July 2010
9 posts
"Letting Go"
Atul Gawande at The New Yorker:
People have concerns besides simply prolonging their lives. Surveys of patients with terminal illness find that their top priorities include, in addition to avoiding suffering, being with family, having the touch of others, being mentally aware, and not becoming a burden to others. Our system of technological medical care has utterly failed to meet these needs,...
Speak Human
Dan Pink:
So try an experiment. For the next seven days, go monolingual and speak only human at work. Don’t say anything to your boss, your staff, your teammate, your supplier or your customer that you wouldn’t say to your spouse or your friend.
Trying things
I think we should all just go ahead and acknowledge that no matter how the macro-economic healthcare resources are distributed or the system through which they are delivered will ever reach an ideal state.
Okay?
That said, we shouldn’t ever stop trying to reach it—even with different definitions of what exactly that ideal state may be. The flux of it all is the engine of its...
Fake bus stop prevents patients from leaving
The Telegraph:
The bus stop, in front of the Benrath Senior Centre in the western city of Düsseldorf, is an exact replica of a standard stop, with one small difference: buses never stop there.
The idea emerged after the centre was forced to rely on police to retrieve patients who wanted to return to their homes and families but had forgotten that in many cases neither existed any longer.
...
Does Your Job Title Get the Job Done? →
Have you ever wondered why that healthcare exec has seventeen different titles? Evidently there’s a motive.
Creativity matters.
An article by Po Bronson and Ashley Merrymen at Newsweek about creativity has been making the internet rounds.
All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace...
When Nurses Go on Strike - Freakonomics Blog →
Unions.
I was ready to comment on this article about the potential nurse strike in Minnesota. I’ve been following the labor dispute loosely; what has surprised me is the predominantly anti-union sentiment taken by newspaper article commenters (Minnesota tends to the liberal side of the spectrum).
This afternoon hospitals and the union agreed to a to-be-voted-upon proposal. Good news for patients....
June 2010
29 posts
What are the odds?
It’s hot in Las Vegas and the heat is on local hospitals as the Las Vegas Sun begins an ongoing quality investigation:
As part of a two-year investigation, Sun reporters Marshall Allen and Alex Richards have obtained a record of every Nevada hospital inpatient visit going back a decade — 2.9 million in all. The information, coupled with interviews with more than 150 patients and health...
What Broke My Father's Heart →
Numbers.
I’ve never really been a “numbers” guy. They don’t allow enough legal/moral creativity for my interests. But that doesn’t mean I don’t respect them. Numbers are vitally important to any business adventure. I just think that sometimes we place too much importance on them—especially when those numbers are just projections without much more than an...
Back to rugged (and it's good...)
Seth Godin:
So I guess instead of slick we’re now seeking transparency and reputation and guts.
3 @leighhouse @danielpink Drive links
If you haven’t dove into “Drive” by Dan Pink yet, you’re due. It takes everything you thought you knew about motivation and turns it around. There are serious implications (everywhere in healthcare, but especially) in the physician compensation area—financial rewards don’t always motivate the behavior they’re intended to. Anyway, Leigh Householder posted a...
THE VELLUVIAL MATRIX →
It’s generally my policy to link to anything written by Atul Gawande, so here is his recent commencement speech for the graduates of the Stanford Medical School.
And again, it is so damn good. Any time I read something by him I dream of being as good of a writer…and thinker.
Digital training!
An interesting nugget from Ed Cotton who heard NPR’s Vivian Schiller at the Wired Business Conference:
Vivian Schiller had a different story, she was all about responding to changing times and about embracing digital platforms as rapidly as possible. She was proud that NPR’s radio listeners are at an all-time high (60% increase in the past 10 years), but yet NPR is rapidly embracing...
Health care by monthly membership →
Individual, isolated bad experiences can ruin a...
Grant McCracken recalls a recent experience on a Virgin Atlantic flight:
I was trying to charge my phone on my Virgin Atlantic flight home from London and one of the attendants descended on me to insist that I cease and desist. I tried to explain that a cell phone was essential to meeting up with one’s car service. She didn’t care.
We’ve all had a similar experience; a power...
WatchWhat we need in organizations are people with a lot of power and no budget. Darn insightful.
Rory Sutherland: Sweat the small stuff
Read! Read! Read!
It’s the secret to life. This just makes so much sense:
It’s a simple proposition: read an article a day. When you are done, make a quick note on what you have read in your notebook. Over time the notebook grows. And yet I honestly believe few people do this. (Savage Minds)
The accelerant for healthcare conversation
Suddenly, you feel like John Nash, you can’t keep up with your own mind as geometric symbols float over the magazine articles in your lap. Someone strikes up a conversation about health care, and suddenly everything you’ve ever heard about the topic is at the tip of your tongue.
Damn, coffee is awesome.
You are Not So Smart because coffee is an amazingly addictive D-R-U-G; but it’s so...
