Avado was featured in the Wall Street Journal along with Mint and other hugely successful consumer applications. The article just focused on the consumer-facing side of Avado. Naturally, Avado's focus on the clinician and how they communicate with their patients is what enables this capability.
 

Dashboard Your Life

Tame the tangle of bills, finances and frequent-flier miles by visiting only a few websites instead of 20
 

 
A year ago, the Arab Spring rocked the world. Stateside, a less visible revolution is underway. The revolution could be called the Primary Care Spring. As social media played a role in the Arab Spring, there is a large group of primary care physicians who have rallied around the #FMRevolution hashtag. Perhaps as unlikely as a street vendor catalyzing the Arab Spring, a catalyst for the Primary Care Spring was IBM.
 
Like any revolution, there are many factors at play (not all of them can be addressed in one article). As a doctor would take a medical history, make a diagnosis and then layout a prescription with accompanying risk factors, I will use this same format for what I believe is fueling the revolution.

 
In an earlier piece, I spoke about how the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) at Health & Human Services should ignore calls to water down the Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements they have proposed. The health (and budget) of the country depends on them sticking to their guns. As predicted, they would receive pushback from some folks who think the patient engagement requirements are too tough. In particular, they have focused on the requirement to have a mere 10% of patients engage. 

There is a great new podcast called the mHealth Zone hosted by Happtique's CEO (Ben Chodor) and President (Corey Ackerman). I have listened to all of their episodes and Ben and Corey do a great job. Recent episodes include my friend Milena Adamian, MD, Founder and Executive Director of Life Sciences Angel Network on "mHealth as an Investment Thesis: The Need, Promise & Mystery" and Dr.

Wither health insurance? A former medical advisor to the Obama Administration who also is the brother of former Presidential Chief of Staff predicted in the New York Times that by 2020 health insurance companies will be extinct. Nearly two years ago, I penned a piece entitled Health Insurance's Bunker Buster. It outlined two key reasons that health insurance -- as we have known it the last couple decades -- will cease to exist.

It's long been said that the most important member of the care team is the individual (aka "patient" - we prefer the word "individual" as most of us don't consider ourselves "patients"). This dovetails with the fundamental thesis for Avado: We believe it's nearly impossible for healthcare providers to thrive in a reimbursement environment that is rapidly shifting from a "do more, bill more" model of reimbursement to a value and outcome based model without recognizing the criticality of the individual. 
 
 
 

With the failure of the super Congress, there's a 27% cut in Medicare reimbursement that is looming. Less well understood is the implications on primary care salaries. Dr. Matthew Mintz wrote for KevinMD that the implications would be a halving of primary care providers' salaries. Whether this will happen remains to be seen, but it is indisputable that primary care has received dramatically less reimbursement over the years.