Health-Wii Connection

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano's leadership has helped create the Arizona Health-e Connection. It's an important development on the way to embedding smart health information exchange and effective health information technology for our system. But let's not forget the Health-Wii Connection.

A British study found that "active gaming consoles" such as the Wii get its players to burn 40% more calories and accelerate heart rates of players from a pedestrian 85 bpm to 130 bpm. Not exactly anaerobic threshold, but it counts for something.

Not coincidentally, the Wii has become the first (and likely last) game console to enter my family's life. It provides not just exercise, but family engagement and good old-fashioned fun. My six year-old son and his grandpa (who to my knowledge has never played a video game of any kind, ever) recently became enthusiastically enmeshed in a hilarious and spirited Wii golf tournament. As noted in the Wall St. Journal, I have personally battled my children in Wii Tennis and felt it the next day in my arm muscles. Wiis are being installed on Erickson Retirement Community campuses serving 19,000 older adults, and Wii bowling leagues are forming in older adult residential settings across the country.

Intergenerational engagement and fun? Check. Peer bonding and enlivenment of social ties? Check. Exercise? Check. Happiness? Check. Other than the couch becoming morose from lack of use and the disdain of the dog, I'm not seeing any downsides yet.

Health-Wii indeed.

Friday Thinking Joke: Embarrassing

(Attribution to the creator of this cartoon was not available)

The Four Mile Donut

"Consider the Four Mile Donut. If we were to walk as fast as we could for an hour, we’d cover a breathless, heart pounding 3-4 miles. If we then decided to celebrate our workout with coffee and a donut, we would eat more calories in a minute than we burned off in an hour."

The above quote comes from Brian Wansink, Ph.D., author of Mindless Eating. No one here at the Hotel has read it yet, but we will be.

Number One, With A Bullet

At left is a graphic representation of the percentage of Americans over age 15 with a body mass index (BMI) greater than 30. According to our government - and to common sense if you saw such a person - a BMI of 30 or more constitutes obesity, a condition with a raft of chronic illnesses (diabetes, heart disease and more) close behind.

Now click here to see how we compare with 26 other countries who are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But wait, these graphics are based on numbers compiled at the end of 2003. According to the CDC's just-released Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS), the proportion of Americans with a BMI greater than 30 grew by 24 percent. The same report projects a 25% - 100% increase in health care costs for individuals with BMI greater than 30.

Was there ever a time when 31% of our population over age 15 smoked two packs a day? We demonized tobacco because it needlessly took the lives of people who didn't necessarily understand the risks, because social mores and values were inappropriately supportive of tobacco use and because individuals needed help to tackle their addictions. And I'm not even sure it ever got as out-of-hand as the situation with obesity has become.

We certainly did something as a nation about smoking. It took time and energy, but we did accomplish a great deal. And those who choose to smoke still can, in most cases without it negatively impacting those who choose differently.

It's past time to wake up, step up and move forward on addressing the obesity situation.

Headscratchin' Hospital Huff and TIGGGER01

USA Today wants everyone to know: the uninsured pay nearly three times more for hospital services than health insurers pay for the same services. The paper posted this article online in a format that allows reader comments. Lucky for us all, one has come in from TIGGGER01 that reads "They are adjusting for what the illegals use and are not charged, someone has got to pay for their free ride."

Now which part should make us scratch our heads more, the finding or the comment?

Darned illegals...power-wielding insurers...bureaucratic hospitals...mutter, mutter, muttter. Wait, hold the phone. "They" is us. We are them. TIGGER01's "someone" would also be each one of us (after all, what we pay for what we get in the health care system borders on what should be illegal).

Makes all of us at the Hotel wonder...would we like to create more convenient and myopic rationalizations, or might we like to think a little more about the situation, how the system works (or fails to) and how we can make it better?

Either way, you've got to love participatory journalism.

Health Care Going to the Dogs

Literally. The Associated Press ran this article about pet owners spending big bucks for extensive cancer and diabetes treatment. As part of its slice-of-life reporting, it contains a detailed anecdote about a dog named Brownie's visit with his owner to Burger King for a fish sandwich. Brownie just had his blood sugar taken that morning, and has been medicated in recent months for diabetes, infections and high blood pressure. He's was having the fish that day because his "finicky gut...rebels at red meat."

