Health Care Strategist

From Chicago News: United Airlines' employees smash a guitar while passengers watch from the plane. Guitar's owner writes a song and posts a YouTube video . Said video is viewed nearly 650,000 times. Airline apologizes and uses video for "employee training" purposes. What does it say when an airline needs to train its employees not to break stuff? Think about it next time you hear an airline executive complain about the industry's poor growth prospects. And speaking of poor growth prospects, if your hospital occupies the lower quartiles of patient satisfaction results, you might want to prepare for the day a similar video spotlights your ER waiting times and execrable customer service. I can just imagine the humor, the pathos, the embarrassment...the desperate search for someone in Patient Relations to "fix" the problem.

Testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter "...testified that large health insurers routinely and intentionally drop high-risk members. They also make coverage exclusions difficult for policy holders to understand and dramatically boost premium rates for small employers that have high claim costs, he asserted." Responding to Potter's accusations, CIGNA mentioned the company's long support (emphasis mine) for a health care system that mandates insurance coverage for everyone at the same rates “regardless of whether or not the person has a pre-existing illness.” Who are they kidding? And since when does acknowledging some new post-election realities constitute "long support?" Find a pdf of Potter's full testimony here.

In ways subtle and overt, medical professionals are encouraged act like businesses. And so they do, sometimes realizing too late the difficult bargain they've struck. Writing in the NY Times , Dr. Sandeep Jauhar expresses the dilemma : "...the consequences of this commercial consciousness are troubling. Among my colleagues I sense an emotional emptiness created by the relentless consideration of money. Most doctors went into medicine for intellectual stimulation or the desire to develop relationships with patients, not to maximize income. There is a palpable sense of grieving. We strove for so long, made so many sacrifices, and for what? In the end, for many, the job has become only that — a job." Most problematic, I believe, is the fact that a sense of "commercial consciousness" is no longer optional if obligations like student loans and payrolls are to be met. It's now the price of admission, a necessary requisite for professional and financial surviv...

'Thanks for reading' to organizations showing up here in the last day or so: Episcopal Health Services Apple Computer Florida Hospital Thomson Financial University of Phoenix Loma Linda University Medical Center Auburn University Kaiser Permanente Visible Technologies Fleishman Hillard Bristol Myers Squibb Johns Hopkins University of Nebraska Medical Center Courtesy of Statcounter's domain tracking stats, I know I've got readers and lurkers. Now what I'd like is commenters. Argue with me. Tell me I'm full of it. It's certainly not out of the question.

Last Friday, I attended a conference sponsored by Purdue University on using innovation and regional partnerships to drive regional economic development. Richard C. Longworth, author of "Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalization " delivered the keynote address. Longworth's basic message is '...the old days are gone and they're not coming back. So get on with the business of economic reinvention.' Tough to hear sometimes, but a necessary message for regions, organizations and individuals all to grasp. Yours truly was interviewed for the South Bend Tribune's event coverage ; "Making this huge attitude change will require more than politicians working together, said conference attendee Steve Davis , an entrepreneur based in (Michigan.) It will require attracting young workers and venture capital to the Midwest, he said. "Davis has two start-up businesses — one for individuals to gain online access to their medical ...

Glendale (CA) Adventist Medical Center offers its patients in-room web access and e-mail and finds the occasion worthy of a press release. The hospital believes the service helps it "...stand out from competitors." They may be right, more's the pity. In a connected world, consumers long-ago learned to expect "anytime, anywhere" connectivity. Even the lowliest coffee shops have been wired for years. So I fail to see how a hospital's quest for strategic separation is aided by ANNOUNCING such a belated entry to the modern world. More likely, they embarrass themselves with further proof (as if more proof was needed) of exactly how far behind the times they'd fallen. What's next? A press release saying "...all rooms are now air conditioned?" Yeah I know. I can hear the excuses. "You don't understand...it's a complicated issue...lots of things to worry about...security, privacy, cost, support..." All true. And all mis...

...it's what THEY say it is. Blogger Joseph Higginbotham offers some timely advice to those of us creating our own social media-driven brand. Be generous, empathetic, civil, cooperative, pay it forward, all the things that pay off in real life work here too. My personal favorite is "The No A**hole Rule." Life is too darn short...

Health care providers showing "meaningful EMR use" by 2011 are eligible for incentive payments from the $20 billion EMR stimulus package. Writing in netdoc.com, Patricia King, JD outlines the details for physicians: "To be a "meaningful EHR user", the physician must satisfy three criteria: * The physician must use "certified EHR technology" in a meaningful manner, including electronic prescribing . * The physician must demonstrate that the certified EHR technology is connected in a manner that provides for the electronic exchange of health information to improve the quality of health care, such as promoting care coordination . * The physician must submit information on clinical quality measures specified by HHS. HHS will designate the way in which a physician is recognized as a meaningful user (through attestation, submission of claims with codes indicating that a patient encounter was documented using certified EHR technology, survey responses, sub...

From IdahoStatesman.com: Officials launched THE CORE, an enterprise zone for health care, education and technology enterprises. St. Luke's Meridian Medical Center is on board along with dozens of other public and private enterprises. The trend continues of health care providers playing leading roles in their community's economic development. From Knowledge@Wharton, sometimes innovation takes a village . It's a thought-provoking article on the benefits of opening up innovation processes to thought leaders and partners outside your organization's walls. What if you created an extranet and posted your innovation priorities for all to see? Let's say you wanted to improve a discharge planning process. How many more good ideas would you get if you asked thousands of people instead of just a few? From Medical News Today, a Health Leaders-Interstudy report trends in the Phoenix market of EMR "de-installation" or contract cancellation due to training, functi...

