Obsessive Measurement Disorder: Etiology of an Epidemic
By KIP SULLIVAN JD
Review of The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Z. Muller, Princeton University Press, 2018
In the introduction to The Tyranny of Metrics, Jerry Muller urges readers to type “metrics” into Google’s Ngram, a program that searches through books and other material published over the last five centuries. He tells us we will find that the use of “metrics” soared after approximately 1985. I followed his instructions and confirmed his conclusion (see graph below). We see the same pattern for two other buzzwords that activate Muller’s BS antennae – “benchmarks,” and “performance indicators.” ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 13, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Data Benchmarks Book Review Jerry Z. Muller Kip Sullivan Metrics performance indicators The Tyranny of Metrics Source Type: blogs
Overprescribing Is a Key Component of the Opioid Crisis — Here’s How to Stop It
By DAVE CHASE
Today’s opioid crisis is one of the most dire side effects driven by our dysfunctional U.S. healthcare system. A recent JAMA Surgery report found that many surgeons prescribe four times more opioids than their patients use. This opens the door for misuse and abuse later on. In fact, the total combined cost of misuse, abuse, dependence and overdose is about $78.5 billion.
Unfortunately, there’s a direct connection between the low-quality care many patients receive, and the astounding rates of opioid addiction. Often, insurance plans offer access to high-cost, volume-centric physicians and include high de...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 29, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Patients Value-Based Care Dave Chase Opioid epidemic Source Type: blogs
Experiencing Patient Experience results from MHQP
For the past 14 years, Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP) has published results of its primary care patient experience survey. The information is useful to the practices themselves as they seek to improve, and to health plans looking to evaluate their networks, improve member service, and pay bonuses to the best practices.
This year MHQP added an analysis of free text feedback to its analysis, to give practices more color on the scores.
The consumer-facing site, Healthcare Compass lets users view ratings for individual practices and compare up to three at a time. Users can click on the individual categories to le...
Source: Health Business Blog - January 28, 2019 Category: Health Management Authors: dewe67 Tags: Patients Physicians Research Source Type: blogs
Progressive Corporate Governance Reforms
This blog post is part of a larger series on “Stock-Market Short-Termism” (see also my entry onshare-buybacks). I will be assessing one proposed cure, corporate governance reforms, and will argue that it is likely to be iatrogenic. I.On August 15, 2018, Senator Elizabeth Warren formally introduced her “Accountable Capitalism Act”, that would,inter alia,require of all firms generating $1 billion or more in revenue that “no fewer than 40% of its directors are selected by the corporation’s employees.” In mandating that corporations include employeesquastakeholders in the firm ’s major decisions, government wo...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 10, 2018 Category: American Health Authors: Derek Bonett Source Type: blogs
Mission-Hostile Hospital Management: Quieter, but Still Pernicious After All These Years
Hospitals exist to take care of sick people, with the goal of making them better. Hospitals employ and work with health care professionals, again who are sworn to put taking care of patients ahead of all other concerns.However, since we foundedHealth Care Renewal, we have noted striking examples of hospital leaders threatening their hospitals ' fundamental mission and/or health care professionals ' core values, which we dubbedmission-hostile management. We also saw mission-hostile management affecting the broader health care industry, particularly pharmaceutical and device companies. Most recently, the mo...
Source: Health Care Renewal - December 10, 2018 Category: Health Management Tags: hospitals imperial CEO managerialism mission-hostile management perverse incentives Source Type: blogs
Blurring of Definition of Big Medicine; Corporatization of Healthcare
Eight years ago I posted a note referring to an article in theNew York Times (see:More Doctors Giving Up Private Practices) about the emergence of"Big Medicine" (see:Physician Private Practice Declines; the Last Barrier to Emergence of"Big Medicine"). In that note, Big Medicine was defined as being composed of the following organizations: (1)Big Pharma, (2)Big Payers (i.e., the U.S. government and large insurance companies); and (3)Big Providers (i.e., large consolidated regional health systems). A related concept now occurring in Big Medicine is its corporatization. As a result, physicians workin...
Source: Lab Soft News - December 3, 2018 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Insurance Pharmaceutical Industry Quality of Care Source Type: blogs
The MSSP Is No Silver Bullet for Healthcare Cost Control
But ACOs could pave the way for more significant cost-cutting based on competition.
By KEN TERRY
The Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), it was revealed recently, achieved a net savings of $314 million in 2017. Although laudable, this victory represents a rounding error on what Medicare spent in 2017 and is far less than the growth in Medicare spending for that year. It also follows two years of net losses for the MSSP, so it’s clearly way too soon for anyone to claim that the program is a success.
The same is true of accountable care organizations (ACOs). About a third of the 472 ACOs in the MSSP received a total of...
