Is there a business argument for Meaningful Use?

Posted by

0

I remember the first time I entered their home I was taken aback by the clutter. Spent and wet leaves and small branches were strewn across the floors and furniture. Black Hefty trash bags stood against the walls filled with last year’s leaves. Dozens of bright orange buckets from Home Depot sat beneath the windows. The house always felt cold, very cold. After a while I learned to act normally around the clutter.

There came a time however when I simply had to ask, “Why all the buckets? What’s the deal with the leaves?”

“We try hard to keep the place neat,” she replied.

“Where does it all come from?” I asked.

“The windows.”

I looked at her somewhat askance. “I’m not sure I follow,” I replied as I began to feel uneasy.

“It’s not like we like living this way; the water, the cold, the mess. It costs a fortune to heat this place.

And, the constant bother of emptying the buckets, and the sweeping of the leaves.”

“Why don’t you shut your windows? It seems like that would solve a lot of your problems.”

She looked like I had just tossed her cat in a blender.

When you see something abnormal often enough it becomes normal. Sort of like in the movie The Stepford Wives. Sort of like all the scurrying around Meaningful Use.  The normal has been subsumed by the abnormal, and in doing so has created an entire entity which is slowing devouring the resources of the organization.

Are you kidding me? I wish. It’s much easier to see this as a consultant than it is if you are drinking the Kool Aid on a daily basis. When I talk with hospital executives they are marching headstrong into the Meaningful Use abyss.

It makes me feel like I must be the only one in the room who doesn’t get it—again with The Stepford Wives.

If I ask about it they always have an answer. It all boils down to something like, “We simply can’t turn down the money.”  They say that with a straight face as though they are waiting to see if I will drink the Kool Aid.  It’s gotten to the point where no matter how goofy things get, as long as they are consistently goofy, there not goofy at all.

This is the mindset that enables leaders to be fooled by their own activity. Busy replaces thinking.

saint Paul M. Roemer
Chief Imaginist, Healthcare IT Strategy

1475 Luna Drive, Downingtown, PA 19335
+1 (484) 885-6942
paulroemer@healthcareitstrategy.com

My profiles: LinkedInWordPressTwitterMeetupBlog RSS
Contact me: Google Talk/paulroemer Skype/paulroemer Google Wave/paulroemer

thought for the day

Posted by

0

Are terrorists smarter than us?

Posted by

0

Sri Lanka has been in a twenty-six year civil war with the Tamil Tigers. NPR reported the leader of the Tigers was killed. Within a day, the Tamil Tigers’ web site posted a blurb stating that the leader was not killed—a la Monty Python—“I’m not dead yet.”

I’ll be brief. The bad guys. These bad guys live in the jungles, others live in the Afghan mountains. As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, they don’t use Cisco servers, they don’t have a call center. There’s no marketing department, no financial analysts, no freshly minted MBAs walking the hallways telling them what to do.  They have established virtual nations.

Yet as primitive as these groups are, they know the value of rapidly employing social networking to their advantage. What amazes me is not that they do it, but that most people reading this don’t have a proactive policy and the resources required to effectively manage their social media.

saint Paul M. Roemer
Chief Imaginist, Healthcare IT Strategy

1475 Luna Drive, Downingtown, PA 19335
+1 (484) 885-6942
paulroemer@healthcareitstrategy.com

My profiles: LinkedInWordPressTwitterMeetupBlog RSS
Contact me: Google Talk/paulroemer Skype/paulroemer Google Wave/paulroemer

The wildebeest postulate

Posted by

2

The Kalahari; vast, silent, deadly. The end of the rainy season, the mid-day heat surpasses a hundred and twenty. One of the varieties of waterfowl, most notably the flame red flamingo that nested in the great salt pans in Botswana, has begun its annual migration. In the muck of one of the fresh-water pools that had almost completely evaporated, writhes a squirming black mass of underdeveloped tadpoles. A lone Baobab tree pokes skyward from the middle of the barren savanna. In its shade, standing shoulder to shoulder and facing out, a herd of wildebeest surveys the landscape for predators.  Sir David Attenborough and PBS can’t be far away.

