The momScore: How West Virginia Ranks For Maternal Health

While reading this week's Grand Rounds hosted this week at Suture for a Living, I jumped over to an interesting post by Dr. Val on an effort by her and Revolution Health to team up with medical experts and mommy bloggers to create a new health index for Mother's Day.

West Virginia ranks 38 out of 51 states on the momScore. As we head into this weekend's Mother's Day, Anna Marie Jarvis would want us to try to raise our ranking. I'm issuing a challenge to all West Virginia health care providers to think about and work on improving these statistics and metrics.

West Virginia received a a score of 69 out of a possible 100. The areas used for the ranking include: access to prenatal care, air quality, availability of childcare services, family paid leave policy, health care coverage rate, infant mortality, maternal mortality, risk of pregnancy complications, affordability of children's health insurance and violent crime rate.

If you want to discuss or debate West Virginia's rankings you can post your comments on the interactive momScore community.

Practical Advice on the Death Spiral

The Death Spiral, courtesy of the WSJ Health Blog.

Great graphic which highlights advice from my dad, a retired physician in West Virginia, who always warns us of such risks. He says, "eat better, eat less, take small bites, drive defensively with two hands on the wheel, don't climb ladders and be careful with guns." Looking at the graph if we listened to this advice we would take care of most of the larger circles.

An Early Look At How Iowan Voters Feel About Health Care

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn at Health Populi looks at some early statistics of how Iowans feel about the state of our health care system. The survey was sponsored by CodeBlueNow, a consumer-led health advocacy group.

I found it particularly interesting that Iowans believe "health care services should stress disease prevention over high-technology cures." I wonder if a poll in West Virginia would show a similar statistic.

Contrast this statistic with some data coming out of the Leadership West Virginia Conference saying that West Virginia's health care system is dysfunctional and in peril. Dave Campbell, CEO of Community Health Network said that "$10 billion a year is spent on health care in [West Virginia], but only 3 percent of that is spent on preventative measures." Chronic disease is a huge problem in West Virginia.

Citing respiratory disease and diabetes as two treatable problems that are causing health care rates to rise in West Virginia, Campbell goes on to say that of the "$4 billion a year spent in hospitals, we know that $1 out of every $10 is avoidable. Over $400 million would be avoidable if people had earlier access to prevention and primary care."

Guy V., this post is for you after our weekend discussion.

Joint Commission Launches WikiHealthCare

iHealthBeat reports about the Joint Commission's new pilot wiki, WikiHealthCare. The pilot project is an effort by the Joint Commission to create a collaborative space for open exchange of information among health care professionals.

According to the article, the site now only has 1,500 registered users and only about 10 actively posting to the wiki. What's a wiki?

Modern Healthcare has more.

Welcome Jane Sarasohn-Kahn: Health Populi

Today I received an email from my colleague, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, a health economist and management consultant, announcing that she had joined the health care blogging world. Congrats Jane!

Jane will be blogging at Health Populi. Over the past year or so I have been reading Jane's thought provoking columns for iHealthBeat and have checked out her THINK-Health site. An example is today's post looking into the priorities (and shifting costs) of Americans on spending for health insurance and technology.

Here is her introductory post and why you should read her blog:

In this blog, I will share my multi-faceted perspectives on health care. In the new wave of transparency in American health care, I seek to shed light. I want to help move along the dialogue that Americans – not just politicians and pundits, but the bulk of Americans living and working outside of legislatures -- must have regarding how to honestly, openly and boldly confront the challenges facing U.S. health care.

Changing our behavior in this new world will involve re-engaging with the U.S. health system and our innermost motivations by

• understanding what health care costs,
• taking better care of ourselves,
• getting smarter about health and health care, and,
• voting in elections.

Along with education, no single domestic issue will affect every American more directly than health care will in the next years and decades to come. Now, read on. Get smart. Go health-shopping. Demand value from those who supply you with health goods and services. Vote. The health system is yours. Act like it.

I can't agree more Jane. Don't miss subscribing to the Health Populi RSS feed.

HHS Secretary Leavitt Joins The Blogosphere

A warm welcome to Secretary Mike Leavitt (blog bio) who last week launched his blog at Secretary Mike Leavitt's Blog. It is wonderful to see the United States top health care official join the blogospere and create a vehicle to share his personal observations and have an open conversation about health care and the challenges that that we all face.

I am impressed by his goal to keep the blog personal (not relying on staff or the PR department to write his posts) outlined in his About this Blog summary and introductory post. I'm hoping that he enjoys the experience and has the time to continue to blog past his initial trial phase. In my mind he gets the idea behind blogging -- a communication utility which is used to think and understand, share his observations, engage ideas and as he says, create a "dynamic online conversation." These characteristics are what makes blogging something more than just another way to create traditional media/PR web content. It's the reason why I enjoy the blogging process.

Question to readers: Is Secretary Leavitt the highest ranking U.S. official to date to have a blog which is personally written? Are there any other Federal Executive Department Secretary level bloggers?

Thanks to iHealthBeat for its article announcing Secretary Leavitt's blog.

Google Health: A Virtual-Doctor In Your Family

Roni Zeiger, MD, Product Manager at Google and part of Adam Bosworth's health team at Google has this recent post on the difficulty of patients getting the information they need.

I can related to his post, Is there a Doctor in the Family? and his discussion of having "better access" to health information. There is incredible value in having a family member who understands the clinical side of health care. My dad, a retired country doctor in West Virginia, at 83 is still my "primary" resource to discuss health issues and get a valuable second opinion on anything related to my health and the health of our family. When the kids get sick we call him to confirm that the advice given by our pediatrician is accurate. When I had to make decisions on whether or not to have knee surgery - he was my sounding board for the pros/cons. I could give 100 more examples where I or others in my family have relied on him to help interpret health care options, treatments and management of our health.

Dr. Zeiger poses the following question in his post, "When I help my loved ones navigate an illness or get up to date with screening tests, I wonder how those who don't have a doctor in the family manage their health."

The answer: They don't manage their health. Most patients find themselves in a sea of information and at the mercy of a complex system. This is one of the fundamental questions that we as health care professionals need to seek solutions for today. Americans have always been great at mass production and we have taken this same approach to our health system. We produce a lot of health care but it is not individualized or coordinated as well as it could be.

If Google can find a way to become this trusted virtual-family doctor and fill this need the patients and providers will be better off in the future. I'll be interested to hear more from Dr. Zeiger at the Health 2.0 Conference who will be participating on the panel discussion on Search in Healthcare.

Tip to Shahid Shah the Healthcare IT Guy for alerting me to this new Google Blog post dealing with health care in his post Google Planning a PHR?

For more information on the Google Health initiative check out this post over at The Health Wisdom Blog which includes links to Adam Bosworth's recent presentation at the American Medical Information Association's annual convention.

UPDATE (6/21/07): Rita Schwab at MSSPNexus Blog adds an insightful post on the topic of Google as Healthcare Advocate? and what to expect when you navigate the health care system.

Where Does Your State Rank On Health-System Performance

Business Week features a new survey by the Commonwealth Fund that ranks the health-systems performance of all 50 states and DC in "The Sorry States of Health Care." The full report detail can be found here at the Commonwealth Fund website.

The survey statistics on the need to increase preventative care and high levels of avoidable hospital admissions struck me an interesting (but not surprising).

West Virginia comes in at 44 of 51 in the survey. (full details on West Virginia here and here). The state ranking was a product of aggregating measurements in 32 benchmarks spread across five categories: access to health care (determined by the number of insured residents); quality of care; unnecessary hospital use and procedures; equity of access based on income and ethnicity; and the overall health of the population.