January 27th, 2010 by AlanDappenMD in Primary Care Wednesdays
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Health and wellness go hand in hand; there is little question of this. I therefore ask why isn’t primary care at the heart of the health and wellness movement? This, I feel, would make outstanding economic sense for all involved.
In an effort to survive these sour economic times, more and more companies are trying to stave off the escalating cost of healthcare by pushing for wellness. There is good reason for this. According to Buck Consultant’s third annual global wellness survey which was cited on the Society of Human Resources Management web site those U.S. companies who measured financial outcomes of their wellness programs reported a 43% reduction in healthcare costs or about two to five percentage points per year. Read more »
January 26th, 2010 by PhilBaumannRN in Better Health Network, Expert Interviews, Opinion
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Do you advertise on your social networks? You might not think that you do, but every time you tweet or update your status on Facebook or post a picture to Flickr, you’re advertising – perhaps not with commercial or self-promotional intent, but you are advertising something: an item of news, a humorous post or a moment from your vacation. I don’t believe that Advertising is bad; but there is bad advertising, the kind that pointlessly interrupts and annoys and leads to no action.
As the Web expands and evolves from a tangle of static web pages towards social and real time streams, Advertising will need to evolve into a suppler and friendlier animal. Google may have perfected Advertising on the traditional web platform, but the door is open to new players who can socialize advertising. It’s not an easy task: the bull’s eye of targeting customers is getting tinier everyday. Enter MyLikes, a start up which has taken on the task of helping advertisers reach their base. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Phil Baumann*
January 26th, 2010 by EvanFalchukJD in Better Health Network, Opinion
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One late afternoon, some summers ago, I was at the beach.
I was with our dog, a Labrador retriever. He was playing fetch with a stick I was throwing into the ocean. Every time I threw it, he darted into the ocean to find it. Swimming through the waves, he would get the stick and carry it
back proudly to shore. He would drop it in front of me, shake off some of the water soaking his coat, and stare at me, heaving, begging me to throw it in again.
We did this for a while, and it was always the same. He was joyous. Eventually I had to stop, even though I loved
seeing him that way. He would have kept doing it until he drowned.
I realized something else as I was watching him.
He was so happy because jumping into the North Atlantic to retrieve things is what he was born to do.
Now, people are much more complicated than dogs. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*
January 26th, 2010 by BobDoherty in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
1 Comment »
One of my favorite movie scenes is from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” when an unfortunate soul pleads with the designated collector of corpses (this being after the plague, mind you) that “I’m not dead … yet.” The collector responds by whacking him on the head … until he is, in fact, quite dead.
This scene comes to mind as I blog about yesterday’s stunning GOP upset of the seat-that-used-to-be-held-by Ted Kennedy. If the election of Republican Scott Brown didn’t quite kill off health care reform, some Democrats are quite willing to complete the task. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The ACP Advocate Blog by Bob Doherty*
January 26th, 2010 by Stanley Feld, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
3 Comments »
President Obama’s Healthcare Reform Bill will not work. It is based on decreases in physician reimbursement while forcing physicians to increase overhead with unaffordable electronic medical records. More and more physician groups and practices are starting to realize that they cannot make a living from the reimbursement from Medicare. They are quitting taking new Medicare patients and trying to get rid of the old ones by not taking assignment.
President Obama’s idea is to force physicians to be more efficient producers. It is very difficult to force anyone to do anything they cannot afford. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Repairing the Healthcare System*
