Help the snowbirds: Transparency as an enforcement tool
Elisabeth Rosenthal at the New York Times has a gift for taking what is right in front of us and unnoticed and making it evident. She does it again in this story about elderly "snowbirds" in Florida who are persuaded by doctors there to undergo unnecessary tests. The lede:Like many retirees, one couple from upstate New York visit doctors in their winter getaway in Florida. But on a recent routine checkup of a pacemaker, a cardiologist there insisted on scheduling several expensive tests even though the 91-year-old husband had no symptoms.“You walk in the door, and they just start doing things,” said Sally S...
Source: Running a hospital - February 1, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Do you know you're in my lane?
An excellent video about texting while driving: (Source: Running a hospital)
Source: Running a hospital - February 1, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Success in Ipswich
Back in 2012, my colleague and I ran some workshops for senior management and clinical leaders introducing the Lean philosophy and some of its practices at Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust. As noted at the time:We started with an introduction based on the Toast Kaizen video produced by and featuring GBMP president Bruce Hamilton. Then it was off to gemba, the "factory shop" floor, where the class members shadowed a member of the staff. The idea was to practice observation skills and try to identify the various types of waste found in all organizations. The class members gained a new appreciation for the degre...
Source: Running a hospital - January 31, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
The judge saw through the lie
In a Boston Globe story, here's how Priyanka Dayal McCluskey reports on how the outgoing CEO of Partners Healthcare System described the deal that was turned down today by Suffolk Superior Court Judge Janet L. Sanders:“The judge has said ‘no’ to an agreement that we believe would have paved a pathway to delivering high-quality care closer to home for patients and their families in a lower cost community-based setting."Well, no. First of all, there was no need for PHS to acquire these hospitals to achieve proper care management for patients. All it takes is an agreement to coordinate care and share acces...
Source: Running a hospital - January 30, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Marching, but where? Moscow, I fear.
Melanie Evans and Bob Herman at Modern Healthcare report that "a new task force made up of providers, insurers and employers has committed to shift 75% of its members' business into contracts with incentives for health outcomes, quality and cost management by January 2020."What's up? Well, the theory is that risk-based payment mechanisms like "accountable care, bundled payments and other contracts with the potential for rewards or penalties based on quality performance and better cost control" will bring about greater efficiency and higher quality in the health care system. It is argued that the current system, mai...
Source: Running a hospital - January 29, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Lynne: Initial CMS Evaluations of Readmissions Have Serious Flaws
Joanne Lynn M.D., Director of the Center for Elder Care and Advanced Illness at Altarum Institute, wields a scalpel and a battle axe in her recent criticism of initial CMS evaluations of readmissions. The lede:The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has quietly put out two evaluations of the readmissions work– and both documents are remarkable for their failure to evaluate the programs fairly or to provide insights as to what works in what circumstances.Excerpts:The readmissions/discharges metric that CMS and its evaluators use for categorizing success or failure is seriously flawed. There is no rea...
Source: Running a hospital - January 29, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
John Q. Sherman Award for Excellence in Patient Engagement
It's time again for the John Q. Sherman Award for Excellence in Patient Engagement.This year’s award will be conferred by Standard Register Healthcare in partnership with the National Patient Safety Foundation’s (NPSF) Lucian Leape Institute at the 2015 NPSF Patient Safety Congress in Austin, Texas on April 30 and the award-winning program will be featured on EngagingPatients.org.Last year the award was given to the Open Notes Collaborative and Dr. Nasia Safdar, hospital epidemiologist for the University of Wisconsin Hospital. Who was Mr. Sherman? Here's background:Founder of Standard Regist...
Source: Running a hospital - January 29, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Sampson engages through Chop Chop
I love Sally Sampson's enthusiastic persistence with regard to teaching kids about tasty good food. She has been publishing Chop Chop magazine for some time now, and each issue is a treasure of ideas and stories. The magazine is widely endorsed by pediatricians and is distributed through children’s hospitals, health centers, public schools, afterschool programs, Indian reservations, and community organizations. ChopChop is also available at newsstands and by subscription.Here's the latest set of blog posts. I like this one on knife skills, with this introduction:Slicing, dicing, chopping, and cutting: it’...