Source: The Health Care Blog - November 19, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Economics Health Policy Medicare Accountable Care Organizations Hospitals Ken Terry Medicare Shared Savings Program Physicians Source Type: blogs
Corporate chains versus boutique clinics for IVF treatment
It's great to see that so many corporate chains of IVF clinics have come up all across India.The advantage is that now patients have access to IVF treatment even in small towns, and they don't need to travel to large cities to get IVF treatment.This makes it much more convenient for them, and hopefully a little more affordable as well.However, the problem is that the major motive behind these corporate chains is to maximize their profits, rather than to do what's in the patient's best interests.This often means that they use an assembly line procedure, and their doctors are forced to meet targets and do a certain numb...
Source: Dr.Malpani's Blog - November 12, 2018 Category: Reproduction Medicine Source Type: blogs
DAI Course – Public Feedback From Alumni
This is a continuation of yesterday’s post on the impact and results of the recently created Deep Abundance Integration course, which was designed to help people shift from scarcity to abundance in many areas of life.
In the previous post, I shared some feedback in summary form as well as charts and graphs of people’s ratings. In this post I’ll share the direct words from course alumni who offered to share some public feedback about the experience.
My exact wording of the invite was:
If you’re willing to share any thoughts, results, or feedback that we can post publicly (especially to help others de...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - October 16, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Steve Pavlina Tags: Abundance Creating Reality Source Type: blogs
DAI Course – Impact and Results
The objective / subjective contrast
The spontaneity and not knowing what’s next kept things exciting
The idea of trusting reality, even if we can’t know its true nature
Just listening to you share your thoughts and ideas
The great examples
The many perspectives and different ways of looking at abundance
The 4 levels with the relationship with the universe being the most important
The idea of living an entertaining life
Feeling I have permission to live more as myself
Releasing a lot of attachments I had
The practical applications
Touching on so many different topics and connecting the dots
The concept of heart-aligned ...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - October 15, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Steve Pavlina Tags: Abundance Creating Reality Source Type: blogs
Cats & Dogs: Can We Find Unity on Health Care IT Change?
By MATTHEW HOLT
Today we have a humming economy and insane politics. In early 2009 we were in economic meltdown and were about one week into the sanest, soberist Administration and even Congress over many recent decades. In February 2009 They passed a stimulus bill that had a huge impact on the health IT market (and still does). At that time there was much debate on THCB about what the future of health IT policy should look like and how the stimulus “Meaningful Use” money should be spent. My January 2009 summary of that whole debate introduced the notion of “Cats and Dogs in health IT”. They’...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 15, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Matthew Holt 2008 Election EHR Health 2.0 Policy Policy/Politics RHIOs Startups Source Type: blogs
Creating a Heart-Aligned Offer (and the Results)
Recently I reached a point on my entrepreneurial journey where I felt it was time to start innovating my own unique offers instead of leveraging and applying the formats I’ve learned from other entrepreneurs, speakers, and coaches.
Until now the methods I’ve used to create and deliver value and to generate income have largely been based on strategies and formats I learned from others. Here are some formats I’ve used thus far to provide value and/or earn income:
Blogging
Affiliate programs
Advertising networks like Google Adsense
Selling ads directly on my website
Podcasting
Creating YouTube videos
Joint ...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - August 13, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Steve Pavlina Tags: Abundance Creating Reality Lifestyle Productivity Values Source Type: blogs
" Hope in a Bottle " - Components of Purdue Pharma Stealth Marketing Campaign for Oxycontin Revealed by Legal Documents from Tennessee
Introduction: Disinformation and Stealth Marketing CampaignsBack in the distant past the US government made some attempt to hold big health care corporations to account for misleading marketing practices. We learned a lot about these practices from documents revealed in the resulting litigation, and in particular, about stealthy, deceptive systematicmarketing,lobbying, andpolicy advocacy campaigns on behalf of big health care organizations, often pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies. For example, in 2012 wefound out about the stealth marketing campaign used by GlaxoSmithKline to sell its a...
Source: Health Care Renewal - July 8, 2018 Category: Health Management Tags: deception disinformation narcotics perverse incentives propaganda public relations Purdue Pharma stealth marketing Source Type: blogs
How About Doing a New 30-Day Deep Dive Together?
While flying back from a recent trip, I got the idea of doing something I’ve never done before: leading people through a 30-day deep dive together via daily live video calls.
So we’ll pick some aspect of personal growth and then delve into it together for a month. Each day I’ll share some insights, lessons, and tips with you about that topic on a live video call. The calls will also be recorded for anyone who can’t attend live.
We can easily do this because we already have the whole tech stack in place thanks to setting it up for Conscious Growth Club last year. It’s the same tech that we use ...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - July 2, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Steve Pavlina Tags: Announcements Source Type: blogs
