Enabling Healthy Decisions | Category Archive

Using Twitter For Health Care

March 16, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 1 Comment

Last week, I talked with a reporter about using Twitter for health care. It can add a new dimension to communications, but I am not sold on it replacing current communications.

Some of my jumbled thoughts on this:

I like the one to many concept of Twitter with the opt-in concept (preference-based marketing), but it doesn’t personalize to the individual the way the information is delivered.
It definitely provides a stream of consciousness which is interesting. I see a lot of application for a reality show type of health tools…like Biggest Loser via Twitter.
I like the idea of posting a question to a broad audience for quick response – Does anyone have research showing the impact of statins on asthma patients?
I don’t see this helping with patient to provider communications. Do I really want my blood sugar posted to Twitter and sent to my physician from my smart device? Do I (the physician) really want to see all that real-time data? No. What about HIPAA…from what I know Twitter is not meant to contain confidential information. There are plenty of rules engines which can be used to capture data; look for things outside the norm; and then send an alert.
A lot of healthcare information has caveats and requires more than 140 characters to get across the message. Most clinical things couldn’t be send this way.
As with most inbound things (i.e., I have to register or search it out), Twitter feeds get those that know what they are interested in and are active in their health management. It still doesn’t help to drive action from those that aren’t engaged in their healthcare.
I can certainly see it as an alert to information, but since one tip to productivity is to batch things, do I really want them broken out during the day in a bunch of Twitter feeds. I would rather get a daily synopsis from a website (which might be created by Twitter feeds).

Some things I found when looking on the web about this topic:

A long list of healthcare people using Twitter.
A list of thoughts around the value of Twitter and ways to use it in health care.
Another post about how hospitals can use Twitter.
eHealth blog on Twitter in Healthcare.

Here is a presentation on Twitter (they even have one of my old posts in there…which was a pleasant surprise to me) around healthcare.

So, my general perspective is that there is some value in pushing basic information out, reality show type of healthcare (Twitter surgery), capturing feedback, and developing community, but it’s not a tool for the corporate to individual communications that I typically deal with.

Consumerism, General Thoughts, Healthcare, Marketing / Communications, Social Media, Technology, Value Propositions, Weblogs

BioGenerics, Text Analysis, and Transparency

March 16, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

Here are a couple of blog posts from other blogs worth reading:

David Williams on the “Folly of BioGenerics” which talks about why they won’t be just like generic drugs.
James Taylor on Text Analysis which if ever figured out would be very helpful in taking inbound e-mails, letters, and call center notes and using them for customer relationship management.
Gilles Frydman on “Opaque Inc.” and how difficult it is to understand the US healthcare system.

Healthcare, Managed Care, Marketing / Communications, PBM / Pharmacy, Politics, Research, Value Propositions, Weblogs

Walgreen’s vs. CVS PBM Ownership

March 13, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

Another question I got yesterday was on retailers (specifically Walgreen’s versus CVS) owning PBMs. The question was since they make so much money on foot traffic and selling non-pharmacy items why would they want to be in the PBM business. DATA!

They both have similar fundamental concepts which are aggregating patient touchpoints – PBM, Clinic, Retail, Specialty. If they can figure out how to aggregate and mine the data to better serve the patients and the plan sponsors, they can be a key influencer in driving health outcomes.

The follow on question was what’s different. Without getting into behind the scenes, the one thing that I think is publicly different is the CVS ExtraCare program. They have a loyalty program that gives them visibility into the non-medical behavior of members. Why is that important? From a PBM perspective, it’s important because they can make sure to focus on channel optimization. By that I mean that people that go to the pharmacy and shop at a CVS are people they want to keep in the stores. But, patients that simply pick up prescriptions are probably people they want to move to mail. Mail order is a lower cost fulfillment option for them and if those consumers aren’t buying other stuff, then they should look to convert them to mail.

