Feb 2, 2009 1
Editor’s Note
| WE ARE PROUD to issue Volume 2 of the International Journal of Medical Banking. Each year I’m surprised by the support we get from so many authors and we often wish we could include them all but costs and wishes sometimes don’t add up — until now. Welcome to the first “green edition” of the Journal! Yes, there are archive and “e-costs” but it sure beats trying to publish everything on paper! And its in keeping with the 2009 Institute’s theme “Creating an Electronic Medical Banking Community”.
Even with the e-version, the organization, editing, review and research required to produce the Journal is daunting. That’s why I want to particularly thank my associate editor this year, Patricia Alfareet at the University of Missouri and the professors who guided her at the University’s Health Management and Informatics Group. In addition, our Peer Review Council deserves a lot of credit and our production staff - Maria, Patti, Scott and Ed. Ed Dodds blogged the Journal and he’s done an incredible job (Ed also blogs MBlog and he has in own blog called Conmergence)!
A key article for the 09 Institute was compiled by yours truly from literature written by Dr. Jerome Grossman, the former head of Tufts-New England Medical Center and a professor at Harvard Kennedy School. I had the fortune of having breakfast with Dr. Grossman and hearing him discuss a “Health Fed” concept - the same idea we’re taking up with the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center in our 09 Keynote Panel. I would have loved to hear him talk about this but shockingly, Dr. Grossman passed away on April 1, 2008, the very day I asked him to keynote our 2008 Institute. He was a sound voice in healthcare and a preeminent visionary who will be sorely missed. Members at MBProject have long felt that a common platform for convening competing healthcare stakeholders is overdue - a Federal Reserve in healthcare. I asked Dr. Grossman (who was chair of the Federal Reserve in Boston for sometime), if the Federal Reserve could implement this within their system, leveraging their many councils to gain and implement established market feeback venues but he said they felt it could affect their “brand”. At that time it was running high. Today with the global credit crisis the Federal Reserve may well consider it - bringing two broken systems together for the public good. In fact, when challenged to stimulate their economy, China recently determined to invest in healthcare because they believe that as healthcare of the population goes, so goes the economy. We would do well to listen. A Keynote Panelist, David Mirvis, MD, University of TN in Memphis, co-authored with Dr. Bloom of Harvard University, an interesting piece on this topic that we couldn’t get released in time for this edition entitled “Population Health and Economic Development in the United States” (JAMA, 2008). There are good reasons why the Federal Reserve might consider this. First they can provide a walk-in platform, second transaction standardization could occur more rapidly with stricter rules and sanctions driven on the banking side and last, policy issues that impact both banking and healthcare are morphing. FACTA’s Red Flag Rules is a good example of this (see TransUnion’s white paper on this topic). In 2001 HIPAA’s Privacy Rule levied a broad impact on banking. In 2009, the banking industry’s Red Flag Rules returned the favor. As I said at a policy talk in DC, “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”. This is bound to happen as long as we fail to coordinate the policy in the two areas. Policy “friction” costs money! Other groups agree, like EPIC (a privacy group in DC) that testified to this effect the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics in 2004. I testified alongside this group about data privacy regulations. Beyond policy and governance, we do have some interesting surveys by BNY Mellon and case studies to report out to the industry. We hope they will provide guidance to efforts to leverage banking systems to improve healthcare. We hope you enjoy clicking through the new e-edition of our Journal! John Casillas |
