Steven Lash, President and CEO of Satori World Medical, spoke with HealthBlawg last week about Satori's take on medical tourism, including its method of sharing cost savings with consumers who use Satori's services through employer-sponsored health plans. The audio file of my interview with Steven L...

Dan Greden, Head of eHealth Product Management at Aetna, spoke with HealthBlawg last week about Aetna's PHR system, its above-average rate of adoption by members, and the benefits that it provides to members, clinicians and ultimate payors. The audio file of my interview with Dan Greden (about 30 mi...

Robert Pear's piece in Sunday's NY Times is about the bajillionth article or MedPAC report recounting the fact that Medicare Advantage and Medicare fee-for-service plans cost the federales more than traditional Medicare -- 12% more and 17% more, respectively -- and it points to some Health Affairs p...

Don Berwick, CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, spoke with HealthBlawg last week, as IHI comes close to wrapping up its 5 Million Lives Campaign . The audio file of my interview with Don Berwick (about 20 minutes long) is available for download/podcast. A full transcript is at the end ...

All Hallow's Eve (celebrated around these parts tomorrow night) incorporates traditions tied to the earlier Celtic holiday of Samhain, which marks the beginning of winter -- as the great (swing) state (or should I say Commonwealth) of Pennsylvania knows only too well.  As we enter the last lap of t...

Item:  CBO says EHRs don't really save money after all. Item:  DoD is hard at work undermining VistA (developed over years at taxpayer expense and now in the public domain) and replacing it with a zillion-dollar military-industrial complex "solution." Item:  ONCHIT's two-years-overdue report on t...

The SGR -- a zero-sum game for physician reimbursement under Medicare which guarantees year-over-year lower unit prices -- has got to go.  Time has run out on the last stopgap measure , and el presidente promises to veto the current fix (which has to take effect by July 1, or else docs get hit with...

Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Hillary and Bill Clinton, has been a favorite surrogate of the campaign. This is fine. But can somebody help me? Explain to me how you’re not prepared for a Monica Lewinsky question. Today, Chelsea got her second Monica Lewinsky question of the week. She was as...

Last week, Google and the Cleveland Clinic announced a pilot of the Google personal health record (under 10,000 patients), touted by Cleveland Clinic as a means to help its snowbird patients keep track of their medical records scattered across multiple locations (among other things).  See the p...

Hospital-acquired infection (HAI) is one of the catchphrases of patient safety advocates, health care cost control champions and health care data and transparency wonks.  CMS made some of these constituencies happy when it rolled out its no pay rules last year, and the Massachusetts Department ...