Before Attorneys’ Fee

Blue Cross to pay doctors $128 million | Miami Herald | 4.27.07

For a cash payment of $128 million, about 900,000 physicians nationwide have settled their disputes about slow pay or nonpayment of claims with 23 Blue Cross and Blue Shield organizations, the parties announced Friday.

Agreeing to end the 4-year-old class-action case based in a Miami federal court, the insurers agreed to implement ”important and valuable business practice changes,” streamlining claims communications between insurers and doctors.

…that’s $142.22 per physician. See here.

End of an Era

So true—good training, experiences, and memories—see GruntDoc.

Webiquette

A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs | NYT | 4.9.07

Is it too late to bring civility to the Web?

The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.

Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.

Draft Blogger’s Code of Conduct | O’Reilly Radar | 4.8.07

1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.
2. We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person.
3. We connect privately before we respond publicly.
4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
5. We do not allow anonymous comments.
6. We ignore the trolls.

Blogger’s Code of Conduct | Blogging Wikia

1. We take responsibility for our own words and reserve the right to restrict comments on our blog that do not conform to basic civility standards.
2. We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person.
3. If tensions escalate, we will connect privately before we respond publicly.
4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
5. We do not allow anonymous comments.
6. We ignore the trolls.
7. We encourage blog hosts to enforce more vigorously their terms of service.

What are your community guidelines? | blogher | 1.29.06

1. BlogHer embraces the spirit of civil disagreement.
2. BlogHer declines to publish unacceptable content.

EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers | EFF | 4.20.06

EFF created this guide, compiling a number of FAQs designed to help you understand your rights and, if necessary, defend your freedom.

About time for the comments, trackbacks are a whole other problem in the blogosphere—I’ve had to shutdown the trackbacks completely, too many URLs to blacklist.

Death for Profit

Some Hospitals Call 911 to Save Their Patients | NYT | 4.2.07

Should a hospital be able to handle a medical emergency?

The answer may seem self-evident. But patients at some hospitals may find the staff resorting to what someone might do at home in a crisis: call 911 for an ambulance.

That happened recently in Texas, where a 44-year-old man named Steve Spivey developed breathing problems after spine surgery. No physician was working there when the staff first recognized he was in trouble. They phoned 911, and he was taken to a nearby full-service hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.

…

The doctors who set up the specialized hospitals defend them by saying that by running the centers themselves and concentrating only on certain procedures, they can provide the best results for patients.

…

“The problem with physician-owned specialty hospitals is that decision-making is more likely to be driven by financial interest rather than patient interest,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who is a longtime critic of such hospitals.

“You see it in the cherry-picking of patients, and with policies that instruct hospital staff to call 911 for the local community hospital if emergency care is needed,” said Mr. Grassley, a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Finance, which oversees Medicare.

Supporting his effort is the committee’s chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, and Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California, who leads the subcommittee on health for the House Committee on Ways and Means.

Steve Spivey joins Helen Wilson—”there is something fundamentally wrong with a hospital that utilizes the EMS system to provide a critical service.”

Google TiSP

Google announces free in-home wireless broadband service | Google Press Release | 4.1.07

“Dark porcelain” project offers self-installed plumbing-based Internet access

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 1, 2007 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the launch of Google TiSP (BETA)™, a free in-home wireless broadband service that delivers online connectivity via users’ plumbing systems. The Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) project is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.

“We’ve got that whole organizing-the-world’s-information thing more or less under control,” said Google Co-founder and President Larry Page, a longtime supporter of so-called “dark porcelain” research and development. “What’s interesting, though, is how many different modalities there are for actually getting that information to you - not to mention from you.”

For years, data carriers have confronted the “last hundred yards” problem for delivering data from local networks into individual homes. Now Google has successfully devised a “last hundred smelly yards” solution that takes advantage of preexisting plumbing and sewage systems and their related hydraulic data-transmission capabilities. “There’s actually a thriving little underground community that’s been studying this exact solution for a long time,” says Page. “And today our Toilet ISP team is pleased to be leading the way through the sewers, up out of your toilet and - splat - right onto your PC.”

Users who sign up online for the TiSP system will receive a full home self-installation kit, which includes a spindle of fiber-optic cable, a TiSP wireless router, installation CD and setup guide. Home installation is a simple matter of GFlushing™ the fiber-optic cable down to the nearest TiSP Access Node, then plugging the other end into the network port of your Google-provided TiSP wireless router. Within sixty minutes, the Access Node’s crack team of Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs) should have your internet connection up and running.

“I couldn’t be more excited about, and am only slightly grossed out by, this remarkable new product,” said Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. “I firmly believe TiSP will be a breakthrough product, particularly for those users who, like Larry himself, do much of their best thinking in the bathroom.”

Interested consumers, contractually obligated partners and deeply skeptical and quietly competitive backbiters can learn more about TiSP at http://www.google.com/tisp/install.html.

New meaning to “now in HD.”

eRx

Industry Initiative Plans to Give E-Rx to All Physicians | Health Data Management | 3.31.07

Several health care industry stakeholders have banded together to offer free electronic prescribing software to every physician in the United States in a broad effort to help reduce medication errors through widespread adoption of the technology.

The National E-Prescribing Patient Safety Initiative is a $100 million, five-year project designed to enable all physicians to access and use a standard electronic prescribing system via an Internet connection.

The initiative is being funded by several major technology companies, including Allscripts LLC, Microsoft Corp., Dell Inc., Fujitsu Computers of America, Cisco Systems Inc., Wolters-Kluwer Health Inc., Google and SureScripts.

Finally!