By Evan Falchuk

In case you missed it over the long weekend:

Dr. Robert Centor continues to share his terrific insights on how medical quality being wrecked by how insurers deal with primary care.

I wrote about how badly the federal government’s good work on getting patients engaged in their care is doomed without a social media strategy.

At the New York Times’ Economix blog, David Leonhardt writes again about his idea of what he calls a “prostate cancer test” for whether health care reform is going to work.  I commented that he is mistaken.  The misguided focus on money over medicine continues to plague health care reform discussions.

Lots of twitter buzz over the weekend on my post Doctors: Beware of Politics.  Check out the insightful comments.

Dr. David Cutler, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine wonders – will the cost curve bend, even without reform? Related thoughts here.

The Boston Globe reported on how Massachusetts’ new payment reform plan may place limits on where patients can seek medical treatment.  In a state dominated by major teaching hospitals, this will an interesting battle to watch unfold.

Also, research reported on in the American Scientist suggests that multitasking tends to degrade your cognitive abilities.  The implication is that gorging on information is the evolutionary equivalent of gorging on food.  A behavior that’s adaptive in a world of scarcity, maybe not so much in a world of abundance.

By Evan Falchuk

A couple of weeks ago, I presented data during a webinar from our most recent survey of more than 100 major US employers.

We asked dozens of questions relating to the design of their benefits programs, strategies they are deploying to contain costs and improve employee health, and their views on the years to come.  I also presented some related Best Doctors data that depicted a disconcerting picture of the problems patients face in trying to get the right care.

I was pleased to co-present with Delia Vetter, Senior Director of Benefits of EMC Corporation (disclosure, EMC is a Best Doctors client).  Delia presented a case study on her company’s approach to employee health and health care costs and took questions at the end.

The session was loaded with valuable information for anyone interested in health care.

Click here to review the webinar.

I’m very interested in your feedback so please comment below. I hope to do more webinars in the future and I would love to get your feedback, thoughts and ideas.

By Evan Falchuk

It’s a great site, but to find it you have to know where to look.  Luckily, the Washington Post unearthed it.

It’s called “Questions Are the Answer,” and it’s a call to consumers to get involved in their care by asking smart questions of their doctors.

The messaging is simple, and effective.  Under alternating pictures of a waiter and a doctor it says “you’ll ask him about the side dish . . . but you won’t ask him about the side effect.”  The rest of the site has public service videos and easy-to-read sections with practical advice on how to ask your doctor questions.

This should be the face of health care quality improvement.

By Evan Falchuk

It should be easy to define health care quality: did the patient get the right diagnosis and treatment?

But it’s not. And it’s because of something Al Gore wrote about in the 1990s.

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By Evan Falchuk

Did you know that for every dollar spent on a sick employee’s health care, there is up to another $20 in lost productivity? That’s what a team of researchers found in a major study published this month.

Sick employees are distracted, and not as productive as they could be. Lost productivity is a hidden cost that doesn’t go away, even when the government pays for health care.

But do we need a study to tell us this? Doesn’t everyone know that a sick person isn’t as productive as a healthy one?

It’s not as well understood as you might think. In our employer survey only 5% of employers rated productivity as their top priority for health care, and only a quarter put it in their top 3. The data say employers need to rethink those priorities.

By Evan Falchuk

I am listening in on a call of major US employers (there are >100 on the call) with the Centers for Disease Control and the National Business Group on Health about swine flu.  Most are doing not much more than sending around information about the illness to employees, including linking to CDC information on corporate intranets. Some employers have told employees who have returned from vacations in Mexico to stay home for 72 hours before returning to the office.  Manufacturers reported that they had policies in place based on the WHO “phases” in terms of possibilities of closing down plants or other facilities. Employers were concerned about the subject but were taking a wait-and-see attitude with respect to anything more significant.

The CDC repeated the guidance that has been on the news — hand-washing, social distance, and covering your mouth when coughing or sneezing.  The CDC says that their position was that masks are not recommended as a way of protecting themselves.  During the call, the HHS released an advisory for federal employees that sick travelers should wear masks to protect other travelers.

UPDATE: CDC says people should keep checking the CDC website as they expect the guidance there will keep changing.  For example, the CDC site has information on it now that is suggestive of a 7-day quarantine for some travelers, which the CDC representative says may need to be checked on.

[more updates below]

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