Entries tagged 'healthcare'
Cecily Hall Meets President Barack Obama
Director of U.S. Health and Wellness Benefits Cecily Hall tells President Obama about some of the steps Microsoft has taken to provide its employees with affordable, comprehensive health coverage.
By Lou Gellos
Cecily Hall got the surprise of a lifetime on Mother's Day.
Out to dinner with her three children, Hall, director of U.S. Health and Wellness Benefits, got a phone call from work. She would be meeting with President Barack Obama on Tuesday.
"I was thrilled that Microsoft was being recognized," Hall said. Her children couldn't believe their mom was going to meet the country's most powerful person. "They were thrilled that I was going to meet the president," she said. The dinner ended on a high note.
Hall got the call because the White House wanted to hear about the innovative and unique way companies like Microsoft are approaching providing health-care benefits while also keeping the cost of providing such benefits down. Representatives from seven companies were invited to sit on the panel.
"You've got terrific innovations at companies like Microsoft, where they actually have used home visits of doctors to reduce the utilization of emergency room care and are saving themselves millions of dollars," Obama said.
Hall joined representatives from REI, Safeway, Johnson & Johnson, Pitney Bowes, Ohio Department of Health, and Hereiu Welfare Fund for what was to be a 50-minute meeting. Each participant was asked to present for three minutes. "The president was quite serious about it," Hall said. She said it's impressive that Obama wants to hear from the private sector and said that each panelist shared creative steps his or her company has taken to keep health-care costs down.
"The president was very interested to hear what Microsoft and other employers are doing to help their employees improve their health, which in turn can help manage costs," she said.
Hall arrived at the White House about a half-hour before their scheduled meeting and was escorted to an assigned seat at a large conference table. The CEOs of REI and Safeway were seated next to President Obama. Hall sat to the left of Safeway's CEO.
Obama specifically called out the creative lengths each company has gone to in order to make sure its employees have health coverage that is extensive and affordable. In particular, he noted that employers win when they help their employees stay fit because the cost of providing health care then drops.
Hall told Obama about Microsoft's HealthVault, weight management, and mobile medicine programs. It was the mobile medicine program that caught the president's ear. He asked Hall if it was similar to programs in France. She said yes and told him that the mobile medicine program keeps Microsoft's costs down by having a doctor make a house call when an emergency room visit is not necessary but care is needed. Three years into the program, the home doctor visits have turned into teaching moments that often lead to the employee and his or her family making lasting changes to improve their overall health, Hall said. What's more, their health data and electronic medical history then can be loaded into HealthVault and shared with primary care physicians. The goal is to encourage a personally controlled cycle of healthy living. In three years, participating doctors have made nearly 10,000 house calls in the Puget Sound region.
Hall told Obama that the program saves Microsoft more than $200 every time a visit to emergency room is avoided, or about $1 million a year. She also described to him that employees who use the service often get more personalized care and that they don't have to wait for hours in a hospital waiting room.
Obama also heard about a weight management program that has helped employees lose a collective 50 tons of weight, and thanks to clinical oversight, has led to behavioral change and helped them keep the weight off.
Finally, Hall told the president about Microsoft's division focused on using innovation to improve the way health care is delivered to people across the globe. She told him how Microsoft HealthVault lets employees personally store copies of their health records from sources across the health system and then use them to manage their health.
Hall said she tried to stick to her allotted three minutes but said the president would not let her, asking questions and taking advantage of the only benefits person in the room. She estimates her conversation lasted 10 minutes.
"President Obama was very cordial and warm. He really engaged in the discussion, he asked good questions, and it was clear he has an interest in health care and innovative benefits," Hall said. "It was an honor to be with the president. It's great he is interested in hearing about how employers are using some innovative approaches to improving employee health and reducing costs. I think he appreciated hearing some of what we are doing." Read Hall's blog entry on her day at the White House on the Microsoft on the Issues blog.
