Disease Management, prevention and wellness

Good morning and happy Friday. I have been thinking a good deal about the convergence of several seemingly disparate areas---namely, disease management, wellness and prevention. I am privileged to serve on the board of a company called ITRAX or you may know them as CHD. In any event, they are practicing worksite wellness and prevention and getting publishable results. In addition to ITRAX, my work with Informedix, has also lead me to believe that we can make a difference with patients about compliance and adherance to medication. If we can bring together the disease management world, the prevention people and all the corporate wellness, build the research base, and effectively implement these tools, maybe we can really turn around the cost of obesity, smoking and the like. For me, I think this stuff is frankly, "too important to be left to the doctor". Meaning, we are not set up to let the docs do this work and they are not good at it anyway. We need a new model and maybe this combination of talents and tools, with the tripod of DM, prevention and wellness, is the way to go. What do you all think?? Don't forget to join us at our national Disease Management Colloquium, here in Philly, on May 19, 20 and 21. Thanks, DAVID NASH

Here we go for the Health Policy conversation.

Good afternoon and welcome to my blog. After much to do, we are ready to bring you the most cutting edge conversation about Health Policy in the nation. We are going to be talking about everything--the failed national quality agenda, the silliness of our presidential candidates, the need for CMS to practice what is preaches, and all the rest. We will not pull any punches either as we tackle all the tough questions. I am so proud of our Department of Health Policy, one of only a handful of such departments, based in a medical school, in the country. I also want to thank several key staff members including Valerie Pracilio and Christina Raymond who helped to make this possible. I am also appreciative of the help from our University CIO, Bruce Metz, who gave this his blessing and our University President,Robert Barchi MD, who said "go to it". I sure hope they will still be supportive months from now!! Okay, enough for now. Stand by for action, general quarters, man your battle stations and open fire when ready. Let the conversation begin. Thanks for your support, DAVID B. NASH MD MBA