Margalit Gur-Arie

Margalit Gur-Arie is founder, BizMed. She blogs at On Health Care Tech & Policy.

There really is no war on doctors: There’s a war on patients.

Policy

June 13, 2014

So you think there is a war on doctors, don’t you? It certainly looks that way from your particular vantage point. The government is deftly intruding into your professional life with a computerized fifth column that is extracting information on your every move, and to add insult to injury, it forces you to actually collect the data which is to be used against you in the court of public opinion. …

Applying the lessons learned in other industries to health care

Margalit Gur-Arie

Policy

May 22, 2014

While grappling with the costs and imperfections of our health care system in recent years, a multitude of experts in the field found it useful and enlightening to compare health care to a variety of more familiar industries, and to suggest that health care should adopt operational models that have been shown to work well in those other industries.

From the financial industry, we learned that health care must be computerized. …

Translucency by design and turbidity by negligence

Margalit Gur-Arie

Policy

May 12, 2014

Did you ever read a seemingly inconsequential sentence somewhere and it then just refused to leave your mind for days on end, triggering avalanches of thoughts way beyond the original intent, if there even was one? It just happened to me a few days ago when I read one more industry article about the recent Medicare data dump.

The following remark was attributed to a primary care doctor: “The U.S. is …

Transparency is here, and it’s hunting season on doctors

Margalit Gur-Arie

Policy

April 25, 2014

It’s here. For the first time in 35 years (or 33, depending on which click bait headline you clicked on), the much anticipated release of data on Medicare payments to physicians, has been released to the public, on the historic date of April 9th, 2014.

“Data trove shows U.S. doctors reap millions from Medicare,” according to the distinguished Reuters news service. The Washington Post will tell you “everything you need …

What health care can learn from Katz’s Delicatessen

Margalit Gur-Arie

Tech

April 9, 2014

Katz's_Delicatessen

Sometime during the last year of the second millennium, I wrote my last letter in response to the last letter I have ever received. It’s been email ever since. I don’t recall making a conscious decision to stop writing letters. It just happened. I cannot pinpoint the exact date when my work memos, agendas, proposals and various notes, disappeared from my desk …

How mHealth will change the doctor-patient culture

Margalit Gur-Arie

Tech

March 4, 2014

Your coffeemaker went dead on you this morning, and while lamenting your drowsiness at work, your friend Denise mentions that she just bought a new coffeemaker at Target and she absolutely loves it. You take your coffee the same way Denise does, black, strong, and all day long, so you decide to buy one for yourself.

You are a busy professional and you don’t have time to go to Target, search …

Don’t blame Obamacare for these 10 things

Margalit Gur-Arie

Policy

February 20, 2014

There is a new report out from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) titled “The Slow Recovery of the Labor Market,” and as its title implies, it predicts a slow recovery from a labor perspective. Among other things, the CBO report is now making headlines in the political game of Obamacare because it forecasts a 2.5 million job reduction by 2024 due to the effects of the health care …

When doctors complain: How to resonate with the public

Margalit Gur-Arie

Policy

January 22, 2014

There is a dark cloud of discouragement, dejection, disheartenment, and all other synonyms of despair, hanging over the medical profession. It’s not that all physicians live in constant gloom and doom, although quite a few do, particularly those still in private practice, but the profession itself seems to be losing its luster.

Some doctors seem content to pragmatically adapt to the new and duller definition of their old profession, but in …

Merry Christmas, American health care!

Margalit Gur-Arie

Policy

December 25, 2013

It’s that time of year when the OECD publishes its “Health at a Glance” comparative health indicators, and The Commonwealth Fund follows with an international survey of health care related activities. A cursory review of these documents always ends up with the customary assessment of American health care: much more expensive than all others, wasteful and inefficient.

But this is the month of December, and health care workers are people too, …

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Merry Christmas, American health care!

How Obamacare will creatively destroy primary care as we know it

Margalit Gur-Arie

Policy

December 4, 2013

As Obamacare is winding its way through a hellish bureaucratic labyrinth of its own creation, accompanied by cheers and boos from the blood thirsty spectator crowds, confusion, fear, trepidation, despair and exhilaration, are gripping America’s doctors all at once, because whatever else is accomplished in the next decade, medicine will never be the same.

