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March 2, 2000
RWJF REPORT
FORECASTS HEALTH CARE IN THE U.S. THROUGH 2010
A report entitled "Health and Health Care
2010" has been released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
and the Institute for the Future.
Here are a few summary findings from
the section of the Executive Summary entitled "Care Processes and
Medical Management":
Medical management -- the active
management of the care of patients and populations -- is currently
applied sporadically, if at all. There are two main issues in the
future of medical management. The first is the debate over which
care processes are used. Many groups are developing guidelines and
practice protocols, but none has agreed how, where, or when to use
them. The second is the need to reduce variations in practice,
thereby reducing costs and improving clinical outcomes.
Because medical management will
depend on information systems to monitor and track both processes
and outcomes, we forecast that putting these medical management
processes in place will take closer to 15 years than 5 years.
In the interim, disease and demand
management programs for the well population -- advice nurses
working with patients using the telephone and the Internet -- will
be commonplace. The advent of disease management programs and the
adoption of clinical guidelines will have a significant impact on
medical practice and patient management by 2005 and a sporadic but
discernible effect on practice variation a few years later.
An editorial review of the disease
management section of Health and Health Care 2010 was written by
Molly Mettler, Senior Vice President at Healthwise. Read thought
provoking essay
-- "That Patient is Not Diabetes Case #1155491. She's Me. The Need
for Disease Management to Become Consumer-Centric".
DMAA SPONSORING
CONFERENCE ON EMERGING PATIENT CONFIDENTIALITY CHALLENGES TO DM
The Disease Management Association of
America (DMAA) is sponsoring a seminar in Washington DC on March 29,
2000.
Senator Bill Frist is headlining this
full-day seminar. The conference will take an in-depth look at the
major, emerging state and federal legislative and regulatory issues
surrounding patient privacy initiatives which will likely affect the
practice of disease management in the coming year. Other speakers
will include:
Janlori Goldman -- Georgetown Privacy
Project
James Jacobson -- Gardner, Carton, and Douglas
Vincent Kerr -- General Electric Corporation
Vince Kuraitis -- Better Health Technologies
Richard Vance MD -- Humana, Inc.
Additional information and
registration information can be seen at
the DMAA website.
TOP 10
DEVELOPMENTS ON THE PHARMACEUTICAL LANDSCAPE
Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit
management (PBM) company, has issued it's list of Top 10 Trends. You
can download the full 10 page report at
Express-Scripts homepage.
The list:
1) COX-2 inhibitors gained 21% share
Of $2.3 billion musculo-skeletal market within first six months
2) Two new drugs join arsenal to
fight influenza
3) Clinton Medicare prescription
benefit proposal draws media attention to the challenging
pharmaceutical landscape
4) Direct-to-consumer drug ads
surpass $1.8 billion, with no end in sight
5) Breakthrough may lead to
Alzheimer's treatment
6) Advancements improve outcomes for
patients with congestive heart failure
7) Report reveals that medical errors
kill thousands annually
8) Vaccines gain ground in the battle
against infectious diseases
9) Surgeon General's report focuses
public attention on mental health
10) New rheumatoid arthritis drugs
offer relief for patients
ALLIANCE OF
COMMUNITY HEALTH PLANS ADVANCES NEW SYSTEM FOR MEASURING HEALTH
IMPROVEMENT
The Alliance of Community Health
Plans announced a new population-based approach to address patients'
risks for developing specific diseases. Read their
press release.
Organizations that contributed to
shaping the process included the American College of Physicians, the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the employers' Managed
Health Care Association, and the Washington Business Group on
Health.
