One of the best parts about predicting the future is how rarely the soothsayer is held accountable. The famous Michel de Nostredame, better known as Nostradamus, is popularly credited with predicting the rise of Hitler …
Continue reading
Information technology systems are evolving. The goal is to use healthcare information technology to identify the best care processes and use the technology to ensure that these best processes are utilized worldwide.
Continue reading
Analytics software presents a growing ever-present danger to organizations that do not understand how to best utilize the reports generated. Effective data governance requires that an overall objective for the analytics be set in advance of running reports.
Continue reading
Despite the evolution and investment in EMRs over the past five decades, little evidence exists that all this digitization is making a difference in quality, safety, or cost.
Continue reading
The word “gerrymander” comes from the pairing of Gerry’s name with the shape of one of the contorted districts north of Boston that resembled a salamander (see Figure 1). This gerrymandering of the Massachusetts Senate proved so successful that although the Federalist party won both the election for governor and a majority of the Massachusetts House, they failed to win the Senate, then controlled by the Democratic-Republicans.
The sophisticated analytics that allow for the gerrymandering of election districts also offer a model that can be applied in the delivery of population health services.
Continue reading
On February 27, 2017, President Trump said, ”Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated.” Well, Mr. President it is complicated and yes, we all knew.
Continue reading
Rather than considering patient information, and in particular genetic testing results, as private property to be used for private good, perhaps it is time to think of our population’s medical information as private property, owned and controlled by the patient, to be used for public good.
Continue reading
A miscalculation by just seven milliseconds is the difference between hitting a ball fair or foul. For comparison, a blink of the eye takes about 150 milliseconds.
Continue reading
To best understand the failures of the bill, it is important to understand its shifting of incentives that were modified by ACA.
Continue reading
Although most attention to HIT focuses on the use of the EMR, other recent HIT tools successfully merge clinical and administrative activities that previously stood independent of each other.
Continue reading
Although achieving herd immunity is critical to ending the pandemic, it makes sense to look at this task regionally, rather than by country or state.
Continue reading
We have two choices to crush this pandemic: 1) Vaccination of a large percentage of our population, and 2) Herd immunity. The responsibility of all of us in healthcare is to follow the science, share what we know with the public, and be careful in how we do so.
Continue reading
Our country now faces the most significant public health crisis in more than a century. The COVID-19 virus has upended our lives and put all of us at risk for illness. As we approach the …
Continue reading
In my first two articles on our road to recovery, I covered the first two phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. In them I shared my thoughts on how provider organizations could restart their service lines …
Continue reading
In Phase 2, businesses expand their services and modify their business practices (e.g., limited seating in restaurants). The COVID-19 disease incidence rate will plateau with a steady number of new cases reported daily. Although researchers are hard at work, we will not have a meaningful treatment or vaccine. As we enter Phase 2 of the pandemic, provider organizations should adjust to the changes in healthcare delivery to take advantage of the opportunities presented.
Continue reading
During normal times, managers often make decisions based on their knowledge and experience; analysis of data to varying degrees informs that decision-making process. Circumstances change at an easily manageable pace, errors in judgment can be corrected, and the impact of those poor choices is often insignificant. During a healthcare crisis, however, the cost of being wrong is exponential.
Continue reading