Re: “How to Strategize in the New Era of Health Care” by Joe Flower in H&HN Daily, July 14
Nice piece. Pleased to see the focus on the shadow, the assumptions. It's a tough challenge to ferret out one's own blind spots, however. And a big one, in general, for most in medicine, is not knowing how systematically different the shift from reductive practice to whole-person, integrative practice; from a disease-focused industry to a system-focused — as Daniel Berwick called for in his 2013 Institute for Healthcare Improvement talk — salutogenesis or “health creation.” One way to illuminate the shadows is to start using the right language. Stop saying "health care system” unless that is how we are behaving. When we are behaving like a medical delivery industry, call it that. When we have a system that focuses on managing disease, call it that. When we have managed to actually develop, in a part of our work, systems for creating health, then savor the success of actually being a health care system.
— John Weeks
Strategy Can't Be Static
Re: “How to Strategize in the New Era of Health Care” by Joe Flower in H&HN Daily, July 14
I particularly like the suggestion that strategy is a continuous, dynamic process unlike our older models of static 3-, 5-, 10-, or 20-year plans. The pace of change has accelerated and uncertainty abounds so we need different planning models. It makes commitment to capital projects and long-term debt much harder, but no less necessary in some cases.
— Kirk Hamilton
New Leaders, New Perspectives
Re: “The New Health Care CEO” by Howard Larkin, June H&HN
Great to see new CEOs pioneering new models and strategies. I served in the Army for 30 years at the executive levels and the two three-year rotations of executives precipitated a different viewpoint based upon various experiences that made the model a progressive, thinking and responsive entity to the environment and the community and stakeholders. The change at the helms in [the New York health care organizations noted in the article] allowed for that very different perspective to be considered and to challenge the assumptions posited by the previous CEO. Susan Fox got it right and it's great for the community and patients. I like that analogy of considering the continuum of care and leveraging the hospital with all of the external entities that care for the patients. Well done.
— Keith Gallagher
Patient-Centered = Person-Centered
Re: "Why Patient-Centered Care Is No Longer Good Enough," by Marty Stempniak in May H&HN
The biopsychosocial model of care delivery means person and patient are one and the same; thus, there would be NO distinction between "person-centered vs. patient-centered" care (except [as] marketing hyperbole).
— L. Faith Birmingham
Some Ideas Age Well
Re: "Throwback Thursday: The Dos and Don'ts of Nursing School Recruitment, circa 1951" in H&HN Daily, July 16
Isn't it amazing how good some ideas are 60-plus years later? Perhaps they need to be tweaked a bit, but the philosophy is still appropriate after all these years.
— Ray
Corrections
In the July H&HN, the 2015 list of Most Wired hospitals and health systems inadvertently omitted CHOC Children's Hospital in Orange, Calif.
• In the list of 2015 Most Wired hospitals and health systems, the number of beds given for Kaiser Permanente was incorrect; the system has 7,520.
• In the Most Wired–Small and Rural list, the Evans U.S. Army Community Hospital entry should have been: Colorado Springs Military Health System | Fort Collins, Colo. | www.tricare.mil/FindDoctor/msm/csmhs.aspx.
• The Most Improved list incorrectly located Allegiance Health. Allegiance Health is in Jackson, Mich.
• The source for the charts on patient engagement should be Health Care’s Most Wired Survey, 2015.