Consumerism, Healthcare, Marketing / Communications, PBM / Pharmacy, Value Propositions

Books / Articles, General Thoughts, Marketing / Communications, Social Media, Technology

How The Recession Could Impact Communications Forever

March 11, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

This recession (or depression) has the potential to systemically impact how people communicate. Some potential impacts:

Death of newspapers (discussed last week)
Death of the land line (everyone has a mobile phone)
Death of magazines (similar to the newspaper issue – drop in advertisements)
Reduction in mail (as costs go up and if service were dropped to 5 days a week)
Short-term reduction in use of high speed Internet (save money)
Short-term reduction in use of text messaging (save money)
Less use of cable (being replaced by online TV shows)
Move to digital coupons

I think some of these will also be affected by the green movement where printing massive amounts of paper and sending those to people (who can get the same information online) will become important. [Although this has been talked about for years, costs may finally make it a reality.]

Some other things that could change:

Reduction in the value of co-branding information as the employer relationship becomes less long-term and more fragile [Traditionally, this has been an important strategy in direct mail from health plans and PBMs where using the employer has improved response rates.]
Improvement in use of online tools (Health 2.0) as people move away from print
Increased use of virtual meetings and further loss of face-to-face contact as companies move to virtual offices and cut travel budgets

If you combine cost driven changes with environmental driven changes with likely technology changes, I suspect that the way we communicate and interact with people over the next 10 years will dramatically change. In the short-term, we may even see an increased number of new Luddites (people who shun technology to save money and over frustration with our overall economic situation).

General Thoughts, Marketing / Communications

More Lies In E-mail

March 6, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 1 Comment

A pair of recent studies suggest that e-mail is the most deceptive form of communications in the workplace–even more so than more traditional kinds of written communications, like pen-and-paper.

More surprising is that people actually feel justified when lying using e-mail, the studies show.

“There is a growing concern in the workplace over e-mail communications, and it comes down to trust,” says Liuba Belkin, co-author of the studies and an assistant professor of management at Lehigh University. “You’re not afforded the luxury of seeing non-verbal and behavioral cues over e-mail. And in an organizational context, that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation and, as we saw in our study, intentional deception.”[See article]

This certainly raises a few flags as letters become a “historical tool” for communicating and everything becomes more about technology. This certainly says a lot for virtual teams and remote management. You can’t rely just on e-mail. You need to pick up the phone and talk. You need to visit face-to-face (F2F).

Does this mean that MDs shouldn’t trust e-mails from patients?

Does this mean that deals shouldn’t be negotiated through e-mails?

Books / Articles, Marketing / Communications, Research, Technology

Every 2 Weeks A Language Disappears

March 6, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 2 Comments

According to Ethnologue, there are 6,912 languages in the world. Lots of these are at risk of being lost. It is estimated that one “disappears” every two weeks as the last person who can speak the language dies.

The Living Tongue Institute for Endangered Languages is rapidly trying to capture and document them before they disappear.

Marketing / Communications, Research

What’s In A Voice?

March 3, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

In the most recent copy of AHIP’s Coverage Magazine (JAN+FEB.09), there is a nice feature called “What’s In A Voice?” which talks about Silverlink Communications. You can find the whole article (“Motivating Change“) here, but I pulled out a few quotes:

“When the phone rings, it takes just the right voice to motivate a member to overcome the tendency to put off receiving preventative care.”

“Silverlink calls allow us to communicate with our members in a really personalized way without incurring the costs associated with hiring and training additional customer service representatives.” Linda Lyle, Cariten Healthcare Vice President of Operations

“This mammography campaign contained scripting that allowed the members to respond, [indicating] whether or not they had had a mammogram. We received a large number of ‘yes’ responses that we will pursue for HEDIS improvement, as well as to identify gaps in our data collection. This method of collecting data about our members is unique to telephone outreach. We are anxious to explore our findings.” ” We know how many listened to the message and how many hung up. We know how many people we actually reach.” Michael Bryne, Assistant Director of Quality Management at EmblemHealth.

The article also talks about using non-professional voices such as the Chief Medical Officer or a customer service representative who was really good with members. In one example, Eleanor Sorrentino, the Managing Director of Quality Management at EmblemHealth, talks about getting 50 calls from members thanking her for the automated call which was recorded in her voice.

A few other items talked about include the use of data and reporting which is available real-time to make decisions along with the use of natural sounding voices to drive a conversational experience which leverages internal and professional scripting resources to develop the best content.

