As one of the first CEOs in healthcare to author his own blog, Paul Levy of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has established a cult following with outspoken posts tackling the issues he faces as the top manager at one of the most influential hospitals in the country, writing on everything from insider debates over the publication of hospital mortality and infection rates to negotiations with labor organizers and the wise use of information technology. Today he tackles a delicate subject sure to provoke debate – and enthusiasm – on the THCB discussion boards …

Several years ago, before taking this job, I was asked to turn around a
relatively small clinical trials data processing company. I had to lay
off a number of people who were not critical to the company’s success,
and one of these included a doctor who had been hired to expand the
business into a certain area that we determined was no longer
appropriate. This was not a case of incompetence or lack of energy or
enthusiasm. He was great guy with terrific credentials, but we just
could not afford his particular expertise in that troubled little
company.Recently, we had a chance to meet, and he confessed to
me that my decision to lay him off had caused him to have a real crisis
of confidence. He had never been fired before and, as he put it, his
view of himself as a person and the job he did was one and inseparable.
Here, I had torn them apart, and it took him a while to remember and feel
that he was still as adept and valuable a physician as he had been
before he was fired. Indeed, he was able to thank me, years later, for
teaching him the important lesson that a particular job does not define
who he is.I replied to him that I thought that his initial
reaction explained to me why doctor-managers often find it difficult to
fire other doctors. They too quickly internalize how it would feel to
themselves to be fired, and they project this onto others. They
conclude that they cannot devalue the professional abilities of a
fellow physician by terminating his or her employment. They have
difficulty separating the business imperative from the degradation of
one’s self esteem.

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I haven’t spent much time recently on the location tracking tools that I think will be a big part of hospital efficiency improvement in the future. The folks I met this weekend at LA County are thinking about them for next year when they move to a huge new emergency room, but the big fuss at HIMSS in 2006 around the asset and people location tracking has yet to really pan out.

But maybe the market is starting to take off. Yesterday one of the companies I’ve been following for a while, Ekahau, announced a big sale to big public hospital system Carolinas HealthCare System. Given that the inherent chaos that most hospitals appear to live with (to the uneducated eye—yes, I’m picking on LA County, but you know there’s some truth in that!), the potential for efficiency improvements from asset tracking and improved communications are very real.

Phreesia is a
fast growing venture backed start up company looking for an experienced Software Architect.Phreesia is free to physicians in participating practices. The
Phreesia solution includes the leading edge PhreesiaPad™ which adds immediate value to the
physician’s practice by gathering comprehensive intake information and chief
complaints, decreasing the time spent asking basic questions, improving patient
flow and reducing administrative time. Based on the patient’s responses they
are automatically taken to a customized portal with relevant health and
lifestyle information. Phreesia is sponsored by pharmaceutical and healthcare
companies with relevant educational communications to patients at
the point of care.

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Frequent THCB contributor Maggie Mahar returns today with another of her "Inside Baseball" posts on the healthcare industry. Is the recent boom in hospital construction a sign of a healthy and vibrant industry as many prognosticators have argued, or a symptom that something is going very wrong beneath the surface. This piece first appeared at Healthbeat, Maggie’s blog at the Century Foundation.    

Yesterday, I wrote about the hospital-building boom and suggested
that we may not need it—and more to the point, we may not be able to
afford it.

In my description of how hospitals are adding costly amenities like
waterfalls and all-private-rooms in order to woo well-heeled,
well-insured patients, I suggested that the money might be better
invested in computerized medical records or Level I trauma units. (In
some parts of the country, trauma units are spaced so far apart that if
you are in a car accident, there is a real danger that the unit will be
too far away to be of any help.)

Barry Carol responded, agreeing that safety should come first, but
also arguing that the private rooms help prevent infections. As for the
waterfalls, he noted that “while they may make good journalistic copy
as illustrative of frills,” given the high cost of hospital
construction “they probably get lost in the rounding as a cost factor.”
See his comment here.

Because Barry had raised a number of good points, and because the
hospital boom is such a large and crucial subject, I decided to return
to it today while responding to his comment.

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