Primary Care Workforce Situation: Not Hopeless
I sometimes observe that the only sector of the economy as messed up as health care is higher education, where the US has some great institutions but where costs are…
Getting Nurse Staffing Right Is Critical
When I was the CEO of a large academic hospital we were constantly concerned to properly balance nurse staffing. More staff than needed meant wasted money and too little staffing…
Kinect Technology Saves Having to Rescrub!
No this not using Kinect to do the surgery, but rather to use gestures (which means they don’t have to touch anything) and view patient images. This is huge and…
HIMSS Meeting Takeaways
Last week we attended the 2011 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference and exhibition in Orlando, Florida, and met with many senior executives as well as different business…
Wireless Fetal Monitor Gets FDA Clearance
Monica Healthcare (based in the UK), has announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted regulatory clearance of their Monica AN24 wireless fetal monitor for use during…
Platelet-Rich Plasma Therapy: Much Ado about Nothing?
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy became a hot topic among professional and recreational athletes after some studies suggested it could hasten wound healing and several high-profile athletes reported using it…
Increasing Hospital Risks
There are a couple of increasing risks for hospital worthy of some attention. The first is drug shortages. I most often think of drug shortage risks in disaster response planning…
Government Pays Bonuses for Increasing Medicaid Expenditures
In December, HHS announced the bonuses for 15 states that had made “significant progress in enrolling uninsured children in Medicaid.” The 2010 bonuses totaled $206.2 million. They were double the…
Prescription Drug Hijacking on the Increase
In my former life in logistics, this is huge problem and from what I read today the shift from hijacking electronics seems to be moving over to drugs. In the…
More on the Longevity Project
Cheerful children, alas, turned out to be shorter-lived than their more sober classmates. The early death of a parent had no measurable effect on children’s life spans or mortality risk,…