Books / Articles, Consumerism, Healthcare, Managed Care, Marketing / Communications, Silverlink, Technology, Value Propositions

Saving Money On Rxs

February 27, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

Are you interested in saving your members money? There are a lot of things you can do. Pill splitting is an easy solution with a quick impact. Using generics and moving to mail order are others. I am going to do a webinar on this in a few weeks. [March 10th and March 12th at 1:00 ET]

Even if you’re not specifically interested, I think you would be fascinated to see how we use a multi-modal approach to drive behavior. It is modeled on what PBMs have been doing around mail order conversion for years.

Lots of people talk about multi-modal coordination. We can and have done it. Gartner is talking about Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) in healthcare and has mentioned Silverlink in their last two reports as one of the few vendors doing this.

I hope you can join us! REGISTER HERE.

Events, Healthcare, Managed Care, Marketing / Communications, PBM / Pharmacy, Silverlink, Value Propositions

Medco Therapeutic Resource Centers and Mail Tour

February 27, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 1 Comment

This is obviously a marketing piece, but I thought it was an interesting video to show how things work behind the scenes at Medco. The first half of the video is about their TRCs (Therapeutic Resource Centers) and the second half is about their automated mail pharmacy.

Marketing / Communications, PBM / Pharmacy, Technology

Buyology: Best Book of 2009

February 25, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 1 Comment

I am finally getting around to writing this up. I mentioned the book – Buyology – a few weeks ago. It is definitely the best book I have read this year. It is by Martin Lindstrom and is all about neuromarketing.

For those of you that don’t think it’s relevant to healthcare, think again. Healthcare is all about compelling individuals to take action and become responsible for their health. That is about understanding how they interpret information and what drives them.

Here are some of my notes from the book:

One of the processes used was fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) which measures the amount of oxygenated blood throughout the brain. Scientists can see what part of the brain is working at any given time.
The other process used was SST (steady-state typography) which tracks rapid brain waves in real time.
One of his first studies looked at the effect of cigarette warning labels and found that they not only failed to deter smoking but activated the nucleas accumbens.
What people say on surveys and in focus groups does not reliably affect how they behave. [although it is often the best we have]
Brand matters…He re-conducted the Pepsi Challenge and showed that if people knew what they were drinking they preferred Coke to Pepsi. When they didn’t know, 50% of people liked Coke. When they knew, 75% of people liked Coke.
He showed that consumers have no memory of brands that don’t play an integral part in the storyline of a program. Just putting something in the movie, TV show, or video game isn’t enough to get you mindshare. AND, those successful placements also weaken our ability to remember other brands.

“Our irrational minds, flooded with cultural biases rooted in our tradition, upbringing, and a whole lot of other subconscious factors, assert a powerful but hidden influence over the choices we make.”

In the Smiling Study that he references, they revealed that people are far more positive and have a better attitude toward the business when the person they are dealing with is smiling. [Maybe a key thing for avatars and real agents as they talk to people over the computer and/or phone.]
Our mirror neutrons allow us to get pleasure just by observing or reading about people doing something that would give us pleasure – e.g., opening a present with a new Wii in it. [You can go to www.unbox.it.com or www.unboxing.com to enjoy this.]
Logos are dead. They showed that images that are associated with smoking (for example) were far more potent in creating a reaction in the brain than the logo.
“Secret Ingredients” matter…he shared several examples of how things sold differently when there were non-existent things listed on the label.
When people viewed images associated with strong brands – iPod, Harley-Davidson, Ferrari – their brains registered the same activity as when they saw religious images.
They studied and showed that odor can activate the same brain response as the sight of the product. He talked about an interesting study that showed that “feminine scents” such as vanilla were sprayed in women’s clothing sections, sales of female apparel actually doubled.
Sex, extreme beauty, or a celebrity in an advertisement can hijack attention away from the information in the advertisement.

“I predict that soon, more and more companies (at least those who can afford it) will be trading in their pencils for SST caps. That traditional market research – questionnaires, surveys, focus groups, and so on – will gradually take on a smaller and smaller role, and neuromarketing will become the primary tool companies use to predict the success or failure of their products.”

