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Category Archives: Health Care

Health-care IT firm Castlight soars 139% after IPO

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"It could be the best or worst of both worlds," said Rich Peterson, director of global markets intelligence at S&P Capital IQ."In terms of valuation, it could be one thing; in terms of potential, it could be another."

Hot Health-Care IPOs

Well over half of the new companies that have gone public in 2014 have been biotech firmsnearly two dozen, according to analysts at IPO research firm Renaissance Capital.

"This period has been the most active, profitable and highest-volume period we've ever seen for biotech in the last 20 years," said Kathleen Smith, chairwoman and co-founder of Renaissance Capital. "This is quite a wide-open window for biotech."

(Read more: Insurers scope out Obamacare enrollees)

Last year was also a strong period for biotech IPO activity, fueled by positive factors that continue to the drive health-care stocks, including a favorable regulatory environment for firms developing drugs for rare diseases and strong merger activity in the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors. As a result, the sector has outperformed the overall market.

"You have the S&P 500 health-care index up about 7.8 percent," said Peterson. "In terms of institutions, there's probably a demand for biotech and health-care offerings."

Strong returns have also helped drive interest. On average, the biotech IPOs have gained over 50 percent from their offering prices.

But Smith cautions that like Castlight, many of the firms going public have no earnings, and many retain large insider ownership after their debuts.

"Most of them are getting done because the venture capitalists and investors are buying their shares at the time of the IPO," she said. "Investors are looking at it as a sign of commitment, but that means that the float is low."

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Health-care IT firm Castlight soars 139% after IPO

Don't upload health care data to Google cloud, UK groups say

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Using Googles cloud services to process health care records is a serious violation of the U.K.s data protection act, privacy groups said in a complaint filed with the countrys data protection authority.

U.K. privacy groups medConfidential, Big Brother Watch and the Foundation for Information Policy Research filed the complaint with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) on Thursday, following recent disclosures that the firm PA Consulting had obtained medical data and uploaded it to Googles cloud for analysis.

In 2011, the predecessor to the U.Ks Health & Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) entered into an agreement to share the Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) patient database with PA Consulting, according to the information center.

Hospital Episode Statistics processes over 125 million admitted patient, outpatient and accident and emergency records each year, according to the information center.

Each HES record generally contains a broad range of information about individual patients, such as age group, gender and ethnicity, diagnostic and treatment codes, and information about where the patient was treated and lives. By default HES data also contain the patients postcode and date of birth, which in combination are enough to personally identify about 98 percent of patients, the groups said in the complaint.

The data was pseudonymized and used in an analytics project, PA Consulting said in a news release.

However, to analyze the vast trove of patient data, PA Consulting uploaded the data to Google and processed it via Googles analytics service BigQuery, a cloud service that allows interactive analysis of large data sets. That never should have happened, the groups said in their complaint.

We do not believe that population-scale data sets of patient data should be uploaded to any cloud provider unless certain rigorous conditions have been met, said Phil Booth, coordinator of medConfidential, via email Friday.

Such sensitive data should never be uploaded to a provider outside the jurisdiction of the U.K. and EU Data Protection authorities and EU human rights framework. If such an action isnt unlawful, it should be, he added.

According to PA Consulting, the dataset does not contain information that can be linked to specific individuals and is held securely in the cloud in accordance with conditions specified and approved by HSCIC. Access to the dataset is also tightly controlled and restricted to a project team of up to 12 people, they said.

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Don't upload health care data to Google cloud, UK groups say

HEALTH-CARE SUMMIT – Innovative strategies and systemic interventions to improve health-care in S… – Video

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HEALTH-CARE SUMMIT - Innovative strategies and systemic interventions to improve health-care in S...
The University of Stellenbosch Business School (USB), in partnership with the Impumelelo Social Innovations Centre, has great pleasure in inviting you to a H...

By: Bellville Park Campus, University of Stellenbosch

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HEALTH-CARE SUMMIT - Innovative strategies and systemic interventions to improve health-care in S... - Video

National Center’s Dr. David Hogberg’s Senate Testimony on Government-Run Health Care Problems – Video

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National Center #39;s Dr. David Hogberg #39;s Senate Testimony on Government-Run Health Care Problems
Dr. David Hogberg #39;s testimony on foreign problems with government-run health care and the political problems that face patients under those systems given bef...

By: SunnyDayAmerica

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National Center's Dr. David Hogberg's Senate Testimony on Government-Run Health Care Problems - Video

Health Care Law Helps Entrepreneurs Quit Their Day Jobs

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hide captionThe Affordable Care Act could encourage people to start new businesses by solving an age-old problem: job lock.

The Affordable Care Act could encourage people to start new businesses by solving an age-old problem: job lock.

The Affordable Care Act which many see creating challenges for businesses could benefit a particular group of business people: entrepreneurs.

Joshua Simonson was reluctant to give up his job at a Portland, Ore., area grocery store, New Seasons Market, which he says had provided excellent health care for him and his family. He had a pre-existing condition that has prevented him from getting insurance in the private market, but one key development helped convince him to quit and start a farm.

"One of the biggest factors was the Affordable Care Act," Simonson says, "that our family would be able to be covered by health care starting the beginning of 2014."

