Posts Tagged ‘market research’
Doctors Don’t Want Patients to Access EHR Info
04/03/2013
Most U.S. Doctors Believe Patients Should Update Electronic Health Record, but Not Have Full Access to It, According to Accenture Eight-Country Survey
March 4, 2013 – A new Accenture survey shows that most U.S. doctors surveyed (82%) want patients to actively participate in their own healthcare by updating their electronic health records. However, only a third of physicians (31%) believe a patient should have full access to his or her own record, 65% believe patients should have limited access and 4 percent say they should have no access (See Figure 1). These findings were consistent among 3,700 doctors surveyed by Accenture in eight countries: Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, Singapore, Spain and the United States.
Patients Access to Records
While nearly half of U.S. doctors (47%) surveyed believe patients should not be able to update their lab test results, the vast majority believe patients should be able to update some or all of the standard information in their health records, including demographics (95%), family medical history (88%), medications (87%) and allergies (85%). And, the majority of doctors (81%) believe patients should even be able to add such clinical updates to their records as new symptoms or self-measured metrics, including blood pressure and glucose levels. Read the rest of this entry »
The Future of Medicine and Virtual Assistants
03/21/2013
In Will Mobile ‘Virtual Assistants’ Propel the Future of Medicine?, the author portrays mHealth and virtual assistants as time savers for practitioners, but I take a different view and commented on his article, mentioning an important new documentary (see below).
He said …
With this evolution of mobility in mind, I’ve been thinking a lot about what a mobile “virtual assistant” could mean for clinicians. In today’s health care setting, far too much clinician time is spent on administrative tasks that, while important, pales in comparison to the significance of their main job duty — ensuring the health and well-being of actual people. But what if we could help clinicians tackle administrative and other day-to-day duties by enlisting the power of a fleet of mobile virtual assistants that: help clinicians simplify interactions and address data-entry headaches with electronic health records (EHRs); provide real-time insight on the next patient, including vital signs and medications; or even prompt them for more information when the record does not contain the level of detail needed to ensure first-rate care?
(Jonathon Dryer is Director of Mobile Marketing for Nuance Communications).
Read the rest of this entry »
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Not Enough Doctors for Baby Boomers
02/13/2013
With over 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day, there may not be enough doctors to care for them as they age. As Seth Doane reports in this CBS News report, over the next ten years there may be 40,000 fewer doctors than needed. Will technology take up the slack? It may have to, and that’s one reason I started Modern Health Talk – to discuss those technologies.
The two-minute video is filled with lots of new statistics that I added to
our growing list about the Healthcare Problem & Opportunity.
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Americans are sicker and die younger (with VIDEO)
02/05/2013
Being American Is Bad for Your Health
By Marty Kaplan, Director, Norman Lear Center and Professor at the USC Annenberg School
“Americans are sicker and die younger
than people in other wealthy nations.”
That stark sentence appears in the January 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, and it comes from the authors of a landmark report – “Shorter Lives, Poorer Health” — on differences among high-income countries. (Editor: This WHO Interactive Chart compares mortality rates from different causes.)
You probably already know that America spends more on health care than any other country. That was one of the few facts to survive the political food fight pretending to be a serious national debate about the Affordable Care Act.
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Unpaid Caregiving in America
01/22/2013
According to AARP, 43.5 million Americans are caregivers, and although they do it out of love and obligation, caring for a loved one takes a personal and financial toll.
The economic impact is surprisingly high. It was over $480B/year in 2009, a figure that includes lost worker productivity, reduced earning capacity & retirement income, and increases in their own physical & emotional health and related costs. That’s about 3.2% of the U.S. GDP ($14.1 trillion in 2009). It’s more than the $361B in Medicaid spending. And it’s nearly as much as the $509B in 2009 Medicare spending. It’s also more than half of what we spend on defense. The burden is even worse for long-distance caregivers.
The infographic below details caregiving in the U.S. Read the rest of this entry »
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Big Data and the Future of Healthcare
01/16/2013
Accessible introduction transcript…
- Every day technology makes new things possible, and some predict that it’s just a matter of time until technology completely revolutionizes healthcare.
- Some believe that medical diagnosis, general patient care, and medical practices are more expensive and inferior than they need to be.
- The problem with health care is that it’s often the practice of medicine, rather than the science of medicine, as most medical decisions are simply based on tradition, a doctor’s limited medical knowledge, and the patient’s known symptoms and medical history.
- The result? Three doctors could diagnose a problem three different ways. This can be a serious issue.
- Over 40,000 patients die in the ICU in the U.S. each year due to misdiagnosis.
- The solution? Big Data. Some believe medicine can become more of a science, rather than practice, by relying on technology.
