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Dell Takes Health Care Online
abb_road writes "Dell will announce today that it will begin offering employees an online system to track health care; the system, which will focus on insurance claims, doctor visits and prescriptions, is expected to improve employees' medical safety while reducing costs. The electronic records are expected to dramatically improve preventative care; employees will receive ongoing alerts for suggested and continuing treatment of health conditions. The system should also improve coordination among health care providers, especially when patients need to see multiple physicians. Other employers are expected to follow Dell's lead; the government 'has estimated that health IT can add $140 billion a year to the productivity of the $2 trillion health care industry.'"
This is nothing new, my health insurance has an online system and so do many others.
Apple Creates a whole new synergistic application interface for healthcare which puts Dell to shame. When will Dell innovate?
Did you remember to floss?
Clippy pops up in the corner...
`It looks like you have cancer. Would you like to book a session of radiotherapy?'
Join the NFSNET. Our prime goal is making little numbers out of big ones. http://www.nfsnet.org/
It's just more corporate spam. Just another autodelete rule.
Denmark has a National IT Strategy on Healthcare. I was able to talk to a delgate from Denmark many months ago about their projects. They have made some major acomplishments and had to deal with some difficult problems such as authentication.
Dell isn't the first, and as each new project comes online new lessons are learned. I suspect there will be many more applications, in the near future, as information is invaluable in proper diagnosis and treatment in the modern medical system.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
I'm always skeptical of blanket prescriptions for health care, or for what IT can and cannot do in the macroeconomic sense to solve a problem. For example, "the government 'has estimated that health IT can add $140 billion a year to the productivity of the $2 trillion health care industry.'" Is that indeed added to the 'productivity' of the industry, or is that added to the cost? The Dell implementation looks innovative (to a degree) and hopefully for them (and their employeees) will show a benefit; but I can already hear the chorus of those who have fought against real reform in the healthcare industry saying that the best solution is throw more IT at the problem. IT has never really worked any better than the proverbial money we used to throw.
I'd be astonished if the employees ultimately benefit from these automated systems. The only thing that they'd get would be online access to their health records. The employers will say the employees benefit from getting health care in the first place. However, I'm a bit skeptical in this age of cost cutting that these tools won't be used to lump "problem" employees that use lots of coverage and force them into programs that would help the company save a bit of money. Is that legal? And how would the company get the information about the employee interactions with health providers - the insurance company, I'm guessing? It'd be an nightmare to get every doctor and pharmacy to plug into the system.
Call me crazy but I don't want my corporate business to "know" if/when/where I'm doing followup for my healthcare or what healthcare conditions I need follow up for.
Any system that allows users of an insurance plan to see the actual costs and, most importantly, make informed choices is a good thing. Enabling preventative measures and personal responsibility is also a good thing as it decreases the long-term payouts and is actually good for the bottom line. I think any type of universal coverage that obfuscates the real costs, denies choice, or just assumes the right to unlimited health care will be a disaster. As I recall Dave Barry once said: "If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's free." I think movements like these are a good thing.
Everyone is generally dissatisfied with healthcare in the US, and there lots of people who believe that the accountability that computerized records can enforce could really change things. Now the customers of healthcare (employers) have balloning costs and very little to show that the healthcare they are purchasing is actually effective.
An obvious question is why proprietary medical software vendors have not addressed this issue already. Part of the reason is that there is no "Microsoft" in the industry. There is no proprietary player large enough to wrangle major IT changes for all of healthcare. This creates an opportunity for open source EMRs (The AMIA open source working group has an Review of Open Source EMRs btw) After all, how would Red Hat fare if there were no Microsoft. This is the opportunity for projects like MirrorMed to grow to be a dominate force.
Fred Trotter
Good news and all, but Dell did have a keynote at Linuxworld and made some real interesting points in regards to virtualization. But no coverage on Appledot about it... C'mon guys!!
1. Identify the employees generating the most health insurance liability. Something tells me it will end up as an undocumented factor in a performance review.
2. Accelerate shifting the burden of medical care to the individual.
Most Americans are quite happy to assume this burden with no benefit to them at all. They assume a huge liability in exchange for absolutely nothing.
Socialized medicine might work some places, but the "S" word is derogatory in the U.S. and I don't see a good solution in either privatized or public health plans.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Dude, you're getting a colonoscopy!
From TFA:
So let me get this straight - this incredible new initiative is actually a lightly-used website, run by WebMD, that Dell employees have had for the past two years. And the newness is that the system can now "electronically" capture results. And Dell trumpets this in a major news release.
