I am a huge fan of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), but probably not for the reasons many people might assume. It’s not because it’s “socialist” (a horribly inaccurate description), or that it’s nationalized, or anything like that. I’m a huge fan because somehow the people of Britain have developed the courage to talk about […]
Value remains one of the most widely invoked and variably interpreted concept in American health care delivery. Beyond patients, stakeholder groups across the health care ecosystem are undertaking value-based initiatives, including payers (e.g., value-based insurance design and payments), provider organizations (e.g., value-based care redesign), pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefits managers (e.g., value-based pricing and formularies), […]
The topic of paying for long-term care is an overlooked issue in health care. None of us want to think about living our final days in the nursing home, but statistically speaking, many of us will. How will you pay for it? What are the options? Long-term care in this country can be divided into […]
Elizabeth Warren describes medical bills as “the leading cause of personal bankruptcy” in the United States. She bases that opinion in part on her own research, in which she and her collaborators surveyed people who had experienced personal bankruptcy, asked them whether they’d experienced health-related financial distress, and concluded that 60 percent of all bankruptcies in the U.S. […]
Like prep sports or prime-time television, medical meetings have seasons. In the spring and fall, my calendar fills with invitations to speak. I try to get to the venue a few hours before I’m scheduled to speak, so I can “take the pulse” of fellow doctors, asking them about their practices, patients and the future of […]
An excerpt from Prescription for Bankruptcy: A doctor’s perspective on America’s failing health care system and how we can fix it. Many years ago, while I was involved in developing the pre-hospital emergency medical care system in Massachusetts, I went with a group to meet with the then-president of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, John […]
For my students in 2018, it’s difficult to imagine an era when there was no such thing as evidence-based medicine (EBM). When I started medical school in 1997, though, the term had only been in use for six years, having been introduced by Dr. Gordon Guyatt at McMaster University (though EBM’s intellectual origins can be traced […]
For my students in 2018, it’s difficult to imagine an era when there was no such thing as evidence-based medicine (EBM). When I started medical school in 1997, though, the term had only been in use for six years, having been introduced by Dr. Gordon Guyatt at McMaster University (though EBM’s intellectual origins can be traced […]
I remember when I started nursing school about a decade ago, that there was a near militant attitude describing the nursing shortage. School administrators, politicians, and journalists hopped on this easy bandwagon and talking point. Research and polls of dubious quality rode the tidal wave of popular opinion. Unsurprisingly, their genesis in an echo chamber […]
The stories are disturbing. A pregnant emergency physician assaulted in a hallway. A patient leaping from the bed, wielding medical equipment as a weapon against the care team. A security guard intervening in a tense waiting room confrontation late at night. Most people find the violence hard to fathom, but for emergency physicians, these threats […]
