaborate and encourage one another as full partners in healthcare.

The Society for Participatory Medicine with the support of our sponsor NRC Health Presents A Creative Learning Exchange(CLE): Community Health Access and Equity

Date: October 20, 2022 Time: 12:00 noon – 4:00pm (Lunch Is Included for In-Person)

Location: Brown Advisory, 100 High Street, 9th Floor, Boston, MA 02110

For more details and to REGISTER TODAY click here.

The Society for Participatory Medicine believes that the culture of healthcare is not benefiting everyone equally and needs to change. And healthcare won’t get better until healthcare culture gets better. We want to drive this change by enabling collaboration, education, information sharing, and communication among patients, caregivers, and health care professionals. Join the movement!

This Creative Learning Exchange, in-person and online hybrid event, will be highly interactive and participatory, using a ‘Neighbors at Each Table’ approach to engaging you in facilitated discussion and brainstorming.

These discussions will focus on applying the Participatory Medicine Manifesto behaviors in culturally and racially diverse communities to enable access and equity in care. Your ideas, insights and solutions that emerge will be curated by SPM to build a toolkit of participatory medicine guidelines. These will be shared with you and through SPM’s social networks, website and blog.

For more details and to REGISTER TODAY click here.

Thank you to our series sponsor NRC Health. Thanks to Massachusetts General Hospital Equity & Community Health for sponsoring the meal. Thanks for Brown Advisory for proving the venue & AV.

Hospital Systems: A Framework for Maximizing Social Benefit

Mar 21, 2022

By JEFF GOLDSMITH and IAN MORRISON

Hospital consolidation has risen to the top of the health policy stack. David Dranove and Lawton Burns argued in their recent Big Med: Megaproviders and the High Cost of Health Care in America (Univ of Chicago Press, 2021) that hospital consolidation has produced neither cost savings from “economies of scale” nor measurable quality improvements expected from better care co-ordination. As a consequence, the Biden administration has targeted the health care industry for enhanced and more vigilant anti-trust enforcement.

However, as we discussed in a 2021 posting in Health Affairs, these large, complex health enterprises played a vital role in the societal response to the once-in-a-century COVID crisis. Multi-hospital health systems were one of the only pieces of societal infrastructure that actually exceeded expectations in the COVID crisis. These systems demonstrated that they are capable of producing, rapidly and on demand, demonstrable social benefit.

Exemplary health system performance during COVID begs an important question: how do we maximize the social benefits of these complex enterprises once the stubborn foe of COVID has been vanquished? How do we think conceptually about how systems produce those benefits and how should they fully achieve their potential for the society as a whole?

Origins of Hospital Consolidation

In 1980, the US hospital industry (excluding federal, psych and rehab facilities) was a $77 billion business comprised of roughly 5,900 community hospitals. It was already significantly consolidated at that time; roughly a third of hospitals were owned or managed by health systems, perhaps a half of those by investor-owned chains. Forty years later, there were 700 fewer facilities generating about $1.2 trillion in revenues (roughly a fourfold growth in real dollar revenues since 1980), and more than 70% of hospitals were part of systems.

It is important to acknowledge here that hundreds more hospitals, many in rural health shortage areas or in inner cities, would have closed had they not been rescued by larger systems. Given that a large fraction of the hospitals that remain independent are tiny critical access facilities that are marginal candidates for mergers with larger enterprises, the bulk of hospital consolidation is likely behind us. Future consolidation is likely not to be of individual hospitals, but of smaller systems that are not certain they can remain independent.

Today’s multi-billion dollar health systems like Intermountain Healthcare, Geisinger, Penn Medicine and Sentara are far more than merely roll-ups of formerly independent hospitals. They also employ directly or indirectly more than 40% of the nation’s practicing physicians, according to the AMA Physician Practice Benchmark Survey. They have also deployed 179 provider-sponsored health plans enrolling more than 13 million people (Milliman Torch Insight, personal communication 23 Sept, 2021). They operate extensive ambulatory facilities ranging from emergency and urgent care to surgical facilities to rehabilitation and physical therapy, in addition to psychiatric and long-term care facilities and programs.

Health Systems Didn’t Just “Happen”; Federal Health Policy Actively Catalyzed their Formation

Though many in the health policy world attribute hospital consolidation and integration to empire-building and positioning relative to health insurers, federal health policy played a catalytic role in fostering hospital consolidation and integration of physician practices and health insurance. In the fifty years since the HMO Act of 1973, hospitals and other providers have been actively encouraged by federal health policy to assume economic responsibility for the total cost of care, something they cannot do as isolated single hospitals.

