Health Care Strategist

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The Daily Beast :   "...what if we are coordinating the wrong kind of care? What if our best practices are the wrong practices? Our toxic industrial diet, our sedentary lifestyle, chronic stress, and environmental toxins cause diabesity and its attendant downstream ills (often mislabeled as something else, such as hypertension, cancer, heart disease, dementia). Drugs and surgery are feeble, ineffective, costly, and often harmful treatments for lifestyle-induced illness. They are misguided efforts at best, dangerous at worst. Mounting evidence proves that the solution to lifestyle- and diet-driven obesity-related illnesses won’t be found at the bottom of a prescription bottle; they will be found at the end of our fork." [...] "Health it seems happens outside the clinic, where people live, work, play and pray. We need to rethink how we treat chronic disease. It is not only better medical management, which often just barely if at all staves off complications and death,...

(CBS News) "iPads not only make doctors feel more efficient at their jobs, the device actually improved their work flow according to a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine ." 75% of residents said iPads saved them about an hour each day. I'll bet physician loyalty and integration rank high on your hospital's agenda.  Yet what have you done lately to save YOUR docs an hour a day?  No, really, I'm asking!  Leave a comment... Or connect with me (Steve Davis) on Twitter @whatifwhynot .

A thought for today:  "Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form. " - Stephen Nachmanovitch

John Commins, for HealthLeaders Media:   Your Hospital is Not Invisible . "It doesn't matter if your hospital is in midtown Manhattan or Manhattan, KS. It doesn't matter how many licensed beds you have or how high you scored with HealthGrades. If you've got problems at your hospital—from labor disputes, to HIPAA violations, to dirty sheets—you'd better be prepared to have answers for the government, public advocacy groups, plaintiffs' attorneys, and the news media." Just ask 88-bed Sheridan (WY) Memorial Hospital.

Cheryl Clark, for HealthLeaders Media:   Patients Set to Unleash Feedback on Doctors . "Doctors should brace for an earful about scheduling difficulties, hour-long waits, perceived disrespectful attitudes, and unreturned phone calls. "I know doctors think these aspects of the care process are, in the big scheme of things, minor annoyances that have nothing to do with their skills in diagnosis and treatment. "But perceived mistreatment by physicians and their staffs may have an enormous indirect, much more subtle, impact on patient compliance, and ultimately on quality and outcomes. [...] "And I don't think doctors are at all prepared for this. They'll no longer be able to brush away a bad review as just another outlier on Yelp. In time, there will be a real cost associated with bad reviews. "Many physicians have no idea what CGCAHPS is, and that value-based purchasing is coming soon for them," says Patricia Riskind, senior vice president ...

 Buy Here  From David Houle and Jonathan Fleece blogging at KevinMD.com: "Why one-third of hospitals will close by 2020." Why?  Because hospitals are expensive, unsafe, "abysmal" at delivering customer care and poorly equiped to compete in the networked, transparent, not-so-distant future.  "One-third of hospitals gone in eight years."    Long-time readers of this modest little blog probably aren't surprised.  But I'll bet it's caught a few CEOs off guard, especially those fond of saying things like "I don't have to outrun the bear, just the other guys."  You know what I mean.  You've heard the joke.  Except it was never very funny and now, as strategies go, it might be deadly. (Houle and Fleece are the authors of " The New Health Age: The Future of Health Care in America." )

"If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative." - Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - ), The Exploration of Space, 1951

Imagine an industry, slow-moving, comfortable and secure in assuming its own irreplaceability.  Health care?  Well, yes,  But also newspapers, and therein lies a lesson or two. From Forbes here's the Healthcare CEO's Guide to Avoiding Newspaper Industry Mistakes : (note that the underlined emphases are mine.) "Health system CEOs would be well advised to study what newspaper industry leaders did (or perhaps more appropriately, didn’t do) when faced with a dramatic industry change. Turn back the clock 15 years and the following dynamics were present: Newspaper leaders knew full well that dramatic change was underway and even made some tactical investments. However they didn’t fundamentally rethink their model. Newspapers were comfortable as monopoly or oligopoly businesses allowing for plodding decisions. Their IT infrastructure mirrored the plodding pace with expensive and rigid technology architectures. Newspaper companies bought up other ...

Mason City-based Mercy - North Iowa is currently searching for Administrator/CEOs for two thriving critical access hospitals. Positions are located in Osage and Emmetsburg, IA. Major challenges include furthering the strategic focus and service complement, ensuring financial stability, and developing infrastructure, goals, indicators and targets, CQI/value improvement/measures of success, and culture. QUALIFICATIONS: Master’s degree in hospital administration or related field (MBA, MSN, MHA). Three years of hospital management experience. Strong human relations skills. Proven ability to articulate values. Demonstrate commitment to the philosophy and mission of the organization, Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa, and Mercy Health Network. Apply online or contact Gayla Toebe at toebeg@mercyhealth.com .  No recruiters please, but feel free to say you read about the position on Health Care Strategist! The fine print: I post interesting executive-level and strategy-related ...

