What's New with ChangeNow4Health

ChangeNow4Health, a broad, open, online community committed to improving health care through immediate action has been formed to help create, share and incubate realistic solutions that address necessary changes to the nation’s health care system. This monthly newsletter is to keep you up-to-date on what's going on with ChangeNow4Health. 

World Health Care Congress
The World Health Care Congress, this April 21st through 23rd, 2008 convenes over 2,000 CEOs, senior executives and government officials from the nation's largest employers, hospitals, health systems, health plans, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, and leading government agencies, to discuss improving health care quality, cost, and coverage. The moderators of the ChangeNow4Health communities will be there, blogging directly from the conference floor, providing insights into topics under discussion and interviewing key speakers and participants at the event.

Recent Blog Articles (posted in March)
You can subscribe to an RSS feed for new ChangeNow4Health blog posts at http://community.changenow4health.com/news/aggregator/RSS 

• 3/29/2008 The state of e-Visits in 2008
  Simplifying healthcare through a web visit has been elusive, but is now a growing reality More »

• 3/27/2008 Mandatory or Voluntary: Schwarzenegger's Anti-Obesity Campaign Highlights the Dilemma
  California Governor's obesity prevention summit is engaging an impressive collaboration of stakeholders More »

• 3/26/2008 Brian Klepper On The Consumerism Myth
  Is consumerism a myth? New data leads one commentator to take a controversial position on this topic. More »

• 3/17/2008 Measuring Consumer and Professional HIT adoption and perceptions
  iHealthBeat's Data Points provides a great resource for recent survey summaries More »

• 3/17/2008 CDC Shows the Way on Health Promotion via Texting
  A few highlights from the recent Texting 4 Health conference. The first public forum to bring together leaders in SMS health applications. More »

• 3/11/2008 Mayo Clinic Survey Reveals Americans' Healthcare Eyes Are Bigger Than Their Stomachs
  A new study indicates Americans are concerned about rising health expenditures, but are not willing to make financial or medical sacrifices (i.e., rationing) to get there. More »

• 3/7/2008 Simplification vs. Choice
  Now and in the past, a number of Benefit Managers and Benefit Consultants have advocated offering just one health plan to employees, with simplification one of the goals, while employees want a choice of plans. Survey data shows single plan offerings are increasing with larger employers. More »

• 3/5/2008 Live Longer, But Cost The System More Money
  A surprising study published in February indicates that healthy people cost the health system more money. Will this finding damage efforts to get people to engage in healthy behaviors and take control of their own care? More »

• 3/3/2008 Health Promotion As a Workplace Cause What are the differences between health promotion in local community vs. in the workforce? More »

Idea Submissions

11 ideas were submitted from the community during the past month, for a total of 81 ideas to date for health care change. Review them in detail, post your comments and submit your own ideas at:
http://community.changenow4health.com/community/ideas

Here's a list of the Idea Titles posted during the past month:

• A Plan To Solve The US Healthcare Crisis
• Supply Side
• We need Universal Health Care Plan for all U.S. Citizens
• Preventive Health Counseling Community Program
• Better Informed Care Program
• Emergency Care program
• Best Practices Program
• Imaging Solutions Program
• Drug Safety Pilot Program
• "Markettizing" Medical Care
• Natural Living Zones