Some things never change. I make my way across the freshly laid macadam to meet the school bus. Fifty feet in front of me is a young silver maple tree, the tips of its green leaves yielding only the slightest hint of the fall colors that are hidden deep within. The late afternoon sun casts a slender shadow across the sodded common area. One by one they come—soccer moms; big moms, little moms, moms who climb on rocks, fat moms, skinny moms, even moms with chicken pox—sorry, I couldn’t stop myself—as they will every day at this same time, seeking protection in its shade. My neighbors.  It’s only seventy-five today, yet they seek protection from the nonexistent heat, a habit born no doubt from bygone sweltering summer days. A ritual. An inability to change. In a few weeks the leaves will fall, yet they will remain in the shadow of what once was, standing shoulder to shoulder facing out, looking for the bus. A herd. Just like wildebeest.

The kids debus–I just made that word, hand me their backpacks, lunch boxes, and hundreds of forms for me to complete.  I look like a Sherpa making my way home from K-2.

I shared this perspective with the moms, and have halted most of my bleeding. I can state with some degree of certainty that they were not impressed with being compared to wildebeest. So here we go, buckle up. By now you’re thinking, “There must be a pony in here somewhere.”

Some things never change; it’s not for lack of interest, but for lack of a changer. For real change to occur someone needs to be the changer, otherwise it’s just a bunch of people standing shoulder to shoulder looking busy. How are you addressing the change that must occur for EHR to be of any value?  EHR is not about the EHR, it’s about moving from a 0.2 business model to 2.0.  Are you chasing ARRA incentive dollars simply because someone is writing a check?

Someone who sees the vision of what is is—sorry, too Clintonian—must lead.  Be change.

One of the great traits of wildebeest is that they are great followers.

saint Paul M. Roemer
Chief Imaginist, Healthcare IT Strategy

1475 Luna Drive, Downingtown, PA 19335
+1 (484) 885-6942
paulroemer@healthcareitstrategy.com

My profiles: LinkedInWordPressTwitterMeetupBlog RSS
Contact me: Google Talk/paulroemer Skype/paulroemer Google Wave/paulroemer

Patient Relationship Management (PRM)-why men can’t boil water

Posted by

0

There was a meeting last week of the scions of the Philadelphia business community. The business leaders began to arrive at the suburban enclave at the appointed hour. The industries they represented included medical devices, automotive, retail, pharmaceutical, chemicals, and management consulting. No one at their respective organizations was aware of the clandestine meeting. These men were responsible for managing millions of dollars of assets, overseeing thousands of employees, and the fiduciary responsibility of international conglomerates. Within their ranks they had managed mergers and acquisitions and divestitures. They were group with which to be reckoned and their skills were the envy of many.

They arrived singularly, each bearing gifts. Keenly aware of the etiquette, they removed their shoes and placed them neatly by the door.

The pharmaceutical executive was escorted to the kitchen.

“Did your wife make you bring that?” I asked.

He glanced quickly at the cellophane wrapped cheese ball, and sheepishly nodded. “What are we supposed to do with those?” He asked as he eyeballed the brightly wrapped toothpicks that looked banderillas, the short barbed sticks a matador would use.

“My wife made me put them out,” I replied. “She said we should use these with the hors d’oeuvres.”

He nodded sympathetically; he too had seen it too many times. I went to the front door to admit the next guest. He stood there holding two boxes of wafer thin, whole wheat crackers. Our eyes met, knowingly, as if to say, “Et Tu Brutus”. The gentleman following him was a senior executive in the automotive industry. He carried a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. And so it went for the next 15 to 20 minutes, industry giants made to look small by the gifts they were forced to carry.

