The term “core competency” was coined by management experts C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel in their influential 1990 article titled “The core competence of the corporation,” published in the Harvard Business Review. Prahalad and H…
Category: Public Health & Policy
Academic medical centers under threat: the impact of funding cuts
A familiar ding echoes from blue scrub pants. My conditioned frontal cortex reflexively shoots my hand to the back pocket. Fingers encircle a black smartphone. A ricochet of notification vibration still tickles my right buttock. Several semi-autonomous…
Academic medical centers under threat: the impact of funding cuts
A familiar ding echoes from blue scrub pants. My conditioned frontal cortex reflexively shoots my hand to the back pocket. Fingers encircle a black smartphone. A ricochet of notification vibration still tickles my right buttock. Several semi-autonomous…
C. Everett Koop meets the giants of pediatric surgery: Ladd and Gross
An excerpt from Dr. Koop: The Many Lives of the Surgeon General. In spring of 1946 the young Koop was sent to Boston for several months to spend time with the giants of the nascent field of pediatric surgery, William E. Ladd (1880–1967), and his traine…
How price transparency fails patients and what insurers must reveal next
In his deluge of executive orders, Trump once again is focusing on health care cost transparency. Efforts to open the lock on health care costs began in 2019 under the Trump administration with mandated publication of hospital price lists, called charg…
C. Everett Koop’s fearless fight against the tobacco industry
An excerpt from Dr. Koop: The Many Lives of the Surgeon General. “I have learned that, when an idea’s time has come—and it is on your watch—you must seize the moment.”– CEK, Glasgow speech It would take C. Everett Koop, M.D., Sc…
The hidden cost of health care: How rising debt threatens your access to care
Before a discussion of entitlements and welfare programs is started, a primer on the fiscal situation of the country seems appropriate. Service on the national debt is now second only to Social Security as a government expenditure. The debt is now abou…
Why Quebec’s health care model could change Canada’s system for good
Health care systems worldwide are grappling with access, efficiency, and sustainability challenges. In Canada, the debate over public versus private care is especially charged, and nowhere is this more evident than in Quebec. The province has the highe…
Why blaming doctors won’t fix the U.S. health care crisis
The tragic and shocking murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO has ignited a nationwide conversation about the flaws in the health care system, often accompanied by misdirected anger toward physicians. The rhetoric suggesting that physician salaries are th…
Physicians are not quitting medicine—they are expanding their impact
The moment I was born, my future was decided for me—I was going to be a doctor. My mother had made up her mind, and from that point forward, my path seemed clear: medical school, residency, patient care for life. That was the blueprint. For many physic…