Some interesting facts:

300 million people, including 60% of male doctors, in China smoke.
8 out of 10 new product launches fail within 3 months.
In 2005, 156,000 new products debuted globally (or one product every 3 minutes).
In 1965, a typical consumer could recall 34% of advertisements from TV. In 1990, that number dropped to 8%. In 2007, consumers could only remember 2.21 advertisements from all advertisements they had ever seen. [Talk about saturation.]
We walk almost 10 faster than we do a decade ago. 3.5 mph
A study in Denmark showed that people talked 20% faster than they did a decade ago.
And, if you don’t believe that culture matters…In Asian cultures, four is an unlucky number and one researcher found that heart attacks among US residents of Chinese descent spiked as much as 13% on the fourth day of each month.
Children that experience social difficulties in school are more likely to be preoccupied with collecting.
Both J&J and Play-Doh have lost their original fragrances and haven’t been able to replicate it.
When classical music was piped over loudspeakers in the London Underground, robberies, assaults, and vandalism dropped by over 25%.

Some of the interesting companies mentioned:

I thought he had a great story about a rock. If I gave it to you for your birthday, you’d be offended until I told it was from the Berlin Wall. And then when I told you it was from the moon, you would be even more impressed.

For more information, there is also a neuroscience blog.

Books / Articles, Business Tools, Consumerism, Innovation, Leadership, Marketing / Communications, Research

Is Your Conversation With The MD One-Sided?

February 25, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

USA Today had an article earlier this week called “Doctors Take Decider Role” which is about the fact that patients are often not asked about their opinions. This is a problem on many fronts. If you’re not discussing the pros and cons, you are not as likely to buy into the recommended treatment plan leading to lower compliance.

“In the real world, people agree to take drugs, have surgery and undergo tests after a much more one-sided process, new studies show. As a result, researchers say, too many people get care they don’t want or need and miss out on options that make more sense for them.”

In a scary example, the research showed the 69% of men heard the procs of taking a blood test for prostate cancer, but only 18% heard about the downside. The research also showed that only 41% of patients were asked how they felt about taking blood pressure medications. But, this obviously varies since 76% were asked to weigh in on their back surgery.

It begs the question of how aware doctors are of patients concerns and priorities.

Books / Articles, Consumerism, Healthcare, Marketing / Communications, Research

Is Choice Good?

February 21, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

In recent discussions, I was talking with some clients about helping members or consumers save money in healthcare. On the one hand, you can educate them about all the different opportunities. On the other hand, you can focus them on one or two opportunities. Those could offer the most value, be the simplest to execute, be the easiest to understand, or have some other logic in prioritization.

The question in my mind was what would drive the best results. If you look at the research around consumer products and 401K’s (for example), it is clear that choice is not always best. When presented with more options, people don’t always make a decision. They get overwhelmed.

So, think about focus and simplification.

Books / Articles, Consumerism, Healthcare, Marketing / Communications, Research

Friends Don’t Let Friends

February 21, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

If they can use this concept for selling DirectTV over cable, why don’t we use this more in healthcare?

It could be…Friends Don’t Let Friends:

Pay too much for medication
Use brand drugs unnecessarily
Use retail for maintenance drugs
Call into the call center when the information is on the web
Go to the ER when they can call the nurse line
Pay too much for individual insurance

Maybe, in today’s economy, it will be time for healthcare companies to look for seriously at referral programs.

Get a friend to come to mail order or the local CVS and get your next prescription copay waived.

Everyone is focused on saving money. Social networking is all the rage. People trust their friends.

Now, I may not want to tell my friends that I am on cholesterol lowering medication so that may change it. But, certainly people talk about higher level items like shopping for individual insurance.

General Thoughts, Healthcare, Innovation, Managed Care, Marketing / Communications, PBM / Pharmacy

Ix for Rx Management

February 19, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

Josh Seidman from the Center for Information Therapy today announced on their blog that the center is going to begin focusing on “Ix for Rx Management” that will look at adherence along with other critical issues. As I talk about all the time, finding the right way to deliver information to people in a way that they can accept it and act upon it is critical. Given that we use more and more medications, this is a critical area where the center’s leadership can help build awareness of the problems.

“Although awareness certainly is an important precursor, it may be the easiest step in the pathway that takes the average consumer along the road to information consumption, then knowledge accumulation, and ultimately leading to behavior change. We know there’s a large body of research that tells us that, in order to be successful, our Ix initiatives need to “meet people where they are.” More specifically, we need to target the information to the individual’s particular moment in care and tailor it to their particular needs and circumstances.”

