Successful Workplace

What a privilege to spend three days in Utah with Intermountain Healthcare at their Mindshare 2012 Conference. I was invited by the CFO Bert Zimmerli and CIO Marc Probst when we met last week at HIMSS 2012 in Las Vegas. I was very interested, but what truly closed the deal was attending a session with […]

Organizational change remains the most difficult part of managing business. The reasons for change can be government mandate, greater efficiency, avoiding risks or losses, or capturing a new market. Regardless of the reason, change is very hard. Enormous and small companies alike fail in the face of change. History is littered with the skeletons of […]

The world is desperately in need of data in motion and our health depends on it. I’ve passed three days now at the HIMSS Conference in Las Vegas, NV and have been struck by how many organizations are paralyzed by their challenges with data stored down in silos, inaccessible for timely decision making, and unavailable […]

My local Safeway isn’t what I would call a very modern store. And the employees are either high school kids bagging groceries and collecting carts or middle-aged cashiers, bakers and butchers. It was a big step forward a few years ago when I could sign for my credit card purchase on an electronic device.  I […]

My career in healthcare started in the early 90s, and it was a crazy time for the industry. The Clinton version of healthcare reform had just hit and the industry was trying to react quickly to the change in reimbursement levels for inpatient and outpatient services. It was a great time for a consultant seeking […]

Cycles of change follow predictable paths, often expressed with phrases like, “forming, storming, norming and performing.” We are squarely in the storming phase for healthcare reform implementation and its a good thing. The level of passion is remarkable. As a member of the LinkedIn Group Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, AKA HIMSS, I’ve watched […]

This is Part 3 of a three-part series on The coming storm in healthcare. Healing healthcare If healthcare were a patient itself, it would be receiving ongoing, expensive treatments from many physicians who never talk to each other. The bills would be paid by an accountant in another state who only has a fax machine. There […]

This is Part 2 of a three-part series on The coming storm in healthcare. The insurance industry, as it grew, developed standard codes to allow healthcare providers (such as doctors, clinics, hospitals) to bill for discreet services. There are 15,000 codes in the ICD-9 standard and it still isn’t enough. 10x The new standardized codes, […]

This is Part 1 of a three-part series on The coming storm in healthcare. There are real challenges with Electronic Medical Records (EMR) beyond getting doctors to write things down (a feat in itself). Healthcare providers are being pushed to adopt EMR, but few are at Stage 7, shown at right. Because certification at lower […]

Regardless of the Supreme Court decision on Healthcare Reform at the end of March, many elements of healthcare reform are here to stay. At issue in the Supreme Court decision is the ability for the Federal Government to mandate that every citizen have healthcare or face tax penalties. But there is much more to a […]

So many initiatives, so little time.  I was recently at UPS working with them to make sure their many initiatives ‘stick’ within the company.  Their executive made of the most important statements I’ve heard in a very long time, “There is one of me, and there are hundreds of thousands of them.” There was something […]