Healthcare Roundup: UnitedHealth's Health Portal, J&J's Spending Spree, Tech Cos. Target Healthcare, and More

(MoneyWatch)  UnitedHealth launches consumer-health Web portal -- In a departure for a major health-insurance company, UnitedHealth Group launched an open Web site aimed at providing anyone with health information, tools and a personal health record. The site, dubbed myoptumhealth.com and offered by UnitedHealth subsidiary Optum Health, puts the insurer in competition with other health portals and PHR providers such as WebMD, Google Health and Microsoft's HealthVault. Yet to be determined: Exactly why consumers would want to trust an insurance company with their personal health information if they don't have to. [Sources: WSJ, WSJ Health Blog, Chilmark Research]

J&J on medical-device spending spree -- Johnson & Johnson agreed to acquire Mentor, a maker of breast implants and equipment for liposuction and facelifts, for $1.1 billion. Just a week earlier, the big health-products and drug company paid $438 million for Omrix, a maker of devices for stanching bleeding. [Source: Bloomberg]

Tech companies anticipate health-IT windfall -- Tech companies are salivating at the thought of major spending on hospital and IT-management systems. Existing players such as GE, Siemens and Philips will be joined by relative newcomers such as Intel, Apple, Microsoft and Google as they elbow for a share of an anticipated $50 billion market. Separately, President-elect Barack Obama said federal health-IT efforts could be an important source of economic stimulus. [Sources: Reuters, CQ Healthbeat via iHealthBeat]

Smaller insurer group dissents from reform proposals -- While the health-insurance industry's largest trade group and the BlueCross BlueShield Association last week said their members would give up medical underwriting in exchange for an individual-insurance mandate, a smaller trade group -- the Council for Affordable Health Insurance -- dissented and said consumer-directed health plans and individual choice offer a better chance of extending coverage to the uninsured. CAHI says its members include health insurers, small businesses, doctors and insurance brokers. [Source: CAHI]

Senators ask GAO to compile best healthcare practices -- Sens. Kent Conrad and Sheldon Whitehouse have asked the Government Accountability Office to compile the best practices of hospitals, HMOs and related "integrated delivery systems," and other national healthcare systems to improve care quality and lower costs. [Source: Health Data Management]

Obama's budget chief believes healthcare IT adoption requires intervention -- Peter Orszag, incoming head of the Office of Management and Budget, has previously testified that neart-term adoption of electronic health records and related healthcare IT systems in the U.S. will probably require federal requirements. Orszag said offering physician bonuses -- as Medicare will start doing next year -- won't work because it would only reward doctors who have already made healthcare IT investments. [Source: Healthcare IT News]

Illinois hospital agrees to $36M settlement -- Condell Medical Center of Libertyville, Ill., agreed to pay the federal government $36 million to ward off a lawsuit over physician payments that allegedly amounted to kickbacks. Condell is being acquired by Advocate Health Care for $180 million. [Source: Modern Healthcare]

U Michigan facility lays off 80 -- The University of Michigan Hospital & Health Centers said it will lay off 80 employees by January. The cuts reflect a tiny fraction of the facility's roughtly 13,000 employees. [Source: Modern Healthcare]