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Health Care Sign-up Snags, Fix-It Efforts Detailed

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On the defensive, the Obama administration acknowledged Wednesday its problem-plagued health insurance website didn't get enough testing before going live. It said technicians were deep into the job of fixing major computer snags but provided no timetable.

Democratic unhappiness with the situation began growing louder including one call for President Barack Obama to "man up" and fire someone as the president's allies began to fret about the political fallout. Democrats had hoped to run for re-election touting the benefits of the health care law for millions of uninsured Americans, but the computer problems are keeping many people from signing up.

And Republican sniping continued unabated, with House Speaker John Boehner declaring, "We've got the whole threat of Obamacare continuing to hang over our economy like a wet blanket."

Obama himself, though strongly defending the health care overhaul, has been increasingly willing to acknowledge extensive problems with the sign-up through online markets. Amid all that, the Health and Human Services Department on Wednesday provided its most specific accounting yet of the troubles with HealthCare.gov an issue that is also about to get a lengthy, even-less-forgiving airing on Capitol Hill.

The first of several hearings is set for Thursday in the Republican-led House, with lawmakers ready to pounce on the contractors who built the balky online enrollment system.

Acknowledging what's been obvious to many outside experts, the administration said Wednesday that the system didn't get enough testing, especially at a high user volume. It blamed a compressed time frame for meeting the Oct. 1 deadline to open the insurance markets. Basic "alpha and user testing" are now completed, but that's supposed to happen before a launch, not after.

The Health and Human Services explanation identified some bugs that have gotten little outside attention.

For example, technical problems have surfaced that are making it hard for people to complete the application and plan-shopping functions. That's a big concern because those stages are further along in the signup process than the initial registration, where many consumers have been getting tripped up. The problems are being analyzed and fixes are planned, the department said.

The explanation, posted online in a department blog and accompanying graphic, identified other broad areas of problems and outlined fixes underway but in most cases incomplete:

Unexpectedly high consumer interest that overwhelmed the system in its initial days. Equipment has been added to handle the load and system design has been improved. More fixes are in progress.

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Health Care Sign-up Snags, Fix-It Efforts Detailed

Parties at odds over health care law

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By: Christina Bellantoni and Terence Burlij

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

House Democrats are getting a debrief on the health care law Wednesday, following a series of problems with the rollout of an insurance exchange website and as the GOP steps up its criticism in the aftermath of a shutdown fueled by the party's distaste of the law.

Republicans have seized on the issue, putting out a video mocking an online chat from HealthCare.gov on a new website designed to highlight the glitches that have plagued people attempting to sign up or get information.

Watch here or below.

The president, meanwhile, is keeping up his defense of the law. He released a video message to his most fervent supporters via the Organizing for Action spinoff from his re-election campaign. He sounded a similar message of frustration with the kinks in the site, but stressed instead the elements of the law that are working, including the ability to keep someone on their parents' insurance plan until the age of 26.

"We've got people working overtime in a tech surge to boost capacity and address the problems. We're going to get it fixed," he said.

Watch the video here or below.

That comes after the administration announced acting Office of Management and Budget director Jeff Zients will lead the charge of getting the site improved.

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Parties at odds over health care law

Memorial Health Care System Selects Aegis Health Group to Partner on Innovative Population Health Initiative with …

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NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Memorial Health Care System has engaged Aegis Health Group to assist in its efforts to expand their population health management programs. It is designed to help local consumers learn about their health risks and get recommendations for how to lead healthier lifestyles. The new initiative will focus on partnerships with area employers interested in implementing wellness programs that improve workforce health and lower health-related costs while supporting the health systems mission of creating healthier communities.

One of the innovative tools and resources Memorial Health will offer employers is OneCommunity, a new population health portal that allows consumers to record and track health information online. It helps employers anticipate and mitigate health risks using solutions offered by the hospital, resulting in a healthier and more productive workforce.

Helping people live healthier, more fulfilling lives has always been central to Memorial Health Care Systems outreach efforts, said Andrew McGill, vice president at Memorial Health Care System. Our goal is to more proactively help local employers identify and address workforce health risks and put employees on a path to better health through targeted interaction, education and intervention.

Aegis time-tested tools, currently used by leading health systems across the country, will enable Memorial to match at-risk individuals with appropriate programs and services offered by the health system. Healthcare reform has underscored the value of worksite wellness programs through its emphasis on health improvement and disease prevention. The law also has increased the value of incentives employers can offer to encourage worker participation.

