Health Care Strategist

MIT's Technology Review presents its annual list of 10 technologies that could change the way we live. The list includes stamp-sized, disposable pieces of paper that diagnose infections or chronic conditions, and a "nanofluidic chip" that dramatically lowers DNA sequencing costs, perhaps ushering in the era of the $100 genome.

Some colleges are responding to the economy by offering degrees in three years instead of the usual four. Is that a kernel of an idea for health care providers blessed with lower-than-average lengths of stay? Consumers understand that longer lengths of stay usually mean higher charges. Will they respond to a "Go THERE and stay 5 days; come HERE, stay 3 and save some money..." message, I wonder? I'll sit back and wait for all the "Yes, but..." e-mails to roll in.

What if...this is the beginning of the recession's end? In the midst of dire headlines - "...a nation on edge." ( Chicago Tribune ), "...Fed Chief Vows To...Stem Crisis." ( NY Times ), "...suffering a severe contraction." ( Yahoo News ) there's this from MarketWatch: "...statistical evidence is mounting to suggest that the worst of this recession may soon be past." And the author backs up his assertion with 21 data points - good news in some cases, less bad news in others. You can't read everything and everybody, but a strategist's job is to find weak signals in the midst of noise and blather. To see through the headlines, understanding that their purpose is not to inform, but to sell papers. And I figured you could use some good news today, weak signal or not.

A great presentation on brand-building for new ventures, from Peter Corbett. (Thanks to Servant of Chaos for the heads-up.) Zero To Brand in 48 Hours from Peter Corbett on Vimeo .

(Please contact Marco Nozicka directly or forward the opportunity to a colleague.) Home health care agency going through a restructuring is looking for an experienced health care leader, BSN preferred, 4+ years home health management experience working with multiple geographic settings. Locations in Florida and Texas. Candidate must be creative, have a strong focus on building relationships and alliances, be a customer-focused, out-of-the-box thinker with strong, ethical values, a passion for results and an ability to drive cultural change. Role requires a hands-on leader, comfortable with using data and metrics to make strategic and tactical decisions. Compensation is competitive and commensurate with experience. For more information, contact Marco Nozicka. (marco@humancapitalgroupinc.com. )

Philip Betbeze, writing for HealthLeaders Media, talks about the "Great De-leveraging" and why organic growth matters now more than ever: "The good news may be this: You're going to be judged going forward on how well you do the blocking and tackling with operations. If you're offering poor patient care and bad customer service, for example, it's not as easy to cover that up with cheap debt, new glittering patient towers and technology purchases funded on the same, and promises that bad financial and operating performance will be fixed with the new toys. Many hospital CFOs and COOs...are focusing more effort than ever in collecting what they're owed, improving processes, bettering patient care, and other basics that should have been at the forefront of their intellectual capital demands all along—and they're only talking about expansion or acquisitions that can be accomplished organically. Much of this transformation has been forced upon us, it'...

Community-building is not new to health care. There's Y-ME (now known as Network of Strength) and Us TOO , Mended Hearts and Al-Anon and 315 others listed on this web site alone. Despite all the experience, it can be challenging to add on-line virtuality to communities accustomed to face-to-face interactions. Still, it's a great way to extend your brand and reach new populations. Here's an excellent set of guidelines to building an active, vibrant community, from Heidi Cohen at ClickZ .

At most, I understood 20% of this article. I did understand that the very core of modern physics - Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity - is threatened by certain implications of quantum mechanics. And I grasped that a generation of physicists is confronting the possibility that much of what they believed to be true is up for grabs. It brought to mind a story about a professor beginning the first day of class by scrawling an apocryphal warning across the chalkboard: "Everything you know is wrong." Of course if that statement's true, it's also false. Messing with freshmen is child's play. But what if the statement reflects more of reality than we'd like to admit? We tend to make decisions about life and organizations through a certain lens, a framework that brings stability to our world. Unfortunately, the lens can turn out to be fogged with casual ignorance and selective, self-justifying history. We may have quiet, nagging doubts along th...

24 Economic Stimulus Programs for Nonprofits. Everything from aging services to zoology scholarships. Just kidding about the scholarships. I think.

From Business Week Magazine: Sure, consumers are stressed, but the service expectations of those actually spending money are running higher than ever. So treat your best customers better than ever. Preserve front-line, customer-facing jobs. Invest in inexpensive, service-improving technology...Twitter anybody? Cross-train call center reps to minimize transfers and reduce overall talk-time. Plow cost savings back into service improvements like longer hours and weekend staffing. Gain economies in ways customers won't feel - grouping supply and other purchasing decisions, for example. Get tough on suppliers that don't measure up. Even better, you might find the ideas working both in good times and bad. And here are Business Week's customer service champions .

From Health Leaders Media : "...suggesting is tearing apart our old processes and rebuilding things in a way that makes sense; in a way that eliminates duplication and waste; in a way that is meaningful to our patients and physicians. That doesn’t necessarily mean fewer people working in your organization but it certainly means those people need to be doing very different jobs."

