Tag: Kim Bellard

Get Ready for (Healthcare) Microgrids

Feb 22, 2022• 1

BY KIM BELLARD

We depend on it. Indeed, our daily lives are unimaginable without it. The trouble is, it’s become unreliable. Lives have been lost because it wasn’t performing when it needed to be. It’s built around large facilities that are often decades old. Parts of it don’t communicate/coordinate well with others. Its workforce is aging and burnt out. There is no person or agency charged with ensuring its resiliency. It badly needs to be rethought for the 21^st century.

Oh, you thought I was talking about our nation’s power grid? I was talking about our healthcare system.

The parallels are striking, and concerning. They’re huge industries, based on early 20^th century approaches, and beset by 21st-century challenges to which they may not be easily adaptable. If we don’t manage their evolution to the 21^st century right, we’re dead. Literally.

Imaging a Different Future

Feb 15, 2022

By KIM BELLARD

Two articles have me thinking this week. One sets up the problem healthcare has (although healthcare is not explicitly mentioned), while the other illustrates it. They share being about how we view the future.

The two articles are Ezra Klein’s Can Democrats See What’s Coming? in The New York Times Opinion pages and Derek Thompson’s Why Does America Make It So Hard to Be a Doctor? in The Atlantic. Both are well worth a read.

Mr. Klein struck a nerve for me by asking why, when it comes to social insurance programs, Democrats seem so insistent on replicating what has been done before, especially in Western Europe. He asks: “But what about building here that which does not already exist there?” He worries “that the Biden administration’s supply-side agenda is stuck in the past and not yet imagining the future.”

Those are exactly the right questions we should be asking about healthcare.

THCB Gang Episode 82, Thursday Feb 10th

Feb 10, 2022

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang for an hour of conversation on the happenings in health care and beyond were writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), delivery & tech expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis); and policy consultant/author Rosemarie Day (@Rosemarie_Day1).

Rosemarie very recently had some personal experiences with end of life care. We talked a lot about hospice and palliative care (and dementia) and, as Rosemarie says, about how little people seem to know about these incredibly important topics.

You can see the video below. If you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels

Spotify, Joe Rogan, and Health Care

Feb 1, 2022

By KIM BELLARD

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to write: the most interesting discussion in healthcare in the past week has been about Neil Young versus Spotify.

For those of you who have not been following the controversy, Neil Young gave Spotify an ultimatum: it could have his music or Joe Rogan, but not both. “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.” Spotify chose Rogan.

Mr. Young was not the first to express alarm at some of the Covid “information” promoted on Mr. Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE); in December, for example, several hundred scientists from around the world issued an open letter to Spotify specifically about JRE, warning:

By allowing the propagation of false and societally harmful assertions, Spotify is enabling its hosted media to damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals.

The Tests were a Test

Jan 25, 2022

By KIM BELLARD

Raise your hand if you’ve gone out shopping for home COVID tests, only to find empty shelves and signs apologizing for the lack of availability. Raise your hand if you’ve been able to obtain one, but were surprised at its cost. Raise your hand if you took one and weren’t quite sure you did it right, or wondered who, if anyone, would be getting the results.

Vox says that the COVID home test reimbursement process “is a microcosm of US health care,” and I think they’ve understated the situation. Testing has been a microcosm for the US health care system generally. It was a test, and our healthcare system failed.

DAOs May Rescue Healthcare

Jan 19, 2022

By KIM BELLARD

You may have seen the news that Kaiser Permanente has signed on to be an organizing member of Graphite Health, joining SSM Health, Presbyterian Healthcare Services, and Intermountain Healthcare. Graphite Health, in case you missed its October launch announcement, is “a member-led company intent on transforming digital health care to improve patient outcomes and lower costs,” focusing on health care interoperability.

That’s all very encouraging, but I’m wondering why it isn’t a DAO. In fact, I’m wondering why there aren’t more DAOs in healthcare generally.

What a Waste of a Healthcare System

Jan 11, 2022

By KIM BELLARD

An essay in Aeon had me at the title: The Waste Age. The title was so evocative of the world we live in that I almost didn’t need to read further, but I’m glad I did, and I encourage you to do the same. Because if we don’t learn to deal with waste – and, as the author urges, design for it – our future looks pretty grim.

Healthcare included.

THCB Gang Episode 77, Jan 6 1pm PT – 4pm ET

Jan 6, 2022

After our Christmas break THCB Gang is back! Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang at 1pm PT 4pm ET Thursday for an hour of topical and sometime combative conversation on what’s happening in health care and beyond will be THCB regular writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard); fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey); futurist Ian Morrison (@seccurve) & patient safety expert and all around wit Michael Millenson (@MLMillenson)

You can see the video below live at 1pm/4pm or it’s kept here for posterity. If you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels

THCB Gang Episode 76, Dec 23 1pm PT – 4pm ET

Dec 23, 2021

This is the last THCB Gang of what has been a long, grueling, but enthralling year. And every week (well almost every week) we have had a group from across the health care luminescence to discuss it.

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang at 1pm PT 4pm ET Thursday for an hour of topical and sometime combative conversation on what’s happening in health care and beyond will be THCB regular writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard); delivery & tech expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis); privacy expert and entrepreneur Deven McGraw (@HealthPrivacy); WTF Health host & Health IT girl Jessica DaMassa (@jessdamassa); and three occasional gang members making very welcome appearances–venture investor & soccer mogul Marcus Whitney (@marcuswhitney); surgeon & startup guy Raj Aggarwal (@docaggarwal); and health economist Jane Sarasohn-Kahn (@healthythinker).

And towards the end of the show we should have our now traditional (or 2nd time) visit from as many other gang members who can make it!

The video will be below but if you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

Not Just Token Tokens

Dec 21, 2021

By KIM BELLARD

I recently watched some of the recent Congressional hearings on cryptocurrency, and, boy, if there’s anything funnier than watching experts try to educate most members of Congress on anything crypto-related, it’s probably me trying to explain it. I don’t own any digital assets, still don’t see the point of NFTs, and am not going to buy any real estate in the metaverse.

All that being said, there’s something about Web3 that fascinates me. Knowledgeable people are talking about Web3 “reinventing the internet,” “democratizing” it, giving people more ownership of/control over what they do on it. It’s a counterbalance to how the internet – both the traffic and the infrastructure — has grown increasingly dominated by a few very large firms, such as Google, Facebook, or Amazon.

As the Web3 Foundation declares, Web3 is an internet where:

Users own their own data, not corporations
Global digital transactions are secure
Online exchanges of information and value are decentralized

All that sounds very intriguing to me, especially as someone who has dim views of how healthcare likes to silo information, has placed too little value on patient ownership of their own data, and is rushing to centralize.