What makes patients choose your hospital?

Patients choose hospitals based on the quality of the medical care they receive and the hospital’s distance from their home.  But what nonclinical criteria do patients value most?  The Salud y Gestión blog reviews the findings of a study in The McKinsey Quarterly.  The study found that patients rank the following as the most important…

Hospital Wristbands

The N.Y. Times writes about how hospitals have standardized patient warning wristbands.  Now, red wristbands will denote an allergy risk, yellow will denote a fall risk, and so on.  This should be the same at all hospitals, reducing the need to re-train nurses and other hospital staff who move between hospitals. “The drive [to standardize…

Lack of physician peer review

The Running a Hospital blog notes that a physician peer review system is absent in most hospitals.  Physicians are only critiqued when something goes wrong.  However, this need not be the case. “Our Chief of Neurology, Clif Saper, originated a thoughtful practice… The doctors in his department do randomly assigned reviews of the case notes…

Fragmented Medical Care I: America’s Problem

The U.S. healthcare system is one of the more fragmented systems in the world. Traditionally, economists believe that a splash of decentralized planning with a heap of free markets is a recipe for efficient outcomes. In the case of health care coordination, however, information sharing, and collaborative work are needed if quality is to improve…

How do the Amish pay for medical care?

There is an interesting article a few weeks back in the Wall Street Journal (“Opting Out“) which describes the plight of Amish and Old Order Mennonites who refuse to buy health insurance. Further, since these groups also refuse to participate in Medicaid government assistance will not bail them out either. Nevertheless, these societies do have…

Congress Pushes Curbs on Doctor-Owned Hospitals

The N.Y. Times reports (“Concerned about costs…“) that Congress is trying to impose new restrictions on physician-owned, for-profit hospitals. The legislators fear that these hospitals 1) drive up costs and 2) provide poor quality. Legislators worry that when physicians own the hospital, they may have more of an incentive to order more procedures to increase…