"We give them too much food. We don't exercise them as much as we can," noted Georgette Wilson, who works for a division of Pfizer. Do tell? Is this a lucky dog, or a dog that's been acculturated in a very unfortunate way?

What happened to a pet being the incentive for the humans to be more active, connected and involved in life and the community? Apparently even this basic approach has gone to the dogs.

Friday Thinking Joke: Seeing the Light

It's late at night. A man is on all fours underneath a street lamp, searching for something. A policeman happens on the scene and asks the clearly drunken man what he is doing. "Looking for my keys," answers the man. The policeman scans the area, seeing nothing and asks "did you drop them here?" "No," the reply comes back, "I dropped them in the alley."

The cop is both bemused and baffled. The drunk only registers the baffled part, and explains, "but the light is much better here."

An apt tale to reflect upon for those who are stumbling drunken down the alley of health care reform and thinking that the keys to making improvement will be right where the light is shining.

Your Long Tail is Showing

80% of Blockbuster's movie rentals are big-budget, big star vehicles (I think they like to call 'em blockbusters). On the other hand, 80% of Netflix's business comes from the art house, specialty, independent or small movie (you know, flix). Our long tail is showing.

Chris Anderson coined the phrase "The Long Tail" in a Wired Magazine article, later turning the concept into a book (shown at right). The cover announces that "the future of business is selling less of more."

When you think about the Arizona economy, you could say that we have a long tail business base. While we can appreciate having large employers that focus on a more traditional "blockbuster" business approach, we can also appreciate having a large share of businesses that collectively "sell more of less."

Let's not get so caught up in comparing ourselves to the blockbuster cities of the past and focus on what will likely be a diversified and bright economic future.

Addendum, fresh from the markets: Blockbuster posted a wider-than-expected loss this past quarter as it spent an inordinate amount of capital to chase Netflix's business model.

Wednesday Stretch: Open Desert

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." - Rumi, Sufi Poet

American can-do spirit seems to have morphed into competitive spirit and then mutated into polarization - politically, socially, and in our business dealings. Even in the face of the positive history of a practice like coopetition (that's not a typo, there's a book on this very subject), polarization seems to be sucking the strength from American culture.

What to do? Create a clearing. And no better place to do it than our Open Desert. One of our greatest resources is our literal and figurative wide open space, meaning this: we have relatively blank slates. A young state with young cities and towns has many opportunities and choices that have just been made or are yet to be made. As the prinicipal of my kids' elementary school says on the PA each day, "It's your choice. Make it a good one."

Take a moment today to look at your choices. Are they polarizing? Coopetitive? Collaborative? Or even unifying? I'll be reflecting today as I work, asking the same questions of myself.

BTW: Google the words "Open Desert" and you'll find our neighbors in Coachella Valley, CA have started a group by that name (and note that I pinched a photo from their site.) At first glance, it appears to have no rudder in the water. When you dig a little deeper, it turns out that this is actually a kinder, gentler networking group. This could be an interesting model for business networkers here to consider.

The Leak Under the Sink

This past weekend was the third installment of "the leak under the sink," an issue I had called a professional repairman to fix (didn't work) and then surely 'fixed' myself last week. Not so. Turns out that all the parts below the sink are interconnected. Simply remounting the disposal that inexplicably fell last weekend wasn't enough. The drain the disposal connected to had a problem, and the pipes and their fittings had all been disturbed by last week's trauma in measurable ways. Measurable, that is, in ounces of water that had accumulated in the under-sink cabinet. Hmm.

Have you already guessed that I might see this as an analogy for the health care system? Without a setup that contains the entire flow, we end up with a trickle, a leak, and ultimately a mess that someone's going to have to clean up or pay to clean up. Attending to one part doesn't get the entire thing to perform right. It sure as heck matters how much water flows in and what's going down the drain with it. Each piece has to be able to deal with what's thrown at it.

Once something does happen, I learned the hard way that it is a whole lot better to take the entire system completely apart, examine the flaws, and then start all over again - some new parts, some old, some different - to build a system that meets the current need and keeps me from coming back in the future to do it again (like next weekend).

Next time you're thinking about health care reform, remember my leak under the sink.