All Blog Posts Tagged 'of' (103)

Time to Rethink How We Pay for Medical Care and Healthcare

Today we mostly have prepaid medical care insurance with some co-pays and deductibles – both with commercial insurance and with Medicare. In other words, our insurance covers essentially everything from basic and routine care to the catastrophic. And the insurance pays out based on units of care – a visit, a test, a procedure, a hospitalization, a prescription. This creates a system in which providers (physicians, hospitals, drug and device companies, others) get paid for a unit of activity –… Continue

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on July 10, 2010 at 5:22pm — 3 Comments

Weight Loss Expert Panel includes Dietitian Lisa Nelson

Next month dietitian Lisa Nelson with be joining me as part of our expert panel as we cover Weight Loss from A to HCG: An Honest Discussion as part of the Conversations with the Masters of Healing.

Here’s a little background information on Lisa Nelson RD:

Lisa Nelson RD, founder and owner of HeartHealthMadeEasy.com and Health… Continue

Added by Cynthia Shelby-Lane, MD on July 8, 2010 at 8:00am — No Comments

Optimal Health Teleseries - Conversations with the Masters of Healing

This year’s Personal Health Telesummit is titled, "Conversations with the Masters of Healing.” This is by no means your usual seminar. It is a rare opportunity for you to listen, learn, change your life, and speak to the most incredible practitioners of healthcare and healing. Here is the link for Personal Health Telesummit’s schedule and speaker lineup:…

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Added by Cynthia Shelby-Lane, MD on July 6, 2010 at 8:00am — No Comments

Stem Cell Research with Dr. Maharaj

Dr. Dipnarine Maharaj is joining us for Conversations with the Masters of Healing. He'll be providing an in-depth look into stem cell research.

Here’s a little background information on Dr. Maharaj:

Dipnarine Maharaj, MD, FACP, is the Medical Director and founder of the South Florida Bone Marrow/Stem Cell Transplant Institute, one of the few completely outpatient bone marrow/stem cell… Continue

Added by Cynthia Shelby-Lane, MD on July 1, 2010 at 8:00pm — No Comments

Today’s Health Insurance Has Perverse Incentives

Whether we have commercial insurance through our employer or Medicare, the incentives are poorly aligned to lower costs and improve quality. In fact, they actually encourage greater and greater expenditures. In most instances, our insurance covers everything from prevention to basic routine care to complex care of serious illness. Coverage may not be all that good for some things like preventive care and our primary care physician feels underpaid for routine visits but nevertheless we basically… Continue

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on July 1, 2010 at 8:47am — No Comments

Hormone Harmony and Dr. Alicia Stanton

Conversations with the Masters of Healing begins next month and we have Dr. Alicia Stanton joining the amazing speaker line-up. This is a FREE teleseries!

Here’s a little background information on Dr. Alicia Stanton:

Dr. Alicia Stanton is one of the country's leading experts on womens health and hormone therapy. Dr. Stanton practices anti-aging and integrative medicine at BodyLogicMD of… Continue

Added by Cynthia Shelby-Lane, MD on June 29, 2010 at 8:00am — No Comments

Turbulence Ahead in Health Care

The decade ahead is one likely to be full of turbulence. How everything will shake out is anybody’s guess.

But we can be sure that technology advancements will slow for no one. The rate of medical technology advancement now is very fast and the speed will only accelerate. One big problem is that technology advances so fast that there is no time for a purchase – say new CT scanner or diagnostic device in a clinical laboratory – to create any return on the investment before a new or… Continue

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on June 10, 2010 at 4:26pm — No Comments

Is Technology a Cost Driver or a Cost Saver in Health Care?

The following was an invited post on the Harvard Business Review at http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/04/is_technology_a_cost_driver_or.html

Pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical-device and equipment companies have been extremely effective at producing innovations that have created major benefits for medical care. But the cost of new patented drugs and devices (pacemakers, defibrillators, stents,… Continue

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on April 20, 2010 at 3:47pm — 1 Comment

“Front of Package Food Labels – Public Health or Propaganda”

The current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association [JAMA, February 24, 2010, pages 771-772] has an interesting editorial of the title here by Drs Nestle and Ludwig about food labeling. “At no point in US history have food products displayed so may symbols and statements proclaiming nutrition and health benefits” is the opening sentence. In brief, the authors suggest that processed food companies have been aggressive in putting information on the front of their packages that… Continue

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on February 24, 2010 at 9:50am — No Comments

Misconception – Healthcare reform will fundamentally improve how we receive care going forward.

