Power to the Patient!
A quick note between trips – here’s my latest video of a keynote speech, this one delivered last Friday in Boise, Idaho. See discussion below.
This talk, at St. Luke’s Health System in Boise, capped my most intensive engagement yet with hospital management:
Edited 7:45 pm – saved some content for a later post
I need to get this off my chest. I know to some it will sound like whining. Well, it’s my blog and my life, and on my blog I get to express myself.
One of the challenges of this path I’ve chosen – evangelizing in social media, starting with no business model – is that the more visible I’ve become, the more people have…
If you care (or worry) about the crunch-time that’s beginning in medicine, read this post last Tuesday on the Harvard Business Review blog:
It has strong echoes of what I wrote last month in As the crunch hits, will the best survive? That post talked about how much pain there’s likely to be as we try to solve the $750 billion of unnecessary spending in US medicine. Until now I wasn’t aware of how much the legal profession has been hit by changing realities. Items from the HBR post:
Yeah, the bankruptcy of a once-high-flying law firm. More:
Imagine if only 55% of med school graduates could find a job. Can’t happen, right?
That’s at the low end. And at the top?
From time to time I post a request from someone who seeks a community of patients for a particular condition. I’ve been accumulating them on the communities page on this site. Sure wish we had a grant to grow a list and manage it well! How many people would THAT help??
This one is from a person who’s had mild epilepsy symptoms for years. It’s been well managed, allowing normal life, but it may be time to look for “what’s next” sorts of treatments. So, in addition to working with their medicos, the family’s wondering about astute patient communities.
I know about the one at PatientsLikeMe. Any others?
Last month I was interviewed by Joan Justice of HealthWorks Collective. She’d picked up on my “visible pricing” rant, and couldn’t agree more, so we did this nine minute Skype interview. Her full post about it is here.
Her entire series of interviews on high quality, low cost healthcare is here. Thanks for including me, Joan – it was stimulating!
For my last post of the year, as word filters out that Washington still can’t fix “the cliff,” I’ll do something rare: repeat something from just a few days ago. This needs to sink in for everyone who wants to fix America’s medical costs:
The “fiscal cliff” is big, but America’s excess medical costs are 30% bigger.
(Not total costs – just the waste that needs to be trimmed.)
As we start 2013, think about that.
Think how much commitment and guidance
it will take to fix it.
Some providers are working really hard to improve effectiveness,
and some insurance companies are too.
Some aren’t.
A lot of people’s income depends
on keeping things the way they are.
During the change, how will we ensure
that families and the best workers in the system are protected
while inefficiencies are pruned?
Here’s this week’s post again, tweaked just a little: