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Category Archives: Health Care

PhilHealth 10 recognizes NorMin health care providers

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The awardees with PhilHealth officials from left Dr. Esther Ricardo of PhilHealth, Dr. Jose Chan of NMMC, Datu Masiding Alonto Jr. of PhilHealth, Maybelle Honcada of RHU Pangantucan, Dr. Marilou Po of Malaybalay Polymedic General Hospital, and Diosdado Ofngol of RHU Pangantucan.

THE Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) on February 27 recognized exemplary health care providers in northern Mindanao which demonstrate outstanding performance in the delivery of quality service by upholding health and financial risk protection to PhilHealth members in line with the Universal Health Care.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary, PhilHealth 10 awarded three health care institutions namely: Pangantucan Rural Health Unit of Pangantucan, Bukidnon; Malaybalay Polymedic General Hospital, Malaybalay City; and Northern Mindanao Medical Center in Cagayan de Oro.

The three awardees were chosen from the seven nominees that include Andot Medical Hospital in Bacolod, Lanao del Norte (LDN), Baroy Rural Health Unit in Baroy, LDN, Barangay Poblacion Lying-In Clinic in Maramag, Bukidnon.

Datu Masiding M. Alonto Jr. PhilHealth 10 regional vice president and concurrent officer in-charge vice president for Mindanao, recalled that since PhilHealth started in 1998, there were only 10,000 to 20,000 claims a year that they have to work on, and 17 years after, the countrys health insurance provider in Region 10 is serving more than 300,000 claims each year from the more than 300 accredited health providers, both public and private, in the five provinces and eight cities of northern Mindanao.

Alonto said that despite the limitations of PhilHealth to meet the demands of their services they are working hard to cope and uphold the standard of quality and sustainable health care for every Filipino.

He said that the awarding of exemplary health care institutions was to acknowledge their cooperation in pursuing universal health care beyond accreditation - consistently demonstrated their willingness to provide care without financial burden; physical facilities and equipment; and quality assurance program for continuing improvements.

PhilHealth 10 said that they are working on national awards be accorded to the nominees in the coming years, especially those already in the hall of fame or have been repeatedly awarded in the 10 years that PhilHealth 10 started recognizing exemplary health institutions in the region.

Published in the Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro newspaper on March 01, 2015.

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PhilHealth 10 recognizes NorMin health care providers

Health Care Sector Update for 02/27/2015: RESN,ACUR,CERS

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Top Health Care Stocks

JNJ -0.16%

PZE -0.69%

MRK -0.23%

ABT -0.64%

AMGN -0.75%

Health care stocks were narrowly lower today with the NYSE Health Care Sector Index slipping about 0.2% and shares of health care companies in the S&P 500 declining about 0.4% as a group.

In company news, Resonant ( RESN ) retreated Friday after posting a wider Q4 loss compared with year-ago levels and late Thursday and saying it first-ever duplexer delivery didn't meet all of the specifications in the development agreement.

The pre-revenue company saw its Q4 net loss expand to $9.7 million, or $2.16 per share, from its $9.4 million loss during the year-earlier period. Total operating expenses climbed to $6.1 million from $2.8 million.

The company recently delivered a completed duplexer for consideration to its first customer but the design didn't meet all contract specifications, according to CEO Terry Lingren.

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Health Care Sector Update for 02/27/2015: RESN,ACUR,CERS

Fines Remain Rare Even As Health Data Breaches Multiply

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In a string of meetings and press releases, the federal government's health watchdogs have delivered a stern message: They are cracking down on insurers, hospitals and doctors offices that don't adequately protect the security and privacy of medical records.

"We've now moved into an area of more assertive enforcement," Leon Rodriguez, then-director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights, warned at a privacy and security forum in December 2012.

But as breaches of patient records proliferate just this month, insurer Anthem revealed a hack that exposed information for nearly 80 million people federal overseers have seldom penalized the health care organizations responsible for safeguarding this data, a ProPublica review shows.

Since October 2009, health care providers and organizations (including third parties that do business with them) have reported more than 1,140 large breaches to the Office for Civil Rights, affecting upward of 41 million people. They've also reported more than 120,000 smaller lapses, each affecting fewer than 500 people.

In some cases, records were on laptops stolen from homes or cars. In others, records were targeted by hackers. Sometimes, paper records were forgotten on trains or otherwise left unattended.

Yet, over that time span, the Office for Civil Rights has fined health care organizations just 22 times.

"It's disappointing and underwhelming," said Bob Chaput, founder and chief executive of Clearwater Compliance, which helps health care organizations create programs to protect sensitive information. "They're not doing as much as they could or should."

The Office for Civil Rights declined an interview request from ProPublica, but said in a statement that it "aggressively" identifies and investigates "high-impact cases that send strong enforcement messages about important compliance issues." The agency looks into all large data breaches, a spokeswoman wrote in an email, and the cases resulting in financial penalties "have involved systemic and/or long-standing" concerns.

The agency's stiffest sanction to date came last May, when it hit New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University with fines totaling $4.8 million for failing to secure the electronic health records of 6,800 people. A physician had tried to remove his personal computer server from a shared network, causing patient records, including patient status, vital signs, medications and lab results, to be found on Web search engines. The problem surfaced when a person found a deceased partner's personal health information online.

The federal government has played a growing role in health privacy and security since the passage of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, in 1996. The law mandated standards for the use and dissemination of health care information and for how organizations protect electronic medical records.