Policies|Techies|VCs: What’s Next For Health Care–Virtual Conference is Sept 7-10

Aug 30, 2021

Policies|Techies|VCs: What’s Next For Health Care? is the conference bringing together the CEOs of the next generation of virtual & real-life care delivery, and all the permutations thereof. You can register here or learn how to sponsor.

This is a big week. We are one week out and we’ve started pre-recording a few sessions and they’ve been fascinating. Keynotes include government officials from the 3 most important agencies for digital health –Pauline Lapin (CMS), Micky Tripathi (ONC) & Bakul Patel (FDA). But wait there’s more! Keynotes from techies Glen Tullman (Transcarent), Sean Lane (Olive), Jonathan Bush (Zus Health), Jeff Dachis (One Drop) & Andrew Dudum (Hims & Hers). And we’re not forgetting the VCs sprinkled through the program, with a keynote from Andreesen Horowitz’s Julie Yoo.

Please look at the agenda for 20 power-packed panels and over 100 speakers – and then sign up!

Shout out to our sponsors – This week we welcome new Gold sponsor data privacy company Skyflow and new Silver sponsor Amwell. Thanks to both of them for supporting the conference. They join Avaneer Health (our Platinum sponsor) & exclusive Agency sponsor 120/80. Sliver sponsors are Transcarent & Lark . More sponsors are Aetion. Merck GHIF, Crossover Health, Zus Health, Newtopia, Aetion & Big Health! Many of them will have sessions you can catch on the web site.

It’s going to be a great conference–no need to leave your seat as it’s happening virtually September 7-10. Register here!! — Matthew Holt

THCB Book Club: Rosemarie Day – Marching Towards Coverage

Nov 25, 2020

Rosemarie Day has been a long time health care consultant and operator, most prominently as the COO of the Massachusetts Health Connector–the first real state exchange that was created as part of Romneycare (which with a few twists later became Obamacare!) Following the 2017 Women’s March, Rosemarie decided to write her own book, Marching Towards Coverage. It’s really four books in one. A personal patient & caregiver journal; a history of the slow march towards universal health care; a policy document; and a primer on how to become an activist. All in less than 200 pages! For the November THCB Book Club Jessica DaMassa and Matthew Holt talked with Rosemarie about what we can all do to really get to better health care for everyone.

For Your Radar — Huge Implications for Healthcare in Pending Privacy Legislation

Feb 20, 2019• 11

By VINCE KURAITIS and DEVEN McGRAW

Two years ago we wouldn’t have believed it — the U.S. Congress is considering broad privacy and data protection legislation in 2019. There is some bipartisan support and a strong possibility that legislation will be passed. Two recent articles in The Washington Post and AP News will help you get up to speed.

Federal privacy legislation would have a huge impact on all healthcare stakeholders, including patients. Here’s an overview of the ground we’ll cover in this post:

Why Now?
Six Key Issues for Healthcare
What’s Next?

We are aware of at least 5 proposed Congressional bills and 16 Privacy Frameworks/Principles. These are listed in the Appendix below; please feel free to update these lists in your comments. In this post we’ll focus on providing background and describing issues. In a future post we will compare and contrast specific legislative proposals.

Cats & Dogs: Can We Find Unity on Health Care IT Change?

Aug 15, 2018• 4

By MATTHEW HOLT

Today we have a humming economy and insane politics. In early 2009 we were in economic meltdown and were about one week into the sanest, soberist Administration and even Congress over many recent decades. In February 2009 they passed a stimulus bill that had a huge impact on the health IT market (and still does). At that time there was much debate on THCB about what the future of health IT policy should look like and how the stimulus “Meaningful Use” money should be spent. My January 2009 summary of that whole debate introduced the notion of “Cats and Dogs in health IT”. They’re still around today. We’re reprinting it here as part of our 15-year THCB birthday party–Matthew Holt

Those of you paying attention for the past few days might have noticed on the one hand a sense of optimism and unity as Barrack H. Obama, somewhat somberly, began his presidency.

Meanwhile, over the past few weeks the fur has been flying among the electrons on THCB while some very knowledgeable and opinionated health care wonks and geeks have been battling it out about what exactly we should be doing in terms of federal health care IT spending.

Given that even among you smart THCB readers this may be all a little perplexing, I’m going to try to try to make what I hope are some elucidating comments to put this argument in context. I’m doing this partly because I’m perplexed too, but also because I think that there is some hope for a middle road.

