My buddy Noah Brier, ingenious man that he is, created a website called Brandtags. It’s super simple and this is what it does: and then it spits out the tags associated with that brand: Is this a problem for Mayo that people associate Mayo with cancer just as much as they associate it with health? I’d say this is a problem for them and the … Continue reading What do people think of the sickness industry?

I’ve been thinking a ton about the fact that patients aren’t the real customers in healthcare. Very little has been designed for you– the user of healthcare. When you visit a hospital’s website, do you get the same feeling as using Kayak to purchase a plane ticket or tumblr to create your first blog and start publishing within 30 seconds? Do you feel more knowledgeable … Continue reading How healthcare institutions talk to you.

I spent Tuesday night with a very distinguished group of high profile people involved in various aspects of healthcare at the Healthspottr dinner to coincide with the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco this week. It was a discussion amongst the 20 or so people about “payment reform.” There was a ton of bickering, ideas galore, and solutions that worked for one of the four … Continue reading I’m optimistic.

How American Health Care Killed My Father by David Goldhill in The Atlantic and The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker These are the two most important articles of the past year on health care. Please take the time to read and digest them… It’s an unfixable mess that will only be solved by complete restructuring from the ground up– the top … Continue reading There are two articles one must read to understand health care reform.

I look at almost everything in life as a process. For the most part, there are predictable steps that occur when doing something– going to the grocery store, checking your email, going out to dinner with friends, building cars, etc.. The opportunity lies in designing processes. When you design processes, you can analyze each step and ask yourself, “What could potentially go wrong?” at each … Continue reading How to fix healthcare #1 = Fix the process of healthcare delivery.

From a conversation I had with squashed: The only way to save healthcare is to mandate broad, sweeping changes to turn all of the US healthcare industry into a Kaiser-like, closed-loop, true Healthcare System designed to function as a whole with incentives aligned amongst all players to practice quality medicine, not quantity medicine. The System must take financial accountability for maximizing a population’s health. In … Continue reading How do we save healthcare?

The healthcare industry as a business model is criminal. It’s too far gone. It works for those making profits off the industry. It doesn’t work for us as citizens in need of quality healthcare at an affordable price with promises of protection from financial ruin. I say let it die. Why are we throwing money at a criminal and dying industry? Did we not learn … Continue reading I think we should give up on reform and invest in creating something new.

Don’t do the internet thing and glance at all of these questions. Sit down, read them carefully. Think about each one. Ask the right questions about each one like who, what, when, where, and why. Find the answers. Then go and talk intelligently about healthcare. Where did our healthcare system come from? Did someone architect our healthcare system in the beginning? Why is healthcare so … Continue reading Here are a few questions to consider before talking intelligently about healthcare reform.