A Request That Got Me Thinking About How We Practice
Recently my 97 year old father was readmitted to his local hospital in North Carolina with another episode of CHF and aspiration pneumonia. He was discharged to the rehab facility at his life care community on a Monday. My sister from Birmingham drove over and spent...
If Innovation Is the Answer, Do You Know What You Need To Know?
“Innovation” is frequently offered as the “way out of the woods” for American healthcare. And why not? As Americans we are reminded of the power of innovation to reshape our world many times a day as we tap on our cell phones to find our way through traffic to a place...
Poverty, Race and Poor Healthcare: The Toxic Combination that Threatens Us All
Over the last year the consideration of the social determinants of health has become my greatest professional interest. This shift in my thinking has not been because I have lost interest in or am less committed to the noble ideals and objectives of the Triple Aim,...
Trump’s Genius and Knowing What Divides Our Righteous Minds in Politics and Healthcare
Someday the presidency of Donald Trump will be a subject for historians. Whatever historians say, I am sure that they will begin the story long before we thought of Trump’s bid for the presidency as anything more than a joke. The story will not begin with a review of...
Applying Dr. King’s Dream to Healthcare in 2018
Not much has changed in the experience of many since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr In the days before the fiftieth anniversary...
Between Is and Ought
I have been reading/listening to Martin Buber’s classic work I and Thou (Ich und Du). I was encouraged to returned to this difficult book after several years by Ezra Klein’s podcast of a conversation with Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers of virtual reality and the...
Why Does Healthcare Cost So Much?
JAMA recently published an interesting study that has not gotten as much attention or debate as it deserves. It is my hope that its impact will grow and that the insight that it offers will make a difference. The article “Health care spending in the United States and...
The Difference Between Knowing and Doing
I am a reader. Amazon knows what to feed me. I get notice of books about politics, especially ones critiquing President Trump and the current perils to the future of our democracy. Their computers know I am interested in inequality and behavioral economics. My...
Did Secretary Azar Turn A Page in the History of Healthcare Reform?
In 1993 when the Republicans joined force with many in the healthcare industry to defeat the plans for universal coverage put forth by the Clintons, I said somewhat facetiously to some colleagues and friends that we would not get universal coverage and healthcare...Case Study – Elizabeth Mcarthy
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