INFOGRAPHIC follows… Read the rest of this entry »
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Working Poor Families Struggle to Pay Bills
01/16/2013
There’s a Direct relationship between poverty, obesity, and the cost of health care.
Here’s some statistics, mostly from the 2010 census:
- 15.1% of Americans (46.2 million) live in poverty, including 22% of our children. 20% live in extreme poverty.
- 3.2 million Americans were kept out of poverty by unemployment insurance.
- 20.3 million were kept out of poverty by social security.
- The poverty threshold for a family of four is $22,113; the 2010 avg. income of the bottom 90% was $26.364.
- $6,298 — decline in median working-age household income from 2000 to 2010.
- 49.1 million — number of people under 65 without any health insurance.
- 13.6 million — decline in people under 65 with employer-sponsored health insurance from 2000-2010.
- Public health officials can accurately predict obesity and longevity rates by zip codes. One inner city example had an average lifespan of just 64 years while it was 90 years in a wealthier neighborhood just 8 miles away. (HBO’s documentary, The Weight of the Nation)
- Disadvantaged communities are at higher risk for many preventable health conditions, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis B and C, and infant mortality, largely due to the lack of health care, nutritious food at affordable prices, and sidewalks and parks to encourage exercise.
- Pressures from Job, Money, Divorce and Violence cause a vicious cycle of Stress = Obesity = Stress.
Tech innovation and automation also plays a role, increasing productivity and profits for some, but eliminating jobs faster than creating new ones. Dr. Oz apparently agrees, as shown in this article, which also features a CBS report on the jobs impact of robotics and a collection of slides that I recently presented to a local jobs group.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/us-working-poor_n_2476463.html
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Health & Medicine Outlook 2013
12/28/2012
“Human actions could become more accurately predictable, thanks to neuroscience. Nano-sized robots will deliver cancer-fighting drugs directly to their targets. And though many recently lost jobs may never come back, people will find plenty to do (and get paid for) in the future,” according to forecasts you’ll find in this roundup of the most thought-provoking possibilities and ideas published in The Futurist magazine over the past year.
I’ve extracted the following Health & Medicine forecasts from the World Future Society’s special report, Outlook 2013. It’s a promotional piece to attract new members who then get a subscription to The Futurist.
- Better health, but fewer doctors.
A projected shortage of more than 90,000 doctors by 2020 will drive technological innovations such as low-cost, point-of-care diagnostics—i.e., Lab-on-a-Chip technologies. A cell-phone-sized device could analyze your blood or sputum while you talk to a health provider from the comfort of your home. —Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler, “The Abundance Builders,” July-Aug 2012,p. 17
Read the rest of this entry »
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Texas Rankings Disappoint
12/23/2012
 Click on the image to view: “Texas on the Brink,” a 2001 report from the Texas Legislative Study Group that includes many more rankings and supporting statistics. Not much has changed. |
Texas near the Top:
Blessed with an abundance of land, rivers, oil and other natural resources, Texas pioneers built a great state, and even today, it seems that everything is bigger in Texas. I’ve lived in this “Great State of Texas” for most of my live, moving here from Arlington, VA in 1976, and I now live in the state capitol of Austin. So I call myself a Texan, but in many ways I’m not proud of my state. Here’s why. We relish in being #1 in many things, but not these:
- Texas is #1 in the percent of population uninsured
(as if that would be something to brag about). - We have the largest number of uninsured children (#1).
- We have the most toxic chemicals released into water (#1).
- We generate the most hazardous waste (#1).
- We have the most carbon dioxide emissions (#1).
- We also have the most executions (#1).
- We have the second highest birth rate
and are 4th in the number of kids living in poverty. - We have the second highest percent of population under 18.
- We’re #2 in percent of population with food insecurity.
- We’re #4 in percent of population living below poverty.
Healthcare Reform to Boost Telehealth 55% in 2013
12/19/2012
Healthcare Reform to Boost Growth in Telehealth Market by 55 Percent in 2013
Austin, TX 19 Dec 2012 – From 2010 to 2011 usage of remote patient monitoring, or telehealth, increased by 22.2 percent as the number of patients enrolled worldwide reached 241,200. However, telehealth device revenues only grew by 5.0 percent from 2010 to 2011; and 18.0 percent from 2011 to 2012. InMedica, a division of IMS Research (now part of IHS Inc.) attributes slow revenue growth over the last year to poor economic conditions leading to restrictions in healthcare funding particularly in Europe, and ambiguity on the impact of healthcare reform and readmission penalties on telehealth in the U.S.
In the U.S., there remained considerable uncertainty on the future of the US healthcare market and the role of telehealth in this market throughout 2012. As the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began penalizing U.S. hospitals for readmissions in October 2012, many healthcare providers remained unclear on the potential impacts on their institutions and are yet to implement a post-acute care plan.