Employers and health systems share the same goal: improving the health of the community and helping organizations lower overall healthcare costs, said Yale Miller, Aegis Health Groups executive vice president of operations. As the areas healthcare leader, Memorial Health Care is perfectly positioned to take the reins in accomplishing this goal.

About Memorial Health Care System

Memorial Health Care System is a not-for-profit, faith-based healthcare organization dedicated to the healing ministry of the church. Founded by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth and strengthened as part of Catholic Health Initiatives, it offers a continuum of care including preventative, primary and acute hospital care as well as cancer and cardiac care, orthopedic and rehabilitation services. Memorial is a regional referral center of choice with 4,000 associates and more than 700 affiliated physicians providing healthcare throughout Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia. To learn more, visit http://www.memorial.org.

About Aegis Health Group

Aegis Health Group has assisted hundreds of hospitals with proven-effective business development strategies for nearly 25 years. Its strategic Population Health Management solutions enable hospitals to grow market share and revenue by identifying and intelligently managing the health risks of local consumers within the community they serve. Complementing this is Aegis data-driven and award-winning Physician Relationship Management strategy, which creates strategic alignment between hospitals and their medical staff to drive service-line growth, enhance patient care and quality, and provide timely issue resolution. Further information about Aegis is available at http://www.AegisGroup.com or on their blog at http://www.aegishi4.com.

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Memorial Health Care System Selects Aegis Health Group to Partner on Innovative Population Health Initiative with ...

Health care site snags? Administration spells out

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From left, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, Humana CEO Bruce Broussard, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida CEO Patrick Geraghty, and other health care chief executive officers arrive at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, to meet with White House officials regarding President Barack Obama's health care law. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

WASHINGTON (AP) On the defensive, the Obama administration acknowledged Wednesday its problem-plagued health insurance website didn't get enough testing before going live. It said technicians were deep into the job of fixing major computer snags but provided no timetable.

Democratic unhappiness with the situation began growing louder including one call for President Barack Obama to "man up" and fire someone as the president's allies began to fret about the political fallout. Democrats had hoped to run for re-election touting the benefits of the health care law for millions of uninsured Americans, but the computer problems are keeping many people from signing up.

And Republican sniping continued unabated, with House Speaker John Boehner declaring, "We've got the whole threat of Obamacare continuing to hang over our economy like a wet blanket."

Obama himself, though strongly defending the health care overhaul, has been increasingly willing to acknowledge extensive problems with the sign-up through online markets. Amid all that, the Health and Human Services Department on Wednesday provided its most specific accounting yet of the troubles with HealthCare.gov an issue that is also about to get a lengthy, even-less-forgiving airing on Capitol Hill.

The first of several hearings is set for Thursday in the Republican-led House, with lawmakers ready to pounce on the contractors who built the balky online enrollment system.

Acknowledging what's been obvious to many outside experts, the administration said Wednesday that the system didn't get enough testing, especially at a high user volume. It blamed a compressed time frame for meeting the Oct. 1 deadline to open the insurance markets. Basic "alpha and user testing" are now completed, but that's supposed to happen before a launch, not after.

The Health and Human Services explanation identified some bugs that have gotten little outside attention.

For example, technical problems have surfaced that are making it hard for people to complete the application and plan-shopping functions. That's a big concern because those stages are further along in the signup process than the initial registration, where many consumers have been getting tripped up. The problems are being analyzed and fixes are planned, the department said.

The explanation, posted online in a department blog and accompanying graphic, identified other broad areas of problems and outlined fixes underway but in most cases incomplete:

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Health care site snags? Administration spells out

Health Care M&A Spending Softens in Q3 2013 as Deal Volume Grows, According to Health Care M&A News

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NORWALK, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Health care merger and acquisition activity picked up in the third quarter of 2013, compared with the second quarter. (View full video: http://www.levinassociates.com/pr2013/pr1310mamq3.) Deal volume was up nearly 16% versus the previous quarter, with 267 deals announced. This years third quarter also outperformed the same quarter a year ago, up almost 20%, according to Health Care M&A News.

The Health Care M&A Market Deal Volume by Sector

Source: Health Care M&A News, October 2013

However, deal value was down slightly compared with the previous quarter. The preliminary total for M&A activity in the third quarter is $50.8 billion, down 4.2% compared with the $53.0 billion spent in Q2:13. Deal value actually increased by 35.1% compared with the third quarter of 2012, when buyers committed just $37.6 billion.

