“In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”

An athenahealth client recently reminded me of this quote attributed to Michelangelo, which nicely summarizes one of the main themes that emerged as part of the America Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Accountable Care Organization (ACO) Summit in Washington D.C. on Wednesday. In theory, ACOs lead to more integrated care and sustainable cost growth throughout the health care system; in practice, ACOs are creating issues in the market that should be proactively addressed via regulation and the forming of new ACOs.

Some details about this first-ever Summit: … Read more

Before I provide some background—and recommendations—regarding the regulation of mobile health (mHealth) apps, be they drug lookups, electronic medical records (EMR) or otherwise, let me begin with one statement: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulating and defining mobile medical reference apps is like an agency regulating calculators because long division exists. The FDA regulates an action that’s completed with greater accuracy and ease electronically vs. the traditional written format.

Okay, now that I’ve got that off my chest, on to the topic at hand.

Based on the FDA’s Draft Guidance for Mobile Medical Applications, it … Read more

According to the latest census, nearly 85% of Americans have some form of health insurance. We know that the implementation of Obamacare will result in an increase in this number, but we have no guarantee that the additional costs associated with better access to care will be counteracted by improvements in overall health.

Of course, we are hopeful that health care reform will help (and, at least not hurt), but we believe a simpler approach to cost containment would be to bring the most American of pastimes to health care: shopping. Today with the intricacies of, and variancies in, medical … Read more

It’s been almost 16 years since we started this incredible journey as the medical practice known as athena women’s health and the Birthplace. Since then, we’ve veered off in different but amazing directions. (See the reunion of the early athenistas from athena women’s health photographed, right). Jonathan has led the evolution of athena into a force of 2400+ athenistas all dedicated to creating a national health backbone in order to make health care work as it should, Todd Park (athena’s co-founder) is serving as the CTO of the United States and then there’s Mitch Besser.

Mitch was one of the … Read more

Earlier this year, ”The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart aired an entire segment on the lack of interoperability between the electronic health record (EHR) system used by the US Department of Defense (DOD) and that of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Stewart pointed out that, while this might be expected between competitors in the private sector, it’s “not the relationship you expect from the part of the government which takes care of our disabled veterans and the part of the government that creates them.”

Gallows humor aside, Stewart’s nearly-seven-minute segment had an effect. Following subsequent coverage by … Read more