• Insurers Embrace Online Physician Visits, But Doctor Participation Slow To Catch On – iHealthBeat – “Aetna is agressively marketing the tool to its contracted providers” – some information about the support for patient-physician messaging in the fee for service sector. Also some information from Kaiser Permanente’s work. California Medical Association provides a distinctive perspective on change. See what you think. Why isn’t this catching on in the fee for service healthcare community? (Audiocast)

• Aetna Clinical Policy: Automated Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring – Rules for ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, which is different from "home" blood pressure monitoring. Useful to know when thinking of connectivity in the California Healthcare Foundation project work. Because health plans and CMS already pay for this type of monitoring, there’s precedent for looking at home blood pressure monitoring. This type of monitoring (ambulatory) pays for itself because it can establish the presence of “white coat” hypertension, which is high blood pressure that only occurs in the doctor’s office. In that situation, it’s better for the patient not to undergo treatment, which saves them (and the system) time and money in unnecessary health care.

• Aetna’s CEO Again Attacks 3rd Party PHRs « Chilmark Research – The "d" word is back. Reacting by innovating is a great thing.

• Topics – e-Visits @ TransforMED – Transforming Medical Practices – Article on whether the tipping point has been reached for e-visits
• WordPress Plugin: SIMILE Timeline at freshlabs journal – Nice visualization tool
• Doctor-Patient ‘Web Visits’ Spur Privacy Concerns : NPR – Should the American Medical Association always present the contrarian view around patient access? I don’t agree with the implication that cell phone / telephone is “most secure.” Anyone who has been in an airport recently would probably agree.
• WSJ.com/Harris Interactive Study Asks: Are There Fair and Reliable Ways to Assess Healthcare Quality? – Patients are saying that having an EHR is a “fair” assessment of quality
• Expansion of CCHIT Certification for 2009 (PDF Presentation) – Overview of CCHIT’s work to date and future strategy. Disclaimer: I am on the Foundations Workgroup
• Meet the Press — Robert Scoble — The Blogosphere | Fast Company – How Tim Ferriss used the blogosphere to his advantage
• News – Diversity gap found among state’s doctors – sacbee.com – “Not just a civil rights issue, a public health issue”
• YouTube – Microsoft Surface Parody – Why not use the device the size of a small car? The peril and promise of on demand video in shaping your message.

• Safari 3.1 includes hidden one-window preference – This is the holy grail of Safari as the browser of choice. That plus compatibility with blog authoring tools.
• Mac BU promises bibliography improvements to Office 2008 – Interesting discussion somewhat unrelated to the article’s title about the state of bibliographic software. I would look forward to further refinements of Zotero, and maybe a server version.
• QLPlugins – Quick Look Plugins – Great efficiency improver of one of my favorite Leopard features.
• Aetna Smartsource Demo – Aetna’s latest information tailoring system for patients. Getting closer to supporting the patient-provider relationship?
• Apple – Support – Discussions – Unresponsive Keyboard and Trackpad … – This is a real issue for MacBookPro owners – prepare yourself just in case this happens to you.
• A new snapshot of health consumerism from EBRI and The Commonwealth Fund – Nice overview from Jane Sarsohn-Kahn
• Roblog » Batch Categories – Another category management plugin, for Wordpress 2.3 and 2.5
• uwMike » WP-Cats – More preparation to migration to WP 2.5
• Disk Inventory X – Map your hard drive to avoid wasting space
• How to Fly Without ID and Skip Lines | The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss – Just in case this happens to you, here is how you can fly and recover.

February 4th through February 6th:

• DC Moves for Safer Sidewalks – Get There – Washington government takes a step toward promoting walkability. Sidewalks stay open for business.Walkers rejoice!
• Apple //c – a photoset on Flickr – The OOB experience of an unopened AppleIIc computer. Remember when technology was fun? It still is. And I never even learned to program in Pascal.
• Ryanair’s Changing Altitude – Efficient cost management and charging for everything keeps margins high at RyanAir – a great example of “copy how we think” in terms of being like Southwest
• Running a hospital: More on fetching and work-arounds – BIDMC launches an improvement methodology called SPIRIT. Looks like it’s at least partially based on LEAN?
• The Health Care Blog: Bad Medicine: How The AMA Undermined Primary Care in America – Brian Klepper – Analysis of RBRVS and impact on primary care.
• The ethics of CEO blogging – Nice discussion from Paul Levy about the approach that a CEO takes to blogging. I’m in support!
• Insurers Begin To Reimburse for Online Visits, Concerns Remain – Nice profile of Kaiser Permanente’s program.
• Marriot Rolls Out Web-Based PHR System to Employees Nationwide – iHealthBeat – An employer-sponsored PHR. Will the lack of connection to the health care team be an issue?
• KUOW: Program Archive: Patient Safety, January, 2008 – Dr. Matt Handley, from Group Health Cooperative, is featured
• Best Companies 2008 – FORTUNE Magazine’s Top 100 Employers to Work For – The 2008 list is out. From an HR/Leadership perspective, it is interesting to look at some of the most important qualifications for being on the list, such as support for diversity.