Some interesting social media measurement and tracking methodologies in this presentation. Social Meda Measurement by Visible Technologies View more documents from Gravity Summit .

While many health systems find it difficult to expand their focus much beyond day-to-day survival, a few recognize the power of teams with innovative ideas to drive measurable, long-term improvements in key strategic indicators. Example: the UAB Health System... "The UAB Health System has announced the winners of its inaugural Innovation Awards, which acknowledge novel and inventive programs, policies, ideas and processes implemented in the last two years that have led to significant, measurable improvements in patient care and/or operational efficiency . "The awards recognize best practices in UAB Health System entities and affiliates, with a goal of promoting widespread adoption of exceptional programs and ideas. Montgomery-based Baptist Health took first place in this first year of the program after the Health System CEO Council reviewed 36 nominations and selected three winners in each of two categories: Impact, for programs that have had the greatest positive effects ...

The Top 50 customer service blogs. If you can't find a few new ideas somewhere on the list, you're not trying very hard. What's not to like about a blog titled "Constructive Grumpiness" anyway?

It's no accident that the best-branded health care organizations are those with physicians tightly integrated into the cultural and decision-making fabric. Mayo, Cleveland Clinic, Kaiser, Geisinger, Virginia Mason, to name a few, have a decided advantage over the more traditional private practice model where physicians are, at best, an arms length away and, at worst, strong competitors. I remember making a site visit to one of the above-named organizations, and hearing the CEO (a physician) say very clearly "Our customer is the patient. Period. Anybody not agreeing doesn't work here!" Wow, now THERE'S the platform for an enduring competitive advantage. Everything in that organization - the people, the processes, the planning, the facility, the scheduling, everything - is all directed toward acting on that "patient as customer" premise. I'm sure there's internal debate about a great many things, maybe even an argument or two, but the basic, c...

A great SlideShare Presentation on Twitter. A Twitter How-To in Seven Easy Steps View more PDF documents from mhomann .

From AIS's Health Business Daily, here's Managing Editor Michael E. Carbine discussing a creative new iPhone application for consumer-directed health plan enrollees . " Canopy Financial's Mobile Consumer Directed Healthcare (CDH) Software Application, the only such one, allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to search medical procedures using keywords to determine if they are eligible for payment using their spending accounts, a valuable capability in its own right. But when the user identifies a specific procedure, the application not only maps the location of local providers offering the procedure but also pulls up the customary cost of the procedure based on the consumer's ZIP code. ... "The medical expense locator feature combines Canopy data on procedure rates with the iPhone's integrated mapping application to match procedures with providers in the user's ZIP code. Contact information for all identified providers also is displayed. A Procedure Cost ...

Now that I've found these tips for succeeding as a late bloomer . Phew! My idea book is getting pretty full.

Take a look at: Several Ways That Pharma Can Harness the Power of Social Media : Bio Job Blog

Of course he's talking about the textbook-publishing industry , and as the father of 4 daughters, college age and older, I wish the death would've occurred, oh, about 8 years ago. Why is death deserved? Let's see...too expensive, resistant to change, uninspiring, impractical. Says Godin, "The solution seems simple to me. Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online. (it's part of their job, remember?) When you have a class to teach, assemble 100 of the best pieces, put them in a pdf or on a kindle or a website (or even in a looseleaf notebook) and there, you're done. You just saved your intro marketing class about $15,000. Every semester. Any professor of intro marketing who is assigning a basic old-school textbook is guilty of theft or laziness. " I hope some health care leaders are paying attention. As adjectives, "expensive, re...

A former boss once referred to health care providers' endless, inward-focused bureaucratic narcissism as "navel-gazing." Jack Welch framed it slightly more elegantly when he said something along the lines of "It's not that bureaucracies dislike customers. They don't. They just don't find them as interesting as they do themselves." Now, Dr. Pauline Chen, writing in the New York Times , discusses Dr. Donald Berwick's philosophy of "patient centeredness" and its provocative implications that health care would work better if control was transferred from physicians to the patients themselves. According to Dr. Berwick, we face a system... "...built...around clinicians that makes it impossible to customize care the way it needs to be. We don’t have a standard of services or processes that are comfortable for patients. We have built a technocratic castle, and when people come into it, they are intimidated. "Patients keep having t...

Enduring another endless spasm of "Pursue scale! Eliminate overhead!! Damn the torpedoes!!!" a PPE (that's Prior Place of Employment to you newer readers) closed a nearby primary care practice in favor of a larger practice two towns over. To the extent there was ANY rationality behind the decision, several theories appeared to apply: (1) solo practice is an expensive, uncompetitive model of organizing a medical practice, and (2) consumers would happily do what they're told even if it meant driving 30 minutes through grinding suburban traffic to see another PPE-branded doctor. Both theories were quickly proved wrong. What was proven right (again) is the notion that markets are local - one service provider, one customer, a loyal dyad. Some physicians prefer practicing solo, are good at it and don't mind the drawbacks, which can be substantial. So it was with this doc. He left us, established another solo practice nearby, joined our competitor's medical st...