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Biotech / Medical : Biotech Valuation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tom pope who wrote (33020)	11/29/2009 1:17:22 PM
From: Gary Mohilner	1 Recommendation Respond to of 52153

Tom, I don't think Medicare should decide how many scans are needed, I think your Drs. should, but as to what it cost, perhaps there Medicare should have a voice. When I go to my Drs. office, X-rays are done on film, probably the most expensive way to do them today, but not when you consider the cost of replacement of a machine that uses an electronic image. I strongly believe in what Obama has said about what's needed to get all medical data into the paperless world. I believe that money would be well spent by the Govt. taking medicine as it is today into where it needs to be. Kaiser Permanente largely made this change before we left them a few years ago. I can't tell you how many time Drs used to struggle finding information in the volumenous files they used to have, if you could even find the file. By the time we left, a Dr. would ask for some test or X-ray to be done, often by the time you returned to his office, he could review the data or scan on any computer in the building. Any information he needed was just a short inquiry away. I believe if the Govt supports modernizing the process it will not only employ many people in producing equipment and digitizing the information, it will dramatically drop the price of healthcare. If there are sufficient C-T, MRI, P-T, scanners available for all the desired scans to be run, the cost for each scan can be dramatically lowered. I'm told my cancer would not have been seen in a typical full body scan, because such scans normally don't include contrast, and it was the contrast that made the small tumor show. My point is better scans are more important then more scans. What is the cost of a scan? If you remove the cost of the equipment from the equation, it probably is a few hundred or less to pay for the power consumed, the operator, and then there is the review. Could computers review most scans and find the problems for pennies, perhaps, but ultimately Drs will review most scans and make the final determination, I cannot say what their cost should be. My tumor has apparently been reviewed by numerous panels, it simply isn't cut and dry. Initially called benign, the latest review says renal carcinoma. They're willing to pay for a variety of experts to get it right, even if treatment doesn't change. What changes is how it should be followed up. If the tumor was originally easily identified, I doubt it would have gone to more than one panel of experts. Hopefully I'll know more on Tuesday when I see the surgeon again. As a novice, I'd think scans into computers could permit the computers to make such decisions, but again, I don't know who should create a program with the ability to make such judgements. If it's done, the costs of determining the type of cancer could go from thousands or more to pennies, or less as long as the computer is capable of making the hard decisions. My point is that with a certain amount of Govt support, and a lot of automation, the costs of the scans you get might be insignificant to the cost of your healthcare. The cost of using technology goes down each day. The first CD recorder I ever saw cost over $3000 and was successful burning CD's about 1 time in 3. Friday we got a Black Friday laptop, a Sony Vaio, it included Blu-Ray capability and records to all forms of CD's and DVD's, it's probably successful over 90% of the time. The computer, which came with a Blu-Ray movie and earphones was less then $500. The cost of technology is dropping dramatically, just a Blu-Ray player a few years ago cost as much as this laptop that included it. CT scanners, etc are all being improved, and the price of better units should fall dramatically as far more units are employed. With automation included in retreaving and interpriting results, in the future the number of scans your drs do will play a small part of your overall health care. What's more important, IMHO, is the cost of not doing a scan. Had the aggressive cancer found on my nose not led to a C-T Scan of other organs, it's very possible that the least I would have lost is a kidney, the most naturally is my life. Gary