Many books review in painful detail the problems with the U.S. healthcare system, but few suggest incremental, easily implemented, and realistic solutions. It is doubtful that radically changing a $4 trillion, 19% of GDP health …
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Look to the EU for Generic Versions of Expensive Brand Name Drugs
U.S. Patent protection for drugs lasts 20 years, although most pharmaceutical companies only get the medication to market after as much as half of that time has already elapsed. This exclusive period to sell the …
Continue readingCrazy U.S. Healthcare: How Did We Get Here?
According to the Commonwealth Fund the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy among the ten highest income OECD countries. We have the highest chronic disease burden and our obesity rates are twice the average of …
Continue readingEnterprise Analytics: Data, Insight, Process Change, Repeat
In 1966, Avedis Donabedian proposed a conceptual model for examining health services and evaluating quality of care. The Donabedian model includes three pillars: structure, process, and outcomes. Structure represents the physical plant, equipment, and staff …
Continue readingWhat Pop Health Needs to Learn from Consumer Marketing
[DISPLAY_ULTIMATE_SOCIAL_ICONS] In the US, consumers reign supreme. American retailers understand their customers and use data to influence what they buy, what they pay, and when they return for more. With more than 68 percent of …
Continue readingAI: Augmented Intelligence or Electric Sheep?
Visionary Elon Musk fears it. Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking worried about it. Microsoft’s Bill Gates embraces it. Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick wrote about androids having the capacity to dream because of it. At HIMSS 2019, everyone talked about it.
Continue readingCOVID-19: Lessons from Smallpox
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 readingLet’s Be Careful Out There
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 readingIs it Safe to Reopen Schools?
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 readingFinal Two Phases on the Road to Recovery
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 …
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