Doccupy, EHRs and the Affordable Care Act

EHR Interface Design = a giant MESS (Photo credit: juhansonin)

It’s rare for doctors to turn out en masse for a public protest. But that’s what happened at “Doccupy” in Contra Costa County California in 2012. A group of safety net physicians testified before county supervisors — in what they only half-jokingly called “Doccupy” […]

Medical Homes Part III: The True Cost

Implenting Patient Centered Medical Home (Photo credit: Army Medicine)

As the Patient Centered Medical Homes (PCMHs) train charges forward along with implementation of the Affordable Care Act, dollars are taken directly out of our health care system to certify providers in a method with no proven benefit (see Medical Homes Part II: The Depressing […]

Medical Homes Part II: The Depressing Data

Community Based Medical Home (Photo credit: Army Medicine)

When looking to examine Patient Centered Medical Home data (click here for my overview of PCMHs), there’s no better place to start than the 26-month evaluation of the multi-site National Demonstration Project. Begun in 2006, with results published in 2010, this federally funded project included an […]

The Gurley Rule of Bureaucracy: The complexity of a bureaucracy is inversely proportionate to the clarity of the idea behind it.

Following on from the first post about Medical Homes and the bureaucracy that was involved in creating and driving the concept, here are some thoughts on medical bureacracy.

Good Bureaucracy: If you’re in health care and you amputate the wrong limb, that is bad.

1) While not as simple to avoid as initially believed, there […]

Medical Homes Part 1: The Reality vs. The Hype

English: Barack Obama signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act at the White House (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Patient-Centered Primary Care Medical Homes (PCMHs) are all the rage. A frequently-touted part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), they have received literally hundreds of millions of dollars in federal incentive and demonstration-project funding. They’ve been […]

Investigating drug rehab, overdose death prevention in your community

Image of Cory Monteith by vagueonthehow via Flickr

Hollywood stars, like Glee’s Cory Monteith, aren’t the only Americans struggling with addiction that kills. Monteith, who died of a heroin and alcohol overdose earlier this month, exemplifies the public health tragedy that is opioid overdose deaths in America. The fact is, there is no […]