The granite countertop was lined with the accoutrements for the party. “It’s just poker,” I had tried to explain. My explanation had fallen on deaf ears. There is a right way and a wrong way to entertain, I had been informed. Plates, utensils, and napkins were lined up at one end of the counter, followed in quick succession by the crock pot of chili that had been brewing for some eight hours, the cheese tray, a nicely arrayed platter of crackers, assorted fruits, a selection of anti-pastas, cups, ice, and a selection of beverages. In the mind of our wives, independent of what we did for a living and the amount of power and responsibility we each wielded, we were incapable of making it through a four hour card game without their intervention.

I deftly stabbed a gherkin with my tooth pick. “Hey,” I hollered “put a coaster under that glass. Are you trying to get us all in trouble? And you,” I said to Pharmacy Boy, “Get a napkin and wipe up the chili you spilled. She’ll be back here in four hours, and we have to have this place looking just as good as when she left.”  I thought I was having the neighborhood guys over for poker; I was wrong. So were each of the other guys. We had been outwitted by our controllers, our spouses. Nothing is ever as simple as it first appears. We didn’t even recognize we were being managed until they made themselves known.

Who’s managing the show at your hospital, you or the patients?  The answer to that question depends on who owns the relationship, who controls the dialog.  If most of the conversation about your organization originates with them, the best you are doing is reacting to them as they initiate the social media spin, or try to respond once the phone started ringing.  It’s a pretty ineffective way of managing.  It’s as though they dealt the cards, and they know ahead of time that you are holding nothing.

There are times when my manager isn’t home, times when I wear my shoes inside the house—however, I wear little cloth booties over them to make certain I don’t mar the floor.  One time when I decided to push the envelope, I didn’t even separate the darks from the whites when I did the laundry.  We got in an hour of poker before I broke out the mop and vacuum.  One friend tried to light a cigar—he will be out of the cast in a few weeks.

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

saint Paul M. Roemer
Chief Imaginist, Healthcare IT Strategy

1475 Luna Drive, Downingtown, PA 19335
+1 (484) 885-6942
paulroemer@healthcareitstrategy.com

My profiles: LinkedInWordPressTwitterMeetupBlog RSS
Contact me: Google Talk/paulroemer Skype/paulroemer Google Wave/paulroemer

Is this a fair representation of the hospital business model?

Posted by

0

I have been looking for a way to represent pictorially the hospital business model and the forces which act upon it.  The picture below came to me last night while playing this board game with my daughter.  It is from the children’s game, Boobytrap.  The way the game is played is that the players try to remove the red, blue, and green pieces without causing the trap to spring and displace all of the pieces.

If we represent patients as the individual playing pieces and make the assumption that each side of the game exerts pressure on the model, I think it represents fairly the external forces with which the large provider model has to battle.  As the forces increase from some combination of costs, regulation, procedure price ceilings, and payor reimbursements, the number of patients in the model will decrease and may do so in a catastrophic manner.  Without a concurrent decrease in those four forces it is unlikely that the model will support additional patients.  Clearly, without changing the size of the board it is impossible to grow the number of patients beyond the board’s capacity.

A couple rules come into play.

  • The forces are all external.  They cannot be controlled or abated by the hospital.
  • The strengths of the various forces change over time
  • The forces result in some maximum number of patients which can be serviced under the hospital’s existing business model.
  • As each patient is lost, the stability of the model weakens.

Does this way of depicting the large provider business model ring true?  Does this help illustrate why the model must change?

saint Paul M. Roemer
Chief Imaginist, Healthcare IT Strategy

1475 Luna Drive, Downingtown, PA 19335
+1 (484) 885-6942
paulroemer@healthcareitstrategy.com

My profiles: LinkedInWordPressTwitterMeetupBlog RSS
Contact me: Google Talk/paulroemer Skype/paulroemer Google Wave/paulroemer

Something to consider…

Posted by

0

I found this on the web and thought I’d share it with you.

