PWeR, Inc.

9Dec, 2015

U.S. Spending on RX 2014

By: Charity Darby | Tags: : FDA, Average Wholesale Price, Big Pharma, Congress, cost, insurance companies, Medicaid, Medicare, PMPM, prescription drugs, price

The United States Spends $297 Billion (USD) on Prescription Drugs, is that fair? As the headline read, in 2014 the United States spent $297,700,000,000 on prescription drugs. This is not only a staggering amount, but what is even more disturbing is we in the U.S. pay the greatest for the most advance drugs in the world. I come to this subject from many angles. One angle is my decade’s long use of prescriptions for chronic problems, the consumer whose life has been saved by those same innovative and revolutionary drugs. […]
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2Dec, 2015

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Who Pays For Healthcare?

By: Charity Darby | Tags: California Healthcare Foundation, CMS, GDP, Government, health spending, hospital care, investment, Medicaid, Medicare, pharamceuticals, public health activity, spending trends

As I reach another personal birthday, I look back at over half a century of personal experiences. Not so out of reach is my passion for healthcare, and that is prompting this discussion of what has happened to healthcare in the U.S. over that period. Recently the California Healthcare Foundation (www.chcf.org) published an incredibly interesting dynamic and informative report on healthcare cost, and the changes in cost and payments from 1960 to 2013 with some projections in to our current year. Wow! I urge anyone interested this industry to check […]
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23Nov, 2015

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Free Trade in Healthcare?

By: Charity Darby | Tags: Certificate of Need, competition, Diagnostic Related Group, facilities, Florida, Florida legislature, Medicaid, Medicare, pharmaceutical provision, U.S. Anti-Trust policies

For the last few months, we in the US, have been witnessing the discussion on the national stage of The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) . The TTP is a 12 nation agreement lead by the US Government, and potentially a landmark deal for President Obama and his administration. This agreement, subject to Congressional approval, was negotiated between the US and 11 other Pacific Rim nations – Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and Japan – and have been negotiating the TTP Free Trade Agreement since […]
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16Nov, 2015

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Consumerism in Healthcare 2016 and Beyond Pt. 4

By: Charity Darby | Tags: communications, consumer, healthcare, medical information, Patient centric, technology-driven

Part 4 / Final Over the first three parts of this series (I will admit here I would enjoy writing about this subject) we have explored the changes being driven by the emergence of Consumerism in Healthcare based around my experiences, more as a healthcare consumer than as a healthcare executive. This transformation is moving the center of healthcare from the provider and facility to the patient or consumer – the “patient centric” healthcare. I believe this trend is driven by several factors including demographics, the use and content of […]
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9Nov, 2015

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Consumerism in Healthcare 2016 and Beyond Pt. 3

By: Charity Darby | Tags: ACA, interconnectivity, technology

Part 3 In Part 1, we briefly discussed a few emerging trends in healthcare that seem to be gathering momentum; including the impact of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA). In Part 2, we discussed how the internet, and particularly Google, has changed “consumer engagement” and what the healthcare industry must invest to catch up with consumer demand for interconnectivity to “everything.” This trend is irreversible and even more likely to pick up steam in the next 4 years. Think of it in terms of a hockey stick; we’re […]
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3Nov, 2015

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Consumerism in Healthcare 2016 and Beyond Pt. 2

By: Charity Darby | Tags: ACA, American Medical Society, insurance, Internet Healthcare Solutions, MU-1, MU-2, platform

Part 2 In Part 1, we briefly discussed a few emerging trends in healthcare today that seem to be gathering momentum; including the impact of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA). This time, I want to expand on a recently released survey by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, “Healthcare Consumer Engagement. ” Let me begin with a brief story. In 2000, as I was beginning the transition from healthcare operations to healthcare technology, while incorporating a company called Internet Healthcare Solutions, (that has, after several reorganizations, become Quantum […]
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26Oct, 2015

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Consumerism in Healthcare 2016 and Beyond

By: Charity Darby | Tags: ACA, consumers, HHS, Medicaid, technology

Part 1 There are many trends emerging today in healthcare that seem to be gathering momentum. Some may credit changes to the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), some may credit changes in demographics, some the advancement in technology, while others the success of increasing consumer engagement. Regarding changes due to the ACA; yes, the ACA has disrupted some elements in healthcare, but in the totality of its context, the ACA seems to have brought about more challenges than solutions. It is self-evident that a lot of work remains and […]
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15Oct, 2015

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Did the world’s largest industry – by revenue – just get bigger?

By: Charity Darby | Tags: ancillary, economy, healthcare, investing, technology, Venture Capital

We have many times referred to the fact that healthcare is the world’s largest industry and is statistically destined to be one for generations to come. It has been hard for people to rationalize, thinking maybe food or even defense industries are larger; however, the facts are getting bigger. The world’s healthcare industry is estimated to have $7 trillion (USD) in total revenues, with the US accounting for about $3 trillion (USD); but according to a new study, the “Longevity Economy” is now a $7.1 trillion (USD) economy in the […]
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7Oct, 2015

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The Age of Data

By: Charity Darby | Tags: data, Doctors, drug-to-drug interaction, EHR, EMR, Goldman Sachs, Google, healthcare, hospitals, ICD-10, ICD-9, Numbers, Oscar, platform, Space

I recently read, with great joy, an article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that noted Google Capital, the internet company’s growth-equity fund, had “invested $32.5 million in Oscar Health Insurance Corporation”, a start-up in the healthcare insurance industry. There are a couple of interesting things about this article. First, this “start-up” is valued at $1.5 billion (USD) and second, according to the article,“Oscar amassed a war chest of more than $350 million in its bid to use data and technology to make the insurance business work more like an […]
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30Sep, 2015

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Healthcare Transparency

By: Charity Darby | Tags: allowed charges, billed charges, EHR, EMR, Florida, Governor, healthcare transparency

This week Florida Governor Rick Scott made headlines on the issue of healthcare transparency. The article that triggered this blog was published by “The News Service of Florida” and included an audio report . The issue of price transparency in healthcare has been a particular obsession of mine since the early 1990s, as I parachuted into healthcare operations. Imagine an engineer and commercial contractor having to deal with the effective collection rate for medical services with a net ranging in the 33 percentile of billed charges. It took a while […]
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