Example of Misalignment

One of the points in George Halvorson’s book Health Care Reform Now! is about misalignment of incentives.  Providers are not paid for better outcomes.  They are paid per activity (i.e., to keep people coming back).  It’s a key point which deserves a much longer discussion.  That being said, I couldn’t help but think of this [...]

Convergence: The White Space Between Ford and Starbucks

I recently read a great book called Microtrends. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it for its interesting analysis of trends and the way it makes you think. For example, it talks about how people are drinking more water and more caffeine drinks. It talks about how people have much [...]

Facebook Application To Drive Blood Donations

I must admit I am pretty conservative so it was with some reluctance that I finally joined Facebook.  After the Health 2.0 conference formed a group out there, I decided to join earlier this week.  First, my brother reached out to me.  Then, a roommate of mine from college who I hadn’t talked to in [...]

Health Transformation 2.0: Follow-up

The other day, I provided a few comments on this book (manifesto) that I picked up, and I reached out to the author. He got back to me last night and was kind enough to provide the PDF of the publication.
In his words:

“These are simply my thoughts and thoughts inspired by a community of [...]

Health Transformation 2.0

I grabbed this little book off the table at Health 2.0.  I am finally getting around to flipping through it (rather than sleeping).
I can’t figure out if it’s associated with a company.  If yes, they have done a great job of disguising it.  [For what purpose, I don't know.]  It is very well laid out [...]

Savings From Wal-Mart Program

I must admit that the $4 generics programs across the country cause me to have a mixed reaction.  On the one hand, it’s great.  It saves patients money.  In theory, it should encourage compliance.  On the other hand, if they get processed as cash transactions, I worry about them not showing up as claims which [...]

Health 2.0: My Notes

I am just flying back from the Health 2.0 conference out in San Diego. I feel like there is a ton of information that I want to share so kudos to Matthew and Indu for the great job. (And, if you make it to the end of this post, you must really like [...]

Making Good Decisions

This is a classic article that I have reused several times.  The article “Great Escapes” by Michael Useem and Jerry Useem appeared in Fortune (6/27/05) on pg. 97.  It is about thing to use to avoid typical decision making problems.
These are all relevant for anyone in business or healthcare, but with the massive amount of [...]

Where Are The Evidologists?

After one of their team posted a comment on my site, I went to Bazian’s website.  Very interesting.  They are a UK based company that focuses on providing evidence-based healthcare information to publishers, governments and insurers.  Sounds promising.  This is an important issue across the world as companies and practitioners look at how to embed [...]

Working With Clients: Some General Thoughts

One of the best discussions I have heard for account management was by Andrew Sobel. I was digging through some files today and came across some of my notes. I thought I would share a few of my takeaways which I think are good general advice.

It is essentially to be trusted.The four attributes [...]

Medical Mistakes

 Wash hands with soap.  Check.
Clean patient’s skin with antiseptic.  Check.
Wear sterile mask, gown, and gloves.  Check.
Put sterile drapes over  entire patient.  Check.

And that’s all it takes to reduce common infections from medical tubing by 2/3rds.  (12/28/06 study in the New England Journal of Medicine looking at 108 ICUs in Michigan hospitals)  Seems pretty simple.
Do you [...]

Pharmacy Satisfaction: Communication is Key

It’s always great when you find research that clearly reinforces one of the things you always talk about – communications. At PharmacySatisfaction.com which is a website sponsored by WilsonRx and Boehringer Ingelheim, it lists the 10 steps to customer satisfaction for a pharmacy. A few key items that I think are relevant to [...]

Book by Kaiser CEO

George Halvorson, the Chairman and CEO of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, has just published a book called “Health Care Reform Now! A Prescription for Change”. A news clipping service I have sent me a summary from Business Insurance. It is published by John Wiley & Sons and is [...]

US News and World Report Health Links

If you haven’t been there, US News and World Report has a good site for healthcare rankings and other information. Here are a few of the things you will find there:

A link to Healthline where you can get help with Medicare Part D
A list of the top plans according to rankings by NCQA (National [...]

Sticky Messaging

We used to talk a lot about stickiness of websites and eyeballs back in the late 1990s. The word still has some attraction and is a key point in the recent McKinsey interview with Chip Heath. Chip is a professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.
“The key to effective [...]

