GE Moore MD's blog

On the Veranda of the Medical Home

In prior blogs, I’ve written about the need for our heatlh care system to tear down the silos. One area of this is the use of health risk and social/behavioral assessments - what Sustainable Health Systems calls health ecology. There is lots of good activity going on in these domains, but it’s as if nobody is looking from the 40,000 foot view, and particularly not with the view of how the pieces will fit together when it’s all done.

ROI on Annual Wellness Visits: Have Your Cake and Eat it Too?

ROI from worksite wellness programs is difficult to measure, is generally positive, and varies widely by type of program. Most authorities quote a range of saving $3.50 - $5.00 for each dollar spent. A great buy, but employers tend to follow the lead of the C-suite - investing in wellness if leadership “Believes” in wellness, not investing if leadership are "Non-Believers".

But what about physician wellness visits? Are those a good buy?

Of Apple Watches and Dreams

This week, Apple announced their forthcoming watch. I'm skeptical that this new wearable tool will be the 'next big thing' in health, in part because of the pricetag - $349 and a new iPhone 6 (a minimum of another $200 and a 2-year contract with AT&T). A couple of colleagues rebutted me on the price tag issue, noting that lots of lower middle-class and poor folks have what one might call fancy stuff - smartphones and flat-screen TVs (aren’t TVs almost all flat screens now?). One of these colleagues is African-American and does research among urban poor.

Health Ecology as the Actual Cause of Chronic Disease and Mortality

A recent headline in the Times of London (England) stated, “One in Three Now at Risk as Diabetes Levels Soar”. One public health official quoted in the article said "If a doctor sits you down and says 'If you carry on they way you are going, I believe within two years you will have diabetes, or heart disease, or cancer,' you will get people to sit up and take notice”. Take notice? Maybe.

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