Dr. Arlen Myers, president of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs, can give you ten good reasons why doctors make great entrepreneurs. However, in my many years of working with physicians, I have learned when it comes to a business idea, doctors, like most new entrepreneurs, often need help getting the nuances wrestled to the ground.
For example, I remember the conversation with an ED medical director about the importance of using “ER” …
As we behold the continued wonders of Obamacare, we receive another reminder of the president’s empty promise: “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” The New York Timesobserved, “No matter what kind of health plan consumers choose, they will find fewer doctors and hospitals in their network — or pay much more for the privilege of going to any provider …
Every player in the medical arena has found itself challenged by conflicts where one’s self-interest competes can skew what should be pure advice. This issue is not restricted to the medical universe. Every one of us has to navigate through similar circumstances throughout the journey of life. If an attorney, for example, is paid by the hour, then there is an incentive for the legal task to take longer than …
For the past couple of years I’ve been working as a traveling physician in 13 states across the U.S. I chose to adopt the locum tenens lifestyle because I enjoy the challenge of working with diverse teams of peers and patient populations. I believe that this kind of work makes me a better doctor, as I am exposed to the widest possible array of technology, specialist experience, and diagnostic (and logistical) conundrums. …
The doughnut shop I pass on my drive to the hospital isn’t the kind of place where you might expect to see outpourings of random kindness. It sits in the shadow of a raised highway, a few doors down from a bail bond business and a block away from a prison complex that resembles a medieval castle.
One Sunday before Valentine’s Day, the line to get served there was long, checkered …
When I first learned to take care of patients in the hospital, as a third-year medical student, we used a mnemonic to help us remember what to order when a patient was first admitted. Patients would come in to the hospital from a doctor’s office or from the emergency room and the nurses needed a set of orders to know what to do for the patient. The mnemonic we used …
Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) is being rolled out across our nations’ hospitals. The old days of written, and often illegible, orders from doctors are fast becoming a thing of the past. The potential for this measure to improve patient safety and transform medical practice is unquestionable.
As a physician who has worked in several different hospitals since finishing my residency, my time in practice has coincided with the new age …
Lean was a serious initiative from the beginning. It was energetically championed by our CEO at that time, John Toussaint, MD, who began his own lean investigations in 2002. By this time, I was a vice president with operational responsibilities …
I wasn’t very familiar with this term until I started my clinical rotations. But after just the first week, I started noticing that health care providers throw this phrase around all time.
We particularly like using it as an excuse. Why did this diabetic patient require a foot amputation? Why does this patient come in monthly with congestive heart failure exacerbation? Why did this patient suffer a stroke? It’s often …
The Institute of Medicine in 2010 famously recommended that nurses should be encouraged to practice “to the full extent of their education and training.” Often, you’ll hear people advocate that every health care worker should “practice at the top of their license.” What this concept is supposed to mean, I think, is that anyone with clinical skills should use them effectively and not …
Health care reform is a reality. The ACA and its associated mandates have forever changed the landscape of medicine in the U.S. today. The Obama administration touts the goals of reform as providing affordable, cost effective, high quality care for all Americans. Certainly these are noble and lofty goals: But have we completely missed the mark?
Today, many remain uninsured and the majority that have signed up for the exchanges are simply …
This was the dream: We would use technology to create a seamless health care system, one where people, computers and machines would work together to improve patient care in many different ways. Health care would be more efficient, it would be safer, it would be less expensive, we would be able to transfer health-related information quickly and accurately.
How do we motivate physicians and other health professionals to work at their best? How do we create systems of high performance? Is it by a series of top-down highly specific mandates or by setting up general guidelines and providing tools?
I believe it comes down to one’s vision of physicians. Are physicians knights to be empowered in their service of patients …
Whether you are a veteran of not, the recent report of waiting lists, and possibly preventable deaths of veterans, has implications for all citizens. There is no large health system which functions perfectly. But I would say that the efficiency of any given system is inversely related to its size. If this is true, then the VA health system is, and has always been, a bureaucratic and wasteful mess. Like …
I wouldn’t say I’ve had a lot of revelations in my professional life, but there is one that still affects me emotionally to this day, and it’s about nurses.
I had been a PICU doctor for a number of years, and I was rounding on all the patients in the PICU with the rest of the team. The background sounds consisted of the usual beeps, alarms, and humming from the patient’s …
That’s what President Obama said about the deepening VA health care crisis. It’s also a lightening rod for how partisans want to frame the ongoing health debate.
Some are eager to link the VA scandal to Obamacare, and more broadly, government-run health care.
Who watches the watchers? It’s an old Roman saying from the poet Juvenal, and it had to do with infidelity. But over the years it has been applied to politics as well. It means, “How do I know that the people guarding me are worthy?” It has also been translated, “Who guards the guards?”
But it seems to me that it applies to medicine quite appropriately. Who watches those watching physicians? We …
“Are you more or less cynical than when you started residency?”
This was the question my program director asked our senior internal medicine residents at a recent dinner with Dr. Bob Wachter. If you aren’t familiar with Dr. Wachter, he is widely acclaimed as the “father of hospital medicine” and a renowned champion of patient safety and quality. His blog, Wachter’s World, is chock full of insightful commentary on the American health …
You were supposed to die of cardiac arrest as you circled toward home plate. Or of a brain aneurysm in the summer during one of your countless hikes through the mountains.
You weren’t supposed to die here. Not in a hospital bed, inhabiting this fragile new body, with an oxygen tube in your nose and tumors in your lungs.
Two days before you left us, I traveled home to visit you. I’d …
It’s no secret that most physicians are unhappy with the way things are going in healthcare. Surveys report high levels of job dissatisfaction, burnout and even suicide. In fact, some believe that up to a third of the US physician work force is planning to leave the profession in thenext 3 years — an alarming statistic.
Direct primary care practices are touted as the best …
