Health Care Strategist

Ed Bennett maintains the "big Hospital Social Networking List." As of August 2010, there were 825 hospitals on: 391 YouTube Channels 631 Facebook pages 634 Twitter accounts 87 blogs. Also included are Linkedin profiles, website links and traffic statistics.  

"Your idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing. The more amazing, the more people will click with your idea. The more people click with your idea, the more it will change the world." (Hugh Macleod, How To Be Creative: 2, 08-22-04)

Trends are a planner's best friends and the raw materials from which insightful strategies are constructed.  From Trendwatching.com, here are 15 tips on tracking and applying trends . (Note: One of the world's leading trend firms, trendwatching.com sends out its free, monthly Trend Briefings to more than 160,000 subscribers worldwide.)

This quote recently took its rightful place at the top of my "all-time great quotes" list: "A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled." Sir Barnett Cocks (1907 - 1989) We all need a map - a personal GPS - for avoiding that dark street.  Maybe this book can help.

Wondering how to pay all those newly-employed physicians?  Stay away from methodologies based on charges or collections, says South Bend, IN attorney Bob Wade . According to Wade, a much better and safer approach is a mixture of base salary - derived from major national surveys - and an at-risk component based on RVUs. (Thanks to AIS's Health Business Daily for the heads-up.)

From Jetson Green blog: construction of the first C3 Modular Home is underway in Chicago.  The brainchild of my friend Jeff Sommers and his firm Square Root Architecture + Design, the home offers numerous green elements such as Energy Star appliances, WaterSense fixtures, a mini-split HVAC system, multiple layers of insulation, high performance windows, and a solar thermal system. Other features include; "(An) exterior (featuring) a rainscreen application covered in reclaimed barn wood, fiber cement board, and painted metal siding. The 2,000 square-foot home (has) four bedrooms and a private interior courtyard, which (draws) natural light into the interior. Otherwise, C3 Modular will be built with FSC-certified wood framing, low-VOC finishes, paints, and sealants, and natural hickory and cork flooring. Also, six 50-gallon rain barrels will accumulate water for landscaping and garden use." Check out the photos.  Full disclosure: I've served as an informal strateg...

Does your organization have heroes? Who are they? Those who hit their expense budgets or those who delight customers and grow revenues ? Those with zero customer complaints or those who realize that a complaint is a 'gift' - a chance to improve? Those finding fault in every difficulty or those uncovering opportunity in every difficulty ? Those for whom "It's new, untried and innovative" is an idea-killer or those for whom it's a discussion-starter? Those grumping 'why? ' or those cheering 'why not? ' The 'plodding risk-avoiders' or the prudent risk-takers ? Who did YOU recognize at your last leadership meeting?  And what signals did it send? Follow me on Twitter at @whatifwhynot.  

Spent part of the day with a colleague in Chicago's western 'burbs discussing consulting opportunities. Great ideas shared. Thanks George! And with a tri-training coach discussing my business plan and assumptions for a triathlon-related e-commerce venture. Great ideas shared. Thanks Joe! And with another consultant brainstorming about creating an innovative business incubator for a large health system. Great ideas shared. Thanks David! And a long conference call with a managed care thought leader and consultant as we pondered the pros and cons of responding to an RFP to help one of America's largest states confront health reform's implementation challenges. Great ideas shared. Thanks Bill! Notice a theme here?

Via Blogging Innovation, a report from Jeff Benablo, M.D., attending HealthCamp San Diego : "...something magical happens when you get health care giants in the same room as entrepreneurs, innovators, technology experts, doctors, nurses and patients."

From Becker's Hospital Review: "10 Tips to Creating a Physician-Led Integrated Care System With Advocate Health's Mark Shields."

Former "car czar" Steven Rattner, writing in yesterday's Wall Street Journal , says this about the auto industry: "For any company with a competitive line of products in a business where fixed costs are high and market share tends to shift only gradually, total volume is the most important determinant of profitability. " High fixed costs.  Gradual shifts in market share.  Might that also describe health care?  I think so. Sure, be seamless, safe, cost-conscious, accountable, value-driven and integrated.  Just make sure your priority list includes business growth. And remember that the basis for competition in health care is changing, and growth may require pulling different and unfamiliar levers.  Acquiring new skills.  Creating insightful metrics and customer feedback loops.  Identifying emerging value streams and risk assessment methodologies. Rest assured that when health care has finished yet another round of cathedral-building, generations ...

