The pressures mounting on most institutions as the years trudge by are mounting. They are mired in mountains of regulations, the need to implement millions of dollars of IT "improvements," streamline their most productive service lines, strip down their front-line staff to dangerous levels … and all this while their reimbursements are being crushed.
Consider that a profitable hospital currently operates on a 1% margin.
Consider that the hospital is considered the most costly ...
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Most of you are quite familiar with the rather astounding facts regarding medical errors. There are many reasons why medical errors occur in healthcare. There are errors in omission, there are errors because of poor communication, there is the ever present risk of human error and perhaps the ever increasing stress on physicians to see more and more patients in less and less time. ...
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The world of healthcare is inherently siloed, tethered, fragmented and prone to poor communication and collaboration. Today, healthcare workers solve their problems via traditional methods that are often costly, inefficient, nor timely. Increasingly, more savvy healthcare workers are looking outside the system to digital media and communities for answers, but are challenged with uncertainty over concepts of usefulness, practicality, bandwidth issues, "ROI" and privacy concerns.
Establishing a digital presence is rapidly ...
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We are all guilty of confirmation bias from time to time.
Confirmation is something that resident physicians in particular are guilty of more so than experienced, qualified physicians. Resident physcians and attending physicians alike may quickly form a diagnosis in their mind during a brief discussion with a patient. Now they will try to convince themselves (sub-consciously) that the other complaints and physical exam fit that diagnosis. They force ...
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I lived in Japan in 1991. When I was having a conversation with someone, they would always nod their head as if they completely understood the message I was trying to convey.
It turns out that was not the case. The nodding was a sign of respect. When I began to inquire if they understood what I was trying to say — it became clear that the answer was usually no.
Many ...
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This is a message that should resonate loud and clear with providers, institutions or members of the healthcare enterprise world who are ruminating over the upsides -- and potential downsides -- of a wide reaching, multiple digital property: social media presence.
As Ted Eytan found out when he questioned the (anonymous) physicians on Sermo, many physicians are simply not interested in establishing an online presence.
"Risk” is the overwhelming variable they’re ...
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This has been a very busy week already. I have seen many second opinons and I am always very interested in the reason why the patient initiated the second opinion.
In many situations it was simply to see if I would perform the surgery. After I spent a while listening to the patient, examining them and coming up with an appropriate ...
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Gentle nudges is a concept termed recently to describe a micro-choice movement that is beginning to carve out a sizable niche in the healthcare start-up space, and is gaining a lot of well deserved national attention. The secret ingredient relates to the power of a gentle nudge; verbal, text or otherwise to accomplish a change in the behavior of the person who receives the nudge. We are just starting to ...
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"Instead of focusing on treating him, an employee said, St. Mary nurses and other hospital staff did the unthinkable: They snapped photos of the dying man and posted them on Facebook."
What can you say about an article like this? I bet there is not a single physician or nurse who are not reasonably conversant about the basic tenets of the health care privacy laws under which they practice.
Stupid is as ...
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You are now out of the Gray Zone, and you are now a member of an exclusive club.
But membership to this club comes at a steep price. Membership is not offered, it is not dependent on your income, title nor your social status. Membership is granted simply by surviving or living with a grave or potentially fatal illness or injury and realizing just how fragile life is and how quickly ...
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"A comprehensive and extremely useful roadmap for doctors."
-Eric Topol, MD, author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine
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Past 6 Months
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