ONLINE HEALTH CARE: NYT Offers a Broad Look
Today's edition of the New York Times features a special ecommerce section devoted largely to ehealth. The lead story, "A Health Revolution, in Baby Steps," examines the evolving relationship between physicians, hospitals and the Internet. It profiles UMass Memorial Hospital, "considered one of the more advanced centers among those connected to a medical school." After investing $40 million in infrastructure over the last five years, it now has the "ability to integrate vast amounts of patient information into a single chart stored online" (Steinhauer, New York Times, 10/25). Another story looks at the "woes of WebMD and Medscape," whose "grand ambitions" to "change the nature of medical communications [and] restructure the nation's health care systems" have been tempered by the precipitous stock decline of health care Web sites on Wall Street. The recent mergers that the two have undertaken "reflect the sober reality that investors will not subsidize grand dot-com visions without seeing some real revenue" (Tedeschi, New York Times, 10/25). A third story examines health insurance companies' attempts to develop relationships with patients and doctors on the Internet. Insurance companies "hope that by delivering information to patients and doctors in real time over the Internet, they will ease some of the frustration with denials of care and months of delays in payments that have stoked public anger against managed care" (Freudenheim, New York Times, 10/25). The full list of stories published in today's special section is available at http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/technology/25ECOM- HEALTH.html.
This is part of the California Healthline Daily Edition, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.