I recently participated in a meeting whose aim was to develop safety measures for hospital units (ie, med-surg, ED, L&D). As various measures were being ticked off, I muttered that we should also try to capture errors that occur as patients move between units. One of my colleagues, quite sensibly, asked, “but who will be [...]
Archive | 2007
Today’s New England Journal Hospitalist Study
Today my pals Peter Lindenauer and Andy Auerbach (and colleagues) published the largest hospitalist outcomes study to date, in the New England Journal of Medicine. It is a rigorous, important piece of work. Let me try to add a bit of context. First, the What’s What. Using the massive database of the Premier system (which [...]
The UCSF-Kessler Saga and the Press
I’ve not been posting regularly on this story (as you might imagine, it’s a bit tricky for me to do so), but for those following it from near and far (I’ve received emails from friends in Europe and Asia) there have been a number of interesting articles, including pieces in the LA Times, Washington Post, [...]
The Termination of UCSF Dean David Kessler
Well, today the great Mecca of medical care and innovation that is UCSF all but ground to a halt. Our Dean was just let go under very odd circumstances, and everyone’s flocking to water coolers and Starbucks around the city to find out who knows what. I won’t be giving away any trade secrets here, [...]
More on Quality Reports: Lessons From SAT Scores
My older son is gearing up to apply to college (:-\ and so I bought him one of the Bibles, the Fiske Guide. The book is cleverly written – enough academic factoids to get parents to spring for it, leavened with enough social scene skinny to get kids to read it. The Guide dutifully lists [...]
Atul Gawande’s "The Checklist"
Let’s make this short and sweet. In this week’s New Yorker, Atul Gawande describes Peter Pronovost’s crusade to improve the safety of intensive care through the use of checklists. If it sounds dull, it’s not. In fact, it is thrilling and inspiring. Gawande glides effortlessly from microscopic detail to panoramic view and back again to [...]
Can a Medical Center Be Too Rich?
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center announced today that it will donate up to $100 million over the next decade to fund college scholarships for Pittsburgh public school students. This is a magnificent gesture, but it left me scratching my head: I thought hospitals were supposed to absorb charity, not dole it out. I already [...]
Adventures in Bizarro Land: My Don Imus Interview
I had mixed emotions this morning when I heard that radio shock-jock Don Imus had returned to the airwaves. My 2004 interview with Imus was perhaps the wackiest experience of my life. It also made Internal Bleeding into a bestseller. Here’s the story: When Internal Bleeding came out, the book’s publicist, a lovely South African [...]
The Weekly Roundup…
Stuff this week that caught my eye: Does medical tourism harm the natives? Are all those CT scans destroying more than our budgets? Are nocturnalists at risk for more than decubs? Will Medicare need to cut hospital payments to fuel P4P? Answers: yes, yes, probably, and duh. Yesterday, NPR’s All Things Considered described the dark [...]
Rapid Response Teams: Ready for Prime Time?
Last year, I (with Peter Pronovost) wrote the toughest paper of my life – one that critiqued the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 100,000 Lives Campaign. This is the healthcare equivalent of criticizing both Mother Teresa and your local food bank in a single sitting (you can also read Don Berwick and his team’s response here). [...]
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