Now, the young entrepreneur runs a 26-acre farm near Sheridan, Ore., where chickens till through the flower beds and goats graze on the lawn. He has 3,000 egg-laying hens, whose eggs he and his partner will sell in the Portland metropolitan area. Soon, they'll add pigs and raise chickens for meat.

It had been hard to leave a job that provided health care, especially since he had trouble getting coverage in the past.

"I was ineligible for any health care. I'd been denied by five different companies because I have back problems," says Simonson, who's broken three vertebrae in his back. "Nobody wanted to cover me because of that."

Economists call what held Simonson back job lock, or entrepreneur lock.

"Entrepreneur lock has proven to be a significant barrier to potential entrepreneurs," says Dane Stangler, vice president of research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation, which promotes entrepreneurship.

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Health Care Law Helps Entrepreneurs Quit Their Day Jobs

U.S. Health Care System Has $5.6 Billion Security Problem

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Health-care organizations are under attack.

Criminals are stealing patient records to commit medical identity theft. And the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has made the situation worse, according to a new report from privacy and information security research firm Ponemon Institute.

Ponemon estimates that these breaches cost the industry about $5.6 billion a year.

The survey found the overall number of reported data breaches at health-care organizations declined slightly last year, but criminal attacks on health-care providers increased dramatically up 100 percent since 2010.

This is Ponemon's fourth annual Patient Privacy and Data Security study, and it finds that most data breaches are caused by sloppy practices, such as lost laptops loaded with unencrypted patient data.

"The information that's contained in a medical record has real value in the hands of a cyber criminal," said Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute. "And there's evidence that suggests that in the world of black market information, a medical record is considered more valuable than everything else."

"The people in the health-care industry are good people who sometimes do stupid things, and that is the source of a lot of the problems."

"The black market is being flooded with payment card data," said Rick Kam, founder and president of ID Experts, which sponsored the study. "That data expires rather quickly because financial institutions replace the cards. Your Social Security number and personal health record don't change. They have a long shelf life."

Other key threats include employee negligence, unsecured mobile devices and third-party contractors who have access to the sensitive patient information of the health-care organizations they work with.

Good people doing stupid things

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U.S. Health Care System Has $5.6 Billion Security Problem

Criminal attacks on US health care soar

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Health-care organizations are under attack.

Criminals are stealing patient records in order to commit medical identity theft. And the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has made the situation worse, according to a new report from the Ponemon Institute.

Ponemon estimates that these breaches cost the industry about $5.6 billion a year.

The survey found the overall number of reported data breaches at health-care organizations declined slightly last year, but criminal attacks on health-care providers increased dramaticallyup 100 percent since 2010.

This is Ponemon's fourth annual Patient Privacy and Data Security study, and it finds that most data breaches are caused by sloppy practices, such as lost laptops loaded with unencrypted patient data.

"The information that's contained in a medical record has real value in the hands of a cyber criminal," said Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute. "And there's evidence that suggests that in the world of black market information, a medical record is considered more valuable than everything else."

"The black market is being flooded with payment card data," said Rick Kam, founder and president of ID Experts, which sponsored the study. "That data expires rather quickly because financial institutions replace the cards. Your Social Security number and personal health record don't change. They have a long shelf life."

(Read more: More winter woes: Utility-bill scams pile up)

Other key threats include employee negligence, unsecured mobile devices and third-party contractors who have access to the sensitive patient information of the health-care organizations they work with.

"The people in the health-care industry are good people who sometimes do stupid things, and that is the source of a lot of the problems," Ponemon said. "They're trying to get their work done, they feel under pressure, they're in the business of caring for patients, and they don't want to waste time to do more security or take that extra step to protect privacy."

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Criminal attacks on US health care soar

Vermont has new plan to slow health care costs

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By WILSON RING/Associated Press/March 12, 2014

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) More than 2,500 health care providers that serve Vermonters could be working together to help control costs by focusing on keeping people healthy rather than being paid to treat patients when they are sick, Gov. Peter Shumlin and other top officials said Wednesday.

The two new shared savings programs offered through health insurance plans offered by Vermont Health Connect and the states Medicaid program are designed to move away from the traditional fee-for-service model of health care to encourage providers to work together, keep people healthier and as a result reduce the growth of health care costs.

Shumlin said the three-year-program getting underway in Vermont is the first such statewide program in the country.

Right now we have a health care system that most folks agree is not sustainable. Its not sustainable because costs are rising faster than Vermonters incomes, Shumlin said at a Montpelier news conference at the headquarters of the Green Mountain Care Board, which is overseeing the overhaul of Vermonts health care system.

If left unchecked, if we continue to do business as we always have it will continue to consume too much income of middle class Vermonters who are struggling enough, of small businesses and large businesses, of all of us together, he said.

The goal of the programs is to encourage health care providers to keep patients healthy rather than provide expensive, sometimes unneeded tests, officials said.

As an example Al Gobeille, chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, said that if a hospital expected to spend $25 million to care for a group of patients and they provided that care for $22 million, the providers would be able to share in the savings if they meet certain requirements.

They've saved money from what we thought they would spend and they get part of it back to invest in their practice, Gobeille said.

One of the programs will be offered through health insurance programs offered by Vermont Health Connect, the state website that provides access to insurance as part of the federal health overhaul efforts, and Vermonts Medicaid program, which provides health insurance to low income and disabled Vermont.

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Vermont has new plan to slow health care costs


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