November 2009
18 posts
Happy Thanksgiving.
May your travels be safe and your get-togethers enjoyable.
What needs to happen
Dear Implementers of any Healthcare Reform,
Kevin Kelly has advice for you. Pay heed:
What would you do if your current offerings cost only one third what they cost today? They will someday soon, so create models that recognize this trend.
Sincerely,
What Needs to Happen
It is the hospital.
Mark Hurst writes …:
Matt’s story about his hospital visit is instructive on two levels. First, his experience mirrors what is said all too often about the hospital patient experience: medical staff, even if capable and effective, don’t create an efficient or especially comfortable environment.
… about Matt Haughey’s “adventure in brain tumors:”
I...
“Patients bring us stories. We drop into the middle of patients’ stories...”
– Terrence Holt. The power of story reigns supreme in medicine, too.
Solving Problems Today
John Halamka, the uber healthcare CIO, is experimenting with his calendar:
The same thing can be applied to our administrative lives. Each day there are challenges created by customers, employees, and the external world. If we left 50% of our calendars open each day for solving today’s problems today, we would reduce stress, enhance communication, and improve efficiency. We could even...
Understandable: primary care visit times increase
This study appearing in Archives of Internal Medicine (out last week) found that primary care physicians have increased the amount of time they spend with patients by about three minutes between 1997 and 2005.
It was a result, in both the mainstream media and the not-so-mainstream media, presented with amazement, astonishment, and awe.
Well, I operate under the assumption that physicians are...
“The hell of it, for providers, and yes I mean you, hospital executives and...”
– e-Patient Dave
Texting health
The Consumerist:
American researchers conducting a study overseas teamed up with banks to send text messages to consumers to remind them to save. There was a 16% increase in savings account balances by the cohort that got messages pointing out how the bank offered specific incentives for consistent deposits.
However, the messages that pointed out the bad things that could happen if you...
What's the competition doing?
This is, to a very large extent, the healthcare business model:
Why do so many websites have the same shiny thing that users don’t want?
Company D saw something shiny on Company C’s website, so they launched the same thing.
Company C had the shiny thing because they had seen it on Company B’s website, and so they copied it.
Company B had the shiny thing because they had seen...
Many chairmen unaware of hospital quality
This is inexcusable:
The journal Health Affairs will soon publish a survey of the chairmen of more than 700 hospitals. Its main message is that many hospitals are not even aware of what they do well and what they don’t. The physicians who conducted the survey, Ashish Jha and Arnold Epstein, gave the chairmen a list of issues — including financial performance, organizational strategy and the...
Crowdsourced healthcare?
Tim Leberecht writes about the experiment that is the world’s first crowdsourced advertising agency:
It’s always good to be the first, and while crowdsourcing, the trend, may have jumped the shark, a fully crowdsourced creative agency is a bold creative experiment and still news. Two Crispin Porter + Bogusky alums, John Winsor and Evan Fry, together with Claudia Batten, the founder...
Do you fear when you fly? There's an app to help... →
Safety numbers need to increase in order to enable healthcare to do the same. But a neat concept to address fear from Virgin.
jayparkinsonmd:
Virgin rocks.
Virgin Atlantic has had an amazing 98% success rate in curing fear of flying though its Flying Without Fear classes. These are seminars held throughout the UK that provide flight knowledge through a Q&A session with Virgin Atlantic...
Be thankful for modern surgery techniques. →
“I likewise recall, and without nostalgic glow, the less technologically...”
– Reynolds Price in “A Whole New Life”
Don't do that...
Bruce Buschel published the first half of his 100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do. It’s great reading (and insightful learning…). And while not universally applicable to our healthcare service world, there are some beauts with transferable resonance:
1. Do not let anyone enter the restaurant without a warm greeting.
9. Do not recite the specials too fast or robotically...