What Broke My Father's Heart

At least our soccer team isn’t the worst among these countries. The Commonwealth Fund is out with an update on international health system rankings—needless to say the U.S. hasn’t made much progress. Have a looksy.

At least our soccer team isn’t the worst among these countries.

The Commonwealth Fund is out with an update on international health system rankings—needless to say the U.S. hasn’t made much progress. Have a looksy.

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 office-based person using data to make an educated guess.

The focus on numbers is warranted. Healthcare is actually still pretty new to cost containment (hospitals were once reimbursed on how much they spent, can you imagine such a world?). So when the gales of the fee-for-service came crashing down upon the ship, numbers mattered more. They’re going to matter even more as we navigate through the bundled-payment storm. By mattering more, there will be more of them.

Ayyyy matey.

Joking aside, numbers are important. But so is everything else. (Like people.)

A recent work task combined with this Chris Guillebeau post have given me more perspective. Numbers are goals. Goals provide focus. Given the complexity of healthcare, focus is a rare element. Numbers provide a sense of control in an environment that is far too crazy to ever really have control. 

Goal numbers can be financial (a budget), performance (zero errors), or interest inducing (hmmm…).

William Taylor at Fast Company asks this question in an article, “So why is it that so many of the numbers we encounter in business—from endless Excel spreadsheets to bloodless calculations in business plans—make our eyes glaze over rather than set our minds racing?”

That’s been my struggle. Numbers have often produced a state of mind-numbing boredom for me. But Taylor notes that the right numbers can tell a compelling story. Like this one: “We’re in front of whiteboards 4 hours a day, but only use them for 4 minutes.”

Yeah, that’s because we’re all looking at the numbers.

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 thought trifecta on the subject that can hold you over while Amazon ships a copy.

The India problem (or: why we all have accountant blood on our hands)

Advice Dan Pink gave me

Where innovation comes from

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.

jayparkinsonmd: The Genome At Ten When I started college in 1994, we were told there were over 100,000 genes in the human genome. Today, it’s estimated to be about 20,000 based on our findings from the Human Genome Project. Science humbles me. We know so little about the human body. And what we “know” today will be different than what we “know” in ten years. The practice of medicine will have gone through two fundamental transitions— there is a common belief within the medical profession that the practice of medicine changes every 5 years. What’s state of the art today is either disrupted by something better or by more accurate information.  One hundred years ago, only about 10% of doctors graduated from medical schools. The rest were essentially shaman. Healthcare is a very new “science.”  That’s why I tend to view the practice of medicine with skeptical eyes. I know what we don’t know. And extrapolate that out a bit more…and you can see why I feel so strongly about healthcare bankrupting our country. The science of healthcare in America is completely based on a moving target. We’re trying to understand the minutiae, rather than focusing on just getting the stupid simple basics right 99% of the time.

jayparkinsonmd:

The Genome At Ten

When I started college in 1994, we were told there were over 100,000 genes in the human genome. Today, it’s estimated to be about 20,000 based on our findings from the Human Genome Project.

Science humbles me. We know so little about the human body. And what we “know” today will be different than what we “know” in ten years. The practice of medicine will have gone through two fundamental transitions— there is a common belief within the medical profession that the practice of medicine changes every 5 years. What’s state of the art today is either disrupted by something better or by more accurate information. 

One hundred years ago, only about 10% of doctors graduated from medical schools. The rest were essentially shaman. Healthcare is a very new “science.” 

That’s why I tend to view the practice of medicine with skeptical eyes. I know what we don’t know. And extrapolate that out a bit more…and you can see why I feel so strongly about healthcare bankrupting our country. The science of healthcare in America is completely based on a moving target. We’re trying to understand the minutiae, rather than focusing on just getting the stupid simple basics right 99% of the time.

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 all things digital. 

One of her most interesting ideas was to ensure all 300 journalists at NPR received digital training, so they knew how to integrate digital elements into their stories.

Digital training! Can you imagine the reach new digital tools might have if hospitals held digital training for everyone? How cool would that be? You might not think so, but I say very, very.

Health care by monthly membership

Beautiful representation of Joint Commission data by Pentagram and GE. The colored boxes are performance indicators for over 30 quality/evidence-based measures. You can drill down to find your local hospital. Here’s the link. (Fast Company)

Beautiful representation of Joint Commission data by Pentagram and GE. The colored boxes are performance indicators for over 30 quality/evidence-based measures. You can drill down to find your local hospital.

Here’s the link.

(Fast Company)