We will set aside the interesting question of how (and whether) WebMD has convinced thousands of independent labs, as well as laboratory giants like LabCorp, to send results to WebMD. We will ignore the HIPAA regulations that will require patients to sign releases with anyone sending results to WebMD. We will overlook the balkanized, backward, and poorly-penetrated electronic medical records world in which these patients' doctors work.
Even if all of these things were somehow not an issue, does anybody except Dell and WebMD marketing droids really believe that the only thing that was preventing this dramatic breakthrough from revolutionizing medical care for everybody was the lack of a stupid HL-7 interface?
Oh, wait. Never mind. Check the last part of the article:
Yup. Sure. Got it. Tinfoil hats meet blue-sky dreamers, and the result is ugly.
"What's wrong?"
This whole thing is hubristic and silly, and has overtones of big-brother style snooping. Perhaps if America had a national health service, like the rest of the civilized World, companies wouldn't need to embark upon such ridiculusness in an attempt to lessen health insurance bureaucracy.
Azural - instrumentals
Information wants to be free.
" the government 'has estimated that health IT can add $140 billion a year to the productivity of the $2 trillion health care industry.'"
Excellent, and with an aging population and increasing cancer rates, the healthcare industry will grow even larger! Soon we'll be the busiest hamsters the wheel has ever seen!
I make and cancel doctor appointments, refill my prescriptions, and contact my doctor or a nurse ALL ONLINE. This news is silly.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
This is called consumer driven health care....basically they entice you into doing preventative healthcare (physicals, health surveys, etc) in exchange for putting "healthcare dollars" in to your fund. This helps with offsetting the deductibles. Which are HUGE by the way, my family plan is 2k a year. It's all very web focused and they strongly recommend you managing your healthcare through the web. In fact one of the incentives that nets you $50 in your fund is simply registering on the provider site.
I think it's good to try and help people be healthy but these plans can be bad. If you are normally healthy but need a normal procedure, say an appendectomy...you will pay out the nose.
It's supposedly much much cheaper for corporations so you can see why they like them. I miss my HMO....
Dobo
"the government 'has estimated that health IT can add $140 billion a year to the productivity of the $2 trillion health care industry.'"
I wonder how much of this savings will end up in the pocket of class action suit lawyers, once the online health care data ends up in the hands of hackers.
Health care data is protected under US law and access to it is restricted to those with a specific need-to-know. I don't think it is very likely that anyone's employer has a compelling need to know anything about your health care other than "when" and "how much." They would surely use any additional data to make employment decisions, which is unethical at best, and in many cases already illegal (e.g. nobody should pass one of two equally qualified candidates just because one is in a wheelchair or has recurring migraines).
This is standard issue Dell PR Release. Slashdot is the one trumpeting it. I would think there would be other more interesting news coming from Dell out of Linuxworld, such as Kevin Kettler's Keynote on virtualization using VMWare and Xen.
It is ironic that the whole point of the conference was to stress the importance of integerating PACS formats across different vendors.
The cost effectiveness of electronic health care will only be served by open standards in, imaging, dispensing, accounting and records software. The trouble comes when some companies try to lock up formats and "lock in" hospitals , clinics and others with their formats. The whole health care industry will just become more and more expensive if there are not closed standards set for formats and these standards must be open!
I broke my clavicle last year and have been swamped with bills. I've been able to track my account on-line, which was particularly helpful in finding one bill sent to me wasn't sent to my insurer, first.
Particularly distressing because when I was taken in to hospital I had my wallet with me and insurance card, which they took down. The depressing bit, however, is in a modern US hospital are many companies and they don't necessarily share information, such as your insurer, member number, etc. You don't realize this until you're getting bills and notices of payment to a half dozen medical companies.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Dell will implement it with windows. It will be cracked easily. At that time, all the employee info will be made available spammers and ID thefts galore. So for them, it will be a free lunch.
If someone else is paying for my healthcare, why should I care what it costs?
For example, when my grandmother was dying of cancer, Medicare and her supplemental picked up 95+% of the tab. Her doctor sent her to a nutritionist at first, as a way of acknowledging the mountain of research that proves nutrition is an important part of health. Grandma later said, "she wanted me to eat 5 servings of vegetables a day. She's CRAZY!" The doctor never mentioned nutrition again, and stuck to the high-tech/high-cost treatments he'd been trained in. She died after six months, after having spent $50k+ of other people's money.