Taking the Pulse of the Health Care Industry
With new products and acquisitions, Peter Neupert’s Health Solutions Group is working to bring medicine into the 21st century.
By Fred Albert
You can use the Internet to organize your finances, make travel arrangements, or even monitor the temperature of your home. But when it comes to managing your health care, the information superhighway is stuck in the breakdown lane. “Health isn’t in the Internet age yet,” acknowledged Peter Neupert, corporate vice president for the Health Solutions Group (HSG). “I can’t interact with my physician online. I can’t get data about myself online. I always have to fill in the same information over and over again. Aren’t there better ways to do this? We think there are.”
Neupert left Microsoft in 1998 after rising to the rank of vice president, News and Publishing, then rejoined the company two years ago to start HSG, a division dedicated to developing information systems in the health care sphere. Launched with a staff of five, the group now boasts some 225 employees working in both the enterprise and consumer sectors.
Although Microsoft has developed software infrastructure for partners in the health care field since the mid-1990s, Neupert’s group represents the company’s first major effort to originate health solutions. It’s a market that’s grossly underserved, yet still doesn’t have any dominant players, making it an ideal arena for Microsoft.
“Not many companies have such a huge global footprint and the resources to dedicate toward health,” said Tracey Ferriss, senior manager of marketing and communication for HSG. “The potential is great to make revenue, but also to really make a difference.”
While competitors often focus on the needs of a specific region, Microsoft is taking a global approach to health management. “The world is flat when it comes to health. The challenges are the same around the world,” said Davide Vigano, general manager of enterprise marketing for HSG. “It’s a perfect hard problem for Microsoft to solve. We’ve solved all the easy ones.”
One of the biggest challenges facing the health care industry is managing patient information. “An average hospital … has about 80 different applications … so every time you move from one department to another, you’re basically in a different company,” said Vigano. Last year HSG acquired Azyxxi, an enterprise solution developed by a team of doctors in a Washington, D.C., hospital. Azyxxi aggregates patient information from a variety of sources, allowing medical professionals to obtain a single view of a patient’s health data.In October, Microsoft purchased Global Care Solutions, a Bangkok-based company that specializes in enterprise solutions for hospitals. Their Health Information System, developed in tandem with Bumrungrad International Hospital, efficiently manages clinical workflow, billing, regulatory compliance, and medical records for some 1.2 million patients each year, while keeping wait time to an average of 17 minutes per patient. “That’s the Microsoft Office for health care: all you need, preintegrated,” observed Vigano. Neupert wants to market this information system to other hospitals around the world, and within a year hopes to integrate it with Azyxxi, creating a menu of features that hospitals can pick and choose from according to their needs.
Neupert isn’t overlooking the consumer in all this. In October he launched HealthVault, a platform designed to help people seek and collect health information and store it in one place. Incorporating Microsoft Live, MSN, and the health search engine Medstory acquired earlier this year, HealthVault addresses the needs of the “family health manager,” the individual, usually a woman, who researches and organizes health matters for her children, spouse, and parents.
“Consumers … are having to accept a lot more responsibility for their health decisions. It’s pretty overwhelming, and oftentimes they’re not really equipped with the information they need to make those decisions,” said Ferriss.HealthVault, now in beta, aims to help. It can store each family member’s health history and make it available to physicians or others when needed. Eventually it will allow users to upload information directly from personal health devices such as glucometers, sphygmomanometers, and peak flow meters.
Given the personal nature of such information, HSG took pains to guarantee privacy on HealthVault, consulting with advocacy groups, using an encrypted link, and deleting search logs after only 90 days. The privacy policy is clearly posted on the home page to assuage users, although it may take a physician’s endorsement to win over some. “If my doctor says to me, ‘Hey, I want you to use this,’ I’m going to trust it,” said Grad Conn, senior director of consumer product marketing for HSG.
Neupert and his group are working to earn the trust of those doctors. But they realize it could take time. “Health is a complex sector that moves slowly … from an innovation point of view,” Neupert said. “This is going to take time.”