Life sciences companies have always faced challenges communicating the clinical and economic value of their products and services to different groups of stakeholders. These challenges arise from the technical nature of research information, the different perspectives of various groups, (e.g. clinicians, payers and patients), and marketing regulations. However, with costs continuing to rise, political, business and advocacy leaders are all agreeing that health care spending is growing out of control. Therefore, no matter who wins the White House in November, “cost containment” will be the embodiment of “change” for health care in 2009 and beyond – and the current economic downturn and expanding government deficits will only fan those flames.…
Patient – Doctor Communications
In the last couple of weeks there were two interesting articles in the New York Times about patient-physicians communications.
Value of Empathy
In the first piece, Dr. Pauline Chen discusses an academic article that explored the way physicians communicate empathy to their patients who have serious and life threatening illnesses. The conclusion of the research, (which looked at the experience of people who had lung cancer), was that physicians miss 90% of the opportunities to connect empathetically with their patients.
The researchers speculated that physicians don’t engage patients empathetically because they are concerned that this would take too much time. However, according to Dr.…
Stem Cells, Cancer, and Politics
The cover of this week’s Economist magazine caught my eye because this weekend I was talking with people about stem cell issues in the context of the Presidential election.
Part of our discussion was how the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s Vice Presidential nominee will effect the Republican ticket’s position on stem cell research.
Doing a quick search on the internet, it appears that John McCain is refining in his position to support research on adult stem cells, while maintaining a foundation that doesn’t alienate the conservative base of his party. Specifically, the only reference to stem cell research that I could find on the campaign’s web-site is:
…Addressing the Moral Concerns of Advanced Technology
Stem cell research offers tremendous hope for those suffering from a variety of deadly diseases – hope for both cures and life-extending treatments.
Digesting Medical Progress
One of the challenges for improving the healthcare system is creating a vision for what is achievable in a timeframe of months or years. The first step for creating such a realistic vision is to understand how progress has been made in the past.
A microcosm of such progress was described in a recent article in The Economist. This article describes advances in our understanding of stomach ailments – one of my favorite areas of biomedical progress because in the last several decades dramatic changes have occurred in our basic knowledge about this area, and so many people can relate to stomach problems.…
Changing Life Sciences Communications Environment for 2009
Cost containment is becoming an increasingly powerful force in shaping the environment for life sciences companies – as well as other parts of the healthcare system. In addition, more sophisticated tools for analyzing and demonstrating the clinical and economic value of medical treatments are making it more challenging for life sciences companies to communicate the value of their new products to all types of audiences, including clinicians, payers, patients and regulators.
These new tools and the changing environment are requiring life sciences companies to think about developing more sophisticated messages to reach these audiences. I recently recorded a short 6 minute discussion about these topics with Jeff Sandman, CEO of Hyde Park Communications – where I am also a Senior Counselor. …
Questions and Answers About Pay-For-Performance (P4P)
An article in the July/August Health Affairs about Massachusetts health plans implementing Pay-for-Performance (P4P) incentives for physicians raised more questions than it answered.
The study found that P4P programs from 5 private sector payers “wasn’t associated with greater improvement in quality” compared to the overall upward trend in the factors measured. But the study didn’t address some overarching questions and basic realities about P4P, such as:
- How the payers P4P incentives to the physician groups was actually translated into incentives for the individual physicians – or smaller groups of physicians inside the larger groups?
- How the P4P incentives compared to the other financial incentives the physicians are facing?
Literacy, Communications and Star Trek – Cores for Reforming Healthcare
In talking to people about the problems with the US healthcare system, two fundamental truths have become apparent.
First, people really want the type of healthcare that is envisioned in science fiction such as Star Trek, where almost any ailment is treated with a single injection or pill, or a few waves of a healing wand. Unfortunately, medical science hasn’t accomplished that, except in a few instances – antibiotics for a bacterial infection, or perhaps relocating a dislocated finger or shoulder (and those still require weeks to heal and therapy to regain strength and mobility).
And second, the ongoing problem of healthcare literacy and communications may be getting worse as the complexity of medical treatments increases.…
Financial Returns from E-Prescribing – Saving Medicare $2.1 billion
The leadership of HHS had a tele-conference on Monday to highlight the new Medicare incentives for physicians to adopt e-prescribing systems. What the Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation reported about this press briefing that wasn’t in the HHS press release was that the Acting Administrator of CMS said that the per physician cost of e-prescribing systems is about $3,000 up front, and then $80-400/month for operation and maintenance.
These numbers caught my eye, because with the incentives in the Medicare bill, the break-even point for physicians is as follows:
First, let’s assume that the per month cost is $240 (the mid-point between $80 and $400), or $2,800 per year.…
Vacations – Poker – Diagnostic and Research Skills
What’s the point of vacations? As a consultant that’s something I often ask myself since with the internet, cell phones, etc., it seems almost impossible to really “get away” and not be connected to work.
So what’s the value of vacations? I think I’ve found the answer at the poker table. As Ricky Ricardo used to tell Lucy, “Lemme splain!”
The point of vacations is to recharge by being in a different environment that presents a new context for viewing our normal “reality.” A great practitioner of this principle was Teddy Roosevelt. He would travel to the wildest and most dangerous parts of the world, and hunt the largest of animals.…
Scientific Study of Resveratrol: Challenges for Reporters to Unravel the Spin
One of my interests in health communications is how the findings from scientific research are presented to various stakeholder audiences. Because of this, I was interested to see how the titles of several reports about one study of an investigational compound highlighted different perspectives.
The compound being investigated in this research was resveratrol, which has been shown to replicate the life-span extending effects of dietary restriction in lower animals. (Resveratrol is also the component of red wine that is believed to provide various health benefits.) The new study looked at the effects of resveratrol in mice. The titles of the journal article of the study’s findings, the NIH’s press release and the company’s press release were:
- “Resveratrol Delays Age-Related Deterioration and Mimics Transcriptional Aspects of Dietary Restriction without Extending Life Span” (From Cell Metabolism’s web-site)
- “Resveratrol Found to Improve Health, But Not Longevity in Aging Mice on Standard Diet” (From National Institute of Aging’s web-site)
- “Long-Term Study of Middle-Aged Mice Shows Resveratrol Improves Health and Mimics Some Benefits of Dietary Restriction” (From Sitris’ web-site)
Looking at these titles it is interesting to note that the scientific journal only includes a general statement about life-span. …
E-Prescribing – Good? E-Dispensing Bad!!
With two notable government actions in the last couple of weeks there has been significant movement towards increasing the use of e-prescribing.
DEA Proposed Rule
The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), proposed regulations on June 27th that would make it possible for controlled substances to be prescribed electronically. Interestingly, this was released right after a National Journal article on this topic.
The DEA’s proposed rule is very important, because while it is appropriate to place stronger safeguards on medicines that are likely to be abused (which is the criteria for being a DEA scheduled medicine), having controlled medicines prescribed by pen and paper while all other medicines are e-prescribed would be a logistical problem and obviate many of the potential benefits of e-prescribing. …
Updates on Vitamin D
Since I wrote about the importance of Vitaim D a few weeks ago, some new information has come out.
A report was released this week from researchers in Australia about Vitamin D reducing the risk of all causes of death. The study was in the Archives of Internal Medicine, about their evaluation of 3,258 men and women scheduled to have a angiogram of their heart arteries. They found that the people who had below average Vitamin D levels had about twice the risks of dying than those with levels in the highest 25% of the group.
While looking for the report of the Austrlian study, I found another study from a group of reserachers in Boston, that looked at 18,225 men who had no diagnosed heart disease. …