From the Health Forum Leadership Center:  Gain market share through hospital-employer partnerships. Download the white paper here .

When hospital CEOs wonder why nobody cares about their fancy new strategic plan, I answer that they likely have an engagement problem, NOT a communications problem. Simply, people are more engaged in what they helped create. So is "crowdsourced innovation" a worthwhile addition to the health care strategist's toolkit? What if you tried this during your next planning cycle? Might you move the "engagement and buy-in needle" to something on the high side of "modest?" TED's Chris Anderson says 'yes.' The rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation -- a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. But to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness.

Also from Business Week : If a CEO yells "innovation" in a forest while everybody else covers their ears, did s/he really yell anything at all? Turns out you also need believers, leaders (probably from outside your industry), a tolerance for failure, lots of experimentation and learning, your own "innovation language" and an acute awareness of when to give up and move on.

A few days ago I wrote about the second opinion program offered through Partners HealthCare System, Inc's Center for Connected Health. Business Week spotlights another second opinion program with a decidedly different business model.  For a fee of $20,000, ExpertConsensus convenes panels of top specialists in a teleconference format to "generate treatment plans for people with confounding illnesses." "ExpertConsensus Chief Executive Officer Richard D. Forman maintains that his nine-month-old company has "no direct competitors" because it performs the dirty work of gathering documents, recruits top doctors, and minimizes institutional bias through its panel approach." Since January, ExpertConsensus has "seen" 12 clients.  Though Forman maintains his company has no real competitors, prospects may not see it that way.  A second opinion from Cleveland Clinic's MyConsult Online Medical Second Opinion service is $565.  And it's free i...

Health care faces many difficult decisions and transitions to improve care quality, maximize efficiency, and enhance patient experience.  And it's where one process or level of care connects to another, the so-called 'handoffs' that represent fertile ground for improvement opportunities. The Center for Technology and Aging has released an interesting repor t examining technologies that help improve transitions from hospital to home and reduce readmissions; "Several technologies are widely available and have potential to support post-acute care transitions, but they are underutilized," said David Lindeman, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Technology and Aging. "Home-use technologies help decrease readmissions in a variety of ways, including engaging patients and caregivers in ways that promote better communication, medication adherence, and monitoring of chronic conditions. " Download the complete report at http://www.techandaging.org The report cov...

After mapping humans' intricate social networks, Nicholas Christakis and colleague James Fowler began investigating how this information could better our lives. Now, he reveals his hot-off-the-press findings: These networks can be used to detect epidemics earlier than ever, from the spread of innovative ideas to risky behaviors to viruses (like H1N1).

A recent Mayo Clinic-hosted forum on innovation produced the recommendation to apply the "free" or open concept to health care, in forums called "collaborative care networks."  These networks - large databases, really - offer doctors, patients and researchers ways to enter, search and access a vast pool of clinical and anecdotal data unavailable to any one person or institution. I don't usually reproduce press releases wholesale, but this RareSpace announcement from Medpedia seems to fit this innovative concept; MEDPEDIA PLATFORM EXPANDS WITH ADDITION OF RARE DISEASE COMMUNITY RareSpace Leverages Medpedia’s Technology Platform SAN FRANCISCO, CA (June 29, 2010) –Medpedia today announces RareSpace, an online knowledge sharing platform designed in partnership with the R.A.R.E. Project and the Children’s Rare Disease Network to advance research and share information about the rare childhood diseases that affect 22.5 million American families. This resource i...

PSFK presents Future Of Health View more presentations from PSFK . Some of the presentation's slides are hard to read.  To view the presentation full-screen, follow the Menu option on the lower left.

Sure, the rating agencies missed the meltdown of real estate and financial services.  But hospital and health system ratings are solid, right? Maybe not, says Dan Beckham, writing in H&HN Magazine.  Beckham's "Bond Rating Delusion" should give you some pause, whether you're issuing or investing. I've been through several so-called "due diligence" processes for ratings reviews and mergers (the latter twice as the acquirer, once as the acquired.)   In that admittedly limited experience, I've found the process stunningly haphazard and superficial. I remember our acquirer demanding a full audit of our managed care contracts, an activity I took seriously since, at the time, I was the system's executive in charge of managed care contracting.  We spent days preparing, gathering information on contract terms and performance, making sure it was all organized just so . The appointed hour came.  A junior attorney showed up in my office, paged d...