Health Care Resources Online

One of the aims of this blog is to connect readers to the multitude of health care industry resources online. Below you'll find a sampling to some of the resources found online. I’ll eventually have all of these as links on the site’s homepage but for now I'll just include them in a posting.

Also, for daily health care current event postings and the latest information on Vanderbilt's Health Care Business Alliance conference in October, please follow me on Twitter @owenhcba.

Dartmouth Atlas

http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/index.shtm

Deloitte Center for Health Solutions

http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/section_node/0%2C1042%2Csid%25253D80772%2C00.html

Real Clear Politics – Health Care Articles

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/topic/?topic=Health_Care

Kaiser Family Foundation

http://www.kff.org/

Congressional Budget Office – Health Care Publications

http://www.cbo.gov/publications/bysubject.cfm?cat=9

White House OMB – Health Care

http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/health_care/

The Health Care Blog

http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/

CMS

http://www.cms.hhs.gov/

California HealthCare Foundation

http://www.chcf.org/

The Commonwealth Fund

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/

Harris Interactive

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/newsletters_healthcare.asp

Pew Internet Project

http://www.pewinternet.org/topics/Health.aspx

The Return of Little Blue Pill

After a brief hiatus, I’m pleased to announce the return of the Little Blue Pill. As a current Health Care MBA at Owen, I’m looking forward to blogging on the exciting things happening in the world of health care and the role Owen is playing in health care. It is truly a unique time to be at Owen and to be pursuing a career in health care.

Some of the things I hope to touch on during my tenure at Little Blue Pill:

• Posting links concerning current events (newspaper and magazine articles, webcast links, relevant blogs, etc.). Given the political nature of much of health care and health care reform, I’ll just post a link and a brief sentence or two summary and refrain from adding any commentary. This site does not intend to be op-ed in nature.

• Links to online resources for health care students and professionals (including things like the Dartmouth Atlas, the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, resources through Owen and Vanderbilt University).

• Information about the Health Care MBA and Master of Management in Health Care programs at Vanderbilt including profiles of faculty, information on events at Owen, classes, etc.

• Details and info on the upcoming Health Care Business Alliance (HCBA) conference in Nashville. The Health Care MBA students are hard at work planning this year’s conference which will feature C-suite keynote speakers, panelists, recruiters and MBA and health care graduate students from schools from around the country.

• Probably a whole lot of other random things going on in health care and at Owen. I want this blog to be as interactive as possible and welcome comments on all aspects of the site.

Thanks for bearing with me as we get things restarted here at Little Blue Pill.

Perry

Closing Key Note Mr. Jim Lackey, Chairman and CEO Passport Health

The beginning of day two came too quickly after the festivities of Friday night, but Jim Lackey got everyone's attention with a phenomenal speech. Mr. Lackey is chief executive officer and chairman of the board for Passport Health Communications, Inc. This morning he spoke about his experiences upstart and the growth of his extremely successful company. His story is every Owen student's dream. He was able to deliver this early morning talk with humor and passion that had the room sitting on the edge of their seats. In the end, he gave his personal advice to achieving success as the leader of a company.

It was evident that Mr. Lackey believes that success comes as a result of personal leadership and passion. First, a successful company requires lots of personal commitment in terms of finances, time, and energy. Second, build a product or provide a service you are proud of and can be passionate about selling. It is an additional benefit is the ways the product can benefit costumers' lives. Third, Mr. Lackey makes the point to serve everyone inside and outside the company. Finally, Mr. Lackey takes a lot of stock in personal improvement. He encouraged attendees to never stop learning and expand on talents. What do you do well? Take that and expand it. The most important skill he recommended is to learn to delegate now. He spoke of the empowerment it brings colleagues when work is delegated to them.

His insight was extremely beneficial and even more important his character is commendable. I would argue that everyone walked out of that room wanting to work for Jim Lackey!

HCBA Day 1 SnapShots

 

Panel: Consumer Driven Health Care

Consumer Driven Health Care

Moderator:

Larry Van Horn, Faculty Director Healthcare MBA Program, Associate Professor of Management

Panelists:

Timothy Gary, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Carleen Haas, VP of Talent Strategies at Humana

Chris Parks, CEO of Change Healthcare

“General Comments on Consumerism”

Gary

Consumerism works to a point that people want to be involved and make their own health care decisions. Consumers want transparency of the system. The baby boomers generation wants information. The generation is having a disconnect with tying monetary expense with health care benefits. People of that generation want good health care services, but rarely consider the cost aspect.