A year ago I started seeing a Doctor of Osteopathy in the Cranial Field for some Osteopathic Manipulation. He works from a home-office, has an answering machine for an assistant, answers all his own messages, and basically does everything himself. He gives me a receipt that I can submit myself for insurance reimbursment, if I so desire. He doesn't accept insurance because a) he'd need an employee to handle the billing b) his practice is full regardless c) many insurances are likely to disallow his kind of therapy, or pay him pennies on the dollar.
In January I decided to see a homeopathic M.D. to see if there was something I could do about my cold hands. After taking an extensive history, he decided that my autonomic nervous system was probably out of balance, and injected me with novocain (same as what dentists use to numb the mouth) in a couple locations. He also gave me a couple of homeopathic remedies, and some fish oil/vitamin E at the next visit. I'm out $400 or $500 for his services, and am totally pleased with the results. He doesn't bill insurance either, also because it's not worth his time.
If I'd gone the conventional route, my insurance would've had to spend $2000 or $5000 on diagnostic tests (an MRI goes for $1000, and CAT scans aren't cheap either), $20,000 on hand surgery/whatever, and I still would've had the problem. As it is, I've spent approx $5,000 with the D.O., and I'm totally satisfied because the treatment program works.
Health Insurance should be carried for accidents, because you never know when you might have a $40,000 medical bill (like me, 8 years ago: a helicopter flight, a plane flight, a cat scan or two, 10 days in the hospital, etc...). But we should all pay our way, for the costs associated with living.
Modern Medicine has evolved with almost univeral insurance coverage, so our doctors have the mindset of "if cost were no object, what would I do?" (this is not a concious thing, but a mindset that gets passed from generation to generation of medical professionals) Which explains why there are so many $60,000 heart bypass surgeries being done, even though some researchers say that bypass surgery belongs in the medical archives, because it is almost universally incompatible with the patient's long-term outcome. I clipped a story from the paper a few weeks back about a guy who died in his 50's, 3 weeks after having a bypass operation. Re-plumbing the heart while ignoring the rest of the vascular system seems like a foolish way to go about attaining health. But it makes the heart surgeon wealthy, so why should he do anything else?
See also:
100 years of Medical Robery
Real Medical Freedom
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
My company began doing this several years ago. The entire program is "voluntary", however if you do not participate - you miss out on substancial health insurance discounts on the monthly premiums. In other words - its best to participate from a financial standpoint. At first, many employees were outraged at the invasion of privacy. Participation involved a yearly physical performed on-site at your office by "trained" medical technicians. Blood samples are taken for the various tests which are to give each participant a "score" to follow the health of their lifestyle and body. Myself, I didn't have much problem with the program. I am very healthy, not over-weight, and 5 years smoke-free (still drinking like a fish but thats expected in the IT business). Unfortunately, other employees are not so lucky. The program penalizes you points for being over-weight, having poor cholesterol, having hyper-tension, being a smoker, alcoholic, and for various diseases. More and more companies will move to in-house health programs such as this to limit and/or curb employees who excessively claim against the company's insurance provider - due to illness, disease, or poor health. There's an upside to it encouraging emplyoees to be more active, and to eat healthier (small monetary bonus). However, the massive downside is (despite the company insisting they are not privy to the details of the health inspection) employees are graded according to health - which may or may not affect their longterm prospects at the company. This is like the first few steps, until we're all living in GATTACA.
So, how am I supposed to fake an exotic illness so I can call in sick to go watch the game if all of my health care records are online? I can see it now:
Boss: Hmm, you don't sound sick, and I see that every time you've visited the doctor in the last six months, they've released you without a prescription every time. Care to explain?
Me: Umm, I'll be in at 8.
Boss: Good, I'm glad you see things our way.
I dont want to be trolling.
But shouldn't this come under politics or something.
Why is this in Science section?
So this program will help keep me healthy...
Until I get really sick, and then Dell (since they have all my records) can fire my ass before I get too expensive! Schweet!!
Yeah....cancer, ok this employees got cancer lets slate him for lay offs as soon as possible.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
You bring up a good point here. Thousands upon thousands of research trials have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that placebos are powerful medicine. But you can't patent a placebo and sell it for $100/pill, so the placebo gets shelved in favor of more profitable treatment options.
:)
While pharmaceuticals have their uses, the primary effect of the overdosing of America is to make the pharmaceutical companies wealthy at the expense of the people's health.
