Waste is a personal pet peeve of mine, so when I recently read Fast Company’s article “The $70 Billion Scam” my jaw hit the floor. Then I fumed. In light of the upcoming primary election (Florida’s is tomorrow), I reflected on the past few years of politics. So much energy has been put into healthcare reform, even before… [Read more…]
January 27, 2012
With his $22 million in loans in hand, an administrator I know was preparing for a major capital project. I introduced his somewhat recent situation in a previous post. His hospital project was approved and ready to take off. Fifteen months later, things are still waiting to break ground. This delay may not seem like a big deal. Or worse… [Read more…]
January 26, 2012
Healthcare administrators often require significant experience in the project type of their upcoming project before considering a design and construction team. For instance, if a health system is doing a cancer center, it may insist on a team having five completed cancer centers in its portfolio. Such a requirement helps confirm a team will be less… [Read more…]
January 23, 2012
Architects have complained over the past thirty years that their significance in society—influence, status, importance—has diminished. This is largely true. I believe it has happened because of one concern: architects continue to push away risk. As architects began off-loading risk from their standard contracts decades ago and limiting services, (for instance, not accepting responsiblities and… [Read more…]
January 20, 2012
Every once in a while I read something that really makes me think about my stance on a core belief, and then totally change my own outlook. It is not often. I read a smart piece on healthcare in the Wall Street Journal this week on the future of personalized healthcare called “A Doctor in… [Read more…]
January 18, 2012
Communication between two ordinary, random people can be difficult. Communication between two intelligent individuals who share a similar lexicon of industry language (jargon), background, are culturally similar, and who are also well-educated, can still be a big challenge. This is so primarily because the definition of words do not mean the same to everyone, and thus expectations from… [Read more…]
January 16, 2012
Eight weeks ago I had the good fortune of attending a presentation on Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and the future of healthcare as envisioned by The Advisory Board, a healthcare consultancy and think tank. In an effort to show hospital administrators what an ideally-organized and high-performing healthcare team looked like, the presenter outlined some top attributes of… [Read more…]
January 13, 2012
For sure, healthcare project partner selection is an emotional decision. Yet other industries struggle as well with the ability to choose talent. Interviewing is another surprisingly imprecise exercise of screening and selection. Google seeks creative problem solvers and tries to develop ways to screen for that in its prospective employee interviews. But an increasing body… [Read more…]
January 11, 2012
My latest blog post for Healthcare Design can be read here.
January 6, 2012
College bowl season is in full swing again. For college football fans, bowl season offers a coda to the football season with a plethora of matchups, and a game almost every night between mid-December and the first week in January, culminating in a national champion. However, bowl game outcomes are notoriously hard-to-predict. For the casual… [Read more…]
January 30, 2012
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