Dateline: Lahinch, County Clare, Ireland I’m sitting over the seawall and embankments of this seaside town in the west of Ireland, watching the Atlantic waves crash and dribble onto the shingle in what must be their most peaceful mood on a surprisingly warm April...
I talk to people all the time in health care at big civic gatherings; board retreats; conventions of nurses, physicians, managers of medical groups and accountable care organizations and health plans and device manufacturers. I give a talk, sit on a panel, run a...
There are no winners in the fee-for-service game. It’s time to toss the whole business-as-usual model — for your own good and the good of your customers. The emerging Default Model of health care — the “consumer-directed” insured fee-for-service model in which health...
Health care is fragile. It survives in a much narrower band of circumstances than most of us realize. Right now many hospitals and systems are having a second down year in a row. They’re consolidating, laying off people, working through major shifts in strategy — all...
(Originally published in the American Hospital Association’s Hospitals and Health Networks Daily on July 22, 2014) Healthcare costs far too much. We can do it better for half the cost. But if we did cut the cost in half, we would cut the jobs in half, wipe out...
First published in Hospitals and Health Networks Daily, the online publication of the American Hospital Association, on May 27, 2014. After decades of bravely keeping them at bay, health care is beginning to be overwhelmed by “fast, cheap, and out of control” new...
