A new study from the Robert Graham Center examined the rate of low-value care services across the country. A LVC service could be a number of things, but the recent wave of research in this area is based off the Choosing Wisely campaign, which asked the major medical societies to come up with at...
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I’ve written before about the unrealized dreams of Obamacare, unrealized because they were poorly designed. One example is the mostly disappointing results of Accountable Care Organizations, which were created in Obamacare. Another is how hospital-physician group mergers drive up the costs in areas where these mega-systems dominate the local market (Harvard Pilgrim...
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I have had several dealings with the benefits managers/HR managers of large corporations and other large organizations over my career. I have one over-arching conclusion about what motivates these people: they will never be a source of disruptive innovation in healthcare. I find them to be passive people. They are fundamentally...
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What I’m about to tell you is based on good insider information. But I also disclose that this is an amalgamation of a few reports of teledoc companies to me and their crony insurance companies, not a thorough analysis of the entire industry. I just assume there are other business models...
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I don’t mean to pick on McDonald’s. Insert any other large retail business where customer satisfaction massively trumps every other consideration of the relationship between employee and customer. Telemedicine companies have exploded the past few years. I suspect a lot of my readers have already seen this, but just in case not,...
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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...
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I can’t make up this stuff. I am on several listservs that publish medical news items. I understand that there are probably several staffers that contribute to the daily blasts, not knowing what the others are doing. But I assume there is still some sort of editor that makes sure the...
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Flu season is about to be upon us. I’ve written about this before, but it’s been a few years, so I thought I’d update some of the evidence (with my thanks to Juan Gervas, MD for compiling a nice list of relevant studies). This, in the face of the recent CDC...
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Several years ago, a group of us concerned about healthcare costs and outcomes met with some local HR benefit managers. One was the head HR person of a city in the DFW area. In part of the conversation, she raved about a local chain of urgent care centers. She loved the...
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I took a little time off to focus on my new part-time private practice and Family Medicine payment model. Now that it’s up and running, I look around and the healthcare system still stinks, so I guess I’ll keep writing. My payment model is available for any U.S. Family physician at...
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