Hospital Systems: A Framework for Maximizing Social Benefit
Health Systems: a Framework for Maximizing Social Benefit. Health systems have been under more or less continuous attack during the past decade by academics and health policy experts for driving up healthcare costs. Yet they proved indispensable in the fight against COVID. This essay, written with fellow futurist and policy wonk Ian Morrison, explores how to maximize the social benefits health systems provide society.
Trusting relationships are the core of medicine. Can telehealth support them?
After the Crash. After an astonishing run during COVID, digital health and tech stocks withered in a broader collapse of NASDAQ companies in early 2022. What do past industry cycles teach us about how important innovations recover from initial challenges and become essential to our lives? How will health tech recover from the crash and what do innovative companies have to do to power through the downturn?
Trust is the Core of Medicine
Jeff Goldsmith argued in STAT First Opinion that the explosion in digital health offerings since COVID began has not altered one key aspect of US healthcare: the central role of trust in healthcare provision. Despite a proliferation of “virtual first” offerings by insurers and employers, trusted relationships between care providers and patients remains the core of the health system. The market for anonymous, “right now” transactions between patients and their cell phones/PCs is limited, and many “virtual first” care and health insurance offerings will founder on this reality. Digital health’s key potential is that of a “force multiplier” for the trusted relations that are the heart of medicine.
Cost Effectiveness in Healthcare
Jeff Goldsmith talked about the role of cost effectiveness in the management of health systems in an interview with Eric Reese of HFM, the lead publication of the Healthcare Financial Management Association. How should health care finance leaders factor cost effectiveness into their strategies?
Health Systems Made A Big Difference In The COVID Fight: Time To Reconsider Their Social Impact
Health Systems Saved Lives During COVID Large multi-hospital health systems have been in the political/regulatory doghouse for the past decade. However, they made a huge difference in the fight against COVID. They were able to mobilize caregivers and facilities at scale across regions to fill gaps left by crumbling public health infrastructure, and stood up testing, vaccination and telehealth offerings rapidly to respond to the pandemic. Policymakers should reconsider the social benefits created by these large complex organizations. With colleague Ian Morrison in Health Affairs blog
Digital Health: Avoiding a Second TechLash!
Digital Health: How to Avoid a Second TechLash Digital health offerings have dramatically expanded during COVID, catalyzing tens of billions of venture and private equity funding for new ventures. And yet digital health enthusiasts are making many of the same mistakes that proponents of the electronic health record made two decades ago. How can digital health offerings fit into and improve US healthcare, while improving communication, co-ordination of care and patient/consumer safety.
Digital Health Frenzy: How to Avoid a Second TechLash
The past eighteen months of COVID have seen a multi-billion frenzy of new investment in telehealth and other digital health technologies. We have been here before. In the wake of the 2008 recession, there was similar, multi-billion dollar wave of policy innovation and investment in the electronic health record , which has been a major disappointment. If we are to avoid another disappointment, healthcare managers and professionals must insist on measurable returns on their digital health investment that patients and professionals notice. How to do this is discussed in this Healthcare Blog posting.
An American Disgrace
An American Disgrace Jeff Goldsmith reviews Anne Case and Angus Deaton’s “Deaths of Despair” for Health Affairs.
Managed Care 3.0: Rise of the Robots
Managed Care 3.0: Rise of the Robots Much is being made of the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare. Little did care providers know that it is already affecting their cash flow! Managed Care 3.0 explores how AI assisted robotic process automation is being used by large and little known healthcare revenue cycle vendors to scrub (and reject) medical claims. Care systems are fighting back with their own AI-assisted systems. Read about this rapidly emerging sector and its risks to care providers.
Relatively Modest Health Reform May Create More Value Than ‘Medicare for All’
Relatively Modest Health Reform May Create More Value than “Medicare-for-All” With the chorus of progressive voices advocating single payer and Medicare for All during the runup to the 2020 Presidential election, Jeff Goldsmith offers three strategies that would create more tangible payoff in improved health with a fraction of the cost and disruption. Read his thoughts in Health Affairs blog.