Hospitals hope to predict illness by analyzing your spending habits

[Dietrichw]

Source

 

Advertisers aren't the only ones interested in your spending habits — hospitals and insurance companies are taking note as well. Carolinas HealthCare, which operates hundreds of healthcare facilities from hospitals to nursing homes and care centers throughout North and South Carolina, is purchasing transaction data and other information on its patients to try and get ahead of any medical problems, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

 

The data, including purchase history and information like car loans, is put through an algorithm that gives a risk score to patients. That score can then be shared with doctors. A representative from Carolinas HealthCare tells the magazine that it plans to start routinely giving those scores to healthcare professionals in two years' time, and it hopes to do more with the data. It currently can't pass along detailed information — like what its patients are purchasing — to doctors, but the company hopes it can renegotiate with its (undisclosed) data provider to give professionals access to that as well. Nevertheless, under the current system, data like whether patients have open gym memberships or how often they purchase cigarettes is used in the score calculation.

 

Both insurance companies and hospitals are interested in using consumer data in this way to help cut costs. While insurance companies are no longer allowed to increase premiums or deny coverage under Obamacare based on pre-existing health conditions, companies can save money by trying to proactively prevent health conditions based on the data. Alternatively, hospitals can identify patients who are likely to heavily lean on emergency room visits instead of regular check-ups, and proactively provide resources to help cut down costly ER trips.

 

 

I like the idea but it needs to have well defined limits to prevent overstepping of boundaries.

This also ties in well with Apple's HealthKit that sends info from your wearables to your doctor  

[T.Vengeance]

Inb4 Halo (anyone who gets the reference gets a gold star )

[Misanthrope]

"Hospitals" you say? Notice how they also say H.M.O.s in which case perhaps they would also like to be looking to your spending habits to "enhance" your coverage and lower their bills by cutting lose the people most likely to need a claim.

 

Private Health Care strikes again ladies and gentlemen.

[totjup5]

A bit creepy, but ok...

[nicehat]

"Hospitals" you say? Notice how they also say H.M.O.s in which case perhaps they would also like to be looking to your spending habits to "enhance" your coverage and lower their bills by cutting lose the people most likely to need a claim.

 

Private Health Care strikes again ladies and gentlemen.

 

what? 

 

Its illegal to do that. This is for preventative medicine. Put away the tin foil hat. 

[Misanthrope]

what? 

 

Its illegal to do that. This is for preventative medicine. Put away the tin foil hat. 

 

Yeah because nothing illegal is ever done by corporations. 

[qwertywarrior]

this guy is spending 1000$ a week

he is a coke addict

[That Norwegian Guy]

I hate to say it, but your country is beyond self-destructing by now.

[JLCitadel]

Yeah because nothing illegal is ever done by corporations. 

 

Then don't be poor as fuck and get your own heath care. It's fucking America, not like it's hard to earn 100k + if you have more then half a brain and a bit of ambition.  :lol:

[Coolnesgamer]

Cool

[Tech_Dreamer]

This is good & bad @ the same time, let's see where this goes..

[wpirobotbuilder]

Then don't be poor as fuck and get your own heath care. It's fucking America, not like it's hard to earn 100k + if you have more then half a brain and a bit of ambition.  :lol:

Right, because being poor is a choice that 15% of the country makes willingly. It can't be that hard to make 6 figures, a whopping 7% of people make that much money!

 

It's not like our lives are governed in part by forces outside our control or anything. The manufacturing and construction jobs lost in the last recession? They obviously got lazy and lost their ambition. It's not like the reduced demand for skilled builders, nor the demand for manufactured goods, was reduced at all due to the economic contractions the world went through and the general cratering of world trade. When credit is harder to come by and employment is less stable, I like to spend lots of money.

 

The deindustrialization that's been going on for more than four decades in the overall U.S., and closer to seven decades in some parts of the country? No ambition whatsoever. Never mind the cheaper labor costs in foreign countries experiencing their own industrial booms, blame our lazy, incompetent citizenry.

 

/sarcasm

 

People like you infuriate me. The world is not a simple place by any measure, and simple declarative statements about it really say more about you.

 

On Topic:

 

Another place that data mining and analysis is finding practical uses. I'm not sure what the connection is between car loans and health is (increased stress levels causing an increased risk for certain medical conditions?), though.

 

I was expecting something a little more mind-blowing, like inferring that a customer who purchases a wide range of foods will have a more balanced diet, and be less likely to suffer from medical conditions caused by deficiencies in certain nutrients. Information about cigarette purchases is useful, but typical. Also, as some people can attest to, owning a gym membership doesn't imply someone actually goes to the gym, nor does the lack thereof imply that someone doesn't work out.