I'll see you in court
Duluth News Tribune:
“The basis for the lawsuit is the defamatory statements that were made on websites and to other sources,’’ Tanick said. “However, by no means does Dr. McKee want to in any way prevent or affect any kind of communications that may be made to the Board of Medical Practice or any other regulatory agencies. The purpose of the lawsuit is to prevent defamation being made on the...
WatchUnwavering commitment to patient safety: if not now, when?
via Gel Health
New ways to organize workers
From the obvious-but-not-no-so-obvious annals:
Given the realities of today’s complex business environment, it is no longer possible to satisfy a workforce with one broad, standard approach to managing talent. A perfect storm of events and trends is pushing organizations to abandon the traditional employment compact along with the one-size-fits-all approach to human resources.
“U.S. health spending will increase from $2.6 trillion in 2010 to $4.7 trillion...”
– CMS Office of the Actuary
Not the definition of sustainability.
Say something
Seth prods corporate speak:
It took me two minutes to find a million examples. Here’s one, “The firm will remain competitive in the constantly changing market for defense legal services by creating and implementing innovative and effective methods of providing cost-effective, quality representation and services for our clients.”
Write nothing instead. It’s shorter.
Most...
Consumers Not Too Psyched About ‘Evidence-Based... →
Discouraging news. I have a feeling, though, if patients knew how much the care they received actually cost and had a true understanding of its chances for success they might feel differently.
A purpose for a closed hospital?
Theme! It’s Detroit Day here. Pure synchronicity.
This is a cool project from architecture fellows at the university up north (my Ohio State pride shining through):
Five research fellows from the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning transformed an abandoned house in Hamtramck (which is basically Detroit) into their very own lab rat. The recent...
10 things your hospital won't tell you →
Of my many questions for the folks at West Bloomfield (see below): is the newly built hospital doing anything different to answer these age-old concerns?
“The challenge today is to deliver a level of service comparable to the best...”
– Gerard van Grinsven, CEO of Henry Ford West Bloomfield (a hospital that is part of the Henry Ford Health System)
One Hospital’s Radial Prescription for Change, Harvard Business Review
Fence sitting is annoying. But I’m completely on the fence with this one. Detroit’s got big...
Dr. Jay: I'm hiring! →
Dr. Jay Parkinson’s new company The Future Well is hiring an intern this summer in NYC. A delightfully cool opportunity if you fall within his parameters.
Fixing the noisy hospital →
Do More With Less Principle
Ezra Klein:
Eventually, we’re just going to have to get the growth of health-care costs down. There’s simply no other way.
Predicting the healthcare future is difficult; it is even more so now that we have reform measures in place. Will it work? Won’t it work? I’d argue, strictly in a sustainability sense (i.e., not including any moral arguments regarding healthcare...
Uh-oh writers...
Cory Doctorow quotes Jason Ford at Boing Boing:
Doctors are being urged to give their patients a legal form that transfers a patient’s copyright over web postings if they mention the doctor or practice online. The doctor can then send a DMCA takedown notice and have the criticism removed from the web without filing a lawsuit. As a fiction writer this worries me greatly, especially since...
May 2010
34 posts
“When Toyota makes mistakes that possibly result in dozens of deaths, the country...”
– What really ails American health care. (via jayparkinsonmd)
The Doctor Will See You Now. Please Log On. →
Who are hospital ads really aimed at? →
Marketplace asks an important question—one that’s difficult to answer. I feel that the majority of hospital advertising is ineffective and that much of the annual billion dollar + spend is wasted (mainly because they’re all the same; try hard to find ads that don’t focus on hospital reputation)—but I’d be willing to be proven wrong.
While improved reimbursement...
WatchJohanna Blakly makes a case for stealing and it’s terrific.
Devolution: a path to success for healthcare?
Kevin Kelly on today’s organization and its struggle with outmoded business models:
There is only one way out. The stuck organism must devolve. In order to go from a peak of local success to another higher peak, it must first go downhill. To do that it must reverse itself and for a while become less adapted, less fit, less optimal. It must do business less efficiently, with less...
A big screw-up
Did you read about 6pm.com’s (a Zappos company) big screw-up last week? Read about it on the company’s blog here.
The short of the long: an error on the website capped all prices for all goods at $50 for a few hours. Customers, as they do, purchased items. 6pm.com (Zappos) realized the mistake and fixed the issue. The company honored all purchases at the mistake price. Zappos lost...
Confirm him!
Paul Levy at Running a Hospital to Senator Scott Brown:
Dear Scott, I understand the Senate confirmation process in Washington, DC, and how the appointment of individuals gets hung up for a variety of political reasons. I don’t particularly like it, but I understand it. But I don’t understand how with regard to the appointment of Don Berwick as head of CMS, the Medicare agency, this...
“In 2009 providers realized their receivables on average 7 days faster across all...”
– That and a bunch more from Health 2.0 darling athenahealth and its 2010 PayerView.
