The dream of patient access and flow
Imagine a healthcare system where there is system-wide coordination, visible real-time data to inform action, properly allocated care resources, automation to reduce administrative burden and cognitive load, minimized delays and wait times, and happy patients and clinicians. This is a common dream for most of us in healthcare. Instead, we are used to hearing a […]
The Pan-Canadian Interoperability Roadmap: Does it get us where we need to go?
The fragmented nature of care in the Canadian health system has a direct impact on the daily experiences of both patients and physicians. While this fragmentation has its origins in long-standing structural features of the healthcare ecosystem, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated its effects. Without burnout-inducing amounts of extra work, the result is a less […]
Note bloat, we can’t quit you
Last year, I wrote about how we physicians in the United States write much longer progress notes than our colleagues in every other country. As I noted in that article, this is not just an opinion that I hold but a fact that has been researched and demonstrated. Our notes are up to four times […]
Apollo’s Curse: When AI Predicts and Doctors Resist
I recently read an article by Yale’s F. Perry Wilson, MD, MSCE about medicine’s Cassandra problem with artificial intelligence (AI). I was intrigued even before I read the first sentence because … who was Cassandra again?
Designing for Health: Interview with Dr. Srinath Adusumalli
Nudging, behavioral science, and implementation science paired with intentional design have the potential to improve the quality, safety, equity, and experience of healthcare while improving care team well-being, achieving the Quintuple Aim.
Advancing consumer-centric healthcare with a digital front door
Creating a high-quality patient experience is top of mind for most healthcare leaders. Unfortunately, words like inconvenient, inconsistent, inefficient, overwhelming, and confusing are often used by patients to describe their healthcare encounters. From patient access to health equity, the critical issues that affect the care of individuals and communities must be solved. To provide a […]
How to keep the Medicaid unwinding from damaging your hospital operating margins
The healthcare industry is in an era of what Nordic calls the “Big Squeeze:” the confluence of market inflation, high labor expenses, and declining operating margins. KaufmanHall’s Operating Margin Index (Figure 1) highlights the financial crisis hospitals are in today and how these razor thin margins are becoming the new norm in a post-pandemic environment.1 Figure […]
From back office to partners in care: The evolution of hospital information technology departments
Early in my training, I was ushered into the emergency department with a telling of its history. It went like this:
Clinical informatics: Fostering a healthier physician-technology relationship
Headlines screaming “Technology is ruining doctors’ lives” are hard to miss. Despite this, the use of digital tools in healthcare continues to rapidly expand. Gone are the days when the average physician could leave discussion of the design and implementation of health technology in the hands of the few tech-savvy colleagues. Just as physicians need […]
An inch deep and a mile wide
Recently, Dr. CT Lin, CMIO at University of Colorado Health, wrote about his fear of “automation complacency” when it comes to practicing medicine in the era of the large language model (LLM) and generative AI. Allow me to explain. Physicians are quite elated about the possibility of having an AI take over administrative tasks for […]