Five sectors posted declines in the number of deals announced, compared with the previous quarter: Behavioral Health Care (-60%), Home Health & Hospice (-50%), Labs, MRI & Dialysis (-20%), Physician Medical Groups (-6%) and Medical Devices (-8%). Two of those sectorsBehavioral Health Care and Home Health & Hospicedo not post significant numbers of deals, so their results typically show wide swings from quarter to quarter.

The health care services sector still managed to post a 6% gain over Q2:13, with 160 deals announced, and showed a healthy 13.5% increase versus Q3:12. The health care technology sector also posted gains, with 107 deals announced in the third quarter, up 34% compared with the previous quarter and 31% over the year-ago quarter. eHealth deals staged a comeback (+100%), although from a very small base, while Biotechnology (56%) and Pharmaceuticals (39%) showed even stronger performance than the previous quarter.

Deal-making momentum is growing, after a very low level of activity, said Lisa E. Phillips, editor of Health Care M&A News. The Long-Term Care and Hospital sectors were even stronger than in the second quarter, and compared with the third quarter in 2012. Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals are still going strong, and we expect that to continueat least until the major drug makers feel their pipelines are full again.

Hospital deals were the attention-getters in Q3:13, with Community Health Systems $7.6 billion bid for Health Management Associates coming on the heels of the Tenet Healthcare Corporations $4.3 billion acquisition of Vanguard Health Systems in Q2:13. Transactions of that size arent likely to be repeated in the near future, but deal volume in the sector will probably remain elevated as more standalone hospitals seek to join larger health systems in order to remain viable.

We expect to see even more M&A activity in the fourth quarter, Ms. Phillips said. Now that the Affordable Care Act is poised to take full effect in January, the uncertainty felt in many sectors is starting to dissipate. Health systems that have made strategic acquisitions such as physician medical groups will now turn their attention to long-term care, home health care and rehabilitation to fill out their care continuum requirements. We still expect a fluid market in Physician Medical Groups and continued consolidation among hospitals.

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Health Care M&A Spending Softens in Q3 2013 as Deal Volume Grows, According to Health Care M&A News

Polls: Health care law rollout reviews not pretty

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Only a minority of Americans are giving a thumbs up to the rollout of the Affordable Care Act health care exchanges, according to a trio of new national polls.

Just 12 percent of people questioned in a CBS News poll released Tuesday say they think the process is going well, with nearly half saying it's not going well and nearly four in 10 saying they can't evaluate the signup process at HealthCare.gov.

The state level online exchanges, which opened for business on Oct. 1, are intended to allow those without insurance to sign up for health care, and are a crucial part of the ACA.

Less than 3 in 10 surveyed in a Pew Research Center poll released on Monday say the online exchanges are working very well, with 46 percent saying they are not.

Besides the expected partisan divide, the poll also indicates a racial gap. Just 24 percent of white respondents, but 51 percent of black respondents say the exchanges are working well.

And the survey points to generational and income divides.

"Young people and those with annual household incomes of less than $30,000 are divided in their evaluations of the exchanges, while the assessments of older and more affluent Americans are more negative," says a release from Pew Research.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll suggests that major problems with the health care law's website may just be an appetizer.

Fifty-six percent of those questioned in the survey, which was released Monday, say the website failures are a sign of broader problems to come, with four in 10 saying they are an isolated incident.

More than eight in 10 Republicans see the website failures as part of a larger problem with the measure, while most Democrats describe it as an isolated incident.

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Polls: Health care law rollout reviews not pretty

Report: Health care website failed early test

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -

The president's health care sign-up Web page was supposed to handle tens of thousands of people at once. But in a trial run days before its launch, just a few hundred users flatlined the site.

Despite the problems, federal health officials pushed aside the crash cart and rolled out HealthCare.gov on Oct. 1 as planned, The Washington Post reported.

The result? The website crashed shortly after midnight as a couple thousand people tried to start the process, two people familiar with the project told the Post.

The report is the latest criticism of the problem-plagued site -- criticism so acute that even President Barack Obama said there was " no sugarcoating" the difficulties Americans have faced trying to sign up for insurance coverage.

Webmaster in Chief

"Nobody's madder than me about the website not working as well as it should, which means it's going to get fixed," Obama said during an appearance Monday at the White House Rose Garden.

But he didn't specify exactly what went wrong or who was to blame for the problems, which include long waits to log onto the federally administered website and maddeningly long wait times once online.

There's "no excuse for the problems," Obama said. But he said tech industry experts were being brought in to help workers trying to fix the site.

Call it more fuel for the fire as the GOP continues its quest to defund the new health care system, popularly known as Obamacare.

