Why Society’s Shift Means Your Group Needs a New Strategy
Neckties get wider, then narrower, then wider again. The tides come in and out and in again. And society cycles round and round from an emphasis on, and worship of, rugged individualism, to an emphasis on, and lauding of, community and cooperation.
I refer to this as the Me-We Cycle. (For an in-depth take on this concept from an historical and marketing angle, read Pendulum by Roy H. Williams and Michael R. Drew, released by Vanguard Press in October 2012. I highly recommend it.)
In the grand gestalt, over the past thirty to forty years, physicians
The Error of Measuring Success Only by Action
In an organization, we tend to be judged for what we decide to do, not for what we decide not to do.
For example, consider the issue of responding to an RFP. If you respond and your organization is successful, you’ll tout your genius and others will toast to it. Yet it’s very difficult to tout your genius in not responding: We humans tend to place tremendous importance on what’s observable and to ignore that which cannot be seen or experienced. Accordingly, your supposedly rational colleagues will neither pat you on the back nor
The ABCs of ACO Economics
If the hospitals at which your group provides services haven’t already approached you and your fellow members of the medical staff about ACO formation, the chances are high that they will in the not too distant future.
Expect that pressure to be great. After all, the hospital will argue, ACOs, or “accountable care organizations,” are all about increasing the quality of care through collaboration.
But recall that Benjamin Disraeli, the great British Prime Minister, once commented that there are lies, damned lies and statistics. I say that it’s time to add acronyms
Recommended Reads
If you like the links to stories around the web, I’ve got good news. We will soon be updating our homepage to feature more links to diagnostic imaging business news that appears online. We’ll research the news each day and give you links to the best of the web.
Until then, here are my current Recommended Reads for leaders and decision makers in the field of radiology.
SF Bay Area Independent Radiology Practice Looks to Unite With Other Practices to Beat the Big Network Providers
Allied Hospital Association Leadership for Quality 2011
Recommended Reads
A lot of news happened in the past week. These are some of the items that caught my attention.
BusinessHealth care M&A activity in second quarter points to a record year, according to a new report from Irving Levin Associates, Inc. Physician group deals are up 200 percent compared to the second quarter of 2010 and hospital deals are up 78 percent compared to last year. Read the press release.
The U.S. News and Fidelity Investments hospital execs survey is out and when asked about ACOs almost all hospital execs say they
Recommended Reads
A lot of news happened in the past week. These are some of the items that caught my attention.
Business
Accountable Care Organization poster child Steward Health Care continues its aggressive roll-up strategy in the Boston market with the purchase of Quincey Medical Center. According to Mass. Market, it will soon own one out of five hospitals in the greater Boston area. Read more.
Insurers eager to cut costs and promote managed care are buying up physician groups finds a new Kaiser Health News report. Check it out here.
Three Ohio
Of Planes and Patients
A criticism that’s often made about any form of government-regulated health care is that patients’ ability to choose will be limited. It’s not difficult to imagine this being an issue with ACOs, since in order to obtain the kind of coordinated care that HHS is calling for, patients will have to see a predetermined subset of clinicians. There’s been some talk in recent years about an upswing in patients selecting their own radiology providers, caused, in part, by escalating co-pays, which drive them to comparison-shop. But in a system dominated by ACOs, neither this cause nor
Where’s the patient?
A couple of years ago I took a fall that resulted in me spraining my right ankle. Like most people, I won’t pay to go to an ER unless I have a bone showing somewhere, so instead of seeking the only medical attention available to me at 8 p.m., I attempted to sleep through the night, then got up and drove to work using my left foot instead of my right. “I just twisted it badly,” I kept telling myself, until a co-worker took one look at my swollen foot and ordered me to see a doctor.
Jonathan Berlin, MD, on Decommoditizing Imaging
Stat Readers, I have but one word for you: SNOW!
You thought I was going to say something else, didn’t you? “Cloud,” “tomo,” “personalized” . . . well, sorry. I live in LA; snow is really exciting.
But that’s not the reason for this entry, I just had to share. The real reason is the terrific session I attended this morning on “Addressing Threats to Radiology,” kicked off by the wonderful Jonathan Berlin, MD, with a discussion of commoditization in imaging. Commoditization, he explained, happens when the only way customers can differentiate between products in a