Source: Running a hospital - January 29, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
WIHI on identifying patients with complex needs
Madge Kaplan writes:The next WIHI broadcast — When Everyone Knows Your Name: Identifying Patients with Complex Needs — will take place on Thursday, January 29, from 2 to 3 PM ET, and I hope you'll tune in.Our guests will include:Catherine Craig, MPA, MSW, Independent Consultant; Faculty, Better Health and Lower Costs for Patients with Complex Needs, IHIMatt Stiefel, MPA, MS, Senior Director, Center for Population Health Care Management Institute, Kaiser PermanenteEleni Carr, MBA, MSW, Senior Director of Care Integration, Cambridge Health AllianceKathy Weiner, MHSA, Regional Executive Director, Medicare, Kaiser Per...
Source: Running a hospital - January 28, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Would you have guessed this percentage?
A friend of mine with small children, on advice of his pediatrician, inquires of the parents of playmates whether they have a gun in their house. (This is also the advice of the Brady Center.) If so, he respectfully asks that the play date take place in his home instead of theirs. Here's the surprise (at least to me): 30% of families he has talked to have guns. This, in my hometown, one of the highly educated, affluent, low-crime rate suburbs west of Boston. (Source: Running a hospital)
Source: Running a hospital - January 28, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Change Day in Oz
A lovely note from Oz, from my buddy Mary Freer. I'm happy to share worldwide so people can join in directly or vicariously--and perhaps share it further:I wanted to share with you the gorgeous little film that we have just made for Change Day Australia. Here's the link.It's 4 minutes of wonderful inspiration. If you are encouraged by it you might like to share it with your colleagues.Change Day in Australia is growing and providing this incredible platform for health and social care professionals to put forward the best version of themselves.We are making Change Day work through sheer determination and passion...
Source: Running a hospital - January 28, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Not ambulance chasers, bus chasers!
Remember this story about an out-of-town bus that crashed into a too-low bridge underpass in Boston?Well, in the category of a story that takes on its own life, the Bucks County Courier Times reports:Eleven Bucks County residents seriously injured when the charter bus they were riding on hit an overpass in Boston almost two years ago have filed a more than $15 million civil suit alleging the GPS improperly routed the bus driver onto the height-restricted road.“Faulty directions by GPS systems have resulted in numerous bridge collisions throughout the U.S. The systems do not take into account the height of the vehic...
Source: Running a hospital - January 27, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Good step by AG Healey. Next steps?
Brava to the new Massachusetts Attorney General, Maura Healey, for indicating her displeasure with the Partners Healthcare System deal submitted by her predecessor. I'm guessing that the Court is now very unlikely to appprove the proposed settlement. That's good.What next? It would be tempting to view this question of system expansion as solely a Partners issue. After all, they have extensive market power. But the fact is that all of the major systems in the state are acting to expand their reach through mergers and acquisitions.It's time to put a stop to all such anti-competitive activities.T...
Source: Running a hospital - January 27, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Against the grain
There was a session at the Jaipur Literature Festival that I found surprisingly close to home in the health care world. It was titled “Against the Grain” and was summarized as follows: Voices of individual courage and conviction examine strategies of steadfast truth telling in the face of social pressure and mass opinion.The panelists comprised a Who’s Who of writers who have taken a stand and engaged in acts of conscience in their work.Swapan Dasgupta, an Indian conservative columnist, says he is labeled as “contrary because I betray my class, “ a group that has “a self-image of being progressive” but...
Source: Running a hospital - January 26, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
Frankopan offers a view from the East
It is often said that you cannot understand the politics, acrimony, and wars of Asia Minor and the Middle East without understanding the place of the Crusades in the region's history. In a marvelous pairing with that thought, Peter Frankopan has written a book that suggests that you cannot understand why the First Crusade occurred without an understanding of what was happening in the Byzantine Empire, and especially the region extending east from Constantinople.I met Peter after he gave a marvelous talk at the recent Jaipur Literature Festival. Now I've finished the book and am pleased to highly recommend it.It...
Source: Running a hospital - January 25, 2015 Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs
