June 13, 2014
by Pamela Wible
Johnny’s disabled. He can’t get to my office anymore. So I drive 100 miles up the Oregon coast to check in on him. I get lost, but finally discover his little white house on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Dr. Wible’s a huge inspiration for us in Wichita.
Please, take a moment to experience her day at the “office”, or in this case, a man’s house in Oregon adjacent to a 100-foot cliff.
June 4, 2014
Our nation loves prescriptions.
According to researchers at the Mayo Clinic and Olmsted Medical Center, “Nearly 70% of Americans take one prescription drug and more than half take two.”
It gets better. Approximately 20% of Americans use at least five prescription medications. Imagine the cost savings if Direct Care doctors directly prescribed a majority of these at wholesale prices.
Prescription drug use has been increasing steadily in the U.S. for the last ten years.
So what drugs are being prescribed, and why?
May 9, 2014
The federal government may believe that the future of healthcare is the Affordable Care Act.
However, a New Jersey entrepreneur has a different vision — one where patients pay out of pocket for just about everything. And they pay a group of doctors and medical practices that are so fed up with the insurance-based system that they are opting to go it alone.
April 4, 2014
MARCH 26, 2014 – Growing up, Erin Havel’s family saw one family physician. That doctor gave her mom medical care when she was pregnant, delivered her when she was born, gave school shots, wrote prescriptions for any virus that came up, and helped her grandparents with geriatric care. This was well-rounded family care at its a finest.
However, things changed when her doctor retired. Patients were transferred to a new doctor, with his eyes on the dollar sign.
March 14, 2014
We all know insurance companies like to insert themselves into just about every aspect of health care. Many insurance plans make you go to an approved doctor at an approved hospital for approved procedures and take approved drugs. Fee-for-service docs don’t have much say here. They’ve handed all this control to insurance companies and the insurance companies use it, they say, to control their own costs. But is that all they use it for?
October 1, 2013
MIT Technology Review published an exciting article. Jeff Hammerbacher, a 30-year-old reputed as Facebook’s first data scientist, is working with The Mount Sinai Medical Center. He once said, “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.” But those days are over. He wants to engineer data to help doctors better predict the likelihood of illness and complications.
Hammerbacher will apply his insight acquired while working to target online advertisements. These data-crunching techniques will be used to help doctors and researchers suck in medical information and spit out predictions. The hospital believes this data, if analyzed properly, could cut the cost of health care.
Will Big Data Promote Results-Driven Medicine?
Read more
July 31, 2013
We found the “Angry Therapist” while reading The Atlantic. Los Angeles therapist John Kim took an untraditional approach to building his practice. He acquired patients through a popular Tumblr blog. Writer Amanda Pelleschi says, “The site effectively harnesses the zeitgeist of internet culture – using memes and hashtags – and pairs it with a variety of classic psychological approaches (cognitive behavior therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, psychodynamic, etc), to bring psychotherapy to the millennial masses.” If you’re intrigued what this “zeitgeist” looks like, check out Kim’s website theangrytherapist.tumblr.com.
July 11, 2013
Forbes contributor Dave Chase claims he powers/covers disruptive innovators reinventing healthcare. A disruptive innovator Dave’s been covering lately is direct primary care (DPC). In his recent article he claims that despite being included in Obamacare, DPC is surprisingly unknown by many health insurance executives. He refers to it as Concierge Medicine for the Masses, which is pretty spot on, comparing the $50-$80 average monthly cost to a gym membership, something Dr. Josh said recently.
Dave’s job is to explain things like DPC to insurance executives and has found it to be like a Rorschach test “reflecting whether that executive’s organization is playing to win or is back on their heels regarding the wrenching changes that are reshaping healthcare from the DIY Health Reform movement as well as the effects of Obamacare.”