I wrote this blog earlier in the year, but have found this piece to again be relevant. Enjoy! —————————————   Almost every chief medical officer (CMO) that I work with in my advisory program has encountered at least one situation in the hospital every year that requires a significant intervention with a member of the… Continue Reading >>

An unanticipated encounter between the Chief Medical Officer and a Physician Board Member   Recently, a chief Medical Officer (CMO) of a large hospital told me about his Board having to resolve a conflict between the hospital CEO and some of the medical staff.  He related this to me because one of the physician Board… Continue Reading >>

Health Care Cost– the silent, dangerous blood pressure equivalent of the Industry I remember the one of the first things we were taught in psychiatry was the adage: “The patient will not change until the pain of staying the same exceeds the pain of changing”. How true!  It completely defined the fundamental challenge of psychotherapy. … Continue Reading >>

The wearing of surgical scrubs has become part of the hospital culture.  Initially intended to reduce the risk of infection and contamination in the operating room environment, their use has expanded far beyond that.  Everywhere one goes in the hospital and the clinics, one sees more and more health care personnel attired in scrubs.  And… Continue Reading >>

With all the pre-convention rhetoric on both sides of the aisle, the topic of health care reform for now has temporarily taken a back seat to terrorism and other issues. But the ultimate fate of the Affordable Care Act and American health care in general will come under continued debate, whether we talk repeal of… Continue Reading >>

You will be NOT be judged (and paid) on how well you performed, but on how well you were coded Did you ever play the game of telephone at a party? A person tells a story to another, who then in turn tells the story to the next person, and on down the line. The… Continue Reading >>

Several years ago it was indeed disturbing to find out that the national 30-day readmission rate for patients discharged with diseases such as heart failure, heart attack and pneumonia was almost 25%. Fortunately, since becoming a publicly reported measure and a financial determinant in the CMS Pay for Performance (P4P), there has been a great… Continue Reading >>

Every health care provider I know, as a part of their core curriculum during training, studied the pioneering work of Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. In her 1969 book “On Death and Dying” she described five stages that patients experience during these difficult times. Her work showed that all patients went through predictable phases or stages as… Continue Reading >>

When I speak to health care executives at conferences, I enjoy posing two situations to the attendees: Looking at the administrators, I say “If a physician tells you I have done it this way for twenty years, I hope it scares the heck out of you”. I then address the physicians and say, “Docs, if… Continue Reading >>