COMPREHENSIVE
REPORT EXPLORES APPLICATIONS AND LIMITATIONS OF THE INTERNET IN
HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE
The National Research Council and the
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board have released a
comprehensive report -- "Networking Health:
Prescriptions for the Internet"
Major sections of the report cover:
Health Applications of the
Internet (Consumer health, clinical care, financial and
administrative transactions, public health, professional
education, and biomedical research)
Technical Challenges
Organizational Challenges
Issues for Public Policy
Conclusions and Recommendations
For the Internet to be used widely
and effectively in the health community, the report identifies four
areas that should be addressed: (1) research, development, and
deployment of technologies needed to support health-related
applications of the Internet; (2) demonstrations and evaluations of
health applications on the Internet; (3) educational programs to
help health organizations and their employees adopt Internet
applications and develop effective policies for doing so; and (4)
efforts to resolve policy issues that impede use of the Internet for
health applications.
INTERNET MORE
POWERFUL THAN TV OR PRINT AT DRIVING PRESCRIPTION DRUG REQUESTS
A
new analysis from Cyber Dialogue of the return on investment (ROI)
from sector expenditures reveals a dramatic difference in online
versus offline effectiveness. According to Cyber Dialogue's model,
the amounts spent to drive a single specific drug request by a
consumer differ greatly across the three media studied. The model
found that the cost to pharmaceutical companies amount to:
$220 per specific drug request for
print ads
$197 per specific drug request for
television ads
$14 per specific drug request for
the Internet
OTHER ENGAGING
ARTICLES AND JOURNALS
MCO Executives
is a constantly-updated online magazine that routinely features
articles relating to disease management and managed care.
Informatics-Review
is a timely e-journal that reviews issues relating to medical
informatics, ehealth, physician use of the Internet, etc.
Finally, the
latest issue
of the British Medical Journal features a half dozen
up-to-the-minute articles on DM.
BOOK
RECOMMENDATION
E-HEALTHCARE: HARNESS THE POWER OF INTERNET E-COMMERCE AND E-CARE
Internet health care expert Doug
Goldstein has authored his 5th book: "e-Healthcare: Harness the
Power of Internet e-Commerce & e-Care". Doug provocatively predicts:
"Ten years from now 50% of all health services will be delivered
through some variation of Web and Internet technology!"
Doug and co-authors highlight 10
e-Trends:
#1: More and More e-Patients Do More
and More On-line
#2: From Information and Medical Decision Support to Online e-Care
#3: Everything is Connected to the Net
#4: Beyond Web Portals(Health and Medical Online e-Services
#5: e-Care is the Next Generation of Disease and Demand Management
#6: Biz-2-Biz: Better, Cheaper, Faster Online
#7: Surf + Shop + Ship = Rapidly Accelerating Online Spending
#8: e-Medical Category Killers
#9: e-Healthcare @Home
#10: Being MedDigital
The book is available from
Aspen
Publishers
5th HON SURVEY ON
INTERNET USE FOR HEALTH PURPOSES
Results of the
5th
Annual Survey on the Evolution of Internet Use for Health Purposes
are available. The study was conducted by the Health on the Net
Foundation (HON). Top line findings include:
The usefulness of medical
cyberspace continues to grow.
Less than half of all doctors in
the U.S. and Europe are actively using the Internet.
Evidence on access patterns,
however, suggests a major reason is lack of time while on the job.
74% of North American doctors and 55% of the European colleagues
say they access the Internet "primarily" from home.
Of all healthcare
professionals, nurses appear to be the most active users of the
Internet.
Women have steadily grown into a
clear majority of medical-Internet users.
Note: this survey uses
"non-probabilistic sampling." In plain old English, this means that
respondents were those who chose who take the survey at the HON
website. Be careful in making comparisons. HON Surveys 1997-2000. ©
Health On the Net Foundation.
E-CareManagement News is an
e-newsletter that tracks a major change in health care and managed
care—the paradigm shift from “managing cost” to “managing care”.
This e-newsletter is brought to you by Better Health Technologies,
LLC (http://www.bhtinfo.com). BHT provides consulting and
business development services relating to disease management, demand
management, and patient health information technologies.
You may copy, reprint or forward this newsletter to friends,
colleagues or customers, as long as the use is not for resale or
profit and the following copyright notice is included intact.
Copyright © 2000, Better Health Technologies, LLC. All rights
reserved.
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