<span itemprop="author">Martin Lustick, MD

Author's posts

3 ways interoperability will improve health care

In health information technology circles, interoperability has become quite the buzzword. A Google search for “Interoperability in Healthcare” yielded 28 million results. Given its pervasiveness, it’s not surprising that the precise m…

Behavioral health providers face challenges in value-based care

Value-based care (VBC) continues to be a popular expression across the health care landscape, but the challenges and opportunities it offers are quite different across specialties. Behavioral health (BH) providers are an important case in point. The op…

The expanding role of specialists in value-based care

Value-based care has become a buzzword over the past decade with early experiments in Massachusetts, followed by creating Medicare accountable care organizations (ACOs) as part of the Affordable Care Act. As commercial insurers jumped onto this bandwag…

Type 1 diabetes in transgender children and adults

In the face of genetically engineered therapies for many cancers and the incredibly rapid development of effective vaccines for COVID-19, it’s easy to lose sight of the breadth and depth of unsolved puzzles in medical science. Many of these remaining m…

The impact of COVID-19 on health conditions

For the past year, we have been inundated with statistics about the impact of COVID-19 on our lives. Reports of daily case rates, hospitalizations, and deaths are so pervasive that they have become routine fodder for  “water cooler”  and dinner table c…

The impact of COVID-19 on those with disabilities and mental illness

As early as April 6, 2020, the New York Times (NYT) published an article revealing early pandemic statistics that showed the death rate for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) who received residential services in New York State…

3 ways health plans can help providers

Just as providers have reimagined their clinical and business models in light of the pandemic, there is an opportunity to reimagine their relationship with health plans. Particularly in the context of evolving value-based contracts, there are a variety…

Why eliminating health care disparities is easier said than done

Those of us in health care understand that the pandemic represents just one more example of the disproportionately negative impact of health issues on people of color.  As stated in a 2017 National Institutes of Health report, “For racial and ethnic mi…

COVID-19 stands on the shoulders of giants

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is difficult to assimilate the global transformation that has taken place in just a few short months.  As we each struggle to make sense of this life-altering event, it might help to reflect on pandemics’…

Keys to sustainable telehealth post COVID-19

As we’ve listened to providers describe their reactions to this pandemic, telehealth continues to be a pervasive theme at the foundation of their response. They refer to this as a “watershed” event that will permanently change healthcare delivery. In t…