At the confluence of cutting edge technology, great poverty and unimaginable fortunes, a new vision for the practice of …

How will repealing the SGR affect your practice?

Margalit Gur-Arie

Policy

November 20, 2013

The sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula was enacted into law in 1997 to tie Medicare payment for services to physicians to the overall status of the economy. Basically, if the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) does well, doctors get more money, and if it does poorly, doctors get less money for the same service. A decade of tinkering with legislation for circumventing the application of the SGR formula, preferably a few days …

3 reasons to be against Obamacare

Margalit Gur-Arie

Policy

November 12, 2013

If you are a staunch conservative who believes that free markets should solve health care, or that poor people should work harder and have more skin in the game, or that governments should stick to building armies, you don’t need to read this post, unless of course you enjoy being aggravated by liberals.

If you are one of the talking heads posing as a progressive, while repeating the slogans of Obamacare …

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3 reasons to be against Obamacare

Why care must conform to patient values and cultural preferences

Margalit Gur-Arie

Policy

October 28, 2013

On his campaign trails, Harry Truman used to call on citizens to go out and vote for themselves, in their own selfish interests. It may sound shallow and divisive, but Harry Truman believed that the individual interests of the people should trump the special interests of the powerful few, and that’s how Democracy should work. Those were simpler times, but the logic still applies today, although it’s becoming increasingly difficult …

Health IT will dictate how health is provided in the future

Margalit Gur-Arie

Tech

October 16, 2013

Health IT is booming, or so they say. The hotly debated and highly politicized health care reform, a.k.a. Obamacare, has been shining bright lights on a segment of our economy that is quickly approaching $3 trillion per year, and is in dire need of improvement, or so they say. Depending on who you ask, some say that health care resources must be redistributed in a more equitable manner, while others …

Why physicians will never learn to like EMRs

Margalit Gur-Arie

Tech

October 1, 2013

EMRs are not designed for patient care. Is there anyone working in health IT who can honestly say that he or she never heard this statement being made hundreds or thousands of times? Is there any clinician actually working with patients and EMRs who can state that such thought never crossed his or her mind? This includes health IT evangelists and physicians spearheading IT initiatives at the most excellent of …

Independent doctors: Update your shingle for today’s digital times

Margalit Gur-Arie

Social media

August 27, 2013

When a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant or any other professional graduated from university, or moved to a new town, he or she would most often locate a nice little office, prepare it for the big day and hang out a shingle to let the world know that new services are available. The world back then consisted of the immediate neighborhood in the big city or an entire small town …

Protecting us from the terrors of unhealthy lifestyles

Margalit Gur-Arie

Policy

July 16, 2013

If a mosquito lands on someone’s head and you hit the mosquito with a shovel, is the death of the guy under the mosquito considered an unintended consequence?

So now we know that the government of the United States of America is spying on its own citizens, not specifically on any one in particular, but massively and indiscriminately collecting troves of data on all American people. All perfectly legal, …

Health delivery models that require a less costly skill mix

Margalit Gur-Arie

Policy

May 8, 2013

How are you feeling today? Do you feel a bit under the weather? Maybe you have some aches and pains, or a miserable flu, or maybe you have some chronic condition like diabetes or asthma, or some other ailment. Perhaps you could benefit from medical attention, but then again getting medical care is so darn inconvenient and expensive and time consuming, and everybody knows that our health care system is …

Does our health system really need doctors?

Margalit Gur-Arie

Policy

April 20, 2013

A dark wind is beginning to blow through the tortured landscape of health care in America. At the confluence of the corporate cold front with the warm front of technology innovation, a storm is brewing. A storm that may grow into gentle and much needed rain showers, or the grandest tornado ever experienced by mankind, and unlike the wondrous works of nature, the path taken here is completely within our …

IBM’s Watson starts its medical career

Margalit Gur-Arie

Tech

March 30, 2013

IBM’s Dr. Watson of Jeopardy! fame has finally completed its residency and fellowships and, presumably to its creators’ utter delight, is now a practicing oncologist.

The prodigy “cognitive system” completed its training in less than a year at the illustrious Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and although only proficient in lung cancer right now, Dr. Watson’s career as an advisor to oncologists …

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IBM’s Watson starts its medical career