The Healthcare Crisis Only Worsens When the Cookie Crumbles

I’m sure most of us face significant health care expenses each year, even if we are healthy and have good jobs.  However, I learned in reading today’s Wall Street Journal that COBRA, the federal law that permits employees to continue their health insurance at their own expense when they lose their jobs, doesn’t apply when [...]

Doctors Who Prescribe Placebos Violate the ROCC of Trust

This is from today’s New York Times:
Half of all American doctors responding to a nationwide survey say they regularly prescribe placebos to patients. The results trouble medical ethicists, who say more research is needed to determine whether doctors must deceive patients in order for placebos to work.
The study involved 679 internists and rheumatologists chosen randomly [...]

Cord Blood Gives the Gift of Life

I’m please to share this from a couple of former Wake Forest EMBA students of mine, Pamela and Tim Lietz:
To all:
Check out the link below to WFMY’s link to Pamela’s segment on this morning’s local CBS Good Morning news show.  She was on at 6:50 this morning talking about her Cord Blood Bank program.
http://www.digtriad.com/news/GMS/article.aspx?storyid=108191&catid=67
Text summary [...]

Another ROCC Star, Dr. Kevin Lobdell

Aneil and Kevin are in Toledo, Ohio today, giving a talk entitled “Quality Improvement and Transformational Change:  The Role of the Trusted Leader” to physicians, staff, and health care managers at St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center.
Kevin Lobdell, M.D. is Director of the Adult and Pediatric CV Critical Care, and is Associate Director of the Cardiothoracic [...]

Wrong Incentives Undermine Medical Diagnoses

In medicine, proper diagnosis is essential to effective treatment and healing, so I was disturbed (but not surprised) to see yet another example of how incentives in the U.S. health care system undermine proper diagnosis. Today’s example comes from the Wall Street Journal:

Many in health-policy circles have focused on how the current health-care payment [...]

Use Checklists to Increase Your Reliability

A great article in a recent issue of The New Yorker, brought to my attention by good friend Dr. Kevin Lobdell, points out the critical importance of checklists in achieving reliability in highly complex task environments:
In 2001, though, a critical-care specialist at Johns Hopkins Hospital named Peter Pronovost decided to give it a try. [...]