Consumerism, Healthcare, Leadership, Managed Care, Marketing / Communications, PBM / Pharmacy, Value Propositions, Weblogs

Seeing Significant Improvements With BPO

February 18, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) or as I will sometimes call it CPO (Communications Process Outsourcing) is something we are definitely seeing a growing demand for in the market. It blends technology, services, process management, consulting, and analytics.

Both IDC and Gartner have now talked about this in recent reports.

According to Janice Young, IDC program director, Payer IT Strategies, “we expect to see an increasing interest and likely investment in BPO in 2009 and 2010 for healthcare payers. Our recent results from our January 2009 healthcare payer survey of IT spending indicate that 45% of healthcare payers expect BPO investments to increase this year.” These trends are highlighted in IDC‘s U.S. Healthcare Payer 2009 Top 10 Predictions (January 2009).

Gartner research vice president, Joanne Galimi, reported on BPO services within health plans in a recent report entitled Healthcare Insurer Business Process Outsourcing Trends (January 2009). “Although things look gloomy for the larger economy, the potential for BPO to address immediate business pressures and long-term recovery goals for the health plans will be unprecedented,” says Galimi.

When I first came to Silverlink as a consultant in early 2007, this was exactly my vision. I always talked about the “one throat to choke” model. When you are in an operations role, it is always so difficult to coordinate modes, vendors, discrete data sources, and ultimately to get a holistic view of the member (or patient). This is what I wanted to help build and is exactly what we have done.

Fortunately, we are now in a position where we can talk about how this service model has grown and how offering turnkey services for clients has driven results. I love to focus on outcomes so this is exciting. Here are a few from the press release we put out this morning:

Over a 300% improvement in retail-to-mail conversions for a large pharmacy benefit manager (PBM),
54% increase in participation for a pharmacy program, representing between $150 and $175 per year per prescription in consumer savings,
400% improvement in yield in a COB program, translating to over $20 million in cost savings to a major U.S. health plan, and
Up to an 82% increase in transfer rates for population health engagement for disease management, lifestyle management and treatment decision support programs.

Books / Articles, Healthcare, Innovation, Leadership, Managed Care, Marketing / Communications, Methodology, PBM / Pharmacy, Silverlink, Technology, Value Propositions

Walking Surveillance Device

February 10, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

There is always lots of debate on the issue of privacy. Clearly, there are military reasons to collect data (with debates on appropriate use). There are programs we willingly opt into (like when I sign up for an organizations e-mail list). Within healthcare, we have HIPAA that tries to protect our personal data. Then there is the constant paranoia about how much your employer monitors on your computer – what sites you visit, your keystrokes, what you say on the phone. Then on the more debated side there is what information is it okay for a company to aggregate and use to push information to me that makes me healthier or saves me money. I don’t expect this will get solved anytime soon.

I think this is why I found the story about Google’s G1 interesting in yesterday’s paper where it talks about how Google aggregates information from you to better target you with advertisements.

“It enables Google to field your search queries quickly when you’re on the run. It also gives Google access to your contact lists, IMs, e-mails, personal calendar, social networking and video downloading — the videos you’d fess up to publicly, as well as the ones you might not. As for all those “personal photos” swapped with pals on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter: Google can grab those, too.

Everything gets crammed into your personal “file,” so to speak, along with a lot of other stuff — such as where you bank, shop and cruise on the Web when you’re lonely, bored or just in the mood for a little fun.

Once your information has been collected and stored, there’s no way to get rid of it. You can’t see what’s been collected or have it expunged. It’s Google’s for as long as it wants to hold onto it.”

Obviously, more and more people use mobile devices and the mobile web. It’s one thing to have your information aggregated when you use a service (i.e., Google search). It seems another thing for them to pull information from your device and aggregate it. I am not sure how this will play out, but I expect there will be a lot of discussion on blogs about this topic.

General Thoughts, Marketing / Communications, Technology, Value Propositions

Cigna And Social Media

February 9, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

I usually hold Humana out as an innovator in the area of established health care companies using social media and other tools to drive awareness. I was pleasantly surprised to find out more about Cigna’s activities on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter along with their deployment of games (like Humana) from the World Healthcare Blog.

Business Tools, Consumerism, Healthcare, Innovation, Managed Care, Marketing / Communications, Technology, Weblogs

Explaining WOM and BUZZ

February 7, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

These are two marketing tactics that are related. WOM = Word of Mouth. Buzz should be fairly straightforward.

