May is National Military Appreciation Month. Attendees of the MedAssets Healthcare Business Summit in Las Vegas recently assembled and shipped 1,800 individual care packages to U.S. troops overseas. Outliers wants to know what your healthcare organization is doing to support the members of our armed forces. Let us know at outliers@modernhealthcare.com.
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Vital fluids gurgle through a tangle of hoses connected to a machine.A cell-saver device and a dialysis machine filter the liquid continuously while a heart-lung machine adds oxygen and keeps circulation in the closed system. A ventilator inflates a reservoir and an EKG monitors an odd-looking pulse. The infant incubator in the contraption's foreground, however, is vacant.
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Outliers has rarely felt a draw to the electronic arts. However, if the Sonys and Microsofts of the world developed video games that helped spur us to meet that burdensome “exercise three times a week” requirement, we may reconsider.A survey released by UnitedHealth Group this month found that Outliers isn't alone.
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The summer concert season is quickly approaching, much to Outliers' delight, and the country's largest nurses union was busy last week promoting one of the first shows of the season.
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“If the nurses are a threat to Rahm Emanuel, then heaven help the U.S. … They're trying to marginalize the effect of the nurses.”—RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, in the Chicago Tribune, citing Mayor Rahm Emanuel in responding to news that the city of Chicago had canceled a permit for a march and rally by NNU in the city the weekend of the NATO summit this month.
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Who's most responsible for the success in recent years of the Chicago Bulls basketball team? Superstar guard Derrick Rose? Coach Tom Thibodeau? Or, as some in his family may believe, is it John Donahue, CEO of the Brentwood, Tenn.-based Cogent HMG hospitalist staffing company?
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The most eye-catching reference in a recent Health Affairs report on patient fears when dealing with “authoritarian” doctors did not get an endnote citation. That's because, instead of coming from a medical journal, it came from a classic episode of the “Seinfeld” TV show.
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A love of government work and family apparently drove HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' decision to accept a controversial invitation to address a graduating class at one of the nation's highest-profile Roman Catholic universities.
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A new app for the Android and iPhone developed by English dentist Ben Underwood may make dancing while brushing an inter-continental phenomenon, and hopefully, it will improve everyone's oral health along the way.
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Outliers appreciates a good whale story, hopefully told over a cocktail, and the soon-to-be opened Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago offers one.The 23-floor facility will replace venerable Children's Memorial Hospital's old location in Lincoln Park and is set to open in June. Part of the planning included decorating the children's rooms. Unlike Captain Ahab, Children's Memorial didn't need a harpoon to hunt down help.
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Here at Outliers, our favorite moments from the gone-but-not-forgotten TV series “The West Wing” were always the show's famed “walk-and-talk” scenes. Whenever a horde of cast members would intently yet aimlessly circle the White House trading witty barbs, we assumed it was the show's attempt at manufacturing drama and tension. Now it seems that creator Aaron Sorkin may have had loftier goals in mind.
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In a perfect world, everyone would care more about their health than their pocketbooks. Of course, this is the real world and the bottom line still refers to the size of one's bank account and not one's, um, bottom.
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An old journalism maxim, much beloved of news assignment editors, is that one is an accident, two is a coincidence, but three is a trend worth writing about. Which means Outliers is way overdue to note the handful of hospitals that have banned sales of sugary drinks within their walls.
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If you receive a text encouraging flu shots while you're driving, is the net impact positive or negative?Although driving while texting is risky behavior—and we here at Outliers often find any texting to be a little obnoxious—a new study says text messages sent to parents about the flu can increase the rate of immunization in children. So the next person who looks down at his phone while you're talking might just be doing his part to decrease instances of influenza. Or maybe you're just boring him.
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If you've partied just a little too hard in Sin City, you can now seek salvation the next morning from Hangover Heaven.Board Dr. Jason Burke's anti-hangover bus—which offers a “stable” and “ultra-smooth ride” that's gentle on queasy stomachs and pounding heads—and you can get back to the poker table after only 45 minutes of treatment.Burke, a Duke University-trained anesthesiologist, offers a cocktail of intravenous medications that treat the nausea, inflammation and dehydration that can follow one too many Jack and Cokes.
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“An auto shop can give an estimate for a brake job, but people are not cars. It's very difficult to get a random call from someone saying, ‘I need gallbladder surgery, so tell me what it costs.'” Jan Emerson-Shea, spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association, in the Los Angeles Times on the cost of a routine gallbladder surgery for someone with a high-deductible insurance policy.
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It seems as if Aetna President and CEO Mark Bertolini would rather skip a visit to the doctor. The chief executive of the Hartford, Conn.-based health insurer has been talking up his devotion to meditation and yoga. At SXSW in March, a blogger wrote about Bertolini discussing the role of meditation in his health regimen. And, just last week, a Kaiser Health News reporter tweeted from the World Health Care Congress Conference: “Aetna CEO says yoga, beta chanting and acupuncture work for him—no docs needed.”
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“Earthquake Surgery” would be a good title for Outliers’ next (and first) rock album, and—while performing surgeries during earth-shaking tremors is not advised—being able to complete post-quake surgery now appears to be possible.
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Here at Outliers, we've always known insurance is important. Sometimes infuriating (ever try to understand an explanation of benefits form?) or interesting perhaps … but funny? Can't say we've ever run across any droll indemnity repartee.
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“Oh, the places you'll go!” will likely have a double meaning for the graduates of Dartmouth College's medical school now that it has been named after Theodor Geisel, also known as Dr. Seuss, and his wife, Audrey.
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The healthcare industry has standards—by the truckload. It also has a multitude of measures and a googolplex of guidelines.Outliers doesn't know whether anyone out there is measuring measures or trying to standardize standards, but, according to a report in the Annals of Internal Medicine, there is an international effort under way to develop guidelines for developing guidelines.
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Parental guidance is required for this one. Playboy Enterprises' former headquarters near downtown Chicago is being transformed into more family friendly digs for Children's Memorial Hospital.
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Outliers was somewhat taken with the U.S. Supreme Court's seeming obsession with broccoli during the recent arguments over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The cruciferous vegetable was mentioned nine times in the high court the day that the individual mandate to buy insurance was the center of debate.So we were interested to see one hospital CEO inspired to offer his own take on the links between the healthy produce and a requirement for health insurance.
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“While healthcare costs have bankrupted many without insurance, Gingrich may be the first to go broke studying healthcare delivery.”-Charles S. Bullock III, political science professor at the University of Georgia, in Atlanta Business Chronicle on news of Newt Gingrich's Center for Health Transformation filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy
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A long retirement full of golf games and tropical vacations might sound ideal for some, but others are content to keep right on working. And working. Such was the way for Dr. Leila Denmark, who was the world's oldest practicing physician when she finally decided to retire in 2001 at the age of 103. Denmark died recently in Athens, Ga., at age 114. In 1928, Denmark became the first resident at Henrietta Egleston Hospital for Children, now part of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. And in 1931, she opened a pediatrics practice in her home that would continue for the next 70 years.
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