Monday, June 15, 2009

11:15am Obama live from Chicago today -- ReachMD XM160 to broadcast President's major health care speech to physicians

I thought you all would want to know that ReachMD is going to be broadcasting President Obama's health care speech LIVE today.

The speech to America's physicians starts at 11:15am CT.

XM subscribers are invited to tune in to the President's address on ReachMD XM160.

If you are not a subscriber to XM, you can listen to the ReachMD broadcast of the President's speech online at www.reachmd.com

ReachMD is covering this event live from the convention floor at the American Medical Association annual meeting. ReachMD will also have extensive post-speech interviews and reaction by physicians and other medical professionals to the speech.

1 comment:

Layne said...

What were your reactions to the President healthcare speech in Chicago today?
• A private electronic system of medical record keeping will only work if EVERY healthcare provider participates. If there is incentive for every HCP to move to electronic record keeping I believe that the benefits mentioned (less paper pushing, less administration cost, better access for Drs to patient information) will be realized.
• While I agree with the President that spiraling costs are due to demographics of an older, sicker society, and the bulk of increased cost is due to the nature of our healthcare delivery system spending lots of money that doesn’t necessarily make our people healthier, I wonder how he intends to scale back defensive medicine. He commented that it’s a priority to work with the AMA on this, but I’m interested in knowing more about how he plans to achieve this goal.
• Affordable Medical Education will allow greater access to the field of medicine and will increase the competition in the industry which will hopefully lead to greater discovery and advancements in the medical world.
• The introduction of competitive bidding for private insurance companies may initially save money for the insurance payer however the implications for what will be covered by insurance might negatively impact the cost of healthcare.
• By gradually reducing payments to hospitals for treating uninsured patients those hospitals will be forced to turn away uninsured patients or face increased financial difficulty.
• Communication within the medical community defiantly has room for improvement which should translate into more effective treatment. I’m interested to learn more about how the President intents to enhance communication quality of medical information (ie. what treatments’ are most effective). Increased communication will help replicate best practices and hopefully the government and payers can help incentivize excellence and close cost disparities resulting in lower healthcare costs.
• AMA has joined with hospitals, labor unions, insurers, medical device manufactures and drug companies to work together to cut national spending by $2 Trillion over the next decade relative to what it would have otherwise been, to bring down costs and cut premiums. These partnerships should bring many synergies, in addition to the financial savings, to the healthcare industry.


Implications for R&D of new medicines?
• The government plans to invest more in preventive care and wellness programs, which implies that there will be more R&D focused in these areas.
• President Obama wants to figure out what works and encourage implementation into practice and said that the government will invest in research.
• Building a stronger economy will help increase philanthropy for R&D.
• FDA will likely develop a pathway to introduce generic biologic drugs, providing more competition for branded drugs.


Implications for advancing care for patients with rare diseases?
• If you like your doctor you will be able to keep your doctor.
• If you like your healthcare plan, you will be able to keep your healthcare plan.
• The government will provide incentives for physicians teaming up which should help provide better patient care.
• If doctors will be reimbursed based on patient outcomes, care for patients with rare diseases should improve.
• If we successfully move to a private electronic system of medical record keeping doctors will have better access to patient information.
• If insurance is made available to everyone, primary care doctors might be too busy taking care of relatively healthy patients to take the extra time to diagnose patients with rare diseases.