Health data is a theme of this edition of the Health Wonk Review because it is also the focus of the current Knight News Challenge. That contest rewards media innovation with seed money. They use the word “challenge” literally, asking for innovative responses to question: How can we harness data and information for the health of communities?
Our definitions of “health data” and “news” are broad, and range from projects in traditional newsrooms to consumer-facing technology to crunching big datasets. We’re hoping to find and accelerate projects that use data and public information in innovative ways to create strong information flows about health in our communities.
Check it out. Health care produces big, big data. Health information technology, surveillance data, electronic medical records, clinical trials, NIH databases. Payers and providers produce endless streams of data for millions of people. On the other end of the scale, the quantified selfers keep blood pressure, diet and exercise logs.
What would happen if you had to turn those logs over to your insurer? David E. Williams of the Health Business Blog notes that car insurer Progressive gathers lots of info on drivers through its Snapshot device. Then, the company lowers premiums in return for lower risk behavior. He asks “What will it look like when the same approach is applied to health insurance?” Risk assessment also serves as the basis for public policies and day-to-day individual behaviors. At Workers’ Comp Insider, Julie Ferguson looks at real versus perceived risks in her post about how “Your Daily Shower Can Kill You.”
Former VA research chief Joel Kupersmith writes on the Health Affairs blog about data, privacy and genomic research. He considers the challenge of balancing the benefits of widely shared genomic data with privacy concerns, in particular the re-identification of individuals.
The Healthcare Economist reports data about long-term care trends and investigates the systems in Austria, England, France, Germany and the Netherlands. For many disabled elderly individuals, a nursing home is their only option. How do European countries take care of the long-term disabled?
CDC data suggest 200,000 Americans are needlessly dying every year from preventable heart disease, but over the last decade, that number – on an unadjusted basis – has decreased by about 12%, or that there are 28,000 fewer deaths, notes Jaan Sidorov of the Disease Management Care Blog: That being said, while the greatest jumps in saved lives are among persons of color, they still are the most vulnerable to avoidable cardiovascular conditions. If we are really going to use this information, that insight is what tells us where the resources are really needed
- Black men are at highest risk of dying early from heart disease and stroke
Moving out of the data world, Health Care Renewal asks: What Sorts of People are “Most Influential in Healthcare?” The post notes that Modern Healthcare answers this question with with a list of managers from hospital systems and health care corporations — and very few doctors. The list did include the CEOs of Sutter Health and Advocate Health, two companies known for significant mismanagement of health care technology, HCR notes.
Some of the most influential run corporations that have been cited time and again for ethical/ legal problems, and some of the corporations have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in legal settlements and sometimes pleaded guilty to criminal charges. The list included not a single doctor in private practice, very few people with backgrounds in medical or health care academics, and a tiny number who have suggested reforms of the sort we discuss on Health Care Renewal.
On to the ACA
Anthony Wright of the Health Access Blog notes that the first ads from California’s insurance exchange provide some basic information to Californians, but also “introduce some signposts and open some doors.” Health Insurance Resource Center Blog offers Maggie Mahar, who says that some pundits are claiming that young Americans will have little interest in purchasing health insurance through the ACA’s exchanges. In reality, the subsidies available to about nine million of those young people should actually make the exchanges’ comprehensive coverage attractive to them.
Joe Paduda’s post discusses the origins of the “idea” of the mandate while positing that repealing the law “won’t do anything to solve the underlying issues inherent in today’s health insurance system.” A post on health and higher education comes in from John Goodman’and the Health Policy Blog. In it, he compares the way the two are funded.
InsureBlog’s Bob Vineyard enthusiastically reports on a new health insurance start-up that leans heavily on transparency and features free telemedicine and generic drugs. Find out why he gets to post a picture of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.
Colorado Health Insurance Insider says that the idea of the ACA “ was to make sure that large employers offered good qualify coverage in order to avoid paying a fine, it appears that some large employers will opt for the fine instead.”
Finally:
- On the Health AGEnda blog, Amy J. Berman of the Hartford Foundation offers a post entitled ” Stunning New IOM Report Reframes How We View Cancer”
- Mike Feehan of the InsureBlog dissects a Bloomberg News item about the apparent wage disparity between male and female docs, and finds it wanting.
- Click here to find my entry into the Knight News Challenge.
Boston Health News 