What’s Next in the Healthcare Debate?

What’s Next in the Healthcare Debate?

by | Aug 8, 2017 | ACA, Bipartisan Healthcare Process, Featured Post, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare Transformation, Presidential Politics, Repeal and Replace, the healthcare debate, The Senate's turn at healthcare reform, The Triple Aim

I was delightfully dazed and confused the morning after Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and John McCain launched us into the next phase of the healthcare debate by giving the ACA a last minute reprieve. In a mix of ecstasy and disbelief I watched the video of John...
Better Healthcare Requires A Bipartisan Expression of Reciprocal Altruism

Better Healthcare Requires A Bipartisan Expression of Reciprocal Altruism

by | Jul 25, 2017 | ACA, Better Care and Reconciliation Act of 2017, Featured Post, Improving the health of the poor, Medicaid Reform, Repeal and Replace, the healthcare debate, The Senate's turn at healthcare reform, The Triple Aim

A major event that changed the way I see the world occurred in 1995 when I read Robert Wright’s The Moral Animal: Why We Are The Way We Are: the New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. The book was so good that I immediately gobbled up Nonzero: The Logic of Human...
Overcoming Individualism and Collectivism: Different Mindsets That Make Improving Healthcare Difficult

Overcoming Individualism and Collectivism: Different Mindsets That Make Improving Healthcare Difficult

by | Jul 18, 2017 | ACA, Better Care and Reconciliation Act of 2017, Featured Post, Lean, Mindset, Politics, The Triple Aim

I read the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and the Kaiser Health News Service and follow their various links that take me to a variety of different sources. I tune in to NPR and watch breaking news on CNN. I follow links all over the Internet trying to...
Contemplation and Action on the Road to the Triple Aim

Contemplation and Action on the Road to the Triple Aim

by | Jul 11, 2017 | ACA, Better Care and Reconciliation Act of 2017, Featured Post, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare Quality, Healthcare Transformation, Repeal and Replace, Single payer, the healthcare debate, The Senate's turn at healthcare reform, The Triple Aim

A few years ago Patty Gabow, the retired CEO of Denver Health and a master of using Lean to benefit the underserved, and I were enjoying a dinner together while we were attending a meeting. Our conversation had gotten to the level of sharing and openness where we were...
The Attack on Medicaid and the Spirit of the Fourth of July

The Attack on Medicaid and the Spirit of the Fourth of July

by | Jul 4, 2017 | ACA, Better Care and Reconciliation Act of 2017, Featured Post, Medicaid Reform, The Senate's turn at healthcare reform, The Triple Aim

When I heard that Mitch McConnell had announced that he would not be seeking a vote in the Senate on the “Better Care and Reconciliation Act of 2017” before the July 4th recess I was upset because McConnell’s move seemed similar to the one Paul Ryan pulled in March...
Sharing “Deep Stories” to Use Empathy in the Quest for the Triple Aim

Sharing “Deep Stories” to Use Empathy in the Quest for the Triple Aim

by | Jun 27, 2017 | ACA, AHCA, Featured Post, Improving the health of the poor, Politics, the healthcare debate, the power of stories, The Senate's turn at healthcare reform, The Triple Aim

A couple of weeks ago when I gave you Dr. Patty Gabow’s letter to Senator Alexander I reported that I was reading Arlie Russell Hochschild’s recent book, Strangers In Their Own Land:  Anger and Mourning on the American Right. In that book Russell seeks to be...
Creating Healthcare Success Using Lean and Redefining the Relationship Between Managers and Clinicians

Creating Healthcare Success Using Lean and Redefining the Relationship Between Managers and Clinicians

by | Jun 19, 2017 | Featured Post, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare Transformation, Leadership, Lean, Process Improvement, The Triple Aim

As I look back over my experience both as a practitioner and as a medical leader, I am reminded of the joke that the life of an anesthesiologist is composed of long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. Nothing describes a moment of terror for me more...