Don't Know Much About Health Care and Public Health... but Appointed to Leadership Positions in US Government Health Care Agencies
Discussion Again, it stands to reason that people entrusted with running US government health care, public health and health policy should have some level of knowledge of biomedical science, health care, public health and/or health policy. I dimly remember that before the Trump administration, many such leaders did have such background. Not any more.This is only the latest examples of amazingly ill-informed people taking important responsibilities in government agencies having to do with health care, public health, and/or health policy. Remember the brew-master with power over major policies in the V...
Source: Health Care Renewal - April 5, 2018 Category: Health Management Tags: DHHS Donald Trump ill-informed management narcotics Source Type: blogs
The Dander Riseth Ever Higher: Shulkin Case Emblematic of Dysfunction
This isnumero sesto if memory serves in a series of what gets one ' s dander up in this era of dysfunctional health care. Of course today it ' s all about the focal dysfunction mirroring the much broader problems of a dysfunctional government. I learned just now of the current VA Secretary ' s ouster while overseas in a country that does things in many ways much more effectively.Today we blog about this one issue only. It seems to perfectly encapsulate the Reality Show-cum-wrestling match that our Republican leadership has morphed into. Oh, wait, maybe it didn ' t morph. It was always that way, perhaps, and people are...
Source: Health Care Renewal - March 29, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: blogs
How Do We Counter Health Care Disinformation Under a Disinformer-in-Chief?
DiscussionAn international organization, Cambridge Analytica/ SCL based in the UK, led by Trump confidantes including his last campaign leader and former White House strategic adviser Steve Bannon, and major Republican donors and hedge fund magnates Robert and Rebekah Mercer, worked with the Trump 2016 campaign, particularly coordinating with digital coordinator Brad Parscale. Cambridge Analytica/ SCL leveraged Facebook private data on millions of people, obtained from most without their specific permission, to create a " psyops " political disinformation campaign featuring emotional appeals to voters ' internal psyc...
Source: Health Care Renewal - March 28, 2018 Category: Health Management Tags: crime disinformation Donald Trump extortion propaganda stealth health policy advocacy stealth lobbying stealth marketing Source Type: blogs
And the Dander Keeps On Rising
This isn úmero cinco in our series of attempts to shed some of this dander. But it keeps on rising. Here are two recent reports both relating to the life-on-the-ground of North American rank and file physicians, especially as that life increasingly revolves around data entry and digital madness over and above everything else.Are physicians suffering from acute, maybe by now chronic, PTSD? In the 20 March 2018 number of the important Boston Globe-affiliated newsfeedSTAT, Elizabeth M étraux, a prolific staffer and author at the eminentorganization Primary Care Progress, gives us another quite useful take on physician ...
Source: Health Care Renewal - March 22, 2018 Category: Health Management Tags: burnout core values EHR managerialism physicians Source Type: blogs
Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington
Newly-appointed Minnesota Senator Tina Smith is off to an energetic start, challenging the powers-that-be in Washington, starting with Big Pharma. She recentlywrote to the CEOs of five drug companies, noting thegigantic tax windfalls reaped by their companies after the fall passage of the tax cut bill, andenquiring whether any of that money might enable them to reduce the skyrocketing prices of prescription drugs.I am sure every one of the five CEOs privately gave a big horse laugh at the very thought. Each of them believes that their duty to the shareholders is precisely to exact themaximum possible amount from the p...
Source: Health Care Renewal - March 20, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: blogs
In " Trump Town, " the Revolving Door Runneth Over: Yet More Ex-Lobbyists as Political Appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services
DiscussionOn and on it goes. The revolving door has been a chronic problem for the US federal government, but the level of revolving door activity in the current regime seems way beyond anything we have seen before. It seems we chronical multiple instances of people going from important health care corporate positions to government positions that regulate or make policy affecting those same corporations for every instance of someone coming from the previous administrations to industry.So, as I have said before, e.g., in August, 2017,The revolving door is a species ofconflict of interest. Worse, some expert...
Source: Health Care Renewal - March 15, 2018 Category: Health Management Tags: DHHS Donald Trump health care corruption regulatory capture revolving doors Source Type: blogs
Quattro! More from the DOG Patch.
Some more offerings in our fourth effort in these pages to get rid of this damned dander. It ' s still up! Here in the DOG Patch, D is for Dander, and the dander, in spite of smatterings of good new lately, has still got itself up.Vive le Qu ébec!Nodbody ' s taking sides in Canadian separatism, if it ' s still brewing north of the border. But a certain sense of fairness surely prevails, and we have to give them a rousing " jolly good " (whoops) among Canadian physicians. At least in the one province. As reported by theWaPo,a large group of doctors there have produced a petition (interesting to read here) a...
Source: Health Care Renewal - March 11, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: blogs
How Corporate Health Care Leaders Maintain Their Impunity: The Case of Purdue Pharma's Funding of the Washington Legal Foundation to Attempt to Weaken the Responsible Corporate Officer Doctrine
The ongoing epidemic ofnarcotic (opioid) abuse, and the resulting rise in the deaths due to overdoses, has focused attention on pharmaceutical companies ' aggressive promotion of these drugs which minimized their substantial risk.A recent article in the Intercept showed how the leadership of one such company tried to insulate itself from responsibility for such actions even while such promotions were continuing.Background: Impunity of Top Leaders of Big Health Care OrganizationsFor years, we have railed against theimpunity of top leaders of health care organizations. We have noted that despite numerous legal settleme...