Michael Comeau:   "According to Apple's press release, most titles for the iBooks 2 iPad app will be priced at $14.99 or less, cheap enough relative to standard textbooks that they''ll offset the cost of an iPad within two or three semesters. "...at the end of the day, we should all celebrate the decimation of a very anti-consumer industry . Well done Apple, and well done publishers." Yes, well done and we SHOULD celebrate.  My only regret is that this announcement came AFTER I put four daughters through college and graduate school. Read more here .

From PhysOrg.com:  Ford, Microsoft Corp. and Healthrageous are researching how connected devices can help people monitor and maintain health and wellness. "According to a study conducted by Pew Research: 93 percent said they seek out online health information because it's convenient - they want to get information on their own timetable, not the doctor's. 83 percent said it's because they can get more information from the Web than they can get from their own doctor. 80 percent said getting this information privately is important to them. "As people spend more time in their cars, the ability to manage health and wellness on the go becomes more important. There are several reasons why the automobile is an ideal platform for research and development in this area: It's convenient and private. It facilitates personalized access to the information, products and services people need. And it's a logical place for them to manage their health while they a...

From Eliot Muir, iNTERFACEWARE , Special to ZDNet: " I hate being the bearer of bad news, but I can tell you, with 100 percent certainty, that your integration strategy is going to fail. That’s the good news. The bad news is that when your strategy fails, there will be a start-up with only a handful of employees and even less money waiting in the wings to take over your market share. I am not trying to paint a gloomy picture; I am just sharing hardcore facts upfront. ... " ...healthcare organizations looking to inoculate themselves from integration failure should follow a few common-sense, tried and true rules: develop a clear strategy up front, keep current with technology, leverage the cloud, be flexible about standards and always look at the opportunity costs inherent in custom development." [Read more...]

"The pill is no longer the product. Our product now is customer service and relationships with our customers that result in better health outcomes for patients and payers." - Kermit Crawford, president of Walgreen's pharmacy, health and wellness services. Walgreen updates stores with eye on health services expansion - The Advisory Board Daily Briefing

Do We Need Doctors or Algorithms , asks Vinod Khosla.  The answer may surprise those of you spending your days worrying about an impending physician shortage. "Eventually, we won’t need the average doctor and will have much better and cheaper care for 90-99% of our medical needs. We will still need to leverage the top 10 or 20% of doctors (at least for the next two decades) to help that bionic software get better at diagnosis. So a world mostly without doctors (at least average ones) is not only not reasonable, but also more likely than not. There will be exceptions, and plenty of stories around these exceptions, but what I am talking about will most likely be the rule and doctors may be the exception rather than the other way around. ... "What is important to realize is how medical education and the medical profession will change toward the better as a result of these trends. The vision I am proposing here, though, is one in which those decades of learning and experi...

Presented at AHRQ and termed a "stunning innovation in health care," Mind Field Solutions ' iPhone/iPad app diagnoses which patients will disengage from treatment.  The new approach also provides a neuroscientific explanation of the underlying causes behind patient disengagement. Says neuroscientist, Dr. Andrea LaFountain, CEO and Founder of Mind Field Solutions: " We are excited about the potential that this innovation brings to healthcare delivery, outcomes and cost. Healthcare has suffered greatly due to the inability to effectively and efficiently engage patients in their self-care. This research provides a scientific framework for engagement that creates significant impact in outcomes and cost. Our data suggests a cost savings of $3billion per annum for Medicare diabetes alone, " Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/06/4167823/mind-field-solutions-presents.html##storylink=cpy Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/01/06/4167...

Image From (Here) Based On Creative Commons Search "Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity." - Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957) Unanimity is bad for health care strategists too, and their organizations. Connect with me on Linkedin.

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Responsibilities: The Allina Health System is committed to building a nationally recognized center for healthcare research and innovation positioned to advance patient care and health in our community. This position provides overall strategic and operational leadership to The Center for Healthcare Research and Innovation (The Center). Most research conducted at Allina will be coordinated by The Center, but the emphasis will be on new research targeted at the advancement of the patient care model, epidemiology, shared decision making, the management of total cost of care, and the optimization of the health of populations. This position will ensure that The Center will serve as a catalyst for developing innovative approaches to care – within Allina, in the community, and across the industry – which deliver greater value for stakeholders. The incumbent will lead the support of innovative projects that will: • Advance our patient care model with emphasis on prevention, chronic dise...

Cancer Center Director, Salary Range: Based on experience/education Bonus Eligible: Yes; Relocation Assistance: Yes Location: Colorado This facility has been recognized by JD Powers for excellence in patient care, as well as receiving national recognition for hospital building design. They are a mecca for skiing, snowboarding rafting, kayaking, mountain climbing, camping and just enjoying their beautiful mountain scenery.  They also have the largest hot springs pool in the world.   The Best Small Towns of America has named it number four in the country. The hospital is building a new state-of-the-art Cancer Center. They currently provide chemotherapy but the radiation therapy is a necessary addition.  This person will be instrumental in the development of the services provided as well as opening the new center which is designed with the look and feel of an alpine resort. Contact Amy Engle. Clonch & Associates ph:  813-498-1589 amy@clonchassociates....