Every week, MedCity News highlights the best of its MedCitizens: syndication partners and MedCity News readers who discuss life science current events on MedCityNews.com.
Now here’s the best of what YOU had to say:
Pay for performance has no place in healthcare. “When an irritating high school student raises his hand and annoys the teacher with the inquiry, ‘Is this gonna be on the test?,’ it is a forerunner of the concept of pay for performance. The Ivy League seeking student won’t study material that he knows won’t appear on the exam. Similarly, physicians and medical institutions will focus their attentions on achieving those outcomes that will be measured and graded, which might be at the expense of patients who ‘are not on the exam.’ For example, if irritable bowel syndrome isn’t being measured, but GERD is, then will these patients be treated the same?”
Getting investors to say yes: 6 elements of a persuasive pitch. “Investors want to know that you and your management team have the experience and skills to make this concept succeed. If you are lacking certain key team members, make sure that the investors are aware of this, as they may be able to recommend appropriate additions to your team.”
The Affordable Care Act: Implications for emerging medtech companies. “It is nearly possible to establish the kind of evidence to support clinical effectiveness in the size of studies normally conducted under an IDE before a product is commercial. Comparative effectiveness research on an existing market competitor could create an opportunity for an emerging company, for example if the company can demonstrate reduced costs (e.g. fewer complications) or improved outcomes with their device compared to the one just trashed by PCORI.”
Will cost-sharing be enough to create more smart healthcare consumers? “The first iteration of consumer-driven health care hasn’t yielded a health citizenry of savvy shoppers. Instead, too many consumers delay necessary health care, split prescribed pills, and forgo recommended clinical tests to save ’their’ money. With high-deductible health plans reaching $2,000 in 2012, consumers lack health plan literacy: the toolkit of just how to smartly use their new health plan design.”
Proposed Obamacare regulation could limit approved drugs to one per class. “A draft regulation proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services would require insurers participating in the law’s new exchanges to cover only a single drug in each class of pharmaceuticals. That could be a disaster for both patients and doctors.”
[Photo from flickr user UC Davis College of Engineering]
Reserve your seat now for MedCity CONVERGE, to be held July 9-10 in Philadelphia. Discover strategies, solutions and startups in healthcare innovation. Be a part of this gathering where the entire healthcare ecosystem converges.
By Deanna Pogorelc MedCity News
Deanna Pogorelc is a Cleveland-based reporter who writes obsessively about life science startups across the country, looking to technology transfer offices, startup incubators and investment funds to see what’s next in healthcare. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ball State University and previously covered business and education for a northeast Indiana newspaper.More posts by Author
The term "consumer-driven" is a marketing misnomer for high-deductible health insurance. It should be called what it's proponents advocate as the solution to our medical over-spending in America - "More skin in the game" health insurance. It wasn't consumer-driven in its origins and it's not really consumer-driven in its execution. And that's because it's missing the crucial ingredient of consumer education - not just about health plan "design", as suggested here, but in smarter use of the health care system itself.
As a result, we find consumers deferring needed tests and procedures like colonoscopies because they can't afford their out-of-pocket costs for it (it IS "their" money, by the way, so not sure what the parenthesis around "their" is all about). An unintended consequence of high-deductible health insurance is that health care choices will become like food choices. People know fast food isn't their healthiest option, but are forced to choose it anyway becasue it's all they can afford.
The average American's income DECLINED by 7% over the past decade - an ominous trend - so the likelihood is that this phenomenon will exacerbate consumers' sacrifice of their longer-term health for the immediate cost-savings of deferring needed care. Those who actually develop disease detected at a later stage will, of course, cost more to treat with advanced disease. So these cost-savings will prove only temporary, like HMO savings in the 1990s, and we'll be back where we started, only with higher rates of advanced, and costlier, disease to treat.
As usual, the best answers lie with education so consumers are better equipped to balance their short-and-long-term health care needs AND their cost consequences.