McKinsey reports on a study of 50 early Web 2.0 adopters ; "To date, as many survey respondents are dissatisfied with their use of Web 2.0 technologies as are satisfied. Many of the dissenters cite impediments such as organizational structure, the inability of managers to understand the new levers of change, and a lack of understanding about how value is created using Web 2.0 tools. We have found that, unless a number of success factors are present, Web 2.0 efforts often fail to launch or to reach expected heights of usage. Executives who are suspicious or uncomfortable with perceived changes or risks often call off these efforts. Others fail because managers simply don’t know how to encourage the type of participation that will produce meaningful results." Six factors appear to be critical: Visible support from the top. Best uses coming from users. Incorporation into daily workflow. Appropriate rewards, including ego-gratification. Targeting technology-savvy opinion leaders....

Thoughtful brand-builders should learn a few lessons from car maker GM's struggle for survival. Lesson #1: brand proliferation, once thought a strength, can quickly become a crippling weakness as too many brands clamor for limited resources and finite consumer attention. One author suggested that GM retreat to two, possibly three brands - volume, luxury and heavy duty - Chevy, Cadillac and, maybe, GMC . Retreat to the core, to a position you can defend and, more importantly, a position from which to grow. Great advice, for GM and perhaps for marketers in the health care provider space too. Many health care marketers struggle with the same issue, as facilities and service-lines claim a right to their own identity. Before you know it, there's a GENERIC Cardiac Center, the LOOKATUS Oncology Institute, and a METOO Neuro Complex. Multiply that by the number of hospital campuses and major "name" donors; it doesn't take long for resources to be spread miles wide ...

I asked this question a few months ago but never got an answer. That upsets me, especially considering I live but a stone's throw from appliance maker Whirlpool's headquarters. So it's either march over there and pound on their door or torture you again, dear readers, and right now it's too cold to go anywhere. Sooo... On days like today, with wind chills firmly below zero, why can't my refrigerator's contents be cooled with outside air instead of a running a compressor to make even more cold air? Don't give me all that EnergyStar appliance crap; I could cool my milk for FREE if someone figured out how to transport a tiny bit of that already-frigid air to where it can do some good. Moving cold air into a warm environment is something my windows seem to do rather naturally. So what's the problem with appliance engineers, anyway?

...which is more important to consumers as they choose a hospital? Research from RAND economists says plush accommodations might just trump high clinical quality. "From the patient perspective, hospital quality therefore embodies amenities as well as clinical quality. We also find that a one-standard-deviation increase in amenities raises a hospital's demand by 38.4% on average, whereas demand is substantially less responsive to clinical quality as measured by pneumonia mortality." RAND may be right, more's the pity. As if further proof was needed that 4 decades of internecine warfare over health care quality - how to define it, measure it, improve it and communicate it - has left consumers utterly baffled about how to make quality-based choices. Depressingly, many old-school obstructionists seem to prefer it that way. They're the ones reading this research and saying "Told ya so! Consumers don't understand quality and they don't buy quality!...

..."(d)esigners begin by asking more questions." And we should too. Here's one way to get started . Download the widget to your desktop and get busy.

A few years ago, I happened on a news item about a small town (Dutch, I think) that removed from its roads nearly all traffic signs. Lo-and-behold, the town's accident rate declined markedly. Too many signs and too much information produces too much competition for a too-tiny attention span. Result: clutter, confusion and cacophony. And, regrettably, I'm forced to admit being old enough to remember a song with lyrics something along the lines of "Signs, signs, everywhere signs. Blocking the scenery, messing my mind..." Dumb song but an under-appreciated message for complex health care campuses everywhere. How much have you spent on your organization's internal signage? How's it working for you? Do you ever sit in your main lobby and watch people walk in? Where do their eyes go? How long do they hesitate? Do they read your signs, not find the information they're looking for and then give up and ask someone how to get to radiology even though it...

...even surgeons are tweeting from the OR. "Doing this removes a real communication barrier. It helps make something scary much more comprehendable," said Christopher Parks, co-founder of the Web site changehealthcare.com. "It brings us closer together and makes us more engaged." "As time goes by and the younger generation moves into medicine, expect even more sharing online of private medical procedures, Parks says. "Newer and newer generations are used to putting their life online," he said. "This generation shares everything." I think the younger generation's more-relaxed attitude toward sharing life's details will be revolutionary in many ways, posing a particular challenge to the HIPAA police's storm troopers. Why worry about medical privacy when your entire life is already YouTubed, MySpaced, Twittered, Blogged and Flickred? Interestingly, the article doesn't mention the patient...was he informed? Did he consent?

"The Blue Sweater" by Jacqueline Novogratz. Acumen Fund's Jacqueline Novogratz is truly one of the world's most innovative and dynamic thinkers. Her idea of "patient capital" - a melange of philanthropy and venture capital, is hard at work around the world, offering new opportunities to the world's poor and disadvantaged. Now you know why Acumen Fund is listed over there in the sidebar under "Where I Find Ideas." You may find some there, too.

Mobile health is starting to take root in developing countries. Initiatives underway include; Collecting population-based medical information. Giving diagnostic and analytic tools to health workers. Delivering educational programs with airtime as an incentive. Improving medication compliance with SMS text alerts. Creating the "mHealth for Development" programme, co-sponsored by the UN Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Vodafone. Curbing the spread of epidemics. Gathering vital statistics in rural areas of Columbia. Embedding mobile phone chips in prescription bottles. Maybe I've missed something, but I don't hear much about these ideas where I live - in the so-called "developed" world. Perhaps it's easier to get things done when you're only fighting poverty and disease, not entrenched corporate interests who dog your every step.