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About Lisa Suennen
Yes, it’s me
Most Popular Posts
- Government as an Engine for Innovation
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- Where The Boys Are…And Not The Girls: Tales from the 2012 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference
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Recent Posts
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- A Woman’s Work
- Friday Medical Comedy Relief: Crystal Clear
- Driving My Life Away, Looking for a Better Way…to Engage Consumers
- Choosing Elephantoplasty Wisely
- Give ‘Em That Old Razzle Dazzle
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Monthly Archives: October 2011
At Least I’ll Die On a Mattress
Ugh. I am recovering from my fourth ear infection/cold/flu thing of 2011, which completely sucks. Nothing worse than a healthcare person interacting with the medical system. We know too much.
I went to my doctor yesterday, finally, after realizing that neither pretending I wasn’t sick, nor begging the gods to make it stop, nor the power of positive thinking was going to ameliorate the feeling of having a railroad spike drilled into my right ear. As I sat there at my physician’s office, I whined, “I can’t believe I have been here so many times this year,” and she said, “Well, thank goodness because it’s how I make money.”
I have to say that if my head didn’t already feel like it was going to explode, it would have after hearing that. She captured, in a nutshell, all that is wrong with the incentives in our medical system. My doctor, a lovely person, should make more money for keeping me healthy, not for setting a record for prescription-writing. I’d certainly pay more for that.
As I paid my bill and checked out of the office armed with my prescription, a … (read the rest)
Posted in Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Uncategorized
Tagged health insurance, healthcare reform, psilos
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Eye on the Prize
There has been a lot of talk in healthcare circles about the concept of “gamification,” a super-annoying made-up word that means turning health tasks into games so they are more engaging and people are more willing to do them. People and companies are coming up with all sorts of games for kids with asthma and diabetes to learn good medical compliance and for adults who need the extra incentive to do their exercise and comply with their chronic care regimens, among others. Michelle Obama even sponsored a big contest to foster the creation of games to sponsor healthy eating and virtually every large health insurance company is now offering various forms of incentive game and points programs for taking better care of oneself. You can get frequent flyer points for taking United Airlines and “personal rewards” points, that you can turn into cash, for being insured by United Healthcare.
We Americans just love our games and nothing sells like a healthy competition. Just witness the insanity of prime time television and you will see people attempting feats that they never would have done (losing hundreds of pounds, surviving extreme … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Innovation, Random Thoughts of the Day, Uncategorized
Tagged CIMIT Prize, gamification, healthcare innovation, healthcare IT, healthcare reform, Heritage provider network prize, i2, Investing in Innovation program, Office of the National Coordinator, psilos, san diego venture group, Sekou Andrews and Steven Connell, wendy schmidt oil cleanup x challenge, X Prize
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Doing the Right Thing: Priceless
I saw an article when I woke up today and it compelled me to dash off this quick post. Entitled “Wal-Mart Cuts Some Health Care Benefits,” the article details Wal-Mart’s decision to eliminate coverage for new part-time workers who work less than 24 hours/week and to increase costs, including deductibles and premiums, for virtually all other workers. This is a pretty common story right now—you can read it any day of the week in any local paper where large and small business are the primary advertisers in that publication as the economy is driving employers to the brink. With unemployment at a record high and consumer spending driving downward, employers don’t need to offer high benefits to attract workers and can’t afford to spend such a large proportion of their income on them anyway. Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it all before. Cue violins and angry union workers. People spend their time blaming the PPACA health reform law for wrecking the healthcare benefit system but that ire is misdirected: it’s the economy, stupid, as they say in politics.
Anyway, it wasn’t the overall punch line of the story that … (read the rest)
Saving the World One Chocolate Covered Strawberry at a Time
October 28th marks the holiest day of the year for women. It is a day where, regardless of any other religious faith we may have, we can focus our energies on the one true God: chocolate. You see, according to those who decide these things, October 28th is National Chocolate Day.
Getting ready for National Chocolate Day requires much preparation, as you can imagine. As such, I’m getting this post out a week ahead of time so I can concentrate my efforts on preparing for the big day. In fact, this is a rallying cry to women everywhere to start filling their bathtubs with M&Ms now. That way, when October 28th rolls around, you will be prepared to get in and revel.
As chocolate disciples, we have good reason to rejoice this year. While there have been a few scientific studies over the years suggesting that chocolate has health benefits (we all know intrinsically that it has mental health benefits at a minimum, right?), a recent study published in the British Medical Journal documents the medical field’s most comprehensive review and meta-analysis ever of the long-term effects of … (read the rest)
It’s Official, Hell Has Frozen Over
Are you feeling a little chilly right now? Look around–do you see icebergs? Are baby harp seals collecting around your feet? If not, they should be, because Hell has clearly frozen over: a major U.S. health insurer has decided to give a bunch of money back to its beneficiaries as a result of “excess profits.”
