Monthly Archives: July 2012

Who Wants to Live Forever?

Posted on July 29, 2012 by
Education-Cuts-Never-Heal

A little while back I saw a report entitled “Retirement and Health,” which was published by the Harvard School of Public Health, National Public Radio and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  Among the statistics in the report was this one:  32% of people above retirement age and 29% of people below retirement age (under age 65 for this purpose) expect to live into their 90′s or 100′s.  In other words, nearly 1/3 of all Americans expect to live well beyond what is currently the national average lifespan. That is a lot of glass-half-full thinking–you go people!

Right now the average U.S. life expectancy is 76 years for men (up from 70 in 1980) and 81 years for women (up from 77 in 1980).   We have made progress, but that is still a long way from living to 100.  In fact, current life expectancy for those at age 65 now is 17.6 years for men and 20.3 years for women (contrary to popular belief, women do not live longer than men because they murder the men they live with, but because they have fewer health risk factors).

But here’s … (read the rest)

Posted in Consumer Engagement, Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthcare Policy, Preventive Health, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Your CEO May Be A Man, But Your Healthcare Customer is a Woman

Posted on July 22, 2012 by
80% of healthcare purchases are made by women

Women don’t want to hear what you think.
Women want to hear what they think – in a deeper voice.   – Bill Cosby

 

I recently saw a statistic from my friends at Rock Health that said that women comprise only 4% of healthcare industry CEOs.  For those of you who are slow at math, this means that 96% of the people running pharmaceutical, medical device, healthcare IT, healthcare service, provider system, health insurance and all of the other healthcare enterprises out there are men.  Despite 51% of the American population being female, this has been a persistent fact since anyone bothered checking.  In fact, I bet the number of women CEOs in healthcare has more than doubled—to 4%–in the last 10 or 20 years.  I don’t have a citation on that, but I bet I’m not far off.

Since it has been lamented and documented to death, I don’t want to talk here about how the above-stated statistic is either pathetic (which it is) or ill-advised for maximizing financial value (which it also is).  Rather, I would like to direct you to pay rapt attention to Women in Healthcare … (read the rest)

Posted in Consumer Engagement, General Business Issues, Girls Rule!, Healthcare, Medical Marketing and MediA, Uncategorized, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 22 Comments

Suicide Squeeze or Sudden Death? A Day at the Ballpark

Posted on July 16, 2012 by
The Killer Kielbasa
http://vimeo.com/28176150

“When we lose I eat.  When we win I eat.  I also eat when we’re rained out.”
–Tommy LaSorda, former Los Angeles Dodgers Manager
 

As a rabid baseball fan I get to the ballpark as often as possible.  I love the pace and intricacies of the game, the sports history associated with it, my team (Go Giants!), the ballpark (can’t beat the bay view at AT&T Park), and all of the rituals of the sport.  Everyone knows that one of those rituals is the ceremonial eating of  junk food and drinking of beer.  Seriously, what would a day at the ballpark be without mustard on your jersey?

The game itself is an interesting exercise in contradiction when it comes to good health. In that my Giants play in San Francisco, home of the sprout-eaters and tree-huggers, you can get your wellness on by eating sushi and farmers market salad at the ballpark;  alternatively you can mainline churros and garlic fries as if you were in the real world.    Interestingly the primary sponsors advertising at the ballpark represent both ends of the healthcare spectrum.  Blue Shield and hospital system … (read the rest)
Posted in Consumer Engagement, Health and Wellness, Healthy Eating, Medical Marketing and MediA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Friday Medical Comedy Relief: Brief Therapy

Posted on July 12, 2012 by

I spent 9 years prior to Psilos on the leadership team of a managed healthcare company which provided mental health and substance abuse coverage and treatment to tens of millions of people.  The focus of our commercial practice, at least in the early days, was to connect people with highly effective but lower cost forms of interventions, with an emphasis on brief therapy.  At the time, brief therapy, an approach to one-on-one counseling where you focus on the immediate problems at hand and not on the long-term rooted causes (like how your parents didn’t love you enough), was a very new approach and was the subject of some controversy who weren’t familiar with that method of practice.

While no one at the firm thought it was funny in any way that people had stress-related or other psychological problems, we did used to joke about how fast we could get brief therapy to work.  If you really want to save money in a perfect world, you would figure out how to get people in and out in one session. Anyway, I came across this Bob Newhart clip about psychotherapy that reminded … (read the rest)

Posted in Medical Comedy Relief, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

What do Richard Gere, Pop Rocks and the PPACA Have in Common? Urban Legends

Posted on July 8, 2012 by
poprocks

While I was time-wasting on Facebook or Twitter or whatever it was the other day, I came across a Kaiser Family Foundation quiz about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, now commonly known as the ACA.  Since I spend at least 94.7% of my time dealing with issues related to the ACA, I figured I’d take the 10-question quiz and see how I’d do.  Thankfully I got them all right, which was an extreme relief to me since I am asked to talk about it frequently and I don’t want anyone to mistake me for a FOX news commentator.  You can take the quiz yourself by clicking HERE.

I sent the quiz around to a bunch of my healthcare-focused friends too. I got lots of emails from friends who them got 9 or 10 out of 10 right; of course, I didn’t get any emails from healthcare pals who did worse, probably because they are still re-reading the law to brush up.

What was particularly interesting to me about the quiz is that it touches on 10 areas of the law about which there has been much hype, … (read the rest)

Posted in Consumer Engagement, Healthcare, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare Reform, Medical Marketing and MediA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

I’m Not a Doctor But I Play One on TV

Posted on July 2, 2012 by
Slide1

“I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV”–Peter Bergman playing Dr. Cliff Warner of All My Children

The trials and tribulations of doctors have long been a television staple.  While plentiful, the shows were typically limited to comedy/dramas about doctors and hospitals where the medical scene was more of a backdrop to the doctors’ personal lives than an effort to educate the masses about true medicine (Dr. Kildare, Marcus Welby, General Hospital, Doogie Howser, MASH, St. Elsewhere, Cosby Show, ER, Grey’s Anatomy. Scrubs, House–the list goes on and on–who knew doctors were so damn interesting?).

This diversified slightly over the years with the advent of “realish” doctor advice shows, such as Dr. Ruth, Dr. Drew, Dr. Phil, and Dr. Oz, among others. The gist of these doctor advice shows was and is eternally the same: one or two very hand-selected patients getting “real world advice” from a doctor with all the answers. While the patients certainly volunteer for this publicity, proving my own personal assertion that people value fame and self-affirmation over medical privacy, those shows’ focus has typically remained squarely on the doctor as celebrity/expert.  In … (read the rest)

Posted in Consumer Engagement, Diagnostics and Screening, Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Medical Marketing and MediA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment