I remember like it was yesterday the example used in my MBA economics course to teach the Law of Diminishing Returns. A fishing boat captain can get dramatic benefit by adding a second fisherman, nearly as much so by adding a third, but then less and less as he hires more fishermen. The reason is
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I worked several years in hospitals before I went over to the IT dark side, spending time in both front line patient care and operational management. It’s a lot different than working in IT. For those who’ve spent their entire healthcare careers sitting at a desk in front of a monitor, I thought I’d point
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I do a lot of interviews for HIStalk. Like a mother who loves all her children equally, I like to think that they’re all good, but let’s be realistic: I know that some of them have been spectacular duds. Those clunkers sounded good on paper as I planned them, a no-holds-barred discussion with some vendor
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I admit that I don’t understand why everything and everybody has to be certified these days. EMRs, CIOs, healthcare IT professionals, and nurses can – for the right price – earn a third party’s validation of their existence (CCHIT, CHCIO, CPHIMS, and RN-BC, respectively). Even the word itself is comforting. Your new software, IT leader,
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Healthcare is different, everybody says, Well, it sure is when it comes to throwing the excessive bacchanal that is the HIMSS annual conference. Most citizens are shell-shocked from economic devastation. Most industries are reeling. But at HIMSS, it was 1999 all over again. Sprawling exhibitor booths are burning electricity like a third-world country! Bring on
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These days, more and more industry people are using Willie Sutton’s famous answer to why he robbed banks. “Because that’s where the money is,” they say. The current form of the question is this: “Why are you leaving your hospital job to work for a vendor or consulting company?” I’ll be honest … I thought
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At my hospital, we worry a lot about ED satisfaction scores. No matter how well we do in areas such as OB or surgery, the ED scores always drag everybody else down. It always seems that the best and the worst aspects of our hospital’s care happen there. We can only do so much to raise those
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I’m excited about the government’s encouragement (or mandate, depending on your perspective) that doctors use electronic medical records. Mandatory progress must go on despite the gripes of a few malcontents (i.e., the majority of doctors, patients, and taxpayers). It is a travesty that more healthcare providers don’t use computers. Software can make healthcare as transparent,
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Too much Meaningful Use has led me to Meaningless Musing. Here’s where it took me: the same handful of wrong reasons that convince people to marry unwisely also convince them to buy EMRs that will make them unhappy. Let’s start with lust. A good-looking partner often leads to hasty and ill-advised EMR marriages. Providers swoon
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(Like other initially cynical recipients, I’m finding the Snuggie to be pretty darned cozy even if it does resemble the offspring of a hospital gown that mated with a choir robe). I think most of us I.T. nerds like the solitude of our natural habitat (basements and programmer grow lights, i.e., windowless rooms with fluorescent
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