Business Tools, General Business, Marketing / Communications

Marketing In A Recession

February 7, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

Most healthcare people hate the word marketing. Well, you know what…that is a big piece of what healthcare is about especially with the rise of consumerism. Individual marketing. Medicare. Getting people to make better choices. It’s all about marketing.

One of the things I liked in the attached presentation is that it talks about tightening up your funnel. One of the things I notice with lots of companies is that they don’t always take a rigorous process framework for thinking about members and communications. Process matters. You have to think about an integrated approach and how you optimize that process.

Books / Articles, Healthcare, Marketing / Communications

The Easiest $400+ You Can Save In Healthcare

February 6, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

In today’s economy, we are all looking for ways to save. And, it should be no surprise that pharmacy is the most frequently used benefit since, on average, people get fourteen 30-day prescriptions per year.

That being said, there are still hundreds of dollars that millions of us can save. Let’s take an easy example – Lipitor. Lipitor still has about $8B in sales here in the US. If you assume the monthly cost is $125 per 30-day supply and everyone on the drug filled it 12 times per year (which doesn’t happen but is a topic for another day), that means that each consumer on Lipitor represents $1,500 in revenue to Pfizer per year. Dividing the $8B by $1,500 tells me that there are about 5.3M consumers using Lipitor in the US.

On most formularies (or preferred drug lists), Lipitor is a 3^rd tier drug meaning that consumers are paying $40-$50 per month for this drug. Considering the fact that Lipitor has a generic alternative which is called simvastatin (aka generic Zocor), consumers can often talk to their physician and use this drug as a lower cost alternative. Additionally, both of these drugs are maintenance drugs that can be filled at mail order which often represents a 30% savings to a consumer (based on average plan designs). And, finally, simvastatin is a drug which can be split according to many different companies.

Here is the math, but a consumer on Lipitor could talk to their physician to get started on simvastatin, split the pills, and after a few months move to mail. That would save them $400+ in many cases.

Assuming Lipitor is a 3^rd tier drug with a $40-$50 monthly copay and the consumer fills the drug every month for a year, they would spend $480-$600 out-of-pocket.
Assuming they moved to simvastatin (with their MD’s approval) with a $10 copay, they would immediately drop their costs to $120.
Assuming they split their pills (i.e., got a higher dose of the medication and used a pill splitter to use ½ the pill each day), they would typically reduce their copays by 50% or drop their costs to $60 a year.
And, if they then moved the prescription to mail where they reduced a 90-day supply for the same price as a 60-day supply at retail, they would drop their out-of-pocket costs to $40 a year.

I don’t know about you, but that seems pretty easy. It’s clinically appropriate for most patients. The PBMs will typically help you with these programs by reaching out to your physician to get the new prescription.

Hopefully, you’ll be hearing from your PBM or managed care company about these savings. At Silverlink Communications, we are working with lots of them to design and execute these types of programs. It is always very rewarding to get in touch with consumers and bring them a message about how to save money.

If you are a health plan whose premiums are going up, this is a great way to reach out to your membership and provide them with a positive message about how you care and are responding to them in these tough economic times.

Healthcare, Managed Care, Marketing / Communications, PBM / Pharmacy, Silverlink, Value Propositions

7 e-Patient Conclusions

January 29, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 2 Comments

Thanks to e-patient Dave’s reminder on the e-Patient blog…

Here are 7 conclusions from the white paper that came out last year on this topic. Very important in diffusing some of the myths around the role of social networking in healthcare and the use of the Internet for information.

1. e-patients have become valuable contributors, and providers should recognize them as such.
“When clinicians acknowledge and support their patients’ role in self-management … they exhibit fewer symptoms, demonstrate better outcomes, and require less professional care.”

2. The art of empowering patients is trickier than we thought.
“We now know that empowering patients requires a change in their level of engagement, and in the absence of such changes, clinician-provided [information] has few, if any, positive effects.”

3. We have underestimated patients’ ability to provide useful online resources.
Fabulous story of the “best of the best” web sites for mental health, as determined by a doctor in that field, without knowing who runs them. Of the sixteen sites, it turned out that 10 were produced by patients, 5 by professionals, and 1 by a bunch of artists and researchers at Xerox PARC!

