A change

To my loyal readers:

I've been writing this blog for over 9 years, starting during my tenure as CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center,  and continuing now over four years later.  During that time, I've had a chance to tell many stories and express lots of opinions with regard to various aspects of the health care industry, and you have rewarded me with your readership and your comments.  I am deeply grateful for that opportunity and for that connection with so many of you.

As my life has moved on, my other activities have evolved. While health care will always be an underlying interest for me (and anybody else getting older!), I am getting more and more distant from the day-to-day policy issues and industry struggles.  There are other people who are better suited to write about those matters.

So, starting after the Labor Day break, I am planning to shift the focus of this blog to topics where I might be able to contribute to people in a broader range of industries and sectors.  The focus will be on my core set of activities and interests--negotiation theory and practice, leadership training and mentoring, and teaching.  Some days, clinical process improvement will be covered, as that subject overlaps all of those topics--but you will not be seeing stories about health care policy, industry structure, market power, and the like.

I'm also going to reduce the frequency of these posts, from the current daily schedule driven by current events to something more sensible (and personally sustainable!)

I'm hoping not to leave my health care followers behind, but I am hoping that others, too, will find the topics of value.  Please continue to stay in touch and, as you have done so generously in the past, forward these links to others who might be interested.

Thank you.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Serendipity is allowed

Image
How's this for a lesson plan? Serendipity is allowed . . . and even encouraged. It is a philosophy set forth by Ed Moriarty , an instructor at MIT's Edgerton Center.  Opening the doors of the strobe lab for "that Saturday thing," as it is called by the students, Ed provides mentorship and asks challenging questions of children and adults of all ages who drop by to play and experiment. Here is learning at its most creative, combining physical manipulation of electrical components with thoughtful observation.  There is no syllabus, just the joy of learning. We were giving some friends a tour of MIT and we had explained that the philosophy of play is an important component of life at MIT.  We walked by the strobe lab at an opportune moment and were immediately hijacked by Ed. He said, "Hey, come in here. I want to show you some stuff." He borrowed a circuit that eight-year-old Amelia had constructed and asked us, "What kind of shadow is created when you ...
Read more

Yes, even surgeons can learn

Image
The Risk Management Foundation of CRICO recently supported a research program to test the effectiveness of 360 degree reviews in influencing surgeons' communication and behavioral skills.  The results were just published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons . The context was important: The program was deployed as part of a long-standing, surgical chief-led patient safety and quality collaborative. The collaborative had previously constructed a Code of Excellence (COE), an explicit description of behaviors expected of all surgeons within their departments. The 360 degree evaluation process was designed to assess progress towards these standards. Here's how the study was designed: Three hundred and eighty five surgeons in a variety of specialties [in the Harvard hospitals] underwent 360-degree evaluations with a median of 29 reviewers each. Beginning six months after evaluation, surgeons, department heads, and reviewers completed follow-up surveys evaluating...
Read more

The story from Consorci Sanitari del Garraf

Image
"In 2009, three medical facilities in the comarca del Garraf, near Barcelona, merged into one organization, the Consorci Sanitari del Garraf. Faced with a 17% budget cut, a result of the financial crisis, the newly created hospital had to find a way to improve its processes and become more efficient." This is a really sweet story from Spain that illustrates how you don't need lots of money and extra resources to apply Lean thinking.  Read the text, but really watch the videos to get a feel for how it happened.
Read more