Neupert On Health : PHR

Another milestone on the journey forward…

pnblog — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:43:00 GMT

Over three years ago, we started on a journey -- to empower consumers with tools to help make better health decisions and drive better health outcomes. We believed that the simplest, easiest way to start was to give consumers their data in a secure and private way, and allow them to share it from provider to provider, keep it in one place over time, and learn about it in order to make better daily health decisions. That simple idea was the beginning of HealthVault.

Back then, there were a lot of objections. Consumers don’t want their data. Consumers can’t understand their data. Their data might actually do them harm…blah…blah…blah…

But fortunately, things have shifted. Consumers have made it pretty clear that they want to be involved in their health – as evidenced by looking at social networking sites like PatientsLikeMe, the raw numbers of health Internet Searches, or research reports like The American Public on Health Care: The Missing Perspective, released by the CEG, Accenture and IOM:

· 78% of American favor giving doctors the ability to share access to their medical records if done with their permission.

· 66% said that they see the value in including their own information anonymously in a large database to help researchers.

And I’m happy to say for a number of reasons that consumer products like HealthVault and GoogleHealth continue to gain market traction.

Today marks another milestone – the first Industry-wide initiative to establish a “Declaration of Health Data rights” to support patients’ rights to access and share their own health information – https://healthdatarights.org will go live tonight, along with blog posts and endorsements from thought leaders and organizations across the country.

While we’re making change, and it's great to see so many organizations and thought leaders coming together, it’s important that we not stop here…that we continue to move forward—specifically by ensuring that consumer access to their data is included in the definition of “meaningful use.” While I’m optimistic about what I see -- what’s been laid out seems to focus on driving real outcomes improvement in the health care system -- we will not be successful without further refinements. Consumers cannot just be given access to data in static form, but must be provided with an electronic copy of their data so they can easily share it, use it, add to it -- creating a lifelong health data asset. In the end, consumers are the ones accountable for their own health.

Health Affairs event and special issue on Health IT

pnblog — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:20:00 GMT

Today I spoke at a very well attended Health Affairs event in Washington DC -- originally designed (months ago in a different time warp in HIT light years) to discuss lessons learned by folks leveraging HIT in effective ways, along with the usual challenges, issues and opportunities. Naturally the discussion was hijacked by the implications, potential consequences and opportunities raised by the ARRA stimulus act and the HITech portion of it in particular.

There is much to report from the event -- because there were a lot of smart and thoughtful panelists -- and because the issues are at the same time complicated, familiar and not super well understood. I don't have time to cover them all in this post.

There is a strong consensus (it showed up in comments from many panelists) around the theme I care most about -- which is we must focus on the outcomes one wants to achieve (better health outcomes at the same or lower cost) and then encourage innovation between providers and technology suppliers to deliver those outcomes. Said another way -- technology is a tool (a means) and not an end in itself. This is why health reform and the health stimulus have to be intertwined and self-reinforcing. Just spending money on HIT is not going to lead to the 'down payment' (i.e. future savings) that Obama believes it is.

Mark Smith brought this to life most effectively in his remarks -- that by adding a computer to Kramer's bookstore you don't end up turning it into Amazon.com. Kaiser reported in the article summarizing the experience in Hawaii with KP Healthconnect (EMR) -- that family practice office visits went down by 25+%. For Kaiser, an integrated delivery network and health plan -- that is a benefit to their bottom line. (I should note patient satisfaction went up in this period because needs were met by phone/email -- a totally win/win situation for Kaiser and consumer alike). For a more typical, small office family physician -- that is a disaster...because revenues are tied to visits. To succeed, we have to change the paradigm of healthcare away from the tyranny of the visit based payment system (Kramer's bookstore) and reward longitudinal care systems (future amazon.com). If we spend a bunch of money automating existing systems of care -- and not enabling new platforms -- we have missed the huge opportunity to make a difference.

Carol Diamond made the subtle, but I think hugely important point that has not fully sunk in to the folks waiting at the starting line of the HIT land rush -- that the public is going to expect accountability for improved outcomes with the stimulus spend. Health touches everyone -- and if the country spends $30+Billion dollars on 'investment' and the average citizen experience with the health delivery network is no different and costs continue to rise -- there is going to be accountability for where did the money go. She is rightly trying to focus the minds of the folks with the wagons -- better pick your spots wisely -- just getting a homestead isn't good enough -- it had better be productive land.

My biggest ah-ha moment came a few hours after the event in a conversation with the CEO of a large player in the healthcare supply chain. I realized that a significant portion of the Health Affairs event, the broader conversation about overall HIT investments and the specific conversation I was having ALL ACKNOWLEDGED and CONCLUDED that individuals (people, patients, consumers, whatever label we want to use) have a right to a personally controlled health record and that the personally controlled health data management platform is a critical component (perhaps a necessary component) of ANY FUTURE HEALTH IT SYSTEM and probably any payment reform system.

