… Gawande writes about ‘hot spotters’ … “An important idea is getting its test run in America: the creation of intensive outpatient care to target hot spots, and thereby reduce over-all health-care costs.” A common factor these programs share is intense one-on-one care and accompaniment by an interdisciplinary team … “My philosophy about primary care […]
patients only a mother could love … Read More »
Kane summarizes the options patients and families have when they are discharged from the hospital to another health care venue. a key concern … “Often social workers are really concerned with the immediate discharge plan … from their facility’s perspective; they’re not always as in tune with the future placement options for that [patient].” Mor
discharge planning … sicker & quicker Read More »
… a good summary of the move (back) to providing care in our patient’s homes.
why health care is going home … Read More »
… a study that tried to improve end-of-life care in the intensive care unit with a series of education interventions concluded that “… this intervention was associated with no improvement in quality of dying … Improving ICU end-of-life care will require interventions with more direct contact with patients and family.” Shades of the SUPPORT study
palliative care in the icu … Read More »
… Vaclav Havel opens the “Forum 2000” conference … Much of what he says has direct applicability to health care, health care reform & palliative care … “I sense behind all of this not only a globally spreading short-sightedness, but also the swollen self-consciousness of this civilisation, whose basic attributes include the supercilious idea that
close together … but otherwise desperately remote … Read More »
… Helen Alvare’s summary of the status of conscience freedoms in the health care reform act.
conscience freedoms … Read More »
… a wide-ranging memoir of the author’s father’s encounter with the modern medical system. “The pacemaker bought my parents two years of limbo, two of purgatory and two of hell…”
what broke my father’s heart … Read More »
Checklist Manifesto … Gawande’s best-seller on the humble checklist as a fulcrum of quality improvement … … ends up arguing that we should ” embrac[e] a culture of teamwork and discipline.” (p. 160) The ‘checklist’ is really just a catalyst, a tool, to get people to talk to each other and work together as a
atul gawande … on improvement Read More »
… no one will need to be good Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger. Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions. There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not. You shall not deny the Stranger. They
dreaming of systems so perfect … Read More »
