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Interview With Paul Levy: How To Protect Yourself In The Hospital

My friend and fellow blogger, Paul Levy, is the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston. He was recently listed as one of the “top 9 people to watch in healthcare” – thanks to his pioneering efforts on behalf of patient safety and transparency of hospital quality data.

I recently interviewed Paul to get his take on how patients can plan for a safe hospital stay, and what Paul is doing at BIDMC to advance quality care for all. Many thanks to Johnson & Johnson for the unrestricted grant that allowed me to create the videos.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV1oRLNtLhc

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY1GJPQ_0uI

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRWS4p9t-9Q

Check out Johnson & Johnson’s YouTube Health Channel for more great videos.

Some Device Companies Would Rather Pay A Fee Than Engage In Price Transparency?

Here’s a dumb thought: If you want to save costs on medical devices to the federal government, require a tax fee concessions of $4 billion dollars from the medical device companies to fund a health care overhaul.

Now either that $4 billion will get added to the cost of devices (and the patient/insurer’s tab) or the device companies will decide that they must pay the fee to maintain their current pricing.

Government pressures hospitals and doctors by paying less, so hospitals keep the heat on medical device makers to lower costs so they can make their margins.

It all sounds good, right?

But according to one analyst, it seems device makers would rather pay the fee than make their prices transparent:

But the mechanism for how devices companies might pay matters more than what they pay, according to Morgan Stanley analyst David Lewis. “A ‘flat tax’ is preferable, in our view, to targeted industry fees as our larger concern is the creation of more infrastructure intended to catalyze pricing transparency,” he said.

And so, with the fee, the government pays itself while the medical device prices continue to remain inflated.

Why do the patients always seem to lose with these government-mandated scenarios?

-Wes

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*

Hospital CEO, Paul Levy, Taking Heat For His Transparency

There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.

– Mat 10:26

The Internet may be fueling the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy – that there will come a day when nothing can be kept hidden or secret. Of course, early adopters of full transparency are regarded as reckless by some (potentially those who have something to hide?) and laudable by others (though they may be afraid to follow suit). In today’s Boston Globe there is an article about my friend and fellow blogger, Paul Levy. Paul is the CEO of Beth Israel/Deaconess, leading the charge to make hospital errors a matter of public record.

Paul writes about the errors made at his hospital (and many other subjects) in his popular medical blog, Running A Hospital. The blog won the “Best Medical Blog of 2007” award, and he is the first (and perhaps only) hospital CEO that has adopted such a high view of transparency. And for that, I commend him.

In my experience, hospital errors are alarmingly common. Read more »

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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