4. We have overestimated the hazards of imperfect online health information.
This one’s an eye-opener: in four years of looking for “death by googling,” even with a fifty-euro bounty for each reported death(!), researchers found only one possible case.

* “[But] the Institute of Medicine estimates the number of hospital deaths due to medical errors at 44,000 to 98,000 annually” … [and other researchers suggest more than twice as many]
* We can only conclude, tentatively, that adopting the traditional passive patient role … may be considerably more dangerous than attempting to learn about one’s medical condition on the Internet.” (emphasis added)

5. Whenever possible, healthcare should take place on the patient’s turf. (Don’t create a new platform they have to visit – take yourself wherever they’re already meeting online.)

6. Clinicians can no longer go it alone.

* Another eye-popper: “Over the past century, medical information has increased exponentially … but the capacity of the human brain has not. As Donald Lindberge, director of the National Library of Medicine, explains ‘If I read and memorized two medical journal articles every night, by the end of a year I’d be 400 years behind.”
* In contrast, when you or I have a desperate medical condition, we have all the time in the world to go deep and do every bit of research we can get our hands on. Think about that. What you expect of your doctor may shift – same for your interest in “participatory medicine.”

7. The most effective way to improve healthcare is to make it more collaborative.
“We cannot simply replace the old physician-centered model with a new patient-centered model… We must develop a new collaborative model that draws on the strengths of both systems. In the chapters that follow, we offer more suggestions on how we might accomplish this.”

Books / Articles, Consumerism, Healthcare, Innovation, Leadership, Marketing / Communications, Research, Technology, Value Propositions, Weblogs

Presentation Zen

January 29, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

presentation-zen-example
Have you read the book – Presentation Zen? If not, you can visit the blog to start to understand what Garr Reynolds talks about in his book. In general, one of the key points that I always try to relay to people is that slides are not your leave behind. Don’t put too much content on them. Don’t talk to them. Think about how to engage your audience in your story.

Take a look at a few of the slides he shares here. How does his presentation compare to your last presentations?

Books / Articles, General Business, Marketing / Communications, Value Propositions, Weblogs

Improving Your Healthcare Communications

January 28, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 1 Comment

I put up a new page off the site that talks about HealthComm that many of you might find interesting.

Healthcare communications is a strategic opportunity for most healthcare entities. This framework should help you think about how to design solutions to drive behaviors within your membership.

Consumerism, Healthcare, Marketing / Communications, Methodology, Silverlink, Technology

Gartner’s Predictions

January 27, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

Gartner put out there top 10 predictions. Three of them stood out to me as relevant for what I like to discuss.

By 2012, successful enterprises will actively encourage and reward more failures in order to find the optimal approach they want more quickly.

By year end 2013, 40 percent of enterprise knowledge workers will have abandoned or removed their desk phone.

By the end of next year 2010, wireless operators will cease to offer unlimited (flat-rate) mobile data plans.

Rewarding failure…finally. This is how healthcare will learn and improve. As consumerism continues to dominate, it is going to be more and more important to test new ideas quickly realizing that many will fail before we “solve” the problem. Everyone is always looking for the silver bullet which usually doesn’t exist. AND, if it does, it’s often temporary as things change both with the patient’s condition and/or with the treatment options that they have.

The death of the desk phone is rapidly happening today. I like to have one when I am in the office, but if I make 30 calls a month from my desk phone, I would be amazed. I don’t even have voicemail set-up. Any calls just get forwarded to my mobile phone.

No more unlimited plans…That would be unfortunate. Talk about driving adoption and then taking away the incentive. The convenience of the mobile devices blended with the low cost has created an “addicted” culture that loves their phones. As the economy lags, I would see this trend having a negative impact or being completely met with negative reaction creating opportunity for new players.

Consumerism, General Business, Marketing / Communications

Will Recession Kill Landlines

January 8, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 1 Comment

Every year there are more and more people who only use mobile phones. A few months ago, you started seeing Sprint advertisements talking about how much you could save on their plan that gives you unlimited calls for $99 / mo. Now, this morning on CNN’s new money segment, the recommendation was to ditch your landline. They suggested that you could save $400+ per year doing this and who wouldn’t want that in today’s economy.

