Collaborative Systems

 A friend who is a retired COO of a Western hospital sent me the following e-mail after reading my column, A Practicing Surgeon Dissects Issues in Physician-Hospital Relations:  You are to blame for getting me to think as a hospital administrator once again- since I have really been enjoying semi-retirement! You mention the implications of the relationship that occurs [...]

Collaborative Physician-Hospital Strategies

Before reviewing Jay Warden’s new book, Creating Sustainable Physician-Hospital Strategies (Chicago: Health Administration Press), I need to disclose that the author cited the Medical Advisory Panel (MAP) at Santa Barbara Cottage Health System as a model for physician-hospital collaboration (p.61-63). I facilitated that project in 2003 and attended a MAP meeting there two weeks ago, [...]

Uncollaborative Insurance

For those accustomed to data-driven posts, I apologize.  This post is 99% personal experience.  It represents my ongoing battle with Harvard Pilgrim Health Care to obtain coverage that I need at a price that I can afford. This episode began when I received a notice dated 2/11/09 notifying me that the cost of my family [...]

Collaborative Business

I’m sorry for being late with this post.  I was on vacation in California with my wife and 82 year-old mother, whom we try to get out of the cold, snowy Buffalo weather one week each winter.  The 5-hour plane ride gave me time to read Why Healthcare Matters: How Business Leaders Can Drive Transformational Change [...]

Collaborative Workout

During business school, I took a course on Organizational Change with Bill Joyce, one of the consultants who helped design the GE workout program to: realize tangible improvements within a short time reduce bureaucratic barriers that hinder decision making and implementation expose and overcome misalignment of incentives generate ideas at every level increase visibility improve [...]

Collaborative Etiquette

A couple of weeks ago, as I was finishing up a weekend of surgical coverage, the hospital CEO quipped, “How come you weren’t in the OR where I can be making money off you?” I replied, “I did something far more important. I spent over one half hour each weekend day listening to Dr. X.” [...]

Collaborative Compact

Collaborative Consultation

I don’t usually talk about work, but the muse awakened me at 6:30 am with some thoughts. I felt proud to be a physician this past weekend.  I was invited to facilitate a medical staff retreat for a mid-size community hospital.  The theme was “Challenging the Status Quo.”  My formal talks included “Interdependendent Healthcare: Moving [...]

Collaborative Fairness

If we have established that life is not fair, what do we do about it? The best advice that I can offer, after traveling through over 40 states, is to reframe, changing perspective to see life as a learning journey rather than a conspiracy. Dr. Abigail Zuger pointed out that the golden age, that lasted approximately two decades after the passage of Medicare in 1965, was an anomaly.

Collaborative Budgeting

Who would have guessed that a surgeon would blog on budgeting? My interest began when a fellow surgeon, the current Chief Operating Officer of a Midwest hospital, wrote that budgeting can make collaboration more of a nicety than a necessity (Lambert M. 2004. “Improvement and Innovation in Hospital Operations: A Key to Organizational Health.” Frontiers of Health [...]