Disease Management Colloquium in Philadelphia - Day 1

I attended the DM Colloquium hosted by Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia at the beginning of the week.  I wanted to blog from the conference, but I didn't want to be rude to the presenters, and I couldn't get the T-Mobile Hotspot to work outside of my room at the Hyatt.

I arrived on Monday and saw Stephen C. Schoenbaum, MD, MPH, Executive Vice President for Programs, The Commonwealth Fund give a keynote. You can view his presentation here.

One of the problems attending these conferences is that I do not always learn that much as one of my roles with Intelecare is market research.   I know America spends the most on healthcare (almost double) of any other modern country, and has the worst system but I did not know that 51% of patients in the US with a chronic condition do not have a "Medical Home".   Meaning no PCP.

I didn't have a PCP when I moved to Connecticut in 2001, and did not get one until 3 months before my son was born in 2007 - but I was still a little surprised by this number.  I know a lot of patients without insurance use ERs as their primary care, but 51% just struck me as bigger than I thought for chronic conditions.

Dr. Schoenbaum presented some of the CWF findings from a few reports and well as options for "savings" in the healthcare system.  Overall a great presentation for the crowd.

Next up was Matthew Holt from the Health 2.0 Conference.  He (obviously) spoke about how Health 2.0 companies can possibly help disease management companies and healthcare in general (his presentation has not been uploaded to the DMC site yet). I have seen Matt present before, and seen some of his presentations online.  Always entertaining and informative.

He gave an overview of the Web 2.0 to Health 2.0 - Search, Social Networks and Tools.  And referred to the educated patient as one taking control of their own healthcare.

Some great takeaways:

High deductible health plans = pay more and get less.

Netherlands and Sweden have 90% of patients on EMRs - US has only 17%.

53% of adults were "cybercondriacs" in 2006.

Finished with new definition:  Patient Guided Care as opposed to Patient Centric Healthcare.

It was a great first day to ease into things.  Unfortunately my favorite Philly restaurant, Vetri, is closed on Mondays, but what are you going to do?