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Report: Health care website failed early test

[ Home hospitalisation=reduced health care cost ?]: [Dr. B. Hari Shankar ] at [TEDxChMCollege] – Video

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[ Home hospitalisation=reduced health care cost ?]: [Dr. B. Hari Shankar ] at [TEDxChMCollege]
Dr B. Hari Shankar, a 2011 pass out of Chengalpattu Medical College is a unique medical practitioner creating waves in neighbouring suburbs of Nanganallur, k...

By: TEDxTalks

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[ Home hospitalisation=reduced health care cost ?]: [Dr. B. Hari Shankar ] at [TEDxChMCollege] - Video

Health Care Speed Bumps In Oregon

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HERMISTON, OR - The new health care rollout hit a few speed bumps on the Internet. Things are even worse in Oregon, where customers still cannot enroll online.

The providers I spoke with today say they are not only ready but they are encouraging people to sign up as soon as they can. While the Oregon site is currently only offering paper applications. Officials say the bugs are being worked out.

"People don't just want it, they're showing up to buy it," said President Obama in his speech from the White House Monday morning.

The President acknowledged the technical issues the Affordable Care Act enrollment is having online. In Oregon, not a single person has been able to enroll on their web site.

"I even tried to get on the site myself just recently just to look around and sure enough it is now easy to get in," said Dennis Burke the President and CEO of Good Shepherd Health Care System in Hermiston. "Already the interest level expressed by hits on web sites show that at least there's a significant interest out there."

The "Cover Oregon" site has already seen almost half a million site visits Burke says that means his hospital might see more patients, but not in the emergency room. With more people covered by insurance in Hermiston, more preventative care and simple check-ups could lower emergency visits.

"If this works as planned, some of our volumes of services may actually decline," said Burke.

Once the Oregon site is fully functioning, Burke thinks more people will enroll. It is not just Oregon having issues, many state health care sites are not working properly and it is something the president says, we are working on.

"Nobody is madder than me about the fact that the web site isn't working as well as it should, which means it's going to fixed," said President Obama.

Currently we are in the enrollment period for Affordable Health Care. Places like Good Shepherd wont see those covered under the new system until it goes into effect on the first of January.

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Health Care Speed Bumps In Oregon

Health Care Without Harm President Gary Cohen to Speak on “24 Hours of Reality” to Outline Health Sector’s Role in …

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Washington, DC (PRWEB) October 21, 2013

Health Care Without Harm President Gary Cohen will participate in 24 House of Reality, on October 22 and 23rd. This is the second year that Cohen has presented in this annual 24-hour online event, created by former vice-president Al Gore. This years event, The Price of Power, focuses on the consequences of increased fossil fuel use and carbon emissions, and features a different topic for each of the worlds continents. Cohen will speak during the Australia Hour, which will focus on human health.

The health impacts of carbon pollution are already being felt the world over, said Cohen. Increased asthma, heat-related deaths, the spread of infectious diseases like dengue and malaria, and increased water-borne diseases are all increasing due to climate change, yet they are not counted in the costs of fossil fuels. The health care sector has a mission-related imperative to reduce its own carbon footprint and lead the rest of society toward a renewable energy and low carbon future.

Cohen is scheduled to speak at 7 pm Eastern on October 22, and at 1am, 7 am, and 1pm on October 23.

Cohen is an advocate and social entrepreneur who has helped create a number of organizations and initiatives focused on health and the environment. Earlier this year, he was named a Champion of Change, Public Health and Climate, by the White House for his work on the health threats associated with climate change and his work with the health care sector to recognize these effects and to prevent and mitigate them.

In addition to co-founding Health Care Without Harm, Cohen is a co-founder of Practice Greenhealth. Health Care Without Harm and Practice Greenhealth are co-organizers of CleanMed, the annual conference for sustainable health care. The two organizations are also co-founders, along with 13 hospital systems and the Center for Health Design, of the Healthier Hospitals Initiative, which was developed to speed the attainment of sustainability in the health care sector, and provides free guidance for hospitals seeking to develop sustainable operations.

Heath Care without Harm (HCWH) is an international coalition of more than 500 organizations in 53 countries, working to transform the health care sector, without compromising patient safety or care, so that it is ecologically sustainable and no longer a source of harm to public health and the environment. To learn more about HCWH, visit http://www.noharm.org.

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Health Care Without Harm President Gary Cohen to Speak on “24 Hours of Reality” to Outline Health Sector’s Role in ...


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