No seriously, I swear it’s true. Blue Shield of California, one of my State’s largest health insurers covering over 3 million people, has just announced that it will return $295 million in “excess profits” to its policy holders, resulting in a more than 50% credit on the December 2011 health premium bill for all insured policy holders and about 18% for others. This is, by the way, in addition to a $180 million dollar rebate Blue Shield of CA gave to their policyholders last month to make up for “excess profits” in 2010. See an article about this HERE.
This is a pretty stunning development, as people generally think that health insurance companies would refund profits only immediately after the Simpson’s Montgomery Burns gives Homer a juicy raise. In other words, not gonna happen. … (read the rest)
The Secret to Lower Healthcare Costs: Dying Faster
As a lover of comedy and satire, I occasionally come across things that would be hilariously funny if they weren’t so damn close to true. In a world where healthcare costs are becoming our nation’s largest economic crisis (enabling Goldman Sachs executives to breathe easy for a moment), the Baby Boomers, who are aging into Social Security and Medicare at a rate of nearly 10,000 people a day right now, have become a rich target for comedians.
A few years back I read a hysterical (and frighteningly realistic) book called Boomsday, by Christopher Buckley (same guy who wrote Thank You for Smoking). In the book, a young female blogger suggests that Baby Boomers be given government incentives to kill themselves by age 75 for the good of the economy and the younger generation. Of course, her proposal is adopted as a leading policy platform by a Senator and would-be Presidential candidate, who jumps on this message of “transitioning” to seek his place in the White House. It is an absolutely hilarious book and includes such discussions as how many narcissistic Baby Boomers would have to adopt the “transitioning” benefit (aka, … (read the rest)
Gravity is a Bitch
Hi everyone. A few weeks ago I had the honor of receiving a very prestigious Corporate Director’s Forum award for Board Director of the Year. The award is given each year to Board Directors who are nominated in 6 categories (corporate governance, enhancement of economic value, companies in transition, corporate citizenship, not for profit governance and lifetime achievement). The awards are presented at a gala dinner; I received my award at a lovely event in San Diego on September 14th attended by more than 500 people. I have been asked by multiple people to send them a copy of my speech as it seemed to be pretty popular. Thus, I decided to publish it below.
The Corporate Directors Forum event is quite a big production and it has a theme every year. This year’s theme was The Right Stuff, the 1983 movie about the original US Mercury 7 astronauts. It’s a great movie that covers the history of the U.S. Space program and the wild and crazy pilots that became the first astronauts. The event had all sorts of movie and NASA footage and cool space gear in … (read the rest)
Smoke on the Water: Fireworks in Cleveland
I spent the early part of this week attending the Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit and, despite the fact that the Cleveland Clinic stubbornly insists on holding it’s conference in Cleveland (aka The Mistake on the Lake), it was well worth attending.
Cleveland is an interesting town. Once upon a time, when old white men roamed the earth in cars driven by chauffeurs, Cleveland was the nation’s fifth largest city and had the highest number of Fortune 500 headquarters of any US city. Today, the Cleveland Clinic is the largest employer in the city, which is known also for a river that used to spontaneously combust and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (the perfect song for this occasion is clearly Smoke on the Water). In a way Cleveland is the perfect place to honor aging rock stars, as they can pick up a statuette and an angioplasty on the same trip. By the way, the river doesn’t catch fire anymore I’m told. I was worried because the Clinic hosted a pretty impressive fireworks display over Lake Erie for their 1500 guests and no doubt most of us expected … (read the rest)
Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Policy, Medical Devices, Uncategorized
Tagged Catheter-Based Renal Denervation, cleveland clinic, cleveland healthcare, consumer engagement, GE Healthcare, health insurance, healthcare IT, healthcare policy, healthcare private equity, healthcare reform, healthcare venture capital, medical innovation summit, medical technology, psilos, top 10 medical innovations
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Great Leadership and the Business of Baseball
Well, the season is over for my beleaguered SF Giants, but I just got back from seeing the movie Moneyball and it was a worthy substitute for a day at the ballpark. I loved this Michael Lewis book when it came out and remember it as my all time favorite book about business. I know millions have written about Moneyball, but the movie made a big impression and reminded me why I loved the book so much so I thought I’d make a note here.
Moneyball is ostensibly about how the Oakland A’s of the early 2000′s blew up conventional baseball by adopting Sabermetrics: the art of selecting players based on statistical models instead of old-school scouting. Sabermetrics was “invented” by a guy named Bill James, who was a baseball fanatic and a security guard at a pork and beans factory. It was popularized by A’s General Manager Billy Beane, a former baseball player who failed after being hailed as a golden boy prospect on the field. As the story unfolds, it appears Beane has virtually lost his mind after losing in the play-offs and sets to work building … (read the rest)