I think this is a great example of how the recession could fundamentally change our world by accelerating certain trends.

Consumerism, General Thoughts, Marketing / Communications

Texting Versus Raising Your Hand

January 7, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 1 Comment

I heard this story on CNN this morning about the smartboards that schools are using these days to replace chalkboards. They talked about how easy it was for kids to respond and ask questions using text messaging versus raising their hands.

Is this a good thing? I definitely feel a little torn. On the one hand, this is great for the shy kids who might not otherwise participate in class. On the other hand, these kids won’t survive in the real world without being able to speak up and talk in front of others. They can’t sit in a meeting and just text their response.

Marketing / Communications, Technology

A Single View of the Member

January 7, 2009 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

Do you dream of being treated as one consistent individual across a company? Wouldn’t it be nice if they knew every communication they sent to you – letters, calls, e-mails – and knew every communication touch you had with them – webpages visited, faxes, inbound calls, e-mails? Unless someone can tell me different, this is still a dream world at most companies and maybe more than a dream at most healthcare companies. (It’s even more complicated if you start thinking about all the touches by the health players – hospitals, clinics, MDs, disease management companies – and integrating them.)

All that data could help paint a much better picture of each individual if blended with outcomes data. Who responded to what? When did they respond? What did they do? How did it vary by condition? How did it vary by gender? By age? What can you use to predict response rates? (I.e., the key here is having data transparency, easy to access data, and the ability to mine and analyze the information.)

There are so many variables that it can be overwhelming. That’s why I found the discussion around Campaign Management 2020 by Elana Anderson and then commentary by James Taylor interesting.

“we can dream of technology that supports fully automated marketing processes and black box decisioning, tools that simplify marketing complexity and support collaborative, viral, and community marketing” (Elana’s blog entry)

This really gets at the heart of some of the fun projects we are working on these days at Silverlink Communications with our clients where we are bringing Decision Sciences to healthcare and helping clients optimize their engagement programs, retail-to-mail, brand-to-generic, HEDIS, and coordination-of-benefits (among dozens of other solutions). Helping clients layout a strategy, define a process, develop a test plan, execute a program, and then partner with them to improve results is what makes my job so exciting.

As we go into the new year, I hope all of you are having fun at your jobs or quickly find a new job if your unemployed.

Business Tools, Healthcare, Innovation, Marketing / Communications, Silverlink, Software, Technology, Weblogs

100 Smart Choices – Optum Health

December 31, 2008 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

Optum Health, a part of United Healthcare, has released a book called 100 Smart Choices. It lays out tips, advice, and tools to help you take control of your health. Since 87.5% of health care costs are due to individual choices, this is a big deal.

We don’t need to create the most medicated generation, we need to find a way to eat better, exercise more, have less stress, and act preventatively.

“Individuals can feel healthier and happier, avoid unnecessary trips to the emergency room or a doctor’s office, and cut their health care expenses by tapping the information in this book,” said Dr. Michael Rosen, national medical director for OptumHealth Care Solutions and consultant on the book. “As we developed the book, we made sure that all of the content was consistent with evidence-based guidelines and assisted members in making informed health care decisions.”

Books / Articles, Consumerism, Healthcare, Leadership, Marketing / Communications, Research

Need A Brady Bunch Show About Health Plans

December 26, 2008 by George Van Antwerp 0 Comments

This is a thought that I have had multiple times. Think about what The Brady Bunch did for architecture. Subconsciously or consciously, I believe it created a positive impression about architecture in the minds of millions of people growing up. I don’t think this was something that architectural associations thought up, but it would have been a good idea.

So, why doesn’t AHIP, the organization that represents the health insurance plans, come up with a way to fund or collaborate with hollywood to create a web story, a sitcom, or a movie in which the hero is an executive at a health plan. By day they are running the company and by night they are moonlighting at a free clinic helping improve health.

Maybe I am crazy, but I really believe this positive imagery would help the industry. In it’s place, the only thing we have are negative images from the movie Sicko or from stories about people being denied care or from our first hand experience with our benefit costs going up. This may not matter as the health industry changes, but I think it will be a long-time before we every really move to a single-payor system or something that radically eliminates the current structure.

General Thoughts, Healthcare, Leadership, Managed Care, Marketing / Communications

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