Palliative Care and Pain Management: “Special Generalists”

Mike Magee Yesterday I had the privilege to spend the day in Washington, DC, with many of the nation’s leaders and experts in the delivery of Palliative Care and Pain Management. The meeting (The State of Palliative Care Across Settings: What Can We Do Together?) was organized by Myra Christopher and John Carney from the […]

Drew Altman, Ronald Reagan and Constructive Leadership in Medicine.

Mike Magee In the fractious world of U.S. Health Policy, contentiousness is an art form. It’s been that way as long as I can remember. When I was 14, late in May of 1962, sitting at the Sunday dinner table with my then 9 brothers and sisters (there were eventually 12 of us), I can […]

“Avoid Brick & Mortar” = “Care Anywhere” : 2 Names, Same Strategy.

Editor’s Note: In an excellent piece, by Intel’s Eric Dishman(below), we are introduced to the “Care Anywhere” movement. This reinforces our “Avoid Brick and Mortar” strategy for managing health care cost while increasing quality outcomes. Eric’s piece deserves a careful reading. ORIGINAL SOURCE “In the currently raging debates about healthcare, there’s little attention to population […]

Ten Years into Personalized Medicine: What We’ve Learned and What’s Next

Ralph Snyderman, M.D. ORIGINAL SOURCE Ten years ago, the sequencing of the entire human genome, along with the development of aggregate “omics” technologies began giving rise to a fundamentally new capability for the practice of medicine – the ability to predict and track disease risks on a personalized basis, to understand diseases mechanistically, and to […]

A Model of Cooperation and Teamwork For Healthcare – Unlocking Human Potential.

In the December 19, 2013 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Kelly M. Doran MD and her co-authors make the case that investment in social services such as education, housing and transportation have a marked positive impact on increased health quality and decreased health cost. They site studies supporting the “estimate that medical […]

Pete Hamill, Dr. Delaney, and The Promise of Palliative Care.

Mike Magee Last week, as part of research on a long-term project, I read Pete Hammil’s terrific novel North River. It recounts the experience of a fictional doctor, James Delaney, in New York City in the 1930’s.(1) In one passage, Hamill describes Dr. Delaney this way: “He was a doctor, but medicine was not an […]

Health Care Costs: “Slain or Sleeping”? Avoiding Brick & Mortar.

Mike Magee The Affordable Care Act has officially arrived. Obstructionism persists, but appears increasingly desperate and politically ill conceived. What remains in the policy backwaters is the legitimate debate over whether Accountable Care Organizations, and a host of other structural changes, are to be credited with the slowing of health cost inflation, and with maintaining […]

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