Was listening to a podcast with Robert Nesse, CEO of Franciscan Skemp Healthcare, which is part of the Mayo system.
In talking about High Value Health care, he put forth an interesting equation I hadn’t heard to date.
His take on the Value Equation for health was that is was:
Value = (Outcomes + Safety + Service)/(Cost + Time)
This is interesting to me as it is a mechanistic equation that seems to be based in a belief that there is some optimal value we can all agree on. One would imagine that would allow society to set some absolute value on each service, which fits in the overall approach taken by Medicare, Medicaid, health insurance, etc.
If we believe in a retail marketplace, value suddenly looks very different than the equation mentioned above. Per Karl Menger, in his Principles of Economics in 1873:
continue reading »
In an interesting twist on how to get young people involved in healthcare, a nonprofit group called “Takes all Types” has released an app on Facebook, per TechCrunch.
When a patient is in need of blood that isn’t available, it becomes a life and death situation. Historically the Red Cross will make efforts to alert the public during a shortage. But there may be a better way – leverage the social networks to get the word out. If shortages of a certain type of blood occur in a certain zip code, having a database of willing donors in that zip code to contact may be the most efficient way to solve the problem quickly.
That’s where Takes All Types (TAT), a non-profit organization, comes in. Users install their just-released Facebook application, tell it their location and blood type, and say how often they are willing to be contacted to donate blood (maximum is every 57 days). If a shortage occurs, they’ll contact you via the methods that you authorize (Facebook, email, text message, etc.)
continue reading »
I’m pleased to announce that we’ve recently confirmed that Consumer-focused Healthcare will be blogging at the World Health Care Congress April 21-23 in Washington DC.
I’m personally excited to meet a number of the luminaries and hope to set up some podcasts during the event.
Please let me know if any of you will be in attendence– I’d love to catch up.
Anyone else going to be there? Looking to meet all the other folks interested in health reform over the next few days. Please say hi if you see me.