This is also not at all likely except for those who do not now have medical care insurance. For the rest of us, medical care delivery will change but it will change not because of reform but because of some fundamental societal and demographic reasons along with a marked change in the types, severity and chronicity of illnesses that is occurring right now. The combination of an aging population and our non-healthy lifestyles (obesity, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, stress and smoking) are… Continue

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on December 21, 2009 at 2:12pm — No Comments

Mammograms as a Stalking Horse for Issues in Healthcare Reform

As we watch the reform movement in Washington, we see and hear so many misconceptions. A current one relates to mammography. A few weeks ago guidelines were published in the prestigious Annals of Internal Medicine stating, in effect, that women between ages 50 and 75 with no history of breast cancer in their family and normal mammograms to date could probably switch from annual to biannual exams. And women between ages 40 and 50 probably did not need to get mammograms as had been previously… Continue

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on December 7, 2009 at 9:44am — 2 Comments

Call for Papers: CARS 2010 ... Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery, 24th International Congress & Exhibition

Colleagues,

See the following message from MedTech-IQ members at the CARS Conference Office ...

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Deadline for abstract / paper submissions: 11th January 2010

http://www.cars-int.org/

Goals

The CARS congress with its associated journal is a facilitator of innovation and an… Continue

Added by CC-Conrad Clyburn-MedForeSight on November 10, 2009 at 6:09pm — 1 Comment

Personal Behoviors and the Costs of Medical Care

A very important reason for medical care cost escalation has to do with our own personal behaviors. We are a country of people who are overweight --one-third are overweight and one-third or more are frankly obese --, under-exercised, poorly fed from a nutritional perspective and highly stressed. And it gets worse each year. Even children have progressively declining physical activity from about three hours per day at age nine to less than an hour by age fifteen. And this will correlate to… Continue

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on July 31, 2009 at 9:08am — No Comments

World Class Health Care at Walter Reed

Last fall I was asked by Maryland Senator Benjamin Cardin to join a group evaluating whether the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center [WRNMMC], when completed in a few years, would be “world class.” The group, a subcommittee of the Defense Health Board, met multiple times to learn about the plans and develop a report for Congress. The report is now available at http://www.health.mil/dhb/meetings/NCR%20BRAC%20HSAS%20Report%20-%20Final.pdf . Here is a brief summary. The Base… Continue

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on July 26, 2009 at 3:23pm — No Comments

Lack of Care Coordination Hinders Care Quality and Escalates costs

The switch from acute to complex chronic diseases and the wide variation in care patterns are closely related. It is the complex chronic diseases that need the most attention and hence are most expensive to treat. But as a country we have long had the tradition of the independent, autonomous practioneer in the community taking care of us. This was fine for acute illnesses. The physician could either treat you him or herself or else would refer you to a particular specialist for needed care.… Continue

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on July 20, 2009 at 10:00am — 1 Comment

Medical Care Varies By Geographic Region

Recently Conrad Cyburn posted a note about the approach of Kaiser to keep costs down while quality high. They do a good job of avoiding the variations in care that exist across the country and which are part of thereason that caare is both expensive and not as good as it could or should be. There are wide variations in care expenditures from geographic region to region. One might assume that those regions with higher expenditures reap better health but that is simply not the case.… Continue

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on July 16, 2009 at 10:13am — No Comments

Complex, Chronic Illnesses That Last a Lifetime and Are Expensive to Treat

I appreciate the comments to my earlier post on the state of America's health care delivery system. We have incredible medical advances, of the type often referred to on MedTecIQ, but if they cannot be dellivered to the right people at the right time, then they are not being fully utilized to best advantage. One pressing need is to recognize the marked shift in disease prevalence from acute illness to chronic illnesses that has occured over the years; it is a real… Continue

Added by Stephen C Schimpff on June 29, 2009 at 2:14pm — No Comments

U.S. Career Opportunities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Dear Friends,

We have recently posted several opportunities for biomedical research positions in the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Please help us get the word out to potentially qualified candidates. We are looking for both a senior and early career researcher, as well as a strategic position as the new Director of the Biomedical Science and Engineering Center. I have attached copies of the positions and would appreciate it if you… Continue

Added by CC-Conrad Clyburn-MedForeSight on May 26, 2009 at 3:18pm — No Comments

Invite/Call For Papers from MedTechIQ Member, Barbara Beckerman: 1st Annual Oak Ridge National Laboratory Biomedical Science & Engineering Center Conference

Dear Colleagues,

We are please to announce the 1st Annual Oak Ridge National Laboratory Biomedical Science and Engineering Center Conference, to be held at ORNL (Oak Ridge, Tennessee), March 18-19, 2009. The conference theme is: Innovative, interdisciplinary research trends in biomedical technologies and research for maximum application-specific problem solving. There are three key target areas: Biomedical Informatics, Modeling and Simulation, and Measurement Science and Imaging… Continue

Added by CC-Conrad Clyburn-MedForeSight on January 7, 2009 at 1:30pm — No Comments

New Member Update - 13 December 2008

A message to all members of MedTechIQ

Colleagues,

We have been joined by new MedTechIQ members. They include:

Academia/ Not For Profit:

Eric Rasmussen, MD, MDM, FACP: Humanitarian medicine, Disaster medicine, public health, outbreak epidemiology, austere communications, collaboration techniques, cross-functional team dynamics

Ron Marchessault: Medical Device Research and Development, Technology Commercialization

Phil Weinfurt:… Continue

Added by CC-Conrad Clyburn-MedForeSight on December 13, 2008 at 6:30am — No Comments