Since speaking at the World Hospital Congress in Brisbane, Australia four years ago, I’ve kept a close eye on the country’s healthcare developments. In recent years—in Australia as in America—the frustrations of both patients and healthcare providers have intensified....
In recent years, Direct Primary Care (DPC) has been the most talked-about and innovative healthcare delivery model in the United States. At the Hint Summit in Denver this week, DPC clinicians, business leaders and technology experts came together to share ideas. The...
The fields of construction and healthcare hardly seem similar on the surface. One leads to new bridges and airports. The other aims to keep hearts beating and bodies moving. But beneath the surface, these two professions share many interesting and overlapping...
Business leaders want the best healthcare for their employees at reasonable prices. But to make that happen, employers must first understand what they’re up against and untangle the Gordian knot that is American healthcare. Much has been said and written about the...
I was heartened this week to see so many passionate and caring people gathered together to solve one of healthcare’s most pressing challenges: physician burnout. At the Healthcare Burnout Symposium #HBS22 held in San Francisco on Jan. 24 and 25, I had the opportunity...
“Change definitely will be happening. And change happening will be difficult.” That’s the message I delivered at the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) Annual Meeting in Minneapolis this week. As this year’s keynote speaker, I promised those in...
Before I was a professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business or CEO at The Permanente Medical Group (Kaiser Permanente), I was a very proud, busy and highly satisfied plastic and reconstructive surgeon. Plastic surgery has for decades stood on the...
Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) have been around for more than a decade—created with the idea that integrating care providers across settings (hospitals, primary care, specialty care, etc.) and aligning their financial incentives would lead to improved clinical...
It began as an acute illness, sometime about a decade ago. Doctors, who had for centuries belonged to a proud and rewarding profession, were suddenly reporting a series of alarming symptoms: exhaustion, frustration and extreme hopelessness. Surveys indicated that...
Not all physician specialties are created equal, at least not in the United States. The relative pecking order of American doctors has, for decades, placed primary care (internal and family medicine) below interventional specialties like cardiology, orthopedics and...