Haas

The term “consumerism” in the health care industry is not about cost shifting, but rather the technology that delivers actionable information. Consumerism is “about education, involvement, and some skin in the game”. Humana saved millions of dollar by getting people to go through behavior change. Having transparency and having education lead to better outcomes. Consumerism is a lot about education, understanding the choices, and having system and technology to obtain that information.

Parks

Parks agreed with Gary that people just want the right health care without worrying too much on the cost. The demand change will be slowly driven by mainstream. Individuals will not be able to pay for the rising premium. Once the individuals spend money, they begin to ask the questions about the right kinds of health care system that suits them.  Ultimately, health care is a service; it must be paid for in some way or another.

(The panelists then transitioned into the discussion on politics and healthcare. The possible healthcare policy change from McCain or Obama if either one is to be elected President.)

“Consumerism in the future”

Parks

The individual will be more accountable for their health care expenses. There will be new nuances that the employers want to get rid of, but at least it was a static cool. In health care, no one knows its exact behavior and policy from year to year. Companies used to do 5-8 year plans for their employees, but nowadays, companies that do 2-3 years are considered to be lucky. Over the next 10 years, time spam will get shorter and shorter. This constitutes easy transition. In health care, there will be much resistance, and much caution in employee shifting. The shift will be who is bearing that cost of health care.

Haas

We are in a society where health care is an entitlement now. Medicine today costs higher than ever. The procedure incentive is not align with the doctor anymore, but with the patient. Doctors are willing to perform shorter procedures and receive less revenue. Shifting accountability and getting out of the entitlement mode.

Gary

Unless you change the mentality that health care is an entitlement, you are not going to change the system a whole lot.

(The panel ended with a fun, interactive Q$A session.)

Panel: Health Care Technology: Pharma, Biotech,and the FDA

Panel: Health Care Technology: Pharma, Biotech,and the FDA

Moderator: Dr. Kenneth Holroyd – Asst. Vice chancellor for Research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Panelists: Keith Gregg, Dr. Charles Hart, James Herman

At the Acorn Ballroom, the moderators and speakers started by introducing themselves and their experiences in the field. The moderator Dr. Kenneth Holroyd began to ask rounds of questions to the individual panelists.

The first topic discussed was the promising area for new development and new venture. While Mr. Greg mentioned that the area for investment resides in the betterment of efficiencies in the current system, Dr. Hart compared the topic of gene therapy with the current exploration of stem cells. Gene therapy was popular 15 years ago. Based on the logical, almost fantastic theory of putting antivirus into human genes to cure diseases such as cancer, gene therapy involves lots of technology and knowledge for development. Due to this use of large amount of technology, the FDA did not understand how to regulate it, for a single problem stems from one specific technology will hurt the entire industry survival. Similarly, on the current popular topic of stem cells, the result promises to cure diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and diabetes. However, in addition to the funding issues, the biology aspect of the knowledge is still not well understood. The FDA must make sure that stem cells are well regulated. Overall, the two ideas in biotechnology consist of good, valid theories, but the lack of knowledge in the fields prohibits development and ingenuity.

Another topic discussed was the counterfeit products, where Mr. Herman shared his views on the danger and prevention of counterfeit products. In a wholesale store, more than 50% of the products purchased through the Internet are counterfeit products, and a majority of these products come from overseas, with Asia being the #1 supplier, closely followed by Latin America.  These counterfeit products do not necessarily represent completely different drugs than what is being described on the packaging box, but rather products that are packaged by the wrong dosage. Some are expired products that are being repackaged, and some are diluted products. To prevent counterfeit products from entering the market, track and trace systems for products have been used. However, that hasn’t been very effective. The FDA is now setting up offices in foreign countries in hopes to better police these products through inspection. The pharmaceutical themselves are also organizing a counterfeiting team, working with education and inspection. There are also Internet teams that monitor suspicious sites and report them to the FDA. The prevention system for counterfeit products is expensive, but consumer protection ranks higher priority.

Additional discussion:

Drug development companies seek funding through raising money themselves. With current economy, most companies might have to “slash and burn” the staff and find buyers (although most buyers buy the product, the science, but not the company). As a result, staff and employees will suffer again.

The safety of products is a problem. For example, the products that go to a Middle Eastern country will face the problematic storage conditions. The same product, not so much as repackaging or anything, but in the mean time, what has happened to the product through storage and handling.

