April 2010
20 posts
Increase the Quiet
Lots of hospitals want to reduce noise. But what about increasing the quiet?
Gosh, I love turnarounds like that.
Experiment!
Dan Ariely:
Companies pay amazing amounts of money to get answers from consultants with overdeveloped confidence in their own intuition. Managers rely on focus groups—a dozen people riffing on something they know little about—to set strategies. And yet, companies won’t experiment to find evidence of the right way forward.
Here’s the advice.
“Is there a way to accomplish what you want using existing standards and existing...”
– Kevin Kelly on, more or less, getting out of healthcare to solve problems.
Park Nicollet rolls out an online diagnosis... →
Here's What Primary Care Doctors Do All Day →
The Future of Health Care Is Social →
Don’t be intimidated by the story’s nine pages—there are lots of pretty pictures.
WatchCNN is exploring healthcare costs across their programming schedule this week.
“We see our role as complementary to the established infrastructure.”
– MinuteClinic CEO Andrew Sussman on the company’s new chronic care monitoring services.
In a healthcare delivery world where providers strive to be the “provider of all services” for a patient, it’s interesting to watch a niche deliverer innovate.
We know chronic disease...
Is This the Answer to Hospital-Acquired... →
Get that attitude
Dr. Carolyn M. Clancy, the agency’s director, pointed out that projects across the country had shown remarkable success in reducing infection rates by adhering to basic standards for hand hygiene, disinfection of patients, sterile handling of equipment and proper use of antibiotics. But at many hospitals those successes have yet to overcome an entrenched medical culture. (New York Times, emphasis...
Keep 'em out of the hospital
The Health Blog:
UnitedHealth Group and Walgreens say they’re teaming up with the YMCA on a program that will reimburse pharmacists and lifestyle coaches to help insured patients prevent and control diabetes.
Putting biases aside, isn’t this a great idea? What surprises me, no rubs me wrong, is that today’s healthcare providers (hospitals) can’t/won’t/don’t try...
Grocers offer free diabetes medicines →
Capitalism doing good.
Doctors and Patients, Lost in Paperwork →
link via Dr Jay
It really is atrocious how much paperwork is required to do anything in healthcare. You’d think our transition to a more technology-competent industry; not so much.
Look at sick people to stay healthy
lifehacker:
According to a University of British Columbia study, looking at sick people can boost your immune system. (Hanging around them does not.)
Not a lingering April Fool’s joke (I don’t think).
More care (not equal to) better care
An interesting article on the fallacy of more care = better care. Health Beat analyzes:
I believe that pundits are right when they say that Americans have to learn to scale back on medical care. But I don’t think it needs to be achieved in the same way it was during the days of managed health care—when it seemed that many of the treatment denials were made purely to save money, without...
Favorites: Get out of healthcare
The complications of delivering healthcare often demand customized solutions. But that doesn’t mean we need to depend on the ideas inside of our walls for inspiration. We could do a lot to improve ourselves if we just looked beyond our doors. Memorial Hospital and Health System in South Bend, Indiana has been doing just that for years. There are plenty of examples of organizations getting...
"If only" (you'd embrace the constraints)
“If only I had one more employee…”
“If only I had a bigger budget…”
“If only I had the newest tool…”
The “if only” plea is often evidence of problems much larger than what the proposed solution would seem to address. Rarely is “if only” an ultimatum between success and failure as some make it out to be.
Near as I can...