Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

Aug 29, 2019

Are patients consumers? Defining the terms patient and consumer will get us started here and also provide the insight and common understanding that we need to tackle this seemingly elusive question.

Patient (adjective): able to accept or tolerate delays, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or...


Aug 22, 2019

“If operating on the wrong leg is called a ‘medical error,’ what do we call operating on someone who doesn’t need surgery?” That is a quote I have heard attributed to Jack Wennberg. It also crystalizes a theme I have been hearing a lot lately—the idea that quality metrics in this country today assess care...


Aug 15, 2019

I am working on a collaborative endeavor right now where the BAA (business associate agreement) signing has literally taken a year. The whole project will likely take 2 weeks. I know I’m likely not going to shock anyone listening, but the legal side of any sale or install or collaboration or proposed interoperability...


Aug 8, 2019

We have gotten ourselves into this pickle: Americans—all of us as taxpayers, as patients, as employees, as employers—spend exorbitantly for highly variable results. Great work, great health care in some areas by some great physicians and their teams, and then voluminous other areas rife with overtreatment, errors,...


Aug 1, 2019

Bad things have a propensity to occur in health care when patients are placed on a trajectory and then simply follow the yellow brick road—to an Oz potentially filled with unnecessary surgeries, MRIs that cost 10 times what they should, low-quality providers chasing RVUs (relative value units) like their...