Virtual Medical Center Opens
Mediconsult.com, a new company with offices in Bermuda, Boston, Montreal and Toronto has announced an Internet-based "virtual medical clinic" that promises to have a dramatic impact on the quality of medical information available to consumers of healthcare services.
Internet users worldwide can now receive a wealth of free medical information tailored to the needs of the consumer. The company's first 10 Web sites (http://www.mediconsult.com) were launched July 1 and already receive more than 10,000 visitors per week.
The topics on which users can receive information relate to some of the most common and pressing medical problems, including AIDS, allergies, arthritis, asthma, breast cancer, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, pregnancy complications and prostate cancer.
Hospital Marketers Take Cue from Mickey
Marketers from the Veterans Affairs hospital in Buffalo, N.Y., have taken a lesson in customer service from Disney World. That doesn't mean patients are hugged by a mute, supersized mouse or hear "It's a Small World" played incessantly over the intercom.
Beginning this month instead:
- Areas of the hospital are tidied by groups of employee volunteers.
- Greeters meet patients at door.
- An employee car-pool program has freed up parking for patients.
- Shuttles pick up patients at their cars and deliver them to the door in inclement weather.
- New phone etiquette has been instituted.
These are the latest of movements designed to make veterans' health services more competitive with other public and private hospitals as a means to attract more patients. (VA hospital 716/876-6754)
New Book Takes A Worldly View On Healthcare
A new book by a Canadian health care reformer and physician hopes to prescribe a cure for what ails healthcare in many countries, including Canada. Dr. Larry Bryan's book, A Design for the Future of Health Care, ($19.95) aims to provide a framework for an integrated delivery systems. For more information call Jennifer Schipper at Environics Communications (416) 920-9000, ext. 253.
AAHP Gets Grant For PR
The American Assn. of Health Plans received a $1 million grant from Merck-Medco Managed Care Inc. and $750,000 from Marion Merrell Dow [MKC]for AAHP's public relations campaign to improve the managed care industry's image and for educational work, coalition research. (AAHP, 202/675-9087)
California Officials Lift Ban on Marketing Fraud
Less than two months after announcing a rare crackdown on Medi-Cal marketing fraud, state regulators have quietly lifted an enrollment ban on a California HMO whose marketers allegedly offered doctors kickbacks for enrolling Medi-Cal patients. The Medi-C al health maintenance organization, Universal Health, that serves roughly 80,000 Medi-Cal recipients in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties, was permitted to resume enrolling new members as of May 14. Healthcare advocates, who applauded the state Department of Health Services for imposing the ban in March, blasted the state's decision to lift the freeze so quickly.
Advocates for the poor have frequently complained that the state is insufficiently monitoring fraudulent marketing in the Medi-Cal program and is too slow to act to stop abuses. When regulators have stepped in to halt abuses, these advocates contend, they have imposed only the slightest penalties.
The seven-week freeze on Universal's enrollment is "a slap on the wrist that sends the health plans a very clear message that they can do business the way they want with very little interference from the state," said Jeanne Finberg, a staff attorney with Consumers Union in San Francisco. (Consumers Union, 310/897-6755)
Texas Writer Wins Award For Story On HMO Doc
Texas freelance writer Mimi Swartz won a national magazine award earlier this month for a story about how a doctor had seen his practice transform in only a few years from one of an independent practitioner to that of an employee of HMOs and insurance companies. Swartz's piece, "Not What the Doctor Ordered," won the award for Public Interest from the Austin-based Texas Monthly's eighth National Magazine Award. (Texas Monthly, 512/320-6900)