I myself did many, many things that could be qualified as a placebo, but I never got the desired effect. I suppose you'd say that my eyeglass prescription decreasing from -2.75 to -1.25 in the one eye is a placebo artifact too (see the link on vision at the osteopath's website I linked to in the grandparent. The other eye's prescription decreased by -.25 at the first prescription, and has been bumping between -1.75 and -2.00 over the last 9 months). Osteopathic manipulative medicine is an artform based on scientific principles. Just about everyone could benefit from a checkup, but all most doctors know to do is to cover up the symptoms with a drug, and so "scientific consensus" dismisses a powerful treatment modality.
While my treatment program has spanned the course of a year (at the last appointment I was told that the level of "shock" in my body was 10% of when I started), the doctor told me during one visit that some months prior he'd had three or four new patients in a row that only needed a single visit, and *poof*, all better. These were people who'd spent 10 years making the rounds of allopathic "medicine", and were still screwed up. I don't remember specifics, other than a guy who was hunched over & had heart problems, even though all the standard tests said his heart was fine. The Osteopathic doctor released the strain that held the man in a hunched-over position, and his heart immediately started working better.
These doctors (and biodynamic cranio-sacral therapists too) get real results. My experience is that the osteopathic philosophy is useful, and while I know you mean well trying to protect everyone who reads this from "quacks", maybe you should consider the possibility that there's something useful here.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
I do not believe that many physicians would forgoe recomending inexpensive treatment...
:)
That's because the philosophical model they were trained in is inaccurate. M.D.s are trained that a patient needs something done externally to fix the problem - surgery, drugs, etc. Still's philosophy was that 'a body will fix itself if the impediments are removed'.
Anecidotal evidence (such as you presented) means almost nothing to a scientist. Especially if this evidence comes from someone selling something (in this case, your D.O..) "Shock" is something I've never heard of. The word activates my mental "con artist" sensors.
This is just an informal post on Slashdot, which will recede into the dustbins shortly. "Shock" is what the osteopath feels in a body with his hands, but because you've never heard the term before it must be a form of con artistry? Sounds like a logical fallacy to me.
Here's a Bibliography if you're interested in persuing it. But I don't care about research. Research is useful, of course, but all that matters to me is, does it work? I'm satisfied with knowing that there's a solid theoretical basis for the treatment modality.
Eyeglass prescriptions change periodically without treatment.
I first got glasses 15 years ago. My prescription was stable until 7.5 years ago, when it got stronger by 1/4 diopter in each eye after I took a nasty bump to the head (that's how my body incurred a good deal of "trauma" or "shock"). It stayed at -2.25L, -2.75R for the next 7.5 years. I mentioned that I wore contacts to the doctor at the second or third visit, and he said, "oh really? Let's see how they are." He got behind me, put his hands on my temples, "close your eyes. Open your eyes." Instantly, "oh, these are totally wrong for you! We'll have to fix this too..." My prescription has been changing every other month, the right eye steadily racheting downward, the left eye oscillating between -2.00 and -1.75. You can say that's just a "periodic change", but I know better.
When D.O.s first came around, their philosophy was based on pseudo-science and quackery. Look it up.
I've read a few independant histories of Andrew Taylor Still (written by researchers, not Osteopaths), and they all say that he had a remarkable healing presence. Osteopathy is a paradigm shift. Still's philosophy states that the body wants to be healthy, and will fix itself if the impediments to health are removed. This was at a time when most doctors were drugging with mercury and doing primitive surgeries. Still's philosophy was a light in a dark age.
Today, most of them are just as useful as regular physicians.
And a handful are a thousand times more useful than a "regular" physcician. I went to several different M.D.s, and they were all frickin worthless - "you need to exercise more" *3, and one recommended a chiropractor. I did plenty of exercise, and it didn't do anything for me.
You keep using that word, "quackery", yet I don't think you know what it means. It's a concept used to subvert effective healing practices that don't rely on patented pharmaceuticals & expensive tests & procedures. Look it up.
Medicine is an art because no two bodies are the same. Every individual has a unique experience, necessitating different treatments. Identical symptoms in different bodies can be from different causes. Pharmaceutical-based medicine is silly because it treats patients as one-offs from a human assembly line, and also because it treats the symptoms and not the cause.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
There are so many conditions that will preclude one buying cheap personal medical insurance, that I want to minimize errors getting into my "official medical record". Borderline-high blood pressure is common exclusionary consdition. Out company used a self-assesment form that asked employees to answer what the employee may have perceived a certain condition rather than a doctor diagnosis.