Cutting costs does not cut costs. If we hope to steer health care toward a better cheaper future, we have to wrap our minds around this conundrum: Slashing spending does not necessarily improve the bottom line. Governments in Ireland and the United Kingdom have come...
A reader writes to ask: What about personal responsibility? “I see no movement afoot to require the public to accept or meet norms of behavior that would reduce the need for medical treatment—smoking, excess drinking, use of drugs, over weight, etc. What ever happened...
Lindsey Dunn of Becker’s ASC Review reports on what I had to say to the Ambulatory Surgeons meeting in Chicago the other day: In a keynote address to attendees at the 9th Annual Orthopedic, Spine and Pain Management-Driven ASC Conference in Chicago on June 10,...
Under the headline, “Medicare Plan for Payments Irks Hospitals,” today’s New York Times details the opposition stirred up by the government’s “value-based purchasing” initiative. If you’re buying anything (and the US federal government is the largest purchaser of...
[Note to the reader: Anything that is in italics and square brackets (such as this note) is addressed to you, personally. Yes, you. Try it on, see if it fits.] Healthcare has, right now, the greatest opportunity we have seen in our lifetimes to make a big change, to...
Let’s create systems that will take on real risk and that will compete for customers based on real results and real prices. [This article first appeared in the March 15 edition of the American Hospital Association’s H&HN Daily] The current reorganization of...
