As Pinterest audience rises to 15% of Internet users, are healthcare and pharma presence growing too?

This Week's Healthcare Online News
Med City News
As Pinterest audience rises to 15% of Internet users, are healthcare and pharma presence growing too?
February 18, 2013
by Stephanie Baum
Pinterest has reached a milestone in its growth. According to a Pew Internet report, the percentage of Internet users that view and post images on the picture-led social network rivals Twitter (15 percent for Pinterest vs. Twitter’s 16 percent). But what are the implications for the healthcare industry? The number of hospitals that at the very least have a Pinterest account has certainly increased in the past year since the last time I took a serious look. There are 42 children’s hospitals alone. I counted 50 health systems. The Mayo Clinic and its affiliates have seven separate accounts. The Cleveland Clinic is up there too. And providers like Tufts Medical Center are making much greater use of video. On a board devoted to cancer, a physician in one video describes signs and symptoms of skin cancer, another board details various heart conditions, another provides warning signs of a stroke.
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Fierce Health IT
CHIME CEO: How health IT can save the economy
Feb,15,2013
By:+Dan Bowman
Although increasing membership and bolstering public policy efforts are top of mind for newly named College of Healthcare Information Management Executives CEO Russell Branzell, he has loftier goals for the organization--and the health IT industry. "We have a duty and an obligation to help transform healthcare through the application of HIT," Branzell (right) told FierceHealthIT in an exclusive interview. "On an even more macro level, HIT, by saving healthcare, will be responsible for saving our national economy. That might sound grandiose, but I really think I need to take my role that seriously."
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MobiHealthNews
Free online weight loss community SparkPeople improves outcomes in peer-reviewed study
Feb,19,2013
by:+Jonah Comstock
A researcher at the University of Texas has published a study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research looking at efficacy of a free online weight loss program. The study looked at 1,258 randomly selected users of SparkPeople.com and found that those who entered their weight into the site at least four times per month lost an average of 11 pounds per month more than those that didn’t, and those who made at least one post on the site’s forum during the time they used the site lost over three pounds more than those that didn’t. (Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the weight entry as four times total, rather than per month.)
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iHealthBeat
Walmart, Sam's Club To Deploy 2,500 Self-Service Health Kiosks
Feb,20,2013
by:+Staff
Self-service kiosks that aim to boost consumer health are being deployed in thousands of stores across the U.S., Kasier Health News reports.

Kiosk Details
Next month, Walmart and Sam's Club are scheduled to debut 2,500 of the kiosks developed by Duluth, Ga.-based SoloHealth.

The kiosks will offer consumers access to various health tests, such as: Blood pressure;
Eye sight;
Obesity.

The devices also can advise patients on:
Diet;
Locating a doctor;
Pain management;
Vitamins.
Read more

Web Docs Network

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Home-Based Business Blog

Welcome to our Home Based-Business Blog
Every Friday Berggren Marketing will be featuring article about small and Home-Based Business to help start or grow your business. Plus feature a business that is looking for Entrepreneurs to become affiliates for their product or service.

Boston.com
Feb,21,2013
by:+Slava Menn
An entrepreneurial MBA program is the best start-up training
Between ages 18 and 28, I’ve applied to MIT four times and have been accepted once. Yet, in my very first week at MIT Sloan in September of 2009, a 29-year-old guest speaker brought my lifelong dream into question. Aaron Patzer told a packed auditorium of start-up-loving MBAs about the two-year journey that lead to Intuit’s $170 million dollar acquisition of his baby, Mint.com. In two years, I would be $170,000 in debt. I asked myself, “Do I really need a MBA to launch a successful startup?”
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SiteProNews
How to Create a Successful Facebook Business With These Essential Tools
Feb,22,2013
by:+Heather Koenig
Facebook offers a multitude of tools that will help your business excel such as Social Ads, Pages, Beacon, Insights, Platform, and Polls. These tools are there to help you in building your brand on your Facebook Page while attracting visitors and future clients. It’s wise to start by learning all about these tools. This will save you a lot of time in the long run. In the following section you’ll learn how this all ties together which will show you how essential these tools are in running a successful Facebook business. You can learn all about these tools by going to the business section at Facebook.com.
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Basic Accounting Help.com
Tips on Managing your Biz Receipts

Feb,19,2013
I put keeping track of my business receipts... in the same category as a trip to the dentist. However, I do realize the importance of good business records management, especially come tax time.Case in point...a couple received every small business owner’s worst nightmare...an audit letter from the government. To make matters worse, they couldn't find all of their business receipts and some that they could find...they couldn't explain what they were for.The IRS’s response, ”We don’t care if your cat ate your receipts...without them...you cannot take the deductions and you now owe us money...lots of money”. Here are some business records management tips for you to keep in mind, so you will not ever find yourself in that same predicament
Read Report

Inc.com
The Real Reason Your Marketing Doesn't Work
Feb,20,2013
By+James Archer
When people talk about their company's target audience, you typically hear things like "individuals between the ages of 13 and 25 who enjoy playing video games and have a mobile phone," or "active consumers between the ages of 25 and 45 who like to hike and rock climb" or "procurement officers at Fortune 1000 companies."

