Fact Checking: Part 2

Okay. Here we go. I started by searching “third leading cause of death in america.” One of the first websites that returned was The Healthy Skeptic. It references an article called “Is US Health Really the Best in the World?” authored by Barbara Starfield MD MPH and published in the July 23, 2000 issue of [...]

Fact Checking

The most retweeted statistic from Transform 2010 (watch the videos!) was this one. “Receiving healthcare is the third leading cause of death in America.” The statistic was part of a presentation by Jill Morin and Jim Rasche from Kahler Slater Experience Design. I was a little skeptical that this could be true, or at least I questioned [...]

Exhibit A

Last September I spoke at our Transform Symposium about the power of conversation. In that talk, I mentioned that there was a significant amount of research out there to support my thesis that a healthcare delivery system focused on fostering good conversations would in turn be better quality, more efficient and more affordable. All the things we [...]

The Bus Stop

A colleague shared this radio story, The Bus Stop, a podcast from WNYC’s RadioLab, as part of some research we were doing into the experience of living with Alzheimer’s.  I was struck by the imaginative shift in the goal of the design. I spend most of my days trying to make the world of healthcare at Mayo [...]

The Value of the Little Things

…A sympathetic touch from a doctor leaves people with the impression that the visit lasted twice as long, compared with estimates from people who were untouched…. Healthcare delivery innovation is stigmatized by the fact that its new concepts are rarely shockingly new or revolutionary. The best ideas are often reintroductions of ideas that used to be fundamental [...]

Integrated Care

One of the things that makes delivering healthcare difficult is that the problems are rarely confined to the set of medical treatments and interventions available. It turns out (unsurprisingly) that everything is connected. The fight we are having with the landlord contributes to stress which exacerbates our chronic conditions and impacts our physical health. The [...]

The Benefits of Existentialism

Do you ever read something and it makes you so happy that you want to squeal with delight, but you can’t because you’re at work and squealing with delight is liable to be disruptive in your shared workspace? Well, that happened to me today when I read this on the NY Times Well Blog. It [...]

More is not necessarily better.

The article, First Physical,  from the Archives of Internal Medicine about the President’s physical was passed along to me by Victor Montori. It offers such a fascinating window into the issues facing healthcare delivery reform. I could quote the whole article but it is very short and the author does such a nice job that I [...]

Everything Old is New Again

If we paired the insights in the NY Times article Stand Up While you Read This about the advantages of moving throughout the day with Dr Levine’s work (Muve), we could make a compelling argument to bring back a redesigned version of off-the-floor consults as both an experiential differentiator for patients and a health benefit for [...]

The Value of the Little Things

…A sympathetic touch from a doctor leaves people with the impression that the visit lasted twice as long, compared with estimates from people who were untouched…. Healthcare delivery innovation is stigmatized by the fact that its new concepts are rarely shockingly new or revolutionary. The best ideas are often reintroductions of ideas that used to be fundamental [...]