Recent Articles In Industry Journals
After The Shouting
(From Hospitals and Health Networks Online, November 11, 2008)
Too often, ideas take on a partisan coloration, doubly so in an election year. And the colors are often rather arbitrary. From a systems-thinking point of view (and shorn of their partisan labels), which ideas for healthcare reform floated during the campaign make sense? What would actually work?
When the Co-Pay Goes in the Gas Tank
(From Hospitals and Health Networks Online, September 9, 2008)
Toward a value-based health care system.
Do you get what you pay for in health care? How can you tell? What if you could tell?
However
we re-organize the payment of health care in the United States over the
next several years, these are the key questions that determine whether
the system works, or whether it evolves to become a new, more complex
form of today’s rolling disaster.
What is a “Doctor?”
(From Physician Executive, September/October 2008)
The answer to that question is undergoing a rapid, thorough, and historic shift. When people around the world ask for more from healthcare, at the core they are talking about their relationship to a physician. The results of the demands, combined with modern technology, will in fact not be a return to any mythical “good old days,” but something entirely new, different, and probably better – both more efficient and more effective. All that must be sacrificed are some habits of mind.
Change the Model
(From Hospitals and Health Networks Online, July 9, 2008)
At the core of any real health care reform, as well as at the core of institutional survival, we find one key problem: the relationship between primary physicians and hospitals. Hospitals need primary care physicians. They should hire physicians, they should buy physician practices, and they should join the retail clinic movement.
The New Integration
(From Hospitals and Health Networks Online, May 10, 2008)
Here’s what we know: Come next January, the United States will have a new president and a new Congress. We can bet that president and that Congress will take up the issue of health care reform. And it is a dollars-to-doughnuts bet that whatever they do will not come close to fixing health care. That’s our job.
What Must Be Done
(From Hospitals and Health Networks Online, March 11, 2008)
The emerging conditions of a data-intensive, customer-centric health care world of real choice and real competition drive a number of clear, on-the-ground imperatives for all health care providers. Here’s a checklist.
10 Ways To Compete In Primary Care
(From Physician Executive, January/February 2008)
[If you run primary-care clinics or practices, multi-specialty
practices, or even fully-staffed, full-service urgent care clinics, you
are or will soon be in direct competition with the largest and most
efficient corporations in the world running retail care operations.]
The Curse of Capitalism
(From Hospitals and Health Networks Online, January 15, 2008)
The growing influence of money in politics and regulation is so pervasive that it drowns out most real discussion of practical solutions for the good of the whole system, and for all of us as citizens.