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Fines Remain Rare Even As Health Data Breaches Multiply

Apps bring health care into ‘mobile moments’

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Holly Fletcher, The (Nashville) Tennessean 11:11 p.m. EST February 25, 2015

The Tennessean staff is kicking off #TNfit, a month-long project in which staff will use the Streaks for Small Starts from the Governors Foundation for Health and Wellness, to make small daily adjustments to be healthier. Join the intiative by downloading the app and tweeting your progress to #TNfit.(Photo: Shelley Mays / The Tennessean)

NASHVILLE When you're standing in the grocery line the next time, take a look around: There may be someone checking her smartphone or doing calf raises.

While it might be an idle reflex in a moment of quiet, it could also be a moment of multitasking a few repetitions of easy yet tingly stretches or checking in on a recent insurance claim. Those "mobile moments," such as standing in a grocery queue, are what a generation of smartphone apps are looking to capture as a way to integrate health care into everyday life.

The person doing calf raises could very well have been this reporter or another person using the Streaks for Small Starts app developed by the Governor's Foundation for Health and Fitness, an initiative of Gov. Bill Haslam's aimed at encouraging Tennesseans to bring movement and healthier choices into their lives.

The person swiping could be a customer of UnitedHealthcare using the Health4Me app to check and pay a claim.

USA TODAY

Smartphones and tablets to spur record annual revenues

Both apps are examples of the mobile health trend mHealth as its called in the industry taking place in all corners of health care and wellness as companies try to engage with consumers or patients where people communicate: the smartphone.

"People aren't thinking about their health or health care on a daily basis. Most don't need to," said Craig Hankins, vice president of consumer engagement products at UnitedHealthcare. "We seek to support our consumers in regards to their whole well-being."

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Apps bring health care into 'mobile moments'

Innovations: The future of health care is a dongle attached to your smartphone

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There are sweeping changes now taking place at the intersection of health care and Silicon Valley. If the first step was the embrace of digital health by big tech companies and the creation of new wearable devices for tracking fitness and health, then the next step could be the creation of a revolutionary new direct-to-consumer health care model. This would take advantage of cheap plastic dongles hooked into your smartphone that offer the type of diagnostic power once reserved for hospital laboratories.

The latest development in this new direct-to-consumer health model is a new breakthrough from a team of biomedical engineering researchers at Columbia University in New York City that makes it possible to test for both HIV and syphilis in 15 minutesafter hooking a plastic dongle into your smartphones headphone jack. You simply insert a pinprick of blood onto a disposable plastic collector, connect the plastic collectorto a microfluidic chipused to analyze the sample and insert the chip with the bloodsampleintothe dongle. Once youve logged into an app, your smartphone can start to determine the presence of HIV or syphilis in your blood and display the results on your smartphones screen 15 minutes later.

More than its ease of use, the cost factor of the dongle is what makes it possible to speculate that this type of smartphone diagnostics could one day lead to a new direct-to-consumer model for health care. The equipment needed to perform a laboratory-quality HIV testcan cost upwards of $18,450 apiece. Contrast that to the cost of a cheap plastic dongle, which costs an estimated $34 to make.That makes it possible to imagine a future where tests are faster, simpler and cheaper than anything available today.

What makes the lab-on-a-smartphone so innovative is that, even though youre significantly reducing cost, youre not sacrificing power. The results delivered by the new device suggest thata full laboratory-quality immunoassay can be run on a smartphone accessory. Moreover, in a small field study in Rwanda, the team of researchers found that patient preference for the dongle was 97 percent compared to laboratory-based tests.

According to Samuel K.Sia, the lead biomedical engineering researcher on the project, there are broad implications for the way we think about health care: Coupling microfluidics with recent advances in consumer electronics can make certain lab-based diagnostics accessible to almost any population with access to smartphones. This kind of capability can transform how health care services are delivered around the world.

And theres plenty more innovation where this came from. This month, 23andMe received FDA approval for the first time ever to market a direct-to-consumer genetic test. Its an important first stepin terms of delivering direct-to-consumer genetic testing, as 23andMe notes: While this authorization is for a single carrier status test only, we are committed to returning health information to our US customers who dont already have this information once more tests have been through this process and we have a more comprehensive product offering. At some point in the future, you could theoreticallyreceive health reports about your childrenby running a series of DNA tests at home.

This lab-on-a-chip innovation fits into a broader trend that has been building momentum for more than five years. Harvard chemist George Whitesides, in a popular TED Talkin 2009, outlined his vision of diagnostics for all, in which the cost of all diagnostics could be brought down to zero by creating a lab the size of a postage stamp. Instead of taking something thats very expensive and trying to bring it down to zero (the $18,000 machine) you can start with something very simple (a cheap plastic dongle) and attempt to build in additional complexity and diagnostic ability.

Interesting things happen when you start thinking in terms of bringing low-cost innovations from the developing world to developed world. Cost constraints become a positive, not a negative. Sias work suggests that similar tests screening for other diseases might be right around the corner. As Sia points out, If you can start to bring core health services to the smartphone beyond just measuringtheheartrate like blood tests then youre going to start seeing a pretty fundamental shift in the health-care system.

Of course, its not certain that all this innovation is going to be coming to market anytime soon. In the United States, for example, there are obvious regulatory hurdles to get new health innovations to market. Just consider how much time and effort 23andMe has spent in getting its genetic tests to market. As a result, health-care dongles will probably be used in the field first for remote and mobile clinics in the developing world, before moving to the developed world.

When it comes to diagnostics, though, zero cost is an admirable goal. Smartphone diagnostics is part of a mind-set shift about the way we offer and receive health care. Smartphones offer power, a simple user interface and mobility, all in the palm of your hand. Now that the average smartphone today has more processing power than NASA had when it put a man on the moon, it could just be a matter of finding the right mix of dongles and letting Moores Law take care of the rest when it comes to testing for disease.

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Innovations: The future of health care is a dongle attached to your smartphone


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