End of Day One! BB Kings here we come...

   Day one has come to a close, and the HCBA is happy to announce that it was a very successful day! Many Owen students had the opportunity to interact with several outstanding companies such as McKesson, Humana, BlueCross BlueShield, Deloitte, DaVita, HCA, Talstone, Wright Medical Equipment, ThermoFisher Scientific, Accretive Health, and Healthways. After speaking to a few recruiters, they were impressed by the professionalism of Owen students. As a result of today’s recruiting piece, a couple smaller companies expressed interest in further recruiting opportunities at Owen. The exposure generated by the conference will hopefully create more opportunities in the future and build stronger relationships with these healthcare companies.
   Those in attendance for the panels got to hear really great insight from professionals on the topics of healthcare entrepreneurship and healthcare IT, more specifically electronic medical records. A lot of the discussions centered around the current realities that the industry is facing. The most valuable aspect of the educational piece today was hearing the expertise of these professionals with many years of experience with healthcare.
   At the end of the day, it’s time to celebrate HCBA and Halloween at BB Kings for legendary Super T! However, everyone celebrating will keep in mind that breakfast is served bright and early tomorrow morning at 8:00… Tomorrow is guaranteed to be another fascinating day full of panel discussions and interviews. Please join us at 9:00 AM for the second keynote address by Jim Lackey, Chairman and CEO of Passport Health. See you tomorrow!

Panel 2: Health Care IT and Medical Records

EHR (Electronic Health Records): Five Perspectives

Moderator: Mark Frisse, Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University
Turning Data into Important Information

John Pirolo, Chief Medical Informatics Officer for St. Thomas Health Services
“A Perspective from the Sharp End of the Stick”
    EMR is a transactional database arcitecture. It is not an enterprise data warehouse, meaning there is not data scrubbing or normalizing. St. Thomas Health Services has implement a remote hosted environment. The EMR’s role depends on your perspective either as a patient, regulator, payor, or clinicians. Most importantly for a clinician it is a tool to expedite and optimize workflow efficiency. The overall value is dependent upon the richness of the data set. The promise of EMR is comprehensive data management, quality enhancement of practice and delivery, workflow optimization, and financial optimization. However, the reality is that the data aggregation is very limited and the scope of deployment is variable. The data sets are incomplete, which in turn limits decision support. You lose system intuition which impacts workflow optimization. Finally, there is financial overhead reduction turns into overhead reallocation. In the future, there are several areas of change that can help the industry realize the promises of EMR.

Janet King “Models for Gaining Efficiencies within Health Care Settings”
  RHIOs can provide more timely access to results, identify patients who may be seeking drugs, give primary care providers access to their patient’s discharge data, provide information that can ‘inform’ the clinical process of care delivery. Overall, this data along with administrative data can help clinicians make better decisions in providing health care services.

Peter Greaves, Senior Enterprise Architect, HCA
  Twenty-five years ago health information technology was largely about the business of health care in the last fifteen years HIT has moved increasingly to the bedside and become an integral part of the process of providing healthcare. What is most important is taking data and transforming it into information. Part of the challenge is to make this information meaningful and comprehend. In the last five years healthcare IT continues to move from the back-office to the bedside creating additional critical IT factors. Standardization of data has become a key issue with emerging tools.

Miriam Paramore, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy & Public Relations, Emdeon
    Healthcare transparency is non-existent, especially in regards to price. Miriam works in financial HIT.   $150 billion dollars is spent of the billing and collecting process. We can save $11 billion dollar every year by just cutting out paper billing. Miriam emphasized a 360-degree-view means we must create a marriage between clinical data and administrative data for each patient. Eliminating this cost allows so much room to reinvest and reduce costs that are passed along.

Brenda Motheral
    Disease management is a growing part of the healthcare industry. It allows for someone with a chronic condition to manage their own health and treatment. The recent data of the success of managing diseases is quite low. One of the problem is that there is a lack of realtime information in controlling disease management.  Participation rates of online personal health files are at best less than 10%. On the social networking side, the numbers are little bit higher. The percentage of population that is at risk that take advantage of these tools is still very low.

Why Health Care Companies Fail?

HCBA healthcare conference

“WHY HEALTH COMPANIES FAIL”

Moderator: Michael Burcham

Panelists:

Mike Aspinwall – Managing Partner at CCP Equity Partners

Bobby Guy – Partner at Waller Lansden

Thomas C. Wylly, II – Senior Partner, Brentwood Capital Advisors

What are the early warning signs of failure that entrepreneurs should be aware of?

