How much does Huntsville Hospital charge for procedures? You’d be surprised!

Thanks to a newly introduced aspect of ObamaCare, hospitals are now mandated to publicly show how much they charge for procedures.

Aren’t you glad?

I mean really… who goes to a grocery store or gas station and doesn’t know how much they’ll pay?

Part of market-based competition includes

The Digital Pushback: Resistance to i-Progress in e-Medicine

What would it be like if you could to to your clinician’s office, and within a few minutes have a complete analysis of your blood done to detect whatever bug might be growing in there simply by the DNA of the organism?

It’s being doing now.

But why is there resistance to progress?

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The Wireless Revolution Hits Medicine

• Updated April 16, 2012, 11:42 a.m. ET

Eric Topol talks about the upheaval that’s coming as the digitization of health care meets the smartphone

By RON WINSLOW

After 14 years as chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, Eric Topol moved to La Jolla, Calif., in 2006 to become director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, which was established to apply genetic discoveries to personalized medicine. Three years later, he helped launch the West Wireless Health Institute, for which he is vice chairman and which is investigating use of wireless technology in the delivery of health care.

The convergence of these two fields—genomics, marked by the rapidly plummeting cost of sequencing a person’s entire genetic code, and wireless, with its flurry of innovative health-care apps—led Dr. Topol to write “The Creative Destruction of Medicine,” a book that offers an illuminating perspective on the coming digitization of health care. It’s also a reminder that while medicine is one of the globe’s premier drivers of innovation, it is also a conservative culture that now finds itself buffeted by transformational change.

The Wall Street Journal’s Ron Winslow discussed the implications with Dr. Topol. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation:

Unnecessary Boundaries

WSJ: Let’s start with the title. “Creative Destruction” is a provocative term. What needs to be destroyed?

DIGITAL DOCTOR Eric Topol advocates the transformative power of technology like the MinIon, a disposable device being developed to sequence parts of an individual’s DNA; a mobile patient monitor enabled by an iPhone app; the Zio patch, worn above the heart to check for irregular heartbeats; and a contact lens embedded with a chip to measure eye pressure for people with or at risk of glaucoma.

DR. TOPOL: There are two levels. One is that in medicine, everything we do essentially is

Huntsville Hospital… all that AND a bag of chips? Wow! …NOT QUITE!

Most folks don’t know it, but Huntsville Hospital is NOT, has not ever been, does not meet criteria for, and is not making any plans to obtain or become:

1.) a certified or verified Trauma Center;
2.) meet the a) American College of Surgeons, or, b) American Trauma Society qualifications for Trauma Center status;
3.) an Academic Medical Center;
4.) university affiliate;
5.) teaching hospital;
6.) research center; nor
7.) Nursing Magnet Hospital.

So what? What does that mean for you, your family, friends and others in this part of the Tennessee Valley?

American Medical Association, AARP OKs Obama Health Reform Bill

Saying “We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” J. James Rohack, MD, President of the American Medical Association, reiterated organizational support last Friday for the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962/H.R. 3961),  which is often referred to as President Obama’s healthcare overhaul bill.

Dr. Rohack said the AMA Board of Trustees voted unanimous approval after reviewing the House of Representatives’ reconciliation bill, added that the bill wasn’t perfect saying, “This is certainly not the bill we would have written.” [ed. note: Nothing in this world is perfect.]

Joining Dr. Rohack, senior staff and board certified cardiologist at Scott & White Clinic in Temple, Texas, whom became the 164th president of the American Medical Association (AMA) in June 2009, was the non-partisan, 40 Million member strong, American Association of Retired Persons.

The Scott & White Clinic is a 636-bed not-for-profit, Level I trauma center and teaching hospital, which also operates