Tag: Atul Gawande

13 Year Old McAllen

Feb 2, 2023

BY IAN MORRISON

As a Scot, obviously I am a whisky fan, and although I prefer the smoky malts of Islay (where my grandfather was from and where I visit my friends there frequently), I am also a huge fan of McCallan 18-year-old whisky, the sticky toffee pudding of single malts.

But as all policy wonks know, McAllen Texas is not famous for whisky but for Atul Gawande’s “Cost Conundrum” article in the New Yorker, in 2009 which is still required reading in medical school and MPH classes and was arguably the cornerstone of Obama health policy and the ACO movement.

Dr. Atul Gawande described overutilization and high cost of Medicare revealed by Dartmouth Atlas nationally and zeroed in on McAllen Texas. Compared to El Paso (a seemingly like comparison) McAllen was the most expensive place in America for healthcare based on Medicare claims data. Gawande highlighted the entrepreneurial, doctor-owned, Doctor Hospital at Renaissance DHR in Edinburg, TX as having fancy, modern technology while the community as a whole seemed underserved.

I have always had unease with just using Medicare data to judge costs, because there was no recognition of what I was observing on my travels, namely an enormous variation in commercial prices (not simply utilization) in hospital costs in terms of paid claims by self insured employers. Poignantly, sources at the time claimed McAllen, Texas had among the lowest commercial insurance premium places in the country. Interesting.

Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 123 | Haven Health, Wellth, Vynca, Nanit & many more

May 13, 2020

Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess and I cover all the big comings and goings of digital health. But first, what happened with Atul Gawande departing Haven Health as CEO? Moving to a whopping 7 deals in this episode, Jess asks me about Wellth raising $10 million in an A round using behavioral economics to drive medication adherence; Vynca, an end-of-life startup, raising $10.3 million, Carbon Health getting a $26 million add-on investment expanding its telehealth offerings, Nanit raising $21 million for its machine learning baby monitor, Stellar Health raising $10 million in an A round to improve physician incentives to address gaps in care, Lucid Lane raising $4 million in seed funding for its substance use disorder program, and Limbix raising $9 million for its digital therapeutic for teens with depression. —Matthew Holt

Healthcare Needs Some IHOPs

Jan 13, 2020• 1

By KIM BELLARD

The New York Times had an article that surprised me: Current Job: Award Winning Chef. Education: IHOP. The article, by food writer Priya Krishna, profiled how many high-end chefs credit their training in — gasp! — chain restaurants, such as IHOP, as being invaluable for their success.

I immediately thought of Atul Gawande’s 2012 article in The New Yorker: What Big Medicine Can Learn From the Cheesecake Factory.

Ms. Krishna mentions several well-known chefs “who prize the lessons they learned — many as teenagers — in the scaled-up, streamlined world of chain restaurants.” In addition to IHOP, chefs mentioned experiences at chains such as Applebee’s, California Pizza Kitchen, Chipotle, Hillstone, Houston’s, Howard Johnson’s, Olive Garden, Panda Express, Pappas, Red Lobster, Waffle House, and Wendy’s.

Some of the lessons learned are instructive. “It was pretty much that the customer is always right,” one chef mentioned. Another said she learned “how to be quick, have a good memory, and know the timing of everything.” A third spoke to the focus that was drilled into all employees: “Hot food hot. Cold food cold. Money to the bank. Clean restrooms,”

Charting The Economic History of US Health Reform

Nov 25, 2019• 7

By MIKE MAGEE, MD

Adam Gaffney’s recent Boston Review article, “What the Health Care Debate Still Gets Wrong”, a landmark piece that deserves careful reading by all, reaches near perfection in diagnosing our health system malady.

Dr. Gaffney is president of Physicians for a National Health Program, and a co-chair of the Working Group on Single-Payer Program Design, which developed the “Physicians’ Proposal for Single-Payer Health Care Reform.”

A seasoned health policy expert, his article cross-references the opinions and work of a range of health commentators including Atul Gawande, Steven Brill, Sarah Kliff, Elizabeth Rosenthal, Zack Cooper, and Canadian health economist Robert Evans. But his major companion is Princeton health economist, Uwe Reinhardt, whose posthumous book, Priced Out: The Economic and Ethical Costs of American Health Care, was recently published by Princeton University Press.

Gaffney’s affection for Reinhardt is evident as he recounts his desperate upbringing in post-war Germany, challenged by poor living conditions, but made whole by access to health care. Quoting a 1992 JAMA interview, Reinhardt states, “When we needed medical care, we got it at the local hospital, no questions asked. When you were sick, society was there for you.”

That acknowledgment is not only personal but historically significant, as I outline in my recent book, Code Blue: Inside the Medical Industrial Complex. The services Reinhardt received were part of a new national health care system funded fully by American taxpayers as part of the Marshall Plan. At the very same time, American citizens were denied a national health plan of their own as Truman was effectively branded a supporter of “socialized medicine” by the AMA and a cabal of corporate partners.

Let Them Eat Cheesecake!

Oct 1, 2018

By John Goodman

Atul Gawande’s piece in the New Yorker elicited . In today’s post John Goodman writes .

This is Atul Gawande, writing about The Cheesecake Factory in The New Yorker:

You may know the chain: a hundred and sixty restaurants with a catalogue-like menu that, when I did a count, listed three hundred and eight dinner items (including the forty-nine on the “Skinnylicious” menu), plus a hundred and twenty-four choices of beverage.

