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• The Times Hits the Right Notes on Hospitalists

  You probably saw yesterday’s hospitalist piece in the New York Times, arguably the best lay article on the movement to date. It hit all the right notes, and did so with uncommon grace and fairness. The piece, written by the Times’ Jane Gross, profiled Read More... Posted Fri, May 28 2010 8:05 AM by Bob Wachter | 5 Comments Filed under: Hospital Care, Hospitalists/Hospital Medicine, Ambulatory/Primary Care, Media/Press Coverage

• Verb-alizing

  One of my interns was “running the list” with me last week (giving me a thumbnail update on the plans for each of our inpatients). It was standard stuff until he got to Ms. X, a 80ish-year-old woman admitted with urosepsis who was now ready for discharge. Read More... Posted Thu, Mar 04 2010 3:22 PM by Bob Wachter | 14 Comments Filed under: Hospital Care, Medical Education/Academia, Information Technology, Ambulatory/Primary Care

• A Week in Asia: Today, Japan; Tomorrow, Singapore

  A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to visit Tokyo and Singapore – the former to speak at a conference on “Training of the Generalist Physician,” and the latter as visiting professor at Singapore General Hospital. Today: some observations on the medical Read More... Posted Wed, Nov 11 2009 8:56 PM by Bob Wachter | 3 Comments Filed under: Hospital Care, Hospitalists/Hospital Medicine, Ambulatory/Primary Care, Health Policy, Outsourcing/Medical Tourism

• Is Healthcare IT Ready for its Big Coming Out Party?

  In 2001, when my colleagues and I ranked nearly 100 patient safety practices on the strength of their supporting evidence (for an AHRQ report), healthcare IT didn’t make the top 25. We took a lot of heat for, as one prominent patient safety advocate chided Read More... Posted Sun, Oct 25 2009 9:15 PM by Bob Wachter | 7 Comments Filed under: Hospital Care, Information Technology, Ambulatory/Primary Care, Patient Safety/Medical Errors, Industry/Pharma, Health Policy

• Can Patients Help Ensure Their Own Safety? More Importantly, Why Should They Have To?

  Sticking with my recent hand hygiene theme, an interesting study came out last week demonstrating that outpatients were willing to help audit their providers’ hand hygiene practices. The patients felt that snooping on their docs didn’t poison the physician-patient Read More... Posted Wed, Oct 14 2009 5:38 AM by Bob Wachter | 5 Comments Filed under: Hospital Care, Ambulatory/Primary Care, Patient Safety/Medical Errors, Health Policy, Medical Ethics

• An Overlooked but Dangerous Handoff… of One Million Patients at a Time

  A quick heads up on an article written by a very talented UCSF psychiatrist named John Young, which I had the opportunity to co-author. John observed that, despite all the recent literature about handoffs (such as here and here), no one has given much Read More... Posted Mon, Sep 28 2009 7:44 AM by Bob Wachter | 2 Comments Filed under: Medical Education/Academia, Information Technology, Ambulatory/Primary Care, Patient Safety/Medical Errors

• My Interview on The Health Care Blog

  If for some reason you haven't gotten enough of me on Wachter's World, I just did a long, fun interview with Matthew Holt on the always-interesting THCB. We cover patient safety, the future of IT, the demise of primary care, Death Panels, and more. I Read More... Posted Wed, Aug 19 2009 3:48 PM by Bob Wachter | 2 Comments Filed under: Quality Improvement, Hospital Care, Transparency and Reporting, Quality Measurement, Efficiency, Medical Education/Academia, Hospitalists/Hospital Medicine, Information Technology, Ambulatory/Primary Care, Patient Safety/Medical Errors, Health Policy

• “Mr. Obama, Tear Down These (Hospital) Walls”: Readmissions in Context

  I like readmissions. Well, that didn’t come out quite right, did it? What I mean is that I like focusing on readmissions as a potentially actionable quality measure. I believe that it’s possible to prevent many readmissions, thereby improving quality Read More... Posted Sat, Apr 04 2009 12:36 AM by Bob Wachter | 10 Comments Filed under: Quality Improvement, Hospital Care, Transparency and Reporting, Quality Measurement, Efficiency, Hospitalists/Hospital Medicine, Information Technology, Ambulatory/Primary Care, Patient Safety/Medical Errors, Health Policy

• The PSA Story: The Triumph of Science Over Common Sense

  My father, who celebrated his 79th birthday yesterday, is many things: eccentric, nearly deaf (though he attributes this to my mom being a “low talker”), hilarious, crotchety, and a true mensch. But he’s neither incontinent nor impotent.It might have Read More... Posted Sat, Mar 21 2009 7:36 AM by Bob Wachter | 9 Comments Filed under: Diagnosis/Clinical Reasoning, Ambulatory/Primary Care, Health Policy

• Today’s NEJM Hospitalist Study: What’s the News?

  A paper in today’s New England Journal proves what we all know – the hospitalist field is the only thing growing faster than the national debt. Even though that’s not news, this elegant biopsy of the Medicare database offers some new insights about our Read More... Posted Fri, Mar 13 2009 6:14 AM by Bob Wachter | 3 Comments Filed under: Hospital Care, Medical Education/Academia, Hospitalists/Hospital Medicine, Ambulatory/Primary Care

• My Colonoscopy… And Dave Barry’s

  When I launched this blog, I vowed not to dwell on personal matters – you’ve heard nothing about my older son's lab work (remarkable), my younger son’s cartooning (awesome), or my golf game (never mind). But I simply must tell you about my colonoscopy Read More... Posted Wed, Aug 20 2008 11:49 PM by Bob Wachter | 4 Comments Filed under: Ambulatory/Primary Care, Media/Press Coverage

• Is “Patient-Centeredness” a Healthcare MacGuffin?

  Last week’s ABIM Foundation Summer Forum focused on patient-centered care… and who could be against that? But is patient-centered care just a healthcare MacGuffin? What’s a MacGuffin, you ask? In a spectacular talk at the Forum, Michael Richardson of Read More... Posted Mon, Aug 04 2008 4:16 AM by Bob Wachter | 8 Comments Filed under: Hospital Care, Transparency and Reporting, Ambulatory/Primary Care, Health Policy, Medical Ethics

• The Long Awaited Crisis in Primary Care: It’s Heeere!

  I recently heard from a UCSF physician who was flabbergasted when he sought an appointment in our general medicine practice and was told it was “closed.” Turns out we’re not alone: there are also no new PCP slots available at Mass General. The primary Read More... Posted Sun, Jul 20 2008 7:36 PM by Bob Wachter | 10 Comments Filed under: Medical Education/Academia, Ambulatory/Primary Care, Health Policy, Media/Press Coverage

• Google Health: A View From the Inside

  Google Health launched on Monday, which sent the world’s Google-watchers into a tizzy. I serve on Google Health's Advisory Council – which met all day Tuesday – and so here’s a bit of inside dish, along with my impressions of the site and the company. Read More... Posted Thu, May 22 2008 4:24 PM by Bob Wachter | 2 Comments Filed under: Information Technology, Ambulatory/Primary Care, Industry/Pharma, Media/Press Coverage

• Can Medical Errors Be Funny? You Betcha.

  All medical mistakes are problematic. A few are truly tragic. But every now and then, a medical error comes along that is downright hilarious. From AHRQ WebM&M, the case-based Web journal I edit for the federal government, here are two of the latter Read More... Posted Sun, Feb 03 2008 7:31 AM by Bob Wachter | 5 Comments Filed under: Hospital Care, Ambulatory/Primary Care, Patient Safety/Medical Errors