We physicians like to think that we are really different from other workers. We physicians, perhaps thinking back to that medical school application essay we all wrote, really believe that we went into this career to simply help others. We physicians truly believe that we always put our patients first.
Because we sincerely believe all of the above, we are shocked when someone like Uwe Reinhardt points out that collectively we ...
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The 21st century challenge for the American health care delivery system is to deliver higher quality care for less money. Republican and Democratic experts agree that payment reform involving transitioning from fee-for-service to global, value-based systems is necessary for us to achieve that goal. Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are the new entities that will receive the new global payments and distribute them to the doctors, allied health professionals, hospitals, and ...
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1. You will have to move a lot. I went to medical school in Cleveland and did my pathology residency in San Francisco at UCSF. I was on the medical school faculty at UCSF, Iowa, Allegheny University of the Health Sciences, and Michigan State.
Since leaving academic medicine, I have worked at a bio-tech start up in Cambridge, an educational and research institute in Grand Rapids, a $2 billion integrated delivery system ...
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If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.
-Lord Kelvin
Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Of course the quantified self movement with its self-tracking, body hacking, and data-driven life started in San Francisco when Gary Wolf started the Quantified Self blog in 2007. By 2012, there were regular meetings in 50 cities and a European and American conference. ...
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Speaker after speaker at the recent Care Innovations Summit in Washington, DC concluded that increasing the quality and decreasing the per-capita cost of health care is the dominant political, social, and economic issue of our time. More than one expert called for a “jailbreak.”
“Jailbreak” for me meant either an obscure English reality television show or an expression applied to overriding the software limitations deliberately placed on computer systems for security ...
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Whether you call it Health 2.0, Medicine 2.0, or e-Health 2.0, the Internet is changing medicine in ways that challenge the status quo. This article explores how a group of amateurs who call themselves "health hackers" and "citizen scientists" are trying to use the Internet to connect with other patients, run experiments, and conduct clinical trials on their own diseases.
Dr. Gunther Eysenbach states “Medicine 2.0 applications, services and tools are ...
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The digital age has had a deep and likely permanent effect on the patient-physician relationship. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had physicians beg me to provide them with a way to stop their patients from Googling their symptoms and diagnosing themselves before their first office visit and much to their chagrin, my answer is always the same, "You can’t stop them. Get over it."
The Internet acts ...
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The doctor/patient relationship is certainly changing and evolving. A term I hear a lot today is: “patient engagement/activation.” Why is this concept so important and what does it mean? What can physician executives do to make it easier for our patients to become engaged and activated?
Judith Hibbard has pioneered the study of patient engagement, and she noted that one needs knowledge, skills, and emotional support to actively engage in one’s ...
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Hospital systems and physician groups are faced with unprecedented change demanding decreased per-capita cost and increased quality in American health care. Boards of directors are underutilized resources that must be tapped more effectively in order for such organizations to survive in a time of industry consolidation. Generative thinking is a tool that can help organizations innovate in order to improve patient care and the financial bottom line.
Generative thinking is ...
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The realization that the American health care system must simultaneously decrease per-capita cost and increase quality has created the opportunity for the United States to learn from low and middle-income countries. "Reverse innovation" describes the process whereby an inexpensive innovation is used first in countries with limited infrastructure and resources and then spreads to industrialized nations like the United States.
The traditional model of innovation has involved the creation of ...
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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
Dear lawmakers: This is what it’s like to be a doctor today
Matthew Moeller, MD | PhysicianA gun owner responds to Sandy Hook
Edwin Leap, MD | PhysicianIs Chris Christie too obese to run for president?
Jeffrey Parks, MD | PhysicianIf I’m wrong about guns, can you please explain why?
Claire McCarthy, MD | PhysicianPrimary care doctors may no longer be needed
Doug Olson, MD | PhysicianWalgreens moves into primary care, and it’s our own damn fault
Kevin Pho, MD | Kevin's Take