How many different dinners — say with two food items and one beverage — can you draw from 308 food choices and 124 beverages? I used to know how to do this. It must be in the millions. So how do you make that work? Timing is everything:

Computer monitors positioned head-high every few feet flashed the orders for a given station. Luz showed me the touch-screen tabs for the recipe for each order and a photo showing the proper presentation. The recipe has the ingredients on the left part of the screen and the steps on the right. A timer counts down to a target time for completion. The background turns from green to yellow as the order nears the target time and to red when it has exceeded it.

The restaurant doesn’t just get plates on the table, however. It aims for perfection:

Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 34

Jun 22, 2018

I’m back. After the takeover editions, I’m answering Jessica DaMassa about Atul Gawande as the CEO of the ABC new venture, the demise of Caresync, Ooda Health and its demand for a female VC, and whole bunch more blather! — Matthew Holt

Computers Replacing Doctors, Innovation and the Quantified Self: An Interview with Atul Gawande

Feb 5, 2015• 49

By ROBERT WACHTER, MD

Atul Gawande is the preeminent physician-writer of this generation. His new book, Being Mortal, is a runaway bestseller, as have been his three prior books, Complications, Better, and The Checklist Manifesto.

One of the joys of my recent sabbatical in Boston was the opportunity to spend some time with Atul, getting to see what an inspirational leader and superb mentor he is, along with being a warm and menschy human being. In my continued series of interviews I conducted for The Digital Doctor, my forthcoming book on health IT, here are excerpts from my conversation with Atul Gawande on July 28, 2014 in Boston.

I began by asking him about his innovation incubator, Ariadne Labs, and how he decides which issues to focus on.

Gawande: Yeah, I’m in the innovation space, but in a funny way. Our goal is to create the most basic systems required for people to get marked improvements in the results of care. We’re working in surgery, childbirth, and end-of-life care.

The very first place we’ve gone is to non-technology innovations. Such as, what are the 19 critical things that have to happen when the patient comes in an operating room and goes under anesthesia? When the incision is made? Before the incision is made? Before the patient leaves the room? It’s like that early phase of the aviation world, when it was just a basic set of checklists.

In all of the cases, the most fundamental, most valuable, most critical innovations have nothing to do with technology. They have to do with asking some very simple, very basic questions that we never ask. Asking people who are near the end of life what their goals are. Or making sure that clinicians wash their hands.Continue reading…

Being Gawande

Dec 5, 2014• 11

ROBERT WACHTER, MD

“I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn’t one of them.” So begins Being Mortal, Atul Gawande’s fourth and most ambitious book.

All of Gawande’s prior books – Complications, Better, and The Checklist Manifesto – were beautifully crafted, lyrical, and fascinating, and all were bestsellers that helped cement his reputation as the preeminent physician-writer of our time. Each blended Gawande’s personal experience as a practicing surgeon with his prodigious skills as an author and journalist. They took readers behind the curtain of the hospital and the operating room, revealing much about some very important matters, like medical training, quality improvement, patient safety, and health policy.

But they were only partly revealing of Gawande himself. He told us what we needed to know about his thoughts and biases in order to make his points, but no more. Being Mortal is Gawande’s most personal book, and as such it reaches a level of poignancy that surpasses the others. Mind you, it’s not an easy read, it’s a bit dull in the early going before it hits its stride, and it has an attitude: Gawande’s indictment of modern medicine’s approach to aging and dying is pointed and withering. But, even more than his other books, this one matters deeply.

Big (Box) Medicine

Oct 30, 2014• 36

By MICHAEL PAINTER, MD

Let’s see a show of hands. Who among us, doctor, nurse, patient, family member, wants to give or get health care inspired by a factory—Cheesecake or any other?

Anyone?

I didn’t think so.

True confession: I have never actually eaten at a Cheesecake Factory (hereinafter referred to as the Factory). My wife, Mary, and I did enter one once. We were returning from a summer driving vacation. Dinnertime arrived, and we found ourselves at a mall walking into a busy Factory.

It seemed popular. The wait was long—really long. We got our light-up-wait-for-your-table device. We perused the menu. There was a lot there. Portions seemed gigantic. We looked at each other and, almost without speaking, walked back to the hostess, returned our waiting device and left.

You got me—I cannot say 100 percent that I wouldn’t love Factory food. We were so close that one time!

A young woman in our small New Jersey town recently opened a new restaurant here. We tried it the other night. She and her business partner tended us and all the other patrons with such attention and care. We waited some, true, but she seated us near the bar while we waited—brought over pieces of cheese (no light-up device) for us to enjoy. The menu was ample and varied—not enormous. It’s also true that two items on the menu—including my first choice—were no longer available that evening. The chef however crafted the dishes that we did select with flare and pride. Dinner was a delicious, wonderful, relaxing experience—made better because of the human touch.

It’s probably not fair to contrast my one near-Factory dining experience with this other. Big chain restaurants have clearly figured out a way to provide a consistent meal for millions of satisfied customers. But the Factory way is not for everyone. People, I think, crave customized, attention-to-detail service experiences—in their dining choices. And—I’ll go out on a limb—in their health care too.

The Great Checklisting of American Medicine

Oct 22, 2014• 23

By HANS DUVEFELT, MD

Medical errors happen every day. Few make the headlines, but when they do, almost everyone who chimes in to comment offers the same type of solution for avoiding them. Three of the most common are guidelines, decision support and checklists.

From my vantage point as a primary care physician I agree that checklists, in particular, can enhance clinical accuracy, but some of the lists I have to work with in today’s healthcare environment are more likely to bog me down and distract me than focus my attention on the essentials. I call them choke lists.

Re-reading “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande, published in 2010, the year before my clinic implemented their first EMR, I am reminded of how much has changed since then.

How I work and where my attention is drawn has changed because of the minutia of Meaningful Use, Patient Centered Medical Home, Accountable Care and all the other new philosophies and forces that define primary health care.