disease management

Nemours Children's Clinic in Jacksonville, FL is kicking off a pilot program using remote monitoring technology to keep track of pediatric patient health. This type of preventative care system saves young patients stressful trips to the clinic and prevents small problems from growing into larger health concerns. "There's a lot of evidence that good case management or disease management keeps people out of hospitals, out of crisis situations," notes Lori Bilello, executive director of the …

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) is demanding more bang for the buck for healthcare spending, as it picks a new administrator for its healthcare plan. While Blue Cross currently administers the pension fund's two self-funded PPOs, the contract expires at the end of 2007. CalPERS issued an RFP this week, requesting pitches to administer the contract starting in 2008.  This time around, CalPERS is asking candidates whether they will share information on …

> In Singapore, a program designed to promote disease management has proved very successful for those with diabetes. Article

> UnitedHealthcare may drop Florida's Blake Medical Center and Doctors Hospital of Sarasota from their plan if the hospitals and the insurer can't agree on a contract before August 29. …

Disease management vendor Healthways said it will buy smaller rival LifeMasters in a deal worth $307 million. The move opens a door for the Nashville-based company to move into Medicaid, an area where it has not previously ventured. The acquisition is expected to increase Healthways' patient base to 2.6 million. CEO Ben R. Leedle said the deal will help his company hold off the competition. "LifeMasters has worked hard to create the relationships that are necessary (to operate …

> Indonesian health authorities say there is no evidence that bird flu is spreading on the island of Sumatra, after reports of a cluster of cases last week. Article (WSJ sub. req.)

> In Massachusetts, Tufts and BCBS of Mass. reported first quarter operating losses yesterday. Both ended up in the black thanks to investment income. …

FierceHealthcare editor Matthew Holt sat in on a conference with tech luminary Esther Dyson at the 2006 Consumer Driven Health Care conference in San Francisco this week. Dyson has been active in healthcare lately, particularly in personal health records. She had some suggestions about the direction that VC money might be flowing in healthcare technology. Potentially hot, according to Dyson, are start-ups that focus on disease management and compliance. She was also interested in …

Galen's Grace-Marie Turner is a leading advocate of consumer-directed health care, who'll be keynoting a big conference on that topic in San Francisco in May. I interviewed Turner to try to understand more about her ideas about HSAs and consumer care. There were lots of surprises. She doesn't think HSAs and HDHPs are solutions for everyone. She believes in the principles of population disease management. She believes in long term insurance contracts via groups. And she calls this all …

One health plan that has a better record than most in promoting disease management (DM) programs, PacifiCare, has just canceled a demonstration project in heart failure for Medicare FFS beneficiaries because it somehow failed to enroll enough people--even thought it will mean sending money back to the Federal government! PacifiCare says only 3,400 people had signed up for its HeartPartners heart-failure management program. It is unclear how this will impact UnitedHealth Group, which …

The number of physicians making house calls appears to be rising steadily again after years of decline. NPR looks at the factors involved in the trend, which is up by 40 percent since 1998 when Medicare raised reimbursement rates for home visits by almost 50 percent. Changing attitudes toward disease management have played a role, as have technological advances which have given physicians the ability to take their practices on the road. Armed with a laptop and a basic Internet …

This week the most convoluted program in the history of Medicare began. I've heard comments from friends, neighbors and people in the press saying that they can't make heads or tails of the new drug benefit.

Whether you like it or loathe it, there are some interesting parts of the Medicare Modernization Act, including the HSA provision and the disease management provisions. …