Comments on: Readers Write 4/1/09

By: Barbara A Duck

Barbara A Duck — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:20:58 +0000

Interesting you mentioned Mayo Clinic. I do a monthly update on my blog called “Desperate Hospitals” that covers layoffs, cut backs, etc. and Mayo was on there last month. The financial reports stated they are breaking even, but would not have been there if they had not sold a facility in Florida.

It’s pretty hard today for hospitals to operate under fixed numbers when as humans, you can’t really group us all together as even though we have the same condition, treatments vary for each of us and so do our reactions to medications, etc. It’s a very challenging time for hospitals to operate under some of the rules and regulations of risk management. Everybody is in control, yet nobody is really in control

By: Frank Poggio

Frank Poggio — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:30:45 +0000

SWA Peanut said:
…will figure out how to solve the workflow problem and make other organizations around them look inept and expensive by comparison. If an insurer could determine that a patient should have been discharged on Day 5 but didn’t get discharged until Day 6, would they pay for the extra day?

There is such a place already – Mayo Clinic…runs like clock work
..and right now Medicare under DRGs does not pay for extra days. I know they lost a bundle on my mom (she was there 6 days should have been 3) but they really did NOT seem to care!
As a former CFO I was dumb founded.

By: Googler

Googler — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:16:58 +0000

I had a CIO teaching a class at a university ask me for a paper or case study about how poor project management lead to the failure of a project. I couldn’t find one. No one really wants to write about or talk about their failures.

Cliff, try a google search on “Project failure.”

By: SWA Peanut Eater

SWA Peanut Eater — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 17:51:36 +0000

Just as Southwest Airlines is running circles around their competitors in plane turnaround time (25 minutes), some hospital organizations will figure out how to solve the workflow problem and make other organizations around them look inept and expensive by comparison. If an insurer could determine that a patient should have been discharged on Day 5 but didn’t get discharged until Day 6, would they pay for the extra day?

By: Barbara Duck

Barbara Duck — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 17:22:25 +0000

I like new technology as well as the next person, but the people side of things is lacking as we all become busier with the amount of information we need to digest and focus on.

I stumbled across this video, which is humorous, but makes the point of how technology is moving so very fast and how an approach of what I would consider a less than human could be. We have all of this technology here today, just linking it all together and applying it is the mystery without forgetting we are still humans.

http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2009/03/humorous-look-at-mobile.html