Archive | June, 2011

You’d better shop around: huge price variances for an MRI in your town

By on June 30, 2011 in Employers, Health care marketing, Health Consumers, Health Economics, Health literacy, Health Plans

My mama told me you’d better shop around, as Smokey Robinson also told us. We now know it pays to shop the prices for digital imaging. The price of an MRI of the brain ranges from a low of $825 to a high of $3,600 within the Southeast region of the U.S. In the Northeast, the low [...]

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Connected health isn’t about the devices – it must align people and providers

By on June 29, 2011 in Health care information technology, Health Consumers, Health Economics, Health engagement, Health social networks, Internet and Health, medical home, Medical innovation, Medical technology, mHealth, Mobile health, Prevention and wellness, Privacy and security, Remote health monitoring, Telehealth

  Under a normal statistical curve, between the chronically ill and the “motivated healthy,” is the largest segment of health citizens who are seeking missing information and solutions that could help them lead healthier lives. IBM has called out this information seeking segment, asserting that these people represent a huge unserved cohort of health care consumers. [...]

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A new meaning for “skin in the game” in health care

By on June 28, 2011 in Baby Boomers and Health, Health and Beauty, Health care marketing, Health Consumers, Health Economics, Health engagement, media and health, Prevention and wellness, Retail health, Supply chain

Health is where we live, play, work and pray — and also where we moisturize. Eucerin is working to create a Skin Savvy Nation. Welcome, health consumers, to the Eucerin Skin Health Cost Calculator, a tool that quantifies the financial impacts of skincare habits by estimating the life-cycle costs and benefits those skin health habits would have. The Calculator takes [...]

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Health care at the bottom of the pyramid

By on June 27, 2011 in Affordable Care Act, Global Health, Health care marketing, Health Consumers, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Retail health

There’s an important management book that’s popular with business people expanding to markets in the developing world called The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid by C.K. Prahalad. He also wrote about this concept with Stuart Hart in Strategy + Business. Professor Prahalad was my professor at the University of Michigan and has had a [...]

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Health costs haunt the long-term budget outlook for the U.S. as Boomers age

By on June 24, 2011 in Affordable Care Act, Aging and Technology, Baby Boomers and Health, Employers, Health Economics, Health Plans, Health politics, Health reform, Medical innovation, Prevention and wellness, Seniors and health, Uninsured

“With the aging of the population and growing health care costs, the budget outlook, for both the coming decade and beyond, is daunting,” reports the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in the 2001 Long-Term Budget Outlook report. If you read between the lines and into the future scenarios on health spending and budget deficits, it’s clear that as [...]

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