Mike commented that warning signs mostly stem from the ability of management. First, the management should not change its business plans constantly, but rather it should have the ability to stick to basic fundamentals, the ability to listen, to adapt, and to think. The management that does not listen to anyone usually ends in failure. In addition to the plans that the management makes, implementation and execution play an important factor. According to Bobby, the warning signs consist of past financial disasters that the company and the market failed to avoid. Through the analysis of past disasters, the company can usually recognize causes of the problems, which can include the lack of internal controls, the inability to put out financials on time, and the lack of analysis on the reports. He also emphasized the recognition of denial, stressing the identification of struggles, the current standing of the company in the industry, and the honesty in optimism and pessimism. Tom affirmed Bobby’s thoughts on the importance of recognizing denial, and the competence of leadership within the company. He gave an example of a major warning sign of failure as he ridicules that when the company is facing a problem and the CEO walks into the boardroom without a plan or an approach to resolve the problem. Lastly, moderator Michael Burcham suggested using terrific tools of sales funnels to identify the signs and predict the areas where problems would arise. He emphasized the essentiality of understanding how sales funnels work and then learn to use it.

What should health care entrepreneurs do to improve their odds of success?

Bobby strongly recommended that the management should be honest, competent, and produces an economically stable outcome. This is especially true when the companies look for funding and capital from banks and investors. Tom, instead of finding internal attributes, suggested finding someone who has more wisdom, connection, and knowledge than the entrepreneur, and learning as much as one possibly can from the person. In the healthcare industry, most people succeed by not making some major breakthrough, but adding innovative twists to existing products and services. Going along the same lines, Mike suggested joining a successful company, and learning its success secrets. Before starting one’s own company, the entrepreneur should also analyze the value of the product or service being delivered, and has the relentless pursuit on execution.

Regarding to the question of when would be a good time to leave the current organization and start your own business, the panelists and the moderator suggested that the decision should be based on the ability to raise funding and capital and the current economic times.  Whether the entrepreneur has the experience and opportunity to succeed in the healthcare industry also plays an important factor. Finally, the entrepreneur should always structure the business model with focus on details such as products vs. company and self-employment vs. hiring before jumping into a new beginning.

HCBA Conference Kicks Off!

   Dean Bradford spoke eloquently when he said that Senator Bill Frist is unique because he “stands at the corner of medicine, policy, and business.” This morning in Acorn ballroom at the Nashville Marriott, Senator Frist kicked off the two-day Health Care Business Alliance conference with a fascinating speech about politics, global comparisons, ethics of reform, behavior, cost drives the uninsured, evidence based medicine, and the vision for the future of health care. The Marriott was buzzing this morning with the 225 students and professionals eager to network, learn, and participate in this exciting event. At 8:30 on a Friday morning, I find myself asking, why are we here? Nashville, Tennessee is home to more than 300 health companies, 15 of which are publicly traded companies. Therefore, some of the greatest healthcare thinkers and business professionals in the country are here, and they are at the HCBA conference to discuss one of the biggest hot button issues in the United States.
    On policy, Senator Frist made many interesting predictions about the future of healthcare as a result of the changing political scene in Washington. Senator Frist predicts that Democrats will dramatically increase their control of both houses of Congress and that Senator Obama will be the next President of the United States. Senator Frist supports the children’s mandate in Obama’s policy. However, Obama’s public plan is very troublesome to the Senator. He is unsure how the government could fund and execute this type of program. Ultimately, he believes that the reform policies of both candidates will never be made policies because of the extremely high cost to the government. Instead, he suggests there might be some incremental reform, but even that is questionable with the current economy.
    Senator Frist did an excellent job presenting the current challenges as well as the future trends that the industry is facing. Currently, why do Americans do so poorly with health care? Why do we spend so much money on it? Why do we die earlier? Why is infant mortality rate is the highest in the world? All of these questions present the problems facing healthcare industry that professionals will continue discussing for the remainder of the conference. Frist’s Challenge: develop a sustainable business model aimed at value and influencing individual behavior. Ultimately, the senator believes healthcare will benefit from full transparency, accountability and value focus.
     This is only the beginning but what a great beginning it was! If you’re reading this, please come join us for two interesting panel discussion this afternoon on the topics of why healthcare companies fail and healthcare IT and medical records. The panels today are from 2:00-4:00.