The ah-ha point is -- Microsoft has made a difference -- a huge difference -- by taking the leadership role it did 3 years ago by investing in building, defining, evangelizing, shipping and refining a personally controlled health data management system, HealthVault. We have a long way to go to make it easy, ubiquitous and fully connected -- and to deliver the value I know it will to consumers/patients in their everyday health lives. But I know it is a good and innovative idea and one that has changed and framed the debate in a positive way. While I have always believed that -- to see the effect and reality of the impact -- made my day.

Message to Washington -- It's all about Outcomes

pnblog — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:35:00 GMT

Yesterday, I testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, otherwise known as HELP. You can see a video of my testimony here. Before getting to the substance, I need to highlight how I continue to be awe-inspired about how our government works -- in a positive way. Any body can walk into the halls of Congress and sit in and listen to a hearing. Folks from all walks of life have input via a variety of means -- and while I get it's not perfect and can be better -- I remain proud of our democratic system and feel honored to be able to contribute/participate in it.

My main message to the Senate was: We should really focus on the health outcomes we want to achieve, not just on the technology itself. What the health system needs is to adopt technology in ways to deliver better outcomes, better chronic care management, better hospital effectiveness. We really want to make sure that we have the leadership focused on encouraging the usage of technology to achieve certain goals, like better chronic care management.

We were the only technology company testifying, and I think people were surprised to hear us saying that technology isn’t the silver bullet. It's not that Microsoft doesn't want to see spending on health care technology. Far from it. We just want to see smart spending, on technology that will really have impact. When we decided to go to the moon, we didn't say let's build a great rocket...we said let's go to the moon...I feel a little bit of the conversation has been about let’s build a great rocket and hope we get to the moon.

The other witnesses included Health Leadership Council President Mary Grealy, National Quality Forum President Janet Corrigan, Permanente Federation Executive Director Jack Cochran and Valerie Melvin, Director of information technology for the Government Accounting Office. Their comments were unexpectedly aligned with mine -- namely take a holistic view; incenting the adoption of technology is not a silver bullet; and, we must have reform of the payment system too. So at a high level -- folks understand the challenges of creating the right kind of change in the complex health ecosystem. Where the differences lie -- is how to get started. Unfortunately as is often the case -- the stimulus bill (big incremental spend investing in health IT) is separate from the activities around health reform. Getting the spend without the right payment system reform -- could lead to the unintended consequences the panel was cautioning against.

The legislation is being drafted now -- that is why the hearing was held on a day when there was a lot of other activity going on in the Senate. There is a clear sense that something big will pass in 2-3 weeks - which is like moving at the speed of light. I am sympathetic to the challenges of the staffers trying to find the right language -- it is not easy to figure out how to guide the spend of $20billion over two years! The scale of spend is still hard to put into perspective for me -- in my last post I tried a per physician number, so this time let's try per day -- it is $27M/day! I am very confident there is lots of low hanging fruit to generate a return on investment in the health system (waste, overuse, misuse, error reduction) that technology can enable -- but still $27M/day!

Since I spend the bulk of my time building software -- decisions about features, hiring great people, how and where to sell -- the hardest question from the staffers to answer is - how do you recommend we spend the money?

My answer is in my closing remarks with the five key things that I think the government needs to focus on:

1. Encourage innovation in health IT by setting out objective goals and criteria, not by mandating specific technologies or development models.

2. Reward innovative doctors who make the Internet the foundation of the patient-physician connection.

3. Provide incentives for sharing data.

4. Focus on making data interoperable today, not waiting for standards tomorrow, and insist that vendors separate data from applications.

5. Enable the private sector to develop an information infrastructure that connects data, systems, and people.

These are really critical, so we don’t end up in the wrong place. They’re based on our learnings as we’ve delved into this complex world of health.

One final thought -- surely it is an exciting time to be in the health information technology business! I personally got passionate about trying to really contribute and make a difference in HIT from my time on the President's Information Technology Advisory Council (PITAC) in 2003-2005. As co-chair of the Health Subcommittee -- we published a report titled Revolutionizing Health Care Through Information Technology with key recommendations for the government to consider. While my depth of understanding has gone up dramatically, what I find is both fascinating and perhaps cautionary -- is the discussion is largely on the same key issues/recommendations. This time there is a lot of money at stake -- but it goes to show that change is hard and probably slow.

I had a great exchange with Fox News --- video embedded below.

You can also read more about Microsoft's general views on a number of topics here.