Month: October 2015

Recon takes an analytical look behind select developments in healthcare

Convenience care, telemedicine and breaking down barriers to geographic competition – a speculation

A few problems Geographic barriers to the entry have long protected providers from best-in-class competition.  Provider consolidation – theoretically a logical response to the current operating environment — reinforces these barriers by locking up referrals and making systems too big / too few to fail.  Instead of pushing providers aggressively on value, payers and regulators may end up nursing underperforming systems (e.g. Highmark’s bail-out of the West Penn Allegheny system) and discouraging disruptive entrants for fear of unintended damage to the stability of the local provider infrastructure.  Even if consolidation is

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Working paper: the coming age of algorithmic medicine

Summary In this working paper, we develop the following thesis. In the not so distant future (a decade or two), medicine will be largely governed by algorithms — highly deterministic clinical pathways characterized by a high level of reproducibility of care — that will be developed and improved by providers. These algorithms will include individual patient preference branch-points but not individual provider preference.  As a result, payers and providers will agree on coverage on the basis of a set of algorithms and a process of how they should evolve; providers

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The Ochsner Health Network: has Ochsner gone “a hospital too far”?

Over eight months between October 2014 and June of this year, Ochsner formalized alliances with five major provider systems in Louisiana. The first wave (with St. Tammany Parish, Terrebonne and Slidell) reinforced Ochsner’s stronghold in New Orleans. The second wave (with Lafayette General and CHRISTUS) secured pathways to markets west along I-10 and the coast and northwest along the I-49 corridor to Shreveport. This collection of alliances — dubbed the Ochsner Health Network (OHN) — is effectively statewide with ~30% of the hospital beds and ~30% of the physicians. Key

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