Kudos to the Nashville Business Journal Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief Susan Dentzer for her insightful comments on many issues surrounding healthcare at the recent Nashville Healthcare Council gathering.

The attention grabbing headline of her corresponding article about the potential for healthcare to be the next sub-prime mortgage crisis rings true though I’m not sure it can all be pinned on HSAs as she does in her article.

Compare the two industries and beyond the similarities in dollars paid out, there are some disturbing lessons begging to be learned.

Housing runs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a family. Healthcare has the potential to do the exact same.

Mortgages can easily hit $1200 per month in expense. And at $1200-1400/month for family healthcare coverage, average healthcare premium costs alone are comparable to the size of a mortgage note for many families.

And houses have to be maintained. You need a new roof …

So it would appear that I’m not the only one less than thrilled about the balance billing practices of some hospitals:

Here’s what the WSJ had to say.

The best thing about this job is that we get to meet some really great people. Today we met some outstanding folks who are going to make a difference.

Cover America made a stop right here in Nashville today and a few of the change:healthcare team had a chance to catch up with them. The cross country trek to capture stories of consumers’ difficulties with the healthcare system is part of a Consumer Reports effort on the healthcare front.

We really enjoyed meeting Meg, Blake, Pauline and Liz. Even got our photo with the RV in Centennial Park, in the shadow of Hospital Corporation of America (oh, how we love the irony of that one). Many thanks to these folks for what they are doing - fighting for the healthcare consumer.

Meg is getting a much deserved break after three weeks …

Ran across this blog entitled medical bills suck. Have to say we empathized with their situation. This is a young couple with a new baby and lacking insurance. That’s a tough spot. They are getting hit with medical bills for the birth of their child now, and the mom despairs about not being able to realize the rest of her dreams of owning a home, etc. because of the medical bills that keep holding them back.

But like the comment I posted says, they probably won’t have to pay the whole bill amount. If they just pick up the phone and call and ask for a discount or failing that, ask to make monthly payments, the hospital will probably negotiate. Some rediculous percentage of people (I think around 60% or more. If I find the source, I will come back and add it) who called and asked for a discount …

Interesting article popped up today on how the healthy population may cost more in terms of healthcare than the obese or smokers. The premise is that the healthy person lives longer and therefore has more opportunity to run up costs in part because they have a longer window to work in.

Let me add a little personal perspective to that. I have been fortunate in my life in that I have lost relatively few people in my immediate family (partially the result of parents who were both late children, and many of my relatives were gone before I was 6). However, lately, the odds have been catching up to me. My parents, my in-laws and many other people close to me are getting older and facing increasingly greater health challenges. One in particular comes to mind.

This friend is a former coach, world champion in sports and just flat out all …

Figuring out your credit card bill is tough, but you do it because it has implications for your credit score.

Figuring out what you owe the doctor is just as tough if not more so and often time far more expensive than that monthly credit card statement. At least you know what you bought with your credit card. A billing statement from the doctor or hospital leaves you scratching your head at the archaic abbreviations they use to describe whatever it is that they did to you.

And now along comes your MedFICO score from Healthcare Analytics like a consumer’s credit rating!

What’s a responsible healthcare consumer to do?

How can you keep track of your medical bills and avoid winding up with a bad score? That poor score may not keep you from receiving care as some fear, but it may wind up …

Two things:

First, I wanted to say thanks for the latest mention by Bob Coffield over at the Healthcare Law Blog.

Bob is one of those individuals whom, when you meet, you just know that he is an all-around good guy. Go on over and read some of his latest posts. Good stuff… Speaking of which…

Secondly, Bob includes a rather telling example of social media influence used by a physician to coach his patients who have obesity behavior modification issues:
…example comes from Dr. Parkinson’s new (old) approach to providing care through technology and house calls. A while ago he mentioned in a post (Food Photography) his approach to helping a patient with weight and obesity problems. This recent Chicago Tribune article again mentions his simple but effective approach to monitoring his patients food intake using Flickr. In the Q/A Dr. Parkinson …

I spent a lot of time in Germany - 2 years to be exact - and found Unity’s post about Health 2.0 taking off in Germany very interesting http://wisdom.blogs.com/health/2007/11/health-20-takin.html (see the original post at http://gigaom.com/2007/11/17/health-20-gaining-traction-in-germany/). Both systems have something to learn from one another, and here are some tidbits.

I got to experience the German healthcare system firsthand. It was interesting. From a customer service standpoint, it left much to be desired. Office hours were sporadic - worse than a college professor with tenure. However, there was a policy in Germany: Just go the doc during hours and take a seat. They HAVE to see you if you get there before close of office hours. From that standpoint, I can see why there might be some resistance to a ratings system. Their system just doesn’t make for the best customer service. As an ailing patient I was there for 3 or 4 hours and …

As the team here in Nashville continues to refine the upcoming release (February 2008) requirements of our enhanced platform, which henceforth shall be referred to as “Project Thunderbolt aka PT” in this post — I took some time to get caught up on the plethora of health2.0 and web2.0 and other feeds clogging my Google Reader pipes (bursting at 188 feeds and 500+ unread articles…sigh, i’m very behind).  Below is a picture of the PT purpose/focus of our new platform name… which the specs were already finalized several weeks ago and coding has already begun:

Ironically, the team (who did not go to the SF conference) came up with the 7 core items independently with little guidance from Rob and me (honestly).

So as i came across the post from Matthew Holt and Marty Tennanbaum… well, read both quoted items and it will …

From FoundRead blog, some Thanksgiving video from Craig Newmark. The video is less important than the Mantra that Craig has consistently espoused:

customer service and customer empowerment

Additionally, i liked the quote regarding their “turkey-postings” community mechanism…
“We trust people… and as as a result we’ve given people this sliding [ad] removal mechanism. If you see any ad on our site, which is wrong, you feel, for any reason, you can flag it for removal. If enough people agree with you, we’ll remove it automatically. It actually works pretty well in practice.”
FoundRead’s best nugget is…
There is a lesson here for founders:
Listen and be responsive to your customers. They are the key participants (or constituents!) in your business. If you do this well, and with sincerity, it will be good enough. After all, there is no way to protect any business against all the “turkeys” out there.