These descriptions all follow the traditional format taught in marketing classes around the world, and, sadly, they're all nearly worthless because they provide almost no relevant information for making strategic decisions. Every year, countless executives and marketing directors dutifully write up plans with these kinds of empty descriptions of their target audiences. And every year, these same companies fumble around trying to figure out why they're not clicking with their customers.
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Featured Company: Web Docs Network

Being healthy should be a natural right that everyone is entitled to. Lack of access and information or financial limitations should never be allowed to further fuel the fear and uncertainty that prevents one from achieving their highest levels of health.
WebDocsNetwork was created to make life easier, better, and most importantly, healthier. To re-distribute healthcare and improve quality and access for everyone. Our vision and mission is to provide people from all over the globe, access to U.S. licensed, board-certified physicians.
Healthcare when you need it, where you need it. We provide individuals unlimited real-time, immediate interaction with a national network of physicians via web-cam. phone or secure e-mail. Access 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.

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Families Push for Better Sharing of Health Care Research Information

This Week's Online Healthcare News
iHealthbeat
Feb,20,2013
By;+Wall Street Journal

Families Push for Better Sharing of Health Care Research Information
Parents of children with rare and debilitating diseases are urging researchers to share their patient data so children are not required to participate in so many studies, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Background
In the early stage of research, natural-history studies are used to gain better insight into how diseases progress without treatment and to track different symptoms. Because the pool of people with rare diseases is small, patients often are needed to participate in multiple studies.

In a conference call last month, Stuart and Jennifer Siedman -- who have a 16-year-old son with Sanfilippo syndrome -- told researchers that fatigue, emotions and travel challenges take a toll on participants in natural-history studies. Federal agencies -- such as NIH and FDA -- also have begun to support the idea of encouraging researchers to share patients' medical data.

Read more

Health Data Management
The Individuals Underlying Population Health
Feb,20,2013
By:+Elizabeth Gardner
Population health starts and ends with individuals. Carol Cain, director of clinical integration for the Permanente Federation and Kaiser Permanente’s Care Management Institute plans to illustrate that point using her audience as an example.

“We’re starting to collect exercise data on every visit,” she says, referring to the millions of members that Kaiser serves. “We can tell folks who don’t have any medical conditions that, based on our data, they are likely to get a medical condition in three to five years if they don’t exercise. We can look at their needs for staying active, and then think about a care delivery program that would respond to those. If you have two jobs and two kids at home, that’s the universe you live in and we won’t get anywhere pretending that you’re going to go running.” She plans to end her session by getting the audience to analyze the individual and collective needs of the group “people who attend conferences.”
Read Report

Med City News
U.S. to operate 26 state health exchanges with little local help
Feb,19, 2013
By:+Staff
WASHINGTON, Feb 19 (Reuters) - The Obama administration said on Tuesday that it will operate federal online health insurance marketplaces in 26 of the 50 U.S. states with little or no input from local state officials.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that a total of 24 states, including six with Republican governors, plus the District of Columbia, are on track to run their own marketplaces, known as healthcare exchanges, or to do so in partnership with the federal government.
The new tally, which follows a Feb. 15 deadline for states to request a federal partnership exchange, underscores the logistical challenge facing the administration as it moves to set up federal marketplaces less than eight months before the Oct. 1 opening of plan enrollment.
"No matter where a qualified consumer lives, he or she will have access to coverage through a marketplace," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a government blog post.
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Modern Healthcare
The charity offering
Despite disparity in margins, rich and poor hospitals offer similar levels of subsidized care
Feb,16,2013
By+Melanie Evans
n 2010, Memorial Medical Center, a small hospital in rural San Augustine, Texas, saw its financial losses grow along with demand from patients who could not afford to pay. The hospital's subsidies for free medical care to low-income patients swallowed 4.5% of its budget by the end of the year.
One of Oklahoma's largest hospitals spent a similar share of its fiscal 2010 budget—roughly 5%—to cover the cost of medical care for patients who were unable to pay. But St. John's Medical Center in Tulsa did so with one enviable difference: The hospital finished 2010 solidly in the black with a margin of 10.8%.
Both are among the roughly 60% of private U.S. hospitals that receive local, state and federal tax breaks in exchange for operations that benefit the community.