First the basics: As sometime THCB contributor & uber-CIO John Halamka makes clear in this excellent post about The Greatest Healthcare IT Generation, some $20 billion of the soon to be passed “spend it as fast as you can” stimulus package is going to be targeted towards health care IT. Now, that’s by no means the biggest part of the $800 billion or so package, and it’s not even the biggest part of the health care spending in the bill. Nearly $87 billion or so is going to support Medicaid, although that will mostly will be replacing cuts being forced on states.

A Time For Revolutionary Thinking

Aug 13, 2014• 53

By JOHN HAUGHOM, MD

We need to design a system of health care that optimally meets the country’s needs while also being affordable and socially acceptable. Clinicians should be at the center of this debate if care delivery is to be designed in a way that puts quality of care before financial gain.

This challenge is too important to be left to politicians and policymakers. There is an urgent need for clinicians to step up, lead the debate and design a new future for health care. Placing professional responsibility for health outcomes in the hands of clinicians, rather than bureaucrats or insurance companies with vested interests, must be an ambition for all of us. We need to find the formula that meets the needs of the patients and communities we serve. A sincere collective effort by committed clinicians to design an effective system will lead to a health care system that has a democratic mandate and the appropriate focus on optimizing the outcomes patients and society need.

As clinicians enter the debate, they should keep three things in mind.

Promote the leadership role of clinicians

We need to help politicians and policymakers recognize the role of clinical leaders in shaping a transformed but effective health care system. Clinicians must redefine the debate so that it focuses first and foremost on patients and health outcomes. Cost effective care can and should be a byproduct of optimal care. Accomplishing this will provide a strong common purpose for efforts to address the challenges of designing outcome-based funding structures and improving access to care.

Seven Policy Recommendations for Healthcare’s New Era

May 31, 2013• 9

Berenson, Pronovost & Krumholz

There is a consensus that measuring performance can be instrumental in improving value in U.S. health care. In particular clinical areas, such as cardiac and intensive care, measurement has been associated with important improvements in providers’ use of evidence-based strategies and patients’ health outcomes over the past two decades. Perhaps most important, measures have altered the culture of health care delivery for the better, with a growing acceptance that clinical practice can and should be objectively assessed.

Nevertheless, as we argue in the full-length version of this paper, substantial shortcomings in the quality of U.S. health care persist. Furthermore, the growth of performance measurement has been accompanied by increasing concerns about the scientific rigor, transparency, and limitations of available measure sets, and how measures should be used to provide proper incentives to improve performance.

The challenge is to recognize current limitations in how measures are used in order to build a much stronger infrastructure to support the goals of increased accountability, more informed patient choice, and quality improvement. In the following paper, we offer seven policy recommendations for achieving the potential of performance measurement.

1. Decisively move from measuring processes to outcomes.

There is growing interest in relying more on outcome measures and less on process measures, since outcome measures better reflect what patients and providers are interested in. Yet establishing valid outcome measures poses substantial challenges—including the need to riskadjust results to account for patients’ baseline health status and risk factors, assure data validity, recognize surveillance bias, and use sufficiently large sample sizes to permit correct inferences about performance.

Read more.

2. Use quality measures strategically, adopting other quality improvement approaches where measures fall short.

While working to develop a broad set of outcome measures that can be the basis for attaining the goals of public accountability and information for consumer choice, Medicare should ensure that the use of performance measures supports quality improvement efforts to address important deficiencies in how care is provided, not only to Medicare beneficiaries but to all Americans. CMS’ current focus on reducing preventable rehospitalizations within 30 days of discharge represents a timely, strategic use of performance measurement to address an evident problem where there are demonstrated approaches to achieve successful improvement [6]. Read more.

Obamacare In Pictures

Mar 2, 2013• 20

By J.D. KLEINKE

A seasoned colleague recently told me that some PowerPoint presentations have no power and make no point.

But sometimes, a picture really is worth a thousand words. Or maybe — in the case of any meaningful discussion of health reform, thanks to its density and complexity — it might be worth 10,000 words. Hence our handy little exhibit.

This picture captures the 10,000 words it would require to explain with technical precision where President Obama’s Affordable Care Act fits relative to all health reform plans. It places “ObamaCare” along an ideologically scaled continuum of all serious reform options developed, debated and discarded or ignored since the 1980s.

They are all here: from the single-payer, centrally controlled models popular with those who detest corporations and the influence of money in medicine — two actual, not imagined “government takeovers of health care” — to two free market, laissez-faire models favored by those who detest regulation and the heavy hand of government in medicine.