Suneel Dhand is an internal medicine physician, author, and co-founder, DocsDox. He can be reached at his self-titled site, Suneel Dhand, and on YouTube.
Suneel Dhand is an internal medicine physician, author, and co-founder, DocsDox. He can be reached at his self-titled site, Suneel Dhand, and on YouTube.
There are certain universal laws that appear to govern the broader workings of the world around us. For those of you unfamiliar with Pareto’s principle, it’s a concept that was first applied in economics and then found to be a governing rule in a whole host of different arenas. It’s no understatement to say that understanding and acting upon this concept can be transformative, not just in your work but …
The job of a nurse has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades. I’ve witnessed these changes at close quarters and heard feedback from nurses in several different hospitals. The biggest change undoubtedly is the interaction with information technology and the move away from paper charting.
The theory behind this push, which is part of the federal government’s meaningful use policy, …
Information technology clearly has a long way to go before it delivers on the immense promise of technology to truly improve health care. Most of the current solutions — quickly rolled out in response to meaningful use requirements — are slow, inefficient and cumbersome.
Physicians (and nurses) spend far too much time staring at their screen and navigating the system, often to the detriment of patient care time. A study published last …
The practice of medicine is changing faster than anyone can keep pace with. As a hospital physician at a relatively early stage of my career, I’d say that a sizeable number of physicians that I work with are towards the latter end of the spectrum.
I find that these doctors, typically over the age of 50, are struggling the most to keep …
As the patient satisfaction movement races full steam ahead, the time is perfect to regroup and define what this whole thing is really all about.
Anyone involved in health care, and particularly hospital care, knows that the term “patient satisfaction” has become a buzz phrase recently. Sadly too it’s also evolved into a bit of a bumper sticker in hospital administration circles …
It’s funny to think that the internet and the online world, so entrenched in our modern day lives, is still a relatively new phenomenon. When I first started medical school (not really that long ago) we hardly used the internet and the concept of a web search barely existed. It only became widely available on home computers shortly after that.
The invention of social media is newer still. If any of …
The recent independence referendum in Scotland got me thinking. I must admit I was glued to the news over the last few days of campaigning. For those of you not following closely, it seemed as if the “no” camp had a comfortable lead right up until the last week when the opinion polls suddenly showed the “yes” camp pulling ahead. This rattled the establishment. The prospect of my country of …
Over the last year I’ve written a lot about the problems with health care IT and how we need to get better. Unfortunately, unlike other aspects of our life where information technology has actually made life easier, in health care the user experience been nowhere near as smooth. IT solutions, including electronic medical records, are for the most part slow, inefficient and cumbersome. They cause a great deal of frustration …
Everyone involved in health care, and particularly hospital care, has witnessed a sea change over the last decade. Things that were never even thought about, let alone formally taught to frontline doctors and nurses, have now come to the forefront.
Chief among these is the drive towards improving patient satisfaction and delivering a more optimal hospital experience. True, a large part of this is due to federal incentives and tying reimbursements …
A major debate taking place in the hospital medicine community over the last several years concerns the way in which we cohort patients on the medical floors. The traditional way is to have patients belonging to each doctor scattered across the hospital on several different floors. This is in contrast to designing a geographical system where all the patients for any one doctor are located on a single floor.
In no other field is unity and collaboration between administrators and frontline staff more important than in health care. Unfortunately my own experience is that the disconnect and mistrust, especially from doctors and nurses, towards hospital administration is growing larger all the time.
Let me start off by saying that I have intimate experience of both sides of the divide. Obviously as …
Over the last year I’ve become rather addicted to golf. Having always been more into cardiovascular sports I’m actually quite surprised with how much I’ve taken to it. Fresh air, outdoors, lots of walking in beautiful nature and spending time with friends — what is there not to like?
Anyway, I’ve frequented several different courses in the Boston area in just the last few months. Last week, we were due to …
We are at a pivotal moment in health care. It’s changing so rapidly even the people leading the change can barely keep up. One of the biggest paradigm shifts over the last decade is the focus on quality over quantity. Improving the health care experience and patient satisfaction are also being talked about in boardrooms across the country (largely due to the link with reimbursements, but still unthinkable a few …
Anyone from outer space reading the news and watching TV would think that the U.S. has some of the worst health care possible. The negativity appears to be pervasive. Controversy over this, outrage over that. Whether it’s inadequate health outcomes, policy debate, or scandals with patient care, the stories and discussion abound.
As someone who grew up and went to medical school overseas and then came to the U.S. for medical residency (along …
Health care information technology has of course grown exponentially over the last decade, as electronic medical records (EMRs) and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems have become ubiquitous. It’s funny to think that not so long ago, physicians and nurses had to trawl through piles and piles of paper charts to search for the information we needed — whether it was lab results or patients’ notes.
When I was a boy, my dream was to become an airline pilot. The job seemed glamorous and exciting, and appeared to be held in high regard by all the people around me. I actually used to have a bit of an obsession with airplanes, and living so close to Heathrow Airport, had plenty of opportunities to see planes and visit the airport: both as a passenger and whenever we …
Over the last few years I’ve had numerous encounters with vets and vet hospitals. Domino, the dog that we had since I was in medical school, was sadly very sick. He was a Jack Russell-Corgi cross, black and white, with the loveliest sweetest nature. He lived till almost 13-years-old, bringing an immense amount of joy to our whole family. Sadly, he passed away last summer. My parents felt a huge …
I read an article in the Boston Globe about how doctors are flocking to get Master of Business Administration (MBA) degrees in record numbers. The prestigious program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, apparently now has more students from the health care sector than any other field — accounting for almost 20 percent of the class.
The very basic definition of a hospital is a place of healing and recovery. Health care is in a tumultuous state of flux at the moment, with the universal drive for quality improvement and the need to reign in costs. These issues, along with the desire to enhance our patients’ satisfaction and overall health care experience, were barely even talked about a decade ago. Now, they are all the buzz …
Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) is being rolled out across our nations’ hospitals. The old days of written, and often illegible, orders from doctors are fast becoming a thing of the past. The potential for this measure to improve patient safety and transform medical practice is unquestionable.
As a physician who has worked in several different hospitals since finishing my residency, my time in practice has coincided with the new age …