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At DocSpot, our mission is to connect people with the right health care by helping them navigate publicly available information. We believe the first step of that mission is to help connect people with an appropriate medical provider, and we look forward to helping people navigate other aspects of their care as the opportunities arise. We are just at the start of that mission, so we hope you will come back often to see how things are developing.

An underlying philosophy of our work is that right care means different things to different people. We also recognize that doctors are multidimensional people. So, instead of trying to determine which doctors are "better" than others, we offer a variety of filter options that individuals can apply to more quickly discover providers that fit their needs.

Other bad optics for the California governor

by jerry on May 09, 2021

In a vein similar to an earlier piece about the current California governor awarding a no-contract bid to Blue Shield to distribute vaccines, Kaiser Health News published another piece reporting on a number of other decisions whose optics look bad. Safesforce, whose CEO is a repeat donor to the governor's campaigns, helped create California's "vaccine clearinghouse" which has already cost the state $93 million. I am familiar with the scheduling portal functionality, although I do not know how much non-patient facing functionality was built into the site; nevertheless, a price tag close to $100 million seems very steep.

In a vein similar to an earlier piece about the current California governor awarding a no-contract bid to Blue Shield to distribute vaccines, Kaiser Health News published another piece reporting on a number of other decisions whose optics look bad. Safesforce, whose CEO is a repeat donor to the governor's campaigns, helped create California's "vaccine clearinghouse" which has already cost the state $93 million. I am familiar with the scheduling portal functionality, although I do not know how much non-patient facing functionality was built into the site; nevertheless, a price tag close to $100 million seems very steep.

An interesting take from the author of the piece is that the governor seems to prefer partnering with private corporations rather than investing in the state's public health infrastructure. Notably, before the pandemic, the governor denied local health departments' request for $50 million per year "to help rebuild core public health infrastructure." Public health leaders seemingly bemoan the channeling of public dollars into private corporations instead of buttressing public health departments. On one hand, this point seems very reasonable: instead of giving private corporations the money and being unsure of any lasting benefit to the services provided, the state could have built out its own infrastructure. On the other hand, government agencies are not known for moving quickly, and building technology infrastructure might have taken them too long in a circumstance that required speed. If the state had funneled the funds into its own infrastructure and the public health departments were unable to deliver, there would certainly be people criticizing the government taking the opportunity to enlarge its own empire without doing what is expedient.

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Colorado sentiment towards healthcare workers shaping state policy

by jerry on May 02, 2021

Kaiser Health News published a piece that looked at Colorado's attempt to pass a government-run health insurance option (known as "public option"). Before the pandemic, it appears that there was sufficient legislative support for a public option, but as the article points out, healthcare workers have been seen as heroes in the fight against the pandemic and people have been less willing to support a major policy change that would mean less compensation for healthcare staff.

Kaiser Health News published a piece that looked at Colorado's attempt to pass a government-run health insurance option (known as "public option"). Before the pandemic, it appears that there was sufficient legislative support for a public option, but as the article points out, healthcare workers have been seen as heroes in the fight against the pandemic and people have been less willing to support a major policy change that would mean less compensation for healthcare staff.

Despite the sentiment this year, this article shows that people were concerned about health insurance premiums before the pandemic; people are likely to care more once again after the pandemic subsides. Even with the reduced support, it appears that the Colorado legislature was able to negotiate premium reduction targets, although the penalty for not attaining the targets seems much softer. Perhaps we will see more attitudes shift in favor of government action in the health insurance market this decade.

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Another look at virtual care

by jerry on April 25, 2021

Kaiser Health News reported on an organization that specializes in virtual care. Given the surge of telemedicine during the pandemic, this piece takes a look at the relevant question of whether or not virtual visits warrant the same fee structure as in-person visits.

Kaiser Health News reported on an organization that specializes in virtual care. Given the surge of telemedicine during the pandemic, this piece takes a look at the relevant question of whether or not virtual visits warrant the same fee structure as in-person visits.

Before the pandemic, telemedicine still had restrictions in a number of states. In some places, for example, a patient's first visit with a physician had to be in-person. Beyond the regulatory restrictions, insurers typically paid less for a virtual visit than an in-person visit. The article talks about some of the differing perspectives on whether that disparity should continue.

On one hand, there is something that feels heftier about in-person visits: providers need to maintain buildings and additional support staff, and those costs should be reflected in payments. Traditionally, one concern has been about telemedicine being more vulnerable to fraud. On the other hand, there are some types of visits where virtual visits can be functionally the same as in-person visits, and there are many who believe that they should be compensated equivalently (in a similar vein to the site-neutrality rules that Medicare has tried to enact). Presumably, this issue will not be going away any time soon.

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Unforeseen consequences of old drug policy

by jerry on April 18, 2021

Kaiser Health News reported on a federal program known as Unapproved Drugs Initiative (launched in 2006). It appears the original intention was to give drug manufacturers of older drugs an incentive for them to apply for FDA approval. These older drugs seem to have existed before FDA had its current processes in place, and were therefore "grandfathered" in. The incentive was seven years of exclusivity -- less than the standard patent, but still potentially very valuable.

Kaiser Health News reported on a federal program known as Unapproved Drugs Initiative (launched in 2006). It appears the original intention was to give drug manufacturers of older drugs an incentive for them to apply for FDA approval. These older drugs seem to have existed before FDA had its current processes in place, and were therefore "grandfathered" in. The incentive was seven years of exclusivity -- less than the standard patent, but still potentially very valuable.

The article reports that unsurprisingly, during the seven years of exclusivity, prices of drugs skyrocketed: the example given rose from $0.10 per pill to about $4.50 per pill. The article does note that after generic competitors were approved, prices dropped, but not to the original amount. The approval process is likely so expensive that generic competitors need higher prices in order to recover their upfront investment.

Safety can come at a price, especially when the drug approval process requires volumes of data and many participants in clinical trials. Such safety measure might be deemed worthwhile, but patients might be shocked at the cost. Fortunately, people are thinking of cost-saving measures to still collect safety data without going through a traditional clinical trial.

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User interface updates

by jerry on April 11, 2021

This week, we rolled out some changes to our profile summary pages. We had been relying on a JavaScript library to dynamically render many of the charts, but we were told that using non-JavaScript renderings of the charts would make the content easier to be understood by search engines.

This week, we rolled out some changes to our profile summary pages. We had been relying on a JavaScript library to dynamically render many of the charts, but we were told that using non-JavaScript renderings of the charts would make the content easier to be understood by search engines.

It is ironic that we ended up removing functionality (cosmetic features such as chart highlights), but one advantage is that users who browse without JavaScript will have an easier time understanding our page.

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