An email from March 2012, my commentary and insights from an email titled – Why UCLA Health System Will Win. Enjoy! I recently stumbled upon the current issue of UCLA MEDICINE, which had an interview with DAVID T. FEINBERG, M.D., M.B.A., CEO of UCLA Hospital System, Associate vice chancellor for UCLA Health Sciences and now, president of UCLA Health System who spoke on what it will take to be successful. He is most proud that the his organization is really “obsessed with being patient centered, in making sure that whoever comes through our doors is treated like they are someone in our own family. That’s our standard…” 99th percentile in patient satisfaction is not enough Also though being in the 99th percentile in the patient satisfaction for the inpatient setting, Dr. Feinberg notes that it means that “eighty-five out of 100 patients would refer to us, but 15 would not. […] Read More »
Category Archives: Healthcare Reform
Recasting the Patient as Consumer – Good Idea? Consumer Driven Health Care?
Posted on June 13, 2013
Are patients now consumers? I recently jumped at the opportunity to attend the 2013 Healthcare Innovation Summit at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Subtitled IT-Enabled Disruption, it featured opening keynote speaker Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, Stanford psychologist and lecturer Dr. Kelly McGonigal, and many other interesting people asking – how do we change health care? Recasting the Patient as Consumer As a practicing primary care doctor, the most intriguing session was labeled – “Recasting the Patient as Consumer”. I have major reservations that this is what patients really want. I have some skepticism on whether consumer driven health care can truly make care more affordable (here, here, here, and here). Was the current fad of pushing the onus of health squarely on the individual may be too simplistic? Panel members included: Ron Gutman, founder and CEO of HealthTap Bassam Kadry, Anesthesiologist and Participatory Medicine Advocate Ann Lamont, Managing Partner of […] Read More »
David Goldhill Replies to My Post “Disappointing, Dangerous, Frightening” on His Interview on Healthcare
Posted on May 9, 2013
David Goldhill, CEO of the and author of the September 2009 Atlantic titled How American Health Care Killed My Father and book titled, Catastrophic Care – How American Health Care Killed My Father — and How We Can Fix It, recently responded to my post – Malcolm Gladwell and David Goldhill Interview on Health Care – Disappointing, Dangerous, Frightening His comments in his entirety: While I’m appreciative that you came to hear Malcolm and I discuss health care, you really don’t seem to understand much of what we were talking about. My work is an attempt to think about health care as an industry, and using comparisons to how other industries behave to understand why health care delivers such mixed performance — with extraordinarily high rates of error — at such high cost. My argument is a systemic one: bad industrial outcomes are a result of badly structured economic incentives; […] Read More »
Is David Goldhill Fix For Health Care Right?
Posted on March 12, 2013
First I believe our health care system must be better so I’m always curious to hear how others might propose to fix it. I recently had the opportunity to listen in two conversations with businessman David Goldhill about how healthcare might be made better. Goldhill lost his father to a hospital acquired infection and witnessed multiple errors during his hospitalization which compelled him to write not only a piece in the September 2009 Atlantic titled How American Health Care Killed My Father, but also a new book titled, Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know about Health Care Is Wrong (Vintage). The first conversation was with New Yorker writer and best selling author Malcolm Gladwell. The second with Professor Ashish Jha, MD, MPH of Harvard medical school and Harvard School of Public Health. Does his solution offer the right prescription? Maybe. Maybe not. As a practicing primary care doctor passionate […] Read More »
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