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Kevin Roche

The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry through Roche Consulting, LLC. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.

Oct 04 2017

Research at JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that doctors who have a financial interest in imaging equipment and a history of low-value imaging, are most likely to do additional low-value imaging for low back and head pain.

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2653911
Oct 04 2017

According to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, comparing online quality ratings of 78 doctors to more objective quality performance measures indicates that online reviews aren't worth much.  This is likely because consumers rate quality on much they like a physician and other intangibles.

https://academic.oup.com/jamia/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jamia/ocx083/4107665/Online-physician-ratings-fail-to-predict-actual?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Oct 04 2017

Patients may be wise, but we will see about investors, as PatientWisdom grabs and undisclosed amount of funding for its app that lets patients share health care stories.  Ahhh, isn't that cute.

https://www.pehub.com/2017/10/patientwisdom-snags-funding-osf-ventures/
Oct 02 2017

Machine learning health startup Cogitativo has raised $5 million in initial financing, to expand its business beyond payment integrity.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/healthcare-machine-learning-startup-cogitativo-closes-5m-series-a-financing-300523016.html
Oct 02 2017

HealthSplash, a health care patient communication and scheduling firm, is acquiring DMERX, which does compliance documentation, primarily for the DME segment.

http://healthsplash.com/news/press-release/DMERX-Acquisition
Oct 02 2017

Contrary to the most commonly cited cost, a new study at JAMA Internal Medicine finds that the cost of developing a cancer drug is around $650 million and that companies typically fully recover that cost within a couple of years after approval.

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2653012
Sep 29 2017

$8 million in new funding flows to Signet Accel, which offers data interoperability to health care firms.

http://www.edisonpartners.com/blog/edison-partners-leads-8m-series-a-growth-investment-in-signet-accel
Sep 29 2017

Call9, which connects patients to on-demand emergency physicians and currently is used by skilled nursing facilities, has dialed up investors for a fresh $24 million in capital.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/call9#/entity
Sep 29 2017

98point6 raises a hot $19.5 million from feverish investors.  I am not sure what it does but the geniuses who wrote the press release say the company has an "audacious vision".  It uses "deep technology" (on the ocean floor?) to do something related to continuity of care at a "massively lower cost than anything in the market today" (I didn't know cost had mass.)  It is not a good sign when you can't tell in the first sentence or two of a press release what a company actually does.  These investors are truly delirious.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170919005623/en/98point6-Raises-19.5-Million-Series-Funding-“Continuity
Sep 28 2017

Cardinal Analytx, which will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict which patients will be high cost, gathers $6.1 million in fresh funding.

https://www.pehub.com/2017/09/cardinal-analytx-solutions-pulls-in-6-1-mln-series-a/