Chemistry in Hell
The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry midterm. The answer was so “profound” that the professor shared it with colleagues, which is why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law, (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Teresa Banyan during my Freshman year, “…that it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you.”, and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze.

The student received the only “A” given.

saint Paul M. Roemer
Chief Imaginist, Healthcare IT Strategy

1475 Luna Drive, Downingtown, PA 19335
+1 (484) 885-6942
paulroemer@healthcareitstrategy.com

My profiles: LinkedInWordPressTwitterMeetupBlog RSS
Contact me: Google Talk/paulroemer Skype/paulroemer Google Wave/paulroemer

Wayne Newton’s 4th law of relative immobility

Posted by

0

Last night I was speaking with a woman at a gathering of graduates from my high school.  She got into the subject of reading glasses and then commented that she first learned she needed regular glasses since the age of four.

As she was not wearing glasses, I asked her if she’d had Lasik.  No, she said, “I always hated how I looked in them, so I quit wearing them in high school.”

“Don’t you miss being able to see things?” I asked.

“Not really.  This is how I’ve seen the world for the past thirty years.  I’ve grown comfortable with how I see the world.”

I think a lot of business leaders have the same perspective—sorry for the pun.  They get comfortable with how they see their world—comfortable with the issues and how to address them.  Given the choice, people will stay in their comfort zone.

Do you remember your physics?  Relative motion is the branch of physics that studies the motion of the body relative to the motion of another moving body (Newton).  For example, if you are in a train and another traveling at the same speed pulls alongside you, it appears to both set of passengers that neither train is moving.  If your train decelerates it will appear to you the other train has accelerated.

Now, take the perspective of someone standing on the platform viewing the two trains.  To that person, there is no illusion.  The bystander can see exactly what is happening; who is moving forward and who isn’t.

Business leaders get caught up in what I call Wayne Newton’s 4th law of relative immobility.  When they look out their windows at the executive in the hospital across the street, it appears they are both moving at the same speed and at the same direction.  That is how they have seen the world each day for the last several years.  They look at each other, wave, and then go about their business, knowing their competitor hasn’t passed them or changed course.

But you and I know why it looks that way to them.  The reason they have not been passed is because neither hospital is moving forward.  The reason they do not perceive a change of direction is that they are both moving in the same direction.  In actuality, there is no motion.  Only an outsider can see neither hospital is moving.

saint Paul M. Roemer
Chief Imaginist, Healthcare IT Strategy

1475 Luna Drive, Downingtown, PA 19335
+1 (484) 885-6942
paulroemer@healthcareitstrategy.com

My profiles: LinkedInWordPressTwitterMeetupBlog RSS
Contact me: Google Talk/paulroemer Skype/paulroemer Google Wave/paulroemer

Herman Melville’s take on healthcare’s business strategy

Posted by

0

Someone once summed up one of Fred Astaire’s screen tests with the following; “Can’t sing.  Can’t act.  Balding.  Can dance a little.”  Probably the same guy who evaluated my Mensa application.  I’ve been accused of having a similar outlook.  I once accosted a guy who was walking on water, accusing him of not being able to swim—but that was a looonnngggg time ago.

The internet is full of opinions, but hopefully not full enough. One of the reasons I chose math over English as my major was the affection I held for getting the right answer, or barring that being able to know precisely where my errant efforts led me away from the answer.

In my narrow-minded view of the universe the downside of English, literature—the soft studies—was the notion held by those who taught that there was more to be divined by the story than just the story.  Those who can do; those who can’t teach.  They displayed a Stepford mentality in their obdurate ability to outthink both the author and their students, to bring forth nascent ideas of the author’s hidden meaning.

Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick.  I am willing to bet he wrote it just the way he intended to.  Nobody has uncovered a frayed notebook of Melville having penned his thoughts about the real meaning of life from a cannibal’s perspective, or suggesting Queequeg was a misunderstood cross-dressing sycophant who was never close to his mother.  We don’t come away from our reading of Moby Dick  with a more in-depth ability to understand anything except for perhaps what it felt like to live aboard a whaling ship.

These interpretations are poppycock.  Art critics do the same thing as they bloviate about the hidden meaning behind what the artist really intended to convey, meaning only they can see.  Ever notice how none of these popinjays, these opiners present their opinions as fact?  Pretentious fops.

I write and paint.  Those who’ve read my missives know there is no buried meaning.  If I had wanted to convey something else I would have written something else.  If I use dark colors and bold brush strokes when I paint it is because I feel they add to what I want to show; it is not a reflection of having missed two days of Zoloft.

Nobody will ever know what Shakespeare intended to convey with his addition of the three witches in Macbeth, or whether Joyce Kilmer had ever seen a tree.  That said, I do have a few strong opinions about where this whole business model of healthcare is headed.  I think these types of opinions; along with the opposite opinions differ from the type offered up as truths in an English Lit class.  They differ in that at some point they will be proven right or wrong—time will tell.

As I have written, I think the large provider model—the business model—is seriously flawed.  Moreover, I think it may prove fatal.  Providers will run out of costs to cut, will run out of processes to re-engineer, and will have no more Italian marble with which to line the foyer.  The good news is that they will still have the machine that goes “Ping” just in case somebody needs it.

I do wonder how Melville would have expressed his ideas about healthcare.

saint Paul M. Roemer
Chief Imaginist, Healthcare IT Strategy

1475 Luna Drive, Downingtown, PA 19335
+1 (484) 885-6942
paulroemer@healthcareitstrategy.com

My profiles: LinkedInWordPressTwitterMeetupBlog RSS
Contact me: Google Talk/paulroemer Skype/paulroemer Google Wave/paulroemer

Hospital marketing strategies–my non sequiter

Posted by

0

I had piloted the Piper Cub for seven hours across endless miles of ocean.  The crash of my small plane left me alone on the uninhabited treeless atoll somewhere in the south Pacific.  I would have been sunburned badly if not for the shade cast by the thirty-foot tall New Jersey hospital’s billboard heralding its urology practice.  The billboard reminded me of the one I saw while solo kayaking the lower regions of Antarctica.  That billboard was from a hospital in Minot, North Dakota advertising its OB/GYN services.  Did you know there has never been a birth in Antarctica?

Hospital marketing has doubled in the last decade.  To whom are they marketing?  Appendectomies; twenty-percent off.  Maybe I’ll get two.  Perhaps I’ll buy some Plavix while I’m at it.

Ninety percent of hospital revenues result from a physician’s signature.  From where does the other ten percent originate, marketing?  Doubtful.  Do the billboards yield more physician signatures?

Hospital television advertising seems to focus its shotgun message in one of two areas; unsubstantiated claims of being the best or having the most, or having the latest and greatest machine that goes “Ping.”  You’ve seen the commercials broadcast to a television coverage area of a few million, advertising newly acquired technology for a non-elective procedure—that cost more than a few million—that less than a fraction of a single percentage of the population will need.  By the way, it is the same piece of technology that three other areas hospitals offer.

I am not sure I understand the logic behind hospital marketing.  Does it merely stem from the fact that other businesses do it?  I have personal knowledge of one hospital’s chief marketing officer whose annual salary exceeds more than four hundred thousand dollars.  She had no prior experience in healthcare.

Would revenues drop precipitously if hospitals did not market themselves?

saint Paul M. Roemer
Chief Imaginist, Healthcare IT Strategy

1475 Luna Drive, Downingtown, PA 19335
+1 (484) 885-6942
paulroemer@healthcareitstrategy.com

My profiles: LinkedInWordPressTwitterMeetupBlog RSS
Contact me: Google Talk/paulroemer Skype/paulroemer Google Wave/paulroemer