• Getting What We Pay For: Innovations Lacking in Provider Payment Reform for Chronic Disease Care - From the Center for Studying Health System Change. Asking the obvious question (in a useful way) about how payment per service is helpful to patients with chronic illness

• Medicare Coverage of Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring - CMS's coverage criteria for ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. Could home blood pressure monitoring be covered similarly?

I learned about this at the CCR workshop. The CCR accomodates elements of this, but CMS has not endorsed it yet as a standard.

AMCP.org - Comments on Standard SIG - The NCPDP was working on the standard for Med Sigs - a little background

• Ning - Create your own Social Networks! - As it says, a way to create a social network. What if a physician created one for her patients (who opted in)?
• The Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial (ALLHAT) - ALLHAT treatment information
• Prevent and Control High Blood Pressure: Mission Possible - Information from the NHLBI about hypertension control - unfortunately, it looks like the site has been abandoned. Another argument for a Web 2.0, more interactive approach.
• Sixty minutes of health reform education: Frontline is required watching - Overview of international health systems - incentives seem more aligned, and of interest, when reforms are society/community focused, the professions understand their utility.
• NEJM — Characteristics of Patients with Uncontrolled Hypertension in the United States - "Undiagnosed hypertension and treated but uncontrolled hypertension occur largely under the watchful eye of the health care system;"

May 6th through May 7th:

• The Happy Hospitalist: This Deserves The Middle Finger - I guess it is controversial (the RUC report on Medical Home Reimbursement)
• AMA (RBRVS) RUC Medicare Medical Home Demonstration project recommendations - RUC and Medical Home. Might this be controversial?
• reportonbusiness.com: Asking ‘why’ again and again is harder than you think, but it works - Good description of the 5 Why's Exercise
• What is Hypertension? - WrongDiagnosis.com - Factoids about Hypertension, useful in planning a community intervension
• Cigna clients seek answers after expiration -
• Cigna ends pact with hospitals, leaves thousands in the lurch - This local story has not made the national news. I wonder why?

• 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.

April 1st through April 2nd:

• Pattern Recognition » Blog Archive » I really hate Zotero - Like the concept, wants to improve the implementation
• Medical Home | Solution to Chronic Care Management? | Health Care | Disruptive Innovation for a New Primary Care Model | Center for Health Solutions - Deloitte LLP - Very nice overview of Medical Home, particularly with the rundown of stakeholders in the back, plus the medical home cost model.
• WordPress ? Support » Tags Import As Numbers, Not Words - Importing issues Wordpress
• Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco 2008 ? Co-produced by TechWeb & O’Reilly Conferences, April 22 - 25, 2008, San Francisco, CA -
• Compare Accounts | YouSendIt - Store and forward service for the times when e-mail isn’t so efficient. I use XDrive.
• Convert Your Paper to iPaper | Scribd - An ambitious project to convert paper , no extra charge
• John Furrier Says Google?s CIO is Leaving for EMI - Interesting change of employer, could the same thing happen if a Google employee was recruited to run a health care organization?
• Twitter - A Teaching and Learning Tool | ICT in my Classroom - Nice discussion of the uses of Twitter in education
• VoiceThread - Group conversations around images, docs and videos - An interesting image, video, voice annotating service. What are the applicaitons in medical group training and patient involvement

A lot of stuff going on this week…

• Apple Digital Fitness Companion System? - Mac Rumors - It was/is only a matter of time. Hello Health2.0, courtesy of iPhone
• The computer will see you now | Economist.com - A nice biographical piece about Larry Weed, father of the problem oriented medical record.
• EMC, Partners collaborate on hypertension program - Daily Business Update - The Boston Globe - An employer that thinks about population health and sets up a PHR in concert with a health system. Interesting…..
• Subscribe to ringtones via iTunes - Easy way to get ringtones - a ringcast?
• Mashable?s Guide to Upcoming Web 2.0 Conferences - A plethora of get togethers to get up to speed on the latest in Web 2.0.
• leanblog.org | Lean Blog: The Waste of Handwritten Notes | Lean Manufacturing | Lean Healthcare | Toyota Production System - Yes, Leadership. From patients and their families too. The kind of leadership that brings the patient perspective into every conversation.
• Apple - Support - Downloads - MacBook, MacBook Pro Software Update 1.1 - Help with keyboard freezing issues caused by Leopard
• Healthcare 360 -
• GHI - GHI Medical Home Pilot - I think this is very promising for supporting EHR adoption and patient access to their own clinical information. Ties in very nicely with NYC’s PCIP project.
• Public health system struggles to reach gay ?hidden population? - Washington Blade - Another vulnerable population that could benefit from outreach - many are underserved even when well insured.
• Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X - The resource for programming on MacOSX, and iPhone as well

March 18th through March 19th:

• The ‘World Wide Computer’?Another HAL? - Businessweek’s Review of “The Big Switch” - I used it for comparison
• NPR: Doctor Blogs Raise Concerns About Patient Privacy - I agree with points raised - a patient should never seek care and then discover that they have been written about on a blog. Instead, they should receive a copy of the medical record that has been created about them. At the same time, physician bloggers are doing something very important - they are testing the boundaries of transparency, to support a more accountable health care system. If anyone saw the 60 minutes story about Dennis Quaid and his family, the rationale for this become very clear.
• What Every Physician Should Know About the RUC - January 2008 - Family Practice Management - The information is useful. As primary care providers I think we need to be careful to include our specialty colleagues in the conversation, not distance themselves from it. As a member of a large multispecialty medical group, I know that there is interest across the physician community in supporting community health and the best experience for patients.
• MindBlizzard blog: Virtual Healthcare 2: Palomar Pomerado Health - All right - More news about the utility of Second Life - testing a hospital before it launches
• What is the ROI on employee suggestion systems? - A nice example from the toothpaste industry. But not necessarily one that supports the evidence, that far less toothpaste than people think is needed to protect teeth…..Maybe a customer suggestion system might be in order.

March 7th through March 11th:

• Frist Advocates Higher Medicare Payments for Doctors Who Use EHRs - iHealthBeat - An idea to promote network preference among physicians who adopt HIT.
• Marissa Mayer’s 9 Principles of Innovation | Fast Company - I love number 5
• The Curious Genius of Twitter - Evan Williams - Tweet | Fast Company - Will Twitter go the way of friendster? I think there could be applications of Twitter in Health Care (really)
• Area Tap Water Has Traces of Medicines - washingtonpost.com -
• Farm Workers Service Wheel - Services for farm workers in Sonoma County. Showing that the Internet can serve everyone