Source: Health Care Renewal - March 6, 2018 Category: Health Management Tags: impunity legal settlements narcotics Purdue Pharma responsible corporate officer doctrine tobacco Source Type: blogs
Dander Gathering Again: Terzo
It ' s hard these days to rid oneself of the rising dander. DanderOmnium GatherumPatch Numero Terzo. To put it more simply, here are more tales from the DOG Patch. And a smattering of actualgood (how ' s this possible?) news.Double Back on Politics at the VA.There ' s a guy now installed under Secretary David Shulkin by the name of Darin Selnick. He carries the title of Senior Advisor, and also works (with the same title) in the White House. Selnick was a California consultant when he fell in with the Koch Brothers and their deep pockets. Together they fostered an organization called Concerned Veterans for America. Ch...
Source: Health Care Renewal - February 27, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: blogs
Tales from the DOG Patch: Numero Deux
A tip of the hat to Dr. Roy Poses, who did a nice job summarizing the first blast from the DOG Patch. (For those who missed it, it ' s a distillate of all the dander we ' ve mustered in recent health policy debates as they veer more and more toward the utterly surreal.) Danderomnium gatherum, hurled willy-nilly at the gentle readers of HCRenewal. Ready or not, another dispatch from the DOG Patch.Dr. Shulkin at the VA.We commented on the recentposting, also from Dr. Poses, dealing with VA Secretary David Shulkin ' s " apparently scandalous travel " to Europe way back in July. We ' ve known Shulkin for a long time. He cares ...
Source: Health Care Renewal - February 21, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: blogs
The Case of the Brew Master's Plot - Was the Veterans Affairs Secretary's Travel Spending Scandalous, or Was He Framed in a Plot to Oust a Political Moderate?
DiscussionDr David Shulkin, a holdover appointee of President Obama who was nominated to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs by President Trump, was alleged by the VA Inspector General to have committed various ethical violations involving a trip to Europe the Secretary took with his wife. This appeared to be just the latest in a string of travel-related scandals by top officials of the Trump administration.When this was first reported, I was inclined to see Dr Shulkin as an entitled, and conflicted former health care executive who ran afoul of the government ' s strict ethical standards. (Dr Shulkin ' soffi...
Source: Health Care Renewal - February 19, 2018 Category: Health Management Tags: Donald Trump ill-informed management mission-hostile management political ideology politics Veterans Affairs Source Type: blogs
Welcome to the DOG Patch: first in a series?
Lately my dander is up so often and so copiously, over what ' s happening in health care and the world at large, I ' m exhausted. Covered with nasty dander. Cowering under the sheets. Others seem to share this dysphoria. But I found if not a cure, at least a palliative. There ' s so much dander I can scrape it off with a great big shovel and toss as much as I can your way. Here ' s my first DanderOmnium Gatherum, or DOG, from the Cetona DOG Patch. Remember, these stories are all DOGs.Litmus Test for New HHS Secretary. The new sheriff at Health& Human Services, Alex Azar, has barely had a chance to wipe his feet in...
Source: Health Care Renewal - February 15, 2018 Category: Health Management Source Type: blogs
New article in J. of General Internal Medicine calls for simplifying EHRs
At my January 31, 2018 Healthcare Renewal blog post "The inevitable downgrading of burdensome, destructive EHRs back to paper& document imaging" athttp://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-inevitable-downgrading-of.html, I opined that the downgrading of the clinician-facing components of EHRs was essential and inevitable. A new editorial in the Journal of General Internal Medicine makes similar points:Electronic Health Records: a " Quadruple Win, " a " Quadruple Failure, " or Simply Time for a Reboot?Journal of General Internal MedicineMichael Hochman05 February 2018https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs...
Source: Health Care Renewal - February 7, 2018 Category: Health Management Tags: healthcare IT simplification Journal of General Internal Medicine Michael Hochman Source Type: blogs
Are You With Us, Dr Gu? - Vanderbilt Suspended Surgical Resident Allegedly Due to Patient's Mother's Compaints About His " Taking a Knee " on Social Media
ConclusionsThis case suggested that at least the leadership of one prestigious university medical center is very uncomfortable at best, with its residents publicly expressing certain political opinions, even clearly outside the confines of the hospital. Whether the leaders felt licensed by the President of the United States, who had banned the person at the center of this case from following him on Twitter, is a reasonable question.It may not be unreasonable to expect physicians and physician-trainees, as medical professionals, to avoid getting into political arguments with patients. However, it is unreasonable...
Source: Health Care Renewal - February 7, 2018 Category: Health Management Tags: academic freedom anechoic effect free speech post-graduate medical education Vanderbilt University Source Type: blogs
Free Press? Don't Need No Stinkin' Free Press - Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Tries to Intimidate Modern Healthcare Journalist
DiscussionIt appears that respected reporter for a well-known US health care business publication was barred from participation in CMS conference calls after some rather mild reporting on his part offended CMS leadership. There seemed to be an attempt to intimidate the reporter by a federal " contractor " paid by CMS, a contractor who was a criminal, that is, who had pleaded guilty to a federal crime of lying to the Conressional Ethics office. How far have we descended.OnHealth Care Renewal we have been writing aboutattempts to limit free speech or free discussion in the press in the health care sphe...
Source: Health Care Renewal - February 5, 2018 Category: Health Management Tags: anechoic effect censorship CMS First Amendment free speech intimidation Source Type: blogs
