Hospitals Begin Data-Mining Patients 162
schwit1 (797399) sends word of a new and exciting use for all of the data various entities are collecting about you. From the article: You may soon get a call from your doctor if you've let your gym membership lapse, made a habit of ordering out for pizza or begin shopping at plus-sized stores. That's because some hospitals are starting to use detailed consumer data to create profiles on current and potential patients to identify those most likely to get sick, so the hospitals can intervene before they do. Acxiom Corp. (ACXM) and LexisNexis are two of the largest data brokers who collect such information on individuals. They say their data are supposed to be used only for marketing, not for medical purposes or to be included in medical records. While both sell to health insurers, they said it's to help those companies offer better services to members.
Anyone up for HIPAA? (Score:3, Interesting)
Something I'd like to see (Score:5, Interesting)
It wouldn't cost much to implement, and would be a trove of info. Have a public structure derived from the national healthcare in charge of it which enforces strong anonymity, and provide anonymity data to big data analysts. It wouldn't take long to figure out scandals such as the Mediator. I mean, if you can't take ONE minute to answer some questions that WILL help others, why should you get free health care ?
Re:Doesn't give warm fuzzies (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Doesn't give warm fuzzies (Score:5, Interesting)
Angie's List was created because separating the lousy doctors from the very few good ones is almost impossible. The AMA has lobbied successfully to make it illegal for a patient to find out the malpractice history of physicians.
If you're looking for a new doctor, the best thing you can do is talk to some local nurses. They know which ones are on the ball, and which ones are flat out dangerous.
Re:Doesn't give warm fuzzies (Score:4, Interesting)
You're still thinking rationaly. You can't do that around these people.
Re:Doesn't give warm fuzzies (Score:2, Interesting)
I work IT at a large practice for a specific uncommon specialty. It employs 30+ doctors. There's quite a range of different types... I don't know if it's representative of doctors as a whole but it is humanizing indeed.
There's the ancient high-brow jerk who disdains to speak with a "computer nerd with no degree" but the guy knows his medicine, despite the attitude. There's the cute lady who muddles through just barely, but has great "people skills". There's the hot-shot european-educated surgeon with a list of demands three pages long before he even does an evaluation. There's a totally chill unassuming doctor with funny posters that the other doctors make jokes about, but whom I know reads through medical journals like some of them read tumblr. And so on.
Computer skills and inclinations vary wildly too, despite my expectations there would be a higher overall competency.
Re:HIPAA? (Score:2, Interesting)
This seems as good a place as any to bring this up. Have other people been getting creepy robocalls from people claiming to be affiliated with their insurance companies?
CSB: Robocall from a 'bot that knows my name, and it claims I need to fill out a survey for my health insurer. I ignore it. Bot calls back a few months later and says it just wants to be sure I'm getting the health care I need, etc.
I do some digging and discover a company called Inovalon (formerly MedAssurant). The deal appears to be that because the insurance companies can't do medical underwriting anymore, they give their customer data to Inovalon [washingtonpost.com]. Inovalon then tries to harass customers into getting a "personal health visit" either at a physician's office, or at your home (small PDF of FAQs for physicians [anthem.com]).
Of note from the PDF: "What are the qualifications of the medical professional who will be evaluating my patient if they have a Personal Health Visit with someone else? The assessment is limited to a physical exam; treatment will not be provided. The medical professional will be a licensed physician, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant hired to perform this service. It is important to note that this exam is in addition to any regular visits the member has with you and is not a substitute for the memberâ(TM)s annual physical examination" / "Will I be paid? No. We have contracted with Inovalon to perform these visits. Since there are no additional resources required from you or your staff, no compensation will be provided to you. After the examination is complete, the documentation from the exam will be sent to you so you can better coordinate your patientâ(TM)s care."
Translation: Medspeak: "Go see your doctor, a doctor, any doctor, because an annual checkup is a good idea." Marketspeak: "It'll keep you healthy!" Truth: "See a doctor that your insurance company chooses, so that it gets all the data and we know who to drop from coverage when/if PPACA is repealed. We can't do medical underwriting anymore, but we can ask nicely and maybe get the data anyways."
CSB: Zero health problems for 15+ years, annual physicals every 3-5 years, I take my own vitals because blood pressure and blood sugar levels are trivially cheap to measure at home. Zero claims to insurance. Zero contact with insurance company for that entire time until this year when I switched from employer's expensive gold-plated plan to cheaper bronze ACA plan. Since then, six robocalls. Next open enrollment period, I'm seriously considering calling them up and telling them in most cordial fashion to go fuck themselves.
Re:Doesn't give warm fuzzies (Score:2, Interesting)
"Lots of math. It involves looking at historical data, attempting to identify patterns and critical factors, then using that model for predictive purposes."
This will fail (to help people). It may be useful as exploratory analysis, but without theory backing it up it is nothing but curve fitting. It will be even worse than current epidemiology (which has a horrible track record, possibly even worse than psychology) that is at least somewhat informed by theory and expert opinion. This new way of incorporating consumer habits is just adding in additional assumptions to mislead the interpreters. Plus, we need to get rid of strawman NHST before anything like this can be implemented intelligently.
Now, this may be able to make some people some money, but help patients...no. Unless you have access to a more detailed account of what is planned beyond mathigic and it differs greatly from what I suspect, it will not help patients.
Re:Doesn't give warm fuzzies (Score:5, Interesting)
What frightens me is the idea that they could get the wrong information and give that to my doctor or insurance company.
To make matters worse, it seems impossible to get erroneous information removed. For example: My wife was misdiagnosed with asthma by an allergist. From then on, until she died 10 years later, every doctor asked her about her asthma, and she would tell them about the error. Even now, 8 years *after* she died, I still get flyers in the mail from BC/BS about asthma addressed to her.