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Web Docs Network

We provide unlimited access to U.S. licensed physicians via web-cam, phone, or secure e-mail. Immediate access available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Being healthy should be a natural right that everyone is entitled to. Lack of access and information or financial limitations should never be allowed to further fuel the fear and uncertainty that prevents one from achieving their highest levels of health.
WebDocsNetwork was created to make life easier, better, and most importantly, healthier. To re-distribute healthcare and improve quality and access for everyone. Our vision and mission is to provide people from all over the globe, access to U.S.
licensed, board-certified physicians. Healthcare when you need it, where you need it. We provide individuals unlimited real-time, immediate interaction with a national network of physicians via web-cam. phone or secure e-mail. Access 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.

Inviter's Name: Keith Berggren
Join Now at http://www.webdocsnetwork.com/chicago

Illinois joins feds as exchange deadline nears

Modern Healthcare.com
Illinois joins feds as exchange deadline nears
By Rich Daly
February 13, 2013
Illinois became the third state to receive conditional approval to launch a health insurance exchange in partnership with the federal government less than eight months from now. The announcement came days before a Feb. 15 deadline for states to apply to participate in that model in 2014. The deadline is three months later than originally planned. The Obama administration extended the window in November to give more time to states with newly elected governors and others that awaited the presidential election outcome to choose a direction. The partnership model is one of three options for health insurance exchanges—recently rebranded by HHS as marketplaces—required by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. States also can apply to operate their own marketplaces or they can take no action and default to a federally operated exchange. Read More

Med City News
Personal QR codes could help first responders get vital patient information
February 18, 2013
by Stephanie Baum
A first responder team responds to a 911 call to find an unresponsive victim. They scan the QR code on the person’s phone or card and get information volunteered by the patient when they register such as underlying conditions, medications he or she is taking and allergies. That was the winning idea for the second Startup Weekend Health held in Philadelphia.

The idea behind the QR code scan is that it would be a personalized system to reduce the risk of medical errors by avoiding medication or treatment that could conflict with medication the patient is taking, pre-existing conditions or allergies. It would also simultaneously alert emergency contacts through a text message

Read More

Fierce Health IT
National Library of Medicine looks to social media to help it improve
February 14, 2013
By Susan D. Hall
The National Library of Medicine has put out a call for a software system to mine social media for insight into how users access its data and how it can improve. It plans to scrutinize social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as blogs, news sites, discussion boards and video- and image-sharing sites, according to a solicitation. "The worldwide explosion in the use of social media provides a unique opportunity for sampling sentiment and use patterns of NLM's 'customers' and for comparing NLM to other sources of health-related information," the solicitation says.

Read Report

Fierce Health Payer
One-third of payers exceed reform's out-of-pocket limits
February 12, 2013
By Dina Overland
More than one out of every three insurers has out-of-pocket costs for individual health plans that exceed new limits set under the reform law, according to a new study from technology company HealthPocket. After analyzing government data on more than 9,700 health insurance policies, HealthPocket concluded 36 percent of individual plans surpass the reform law's $6,300 out-of-pocket cap. Out-of-pocket costs averaged $6,019 in 2012, but varied from $3,000 to as much as $10,000 a year, according to the study. Insurers selling plans in 15 states exceeded the reform law's out-of-pocket limits, with insurers in five states--Alabama, Florida, Oregon, Vermont and Washington--surpassing that mark by 28 percent, Albuquerque Business First reported. Read More

WebDocsNetwork


We provide unlimited access to U.S. licensed physicians via web-cam, phone, or secure e-mail. Immediate access available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Being healthy should be a natural right that everyone is entitled to. Lack of access and information or financial limitations should never be allowed to further fuel the fear and uncertainty that prevents one from achieving their highest levels of health.

WebDocsNetwork was created to make life easier, better, and most importantly, healthier. To re-distribute healthcare and improve quality and access for everyone. Our vision and mission is to provide people from all over the globe, access to U.S. licensed, board-certified physicians.

Healthcare when you need it, where you need it. We provide individuals unlimited real-time, immediate interaction with a national network of physicians via web-cam. phone or secure e-mail. Access 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.

Inviter's Name: Keith Berggren
Join Now at http://www.webdocsnetwork.com/chicago

Study Finds Similar Outcomes From Online, In-Person Doctor Visits

Study Finds Similar Outcomes From Online, In-Person Doctor Visits
Online physician consultations for uncomplicated conditions produce similar outcomes as in-person office visits, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, Reuters reports.

Study Details
For the study, researchers compared data on physician e-visits and in-person doctors' visits for patients with sinus infections and urinary tract infections between January 2010 and May 2011. Of the more than 8,000 consultations examined in the study, more than 90% occurred in person

Key Findings
The study found that for both groups, 7% or less of patients returned to the doctor within three weeks for the same condition, suggesting that online consultations did not have higher rates of misdiagnosis or treatment failure. In addition, the researchers estimated that treating a patient with a UTI cost an average of $74 per e-visit, compared with $93 per office visit. The researchers wrote, "There are several potential advantages of e-visits, including convenience and efficiency (avoiding travel and time), and lower costs," as well as allowing patients to meet with their primary care physician instead of emergency department doctors. Read Report at iHealthbeat