World Congress - The Leader in Health Care, Pharmaceutical and Marketing Conferences

Scotts Miracle-Gro, an Ohio-based company, screens out job candidates who use tobacco, believing that the measure will reduce its future health care costs tied to smoking-related illnesses. The company discussed the financial results of its new wellness program at the World Health Care Congress in April. more»

Employers understand that politicians have to offer proposals to reform the health care system, considering that escalating medical costs are straining the nation's and consumers' budgets more»

Personalized medicine has moved from the realm of concept to reality, as an increasing number of pharmaceuticals are coming to market with genetic tests that purport to determine how and if an individual patient will respond to the therapy. While some optimists say this paradigm shift will revolutionize medicine over the next few years, others caution that widespread adoption of personalized medicine still faces significant obstacles, including issues of reimbursing for genetic tests and questions about whether the model actually provides a return on investment (ROI). more»

Consumer-focused Care spoke with Gene Drabinski, Vice President of Cost and Quality for Trizetto, a leading enterprise software company providing solutions to health plans. As you may recall, we had an interview with another Trizetto executive, Dan Spirek, last year. more»

Advisors to the Obama, McCain and Clinton campaigns participated in a panel discussion titled "The Presidential Health Care Agenda" at the World Health Care Congress April 21 in Washington.

In the ADVANCE video presented below, see how Jim Cooper (Obama advisor), Thomas Miller (McCain advisor) and Chris Jennings (Clinton advisor) position their respective candidates. Former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz and Kaiser Foundation CEO George Halvorson provide analysis. more»

I was speaking yesterday at the World Congress Leadership Summit on Consumer Connectivity & Web Empowerment. Another speaker, the always informative and engaging Susannah Fox, Associate Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, shared several interesting pieces of data. more»

WASHINGTON—Features that make it attractive for employers to offer health savings accounts and health reimbursement arrangements to employees also make them appealing as retiree health care funding vehicles, an expert says.

For employers who contribute to HSAs or HRAs, the costs are predictable; for employees, there are tax breaks such as tax-free accumulation of earnings and tax-free distributions taken to pay for health care expenses. more»

Two-thirds of more than 1,100 U.S.-based organizations have a benefits strategy promoting health and productivity, most commonly through wellness programs aimed at preventing chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes, a new survey found. more»

Delaware is the only state in the nation that, for the past three years, has not raised its health care premiums for state employees. Instead, employee contributions have remained flat at 5.8 percent, according to Jennifer W. Davis, director of Delaware’s Office of Management and Budget. more»

Last week, MEDecision welcomed Dr. Andy Schuyler on board as chief medical officer. And we wasted no time in putting him to work! On Monday we promptly dispatched Andy to the 5th Annual World Health Care Congress in Washington, D.C. where, along with Dr. Jim Barr, medical director of Partners in Care, a physician owned management company, he conducted the Market Insight Presentation “The Use of Patient Clinical Information to Affect Care.” more»

The last major effort at healthcare reform 15 years ago failed because of nervous consumers. TV ads featuring Harry and Louise, the fictional middle-class couple poring over President Clinton's plan for universal coverage, became symbolic of widespread resistance to the perceived heavy hand of nanny government, trying to force one size to fit all. Now, with exorbitant costs being the overriding concern, consumers—who drive those costs—may well be the system's best hope for reform. They're motivated: As the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation just reported, the amount people pay for health insurance alone increased 30 percent between 2001 and 2005, while income went up a mere 3 percent. more»

Consumer-focused Care spoke with Kenneth Mayes, Marketing Director for Bumrungrad International, a leading player in medical travel/ medical tourism in Southeast Asia, as a world class, JCAHO accredited (the American hospital accrediting organization) facility. more»

James Roosevelt Jr., CEO, Tufts Health Plan, said “34% of adults in America are overweight and an additional 32% are obese. Obesity and the number of severely obese individuals in our country cost the U.S. economy in excess of $100 billion annually and results in 400,000 deaths”. He made his remarks at the 5th Annual World Health Care Congress held in April in Washington D.C. more»

Imagine a Health Care system that functioned like the consumer credit industry. Scott Kornhauser has. The CEO of Healthation thinks the system will ultimately deliver a personal health care score (like a credit FICO score) that drives what consumers pay for healthcare, complete with the ability to improve their rating over time with the right behaviors/performance. more»

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt knows in nine months his term will expire, but that doesn't mean HHS will slow down in advocating initiatives for value based health care.

"The value of care should replace the volume of care as the most important variable in the way we pay for and consume health care in this country," Leavitt told attendees last week at the 5th annual World Health Care Congress. more»

Before a whole week passes, I need to capture my interview with Gene Drabinski from Trizetto. Gene is the President of Cost and Quality of Care. This was a fun interview where we just kicked back at the end of day two at the World Healthcare Congress and talked. more»

Obesity and tobacco use are the “big dogs” of escalating health care costs that pose “a significant long-term threat to American business,” says Scotts Miracle-Gro Chairman and CEO James Hagedorn, and the company is taking aggressive, dramatic steps to shoo them away. more»

It’s amazing to me that a company that hasn’t launched yet has been at two conferences with standing room only (in the hallway), but that is the story for American Well. At both Health 2.0 and at the WHCC 2008, the crowds packed in to hear Dr. Roy Schoenberg (CEO and founder) speak. Fortunately, I had scheduled a meeting with him offline so I got to spend an hour talking with him about what they are up to. more»

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said HHS has no intention of slacking off in its efforts to drive transparency into the U.S. healthcare system during the winding down of the Bush Administration.

At the Fifth Annual World Health Care Congress, held Wednesday in Washington, D.C., Leavitt said in his 272 days left as HHS secretary he has "a continued sense of urgency" and plans on picking up the pace to drive much-needed change. more»