March 2010
24 posts
The And is Everything
The word “and” is used as a link between two statements.
What better statement for a healthcare system to make than to add an and to its name?
Seventy-five percent of the United States annual healthcare spend goes toward the treatment of chronic disease. Three-fourths!
As of today, “approximately 412,857 people have died from chronic disease this year.”
Healthcare is...
Choose Your Battles
A lesson in battle selection.
While no expert, I understand actuarial science. I’m familiar with the concept of an “uninsurable risk.” I’m even aware of the difficulties with interpreting congressional legislation.
But a concept I’m completely unfamiliar with is why a health insurance company would want to stage its first fight of healthcare reform against kids.
...
Local possibilities in healthcare reform
Atul Gawande on local healthcare solutions:
The most interesting, under-discussed, and potentially revolutionary aspect of the law is that it doesn’t pretend to have the answers. Instead, through a new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, it offers to free communities and local health systems from existing payment rules, and let them experiment with ways to deliver better care at lower...
the organization should adapt to its talent →
+1
For your next small problem (alas, none of them are small!) try something different.
Instead of finding the path of least resistance, choose one that makes a revolutionary change.
In this constantly turning world it’s easiest (and likely wits saving!) to find the simple fix. Simple fixes are divine, to be sure. But the fix that only pushes the headache to another day is not a solution.
...
WatchWe know that childhood obesity is a problem; but that’s just it: it’s a problem. The segment that begins at :51 transformed the ho-hum for me: this is an epic, all-hands-on-deck, if-something-isn’t-done-immediately looming disaster.
And then in one of those unexplainable, synchronistic moments when there’s no explanation for events transpiring except that there’s a...
WatchDesign for Patient Dignity, a project of the U.K.’s Design Council:
Design for Patient Dignity is an initiative between the Department for Health and the Design Council that brings together designers, manufacturers, healthcare experts, staff and patients to design a variety of solutions to enhance and promote privacy and dignity in hospitals.
Other cool prototypes here.
via Core77
“We as a nation—and in particular those of us in medicine—now have work to do to...”
– Atul Gawande
What the sale of DMC might mean
On Friday a for-profit hospital holding company (Vanguard Health Systems) agreed to purchase the Detroit Medical Center for $500 million and a promise of an $850 million capital infusion to the system’s eight hospitals.
I think this is significant for a number of reasons:
If not the largest, it has to be one of the largest non-profit hospital systems ever to be sold to a for-profit body....
ER care not so spendy, not so overutilized
Dispelling myths about ER care are Slate’s Zachary Meisel and Jesse Pines:
While the past decade has seen dramatic increases in the use of emergency care and ER crowding, ER care is but a tiny portion of the U.S. health care pie: less than 3 percent. The claim that unnecessary visits are clogging the emergency care system is also untrue: Just 12 percent of ER visits are not urgent. People...
Keep it simple stupid
The Heath Brothers:
Researchers Eldar Shafir and Donald Redelmeier helped prove this point in an article inThe Journal of the American Medical Association. They gave doctors the medical history of a 67-year-old man who’d been suffering chronic hip pain from osteoarthritis. He’d been given drugs to treat his pain, but they had been ineffective, so there was only one viable option:...
@tgoetz: "The Paradox of Technology in Healthcare"
Usually technology makes doing business cheaper. It’s the opposite in healthcare. Thomas Goetz explains why. An excerpt:
In the last century, medical technologies ably did their part to extend the life expectancy of the average American to nearly 80 years. It’s time to reassess how we deploy technology in healthcare, and put the digital revolution to work not just for our entertainment, but...
Truly great healthcare people
Rick Reilly:
Suddenly, the huge gray machine whirs like a giant Transformer, turning sideways, first this side, then that, as though it’s trying to decide how to eat him. Then it zaps his throat and neck lymph nodes, ravaging them. It gives him a radish-red rash that’s covering his face, chest and back. I know. He shows me. He shows me many things I don’t want to see....
@KevinMD asks: "can focusing too much on patient... →
Six Companies Pushing for Transparency in... →
jayparkinsonmd:
Part of my series over at GOOD about fixing the sickness industry with good design.
The dollar cost of it all
An emotion-evoking, stop for nothing, account of battling sickness. Conversations like this are missing from the health care dialog.
Tough talk
Maggie Mahar rightly takes a Hospital Impact post to task.
Low ceilings in the OR = good.
One of many (lots and lots?) insights garnered from research that says building architecture affects mood (and other stuff):
Because her earlier work had indicated that elevated ceilings make people feel physically less constrained, the investigator posits that higher ceilings encourage people to think more freely, which may lead them to make more abstract connections. The sense of confinement...
Combining social programs and sick care
Paul Levy posts striking data from a report by The Blue Ridge Academic Health Group. A breakdown of healthcare spend (public health, medicine, the two added together) as a proportion of total GDP follows:
Country — % of GDP on Social Programs | % of GDP on Sick Care | Total % GDP
United States — 2.3% | 16% | 18.3%
Canada — 5.8% | 10% | 15.8%
Netherlands — 9.6% | 9% |...
The commute is the best part of the day
The conference board says workers’ “commute to work ranks number one as the most satisfying aspect of one’s job.”
Youch.
Links: Design in healthcare
Marketplace story on Sharp Memorial and its use of evidence-based design to build a hospital. Bottom line: better healing.
PSFK presents Ten Radical Rules for Better Healthcare by UK design firm Priestmangoode
WatchAyyy.
Love cost shifting. As defendable as it might be, it’s just not defendable in reality.