Looking for an Acquisition - Speculation

With the stock market handsomely rewarding the PBMs especially Medco and Express Scripts, they have cash and stock value to go on the acquisition path. Express Scripts has grown through acquisition over the years leading up to its acquisition of several specialty pharmacy companies a few years ago. In the St. Louis Business [...]

Is Healthcare Missing a Generational Opportunity?

I think a lot about some of the new marketing tactics being used by consumer product companies – sponsorship (e.g., McDonalds Holiday Lights at the Beach Presented by Verizon Wireless), advertisements or product placement in video games, corporate tattoos, YouTube videos, MySpace personas, and Second Life avatars. Logically, who cares about most of [...]

Bat Phones, Blue Phones, and On-Star

I was listening to a GM commercial for their OnStar service earlier today, and it made me wonder.  If GM can design a service, staff a call center, and make money in the highly competitive car market, why can’t healthcare?
Conceptually, it seems like such a great service.  No interactive voice response (IVR)…you actually get to [...]

Missouri Healthcare Discussion

Last month, there was an article in the St. Louis Business Journal where several industry leaders commented on the future of healthcare for Missourians.  I thought several of the comments were universally relevant.
The participants were:

Ron Levy, President and CEO of SSM Health Care
Steve Lipstein, President and CEO of BJC Healthcare
Robert Fruend, CEO St. Louis Regional [...]

IBM HC 2015 – Win-Win or Lose-Lose

I skimmed another IBM publication today which I thought was a great piece – IBM Healthcare 2015: Win-win or lose-lose?. (A little long at ~70 pages, but good with concise charts.) It talks about what healthcare has to do to survive and create a win-win model. It looks at it from multiple [...]

Physician Double Standard (What’s Ours)

There was an article out yesterday summarizing a survey of physicians.  The key point it made was that “up to 96 percent of those surveyed said they should report all instances of significant incompetence or medical errors to the hospital clinic or to authorities.”  [It was only 45% among cardiologists and surgeons??]  BUT, 46% of [...]

IBM on HC 2015 - Part I

I had a chance to catch up on a bunch of reading on the plane including an IBM brochure I picked up the other day on “Healthcare 2015 and US Health Plans“. I found it to be a good piece with several good frameworks although it doesn’t take any radical views on the future (which [...]

Empty Every Chair

It takes a lot for an advertisement to catch my eye, but “empty every chair” made me think.  Especially, when I see the word health in the text.  The text goes on…
“Whose idea was it to build a room to house inefficiency?  The less time patients spend in the waiting room, the happier everyone will [...]

What Have You Failed At Today?

I caught this story on ABC last night about entrepreuners.  It made an interesting point about the need to fail and learn from your failure.  In summary, it was basically saying that people who took risks, failed, and spent the time to learn from their failures ended up more successful.
I think that is very relevant [...]

Companion Global Healthcare

BCBS of South Carolina has been a progressive Blues plan for years.  Under Ed Sellers’ leadership, they have tried new services and built new businesses.  It was surprising, but not shocking, to see that they had opened a new company called Companion Global Healthcare which is a medical tourism company to help people get costly [...]

Patient Centric Healthcare

I changed the name of the blog last week. (I am still debating changing the URL since I don’t want to lose too much of the traffic I get today.)  It fits what I want to talk about (with the exception of some of my ramblings about technology, leadership, innovation, etc).
I was trying to [...]

Leadership in 60 Seconds

I have always been fascinated by two topics - leadership and innovation.  They have driven me to read many things and try different roles.  I also believe my pursuit of both architecture and business as a combination of right and left brain challenges was a way for me to try to learn both.
I found this [...]

Permission Marketing – This is What I [patient] Want

Permission Marketing is certainly not my concept. Seth Godin invented the term and wrote the book on this several years ago. But, I think it is a concept way behind it’s time in healthcare.
“Permission Marketing cuts through the clutter and allows a marketer to speak to prospects as friends, [...]

Encouraging Healthy Behavior (example)

Wellness is a big topic at employers these days.  (And, it would be bigger if retention issues were fixed and companies knew how to retain their people.)  The right programs can make people more motivated, healthier, and more productive and dedicated employees.
I found an example from eBay to be very innovative.  They have launched a [...]

Consumer Voices for Coverage

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has funded something called the Consumer Voices for Coverage which begins in 2008. 
The need from the project comes from the publication of Consumer Health Advocacy: A View from 16 States by Community Catalyst in October of 2006.  This calls for consumers to be active in protecting and expanding healthc are access.  In [...]