First off, Happy New Year to all of our dedicated readers and followers. Quite a few of you joined our ranks in 2014, and we are most appreciative for every new follower that joins our family. We hope each and every one of you have a fantastically successful 2015 ahead of you.
Before we go into this week’s WWBR, which is a little shorter than normal as we settle into our new office, I wanted to remind everyone to grab a copy of our most recent free content, an in-depth view of the partnership between Health Catalyst and Allina Health announced earlier this week. If you are not already on our mailing list, please follow this link to download the article. If you are already on our distribution, simply click here to download. We hope you enjoy!
The Bill
Malcolm Gladwell for The New Yorker
“Not one to promote a book review, but this one on Brill’s latest book, ‘America’s Bitter Pill’ by Malcolm Gladwell provides intriguing insights into the creation of ACA.” – John
The Trouble with Home Health Care & Care Coordination
Leslie Kernisan for The Health Care Blog
“This post illustrates that messaging is the go-to technology for care coordination. Unfortunately, it also illustrates how limited messaging is for care coordination. It highlights how directories, even if they are accurate and complete for clinical addressees (which they are not), do not provide addresses for family and caregivers. The answer in the example given here is fax for the simple reason that it is more efficient than phone tag. Better care coordination needs a universal approach and messaging is not it.” – Brian
The Differences Between First and Second Curve Hospitals
Paul Keckley for Hospitals and Health Networks
“Paul Keckley’s HH&N article that states that most hospitals are still on the ‘first-curve’ vs ‘second-curve’ and some further explanation of what exactly are the differences between the two. It is a concept that AHA has been using and been disseminating into the marketplace but I would still like to see some actual financial/operational/strategic metrics that really provide more clarification.” – Matt
Looking Forward in 2015
John Halamka for Life as a Healthcare CIO
“Is 2015 the year that private sector efforts surpass federal efforts in terms of driving adoption of new patient engagement tools, pushing interoperability, and enabling effective care transitions between different segments of the delivery system? John Halamka thinks so, and provides a few examples to illustrate his optimism.” – Naveen
How Should We Pay for Health Care?
Michael E. Porter and Robert S. Kaplan for Harvard Business School
“Working draft right paper from Porter and Kaplan at the Harvard Business School on payment methods and reform and their basic conclusion is that bundled payments is the only reimbursement mechanism which aligns all stakeholder agreements. I would agree but it is an incredibly difficult and complex undertaking from a time cost-accounting basis to even do this for one or two clinical processes let alone say eighteen or twenty-four.” – Matt
