Making Health Reform Simple

Rosemary Flanigan
August 9, 2010

Just because I'm retired doesn't mean I don't yearn to tell you all the goodies I read and talk about--and the latest is a Harvard Business Review article, April, 2010, in which Richard M.J. Bohmer gives some ideas on "Fixing Health Care on the Front Lines."

He makes re-design sound simple, and I know it isn't, but it ought to be simpler for some of our systems that aren't as complex as others: Think "optimizing patient care" instead of maximizing utilization of beds, tests, procedure rooms, etc.

That means using well-developed evidence on the effectiveness of treatments, especially those "normal" to the institution; for the more complicated cases, develop a hospital-within-a-hospital approach where specialties work together and keep careful records.

Of course, all of this presupposes administrators focused on the re-design who can rally the forces to share information and work toward standardizing "normal" care.

If anyone reads this article, I wish you would give me your "take." Remember my woeful dearth of information about the interior workings of hospitals.