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“There is no use trying,” said Alice; “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” There are a number of...
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Being a blogger is not too dissimilar to being a failure’s biographer. Unless you simply repeat the ideas of your contemporaries, good blogging requires a certain avidity to oppugn those who revel in the notion that theirs was the only good idea. To me, their Sang-froid calmness has all the appeal of...
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The characters on the train into Philadelphia, while never dull, were more interesting than usual this morning. The woman across the aisle from me wore her hair in a style that could be described best as resembling a termite mound. The ride felt so much like bumper cars that I was tempted to ask the...
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I’ve never been mistaken as one who is subtle. Gray is not in my patois. I am guilty of seeing things as right and left and right and wrong. Sometimes I stand alone, sometimes with others, but rarely am I undecided, indecisive, or caught straddling the fence. When I think about the expression, ‘lead...
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Les choses son contre nous—things are against us. EHR is the marmalade-and-toast hypothesis, that the marmalade-side will land on the carpet when the toast falls from the breakfast plate, played out in bits and bytes. Resistentialism is the belief that inanimate objects have a natural antipathy towards...
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Our middle school child is in the middle of a family consumer science project (home economics) to organize one room in our home. He has redefined the project so that he reorganizes during commercials, and he is seven hours into a project involving our walk-in closet. While watching the news it occurred...
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One of the great things about social media is its ability to infer attributes of both the readers and the writer. When you finally meet your virtual pen pal the mind wanders—I thought he sounded taller. There are those among us who when they picture me writing, see me sitting at my desk, wearing my Read...
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Twice in the span of twelve hours, I received unsolicited and honest feedback from two individuals whose opinion I value, about my attempt to share with you my thoughts about a range of issues concerning the business of healthcare. One came from my father; since he holds that role he is allowed to offer...
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If you like adventure, here’s a site to check, http://www.jfk50mile.org/. This is an annual event whose origin came about during the cold war. Fortunately for both of us, the entry date has already passed. The thought behind the JFK fifty-mile hike/run was that because of the possibility of a nuclear...
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I have been looking for a way to represent pictorially the hospital business model and the forces which act upon it. The picture below came to me last night while playing this board game with my daughter. It is from the children’s game, Boobytrap. The way the game is played is that the players...
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Someone once summed up one of Fred Astaire’s screen tests with the following; “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Balding. Can dance a little.” Probably the same guy who evaluated my Mensa application. I’ve been accused of having a similar outlook. I once accosted a guy who was walking on...
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In high school when my mother thought I needed to come down a peg or two she would call me, “Never Wrong Roemer.” Today I prefer to go by, “Dr. Knowledge” or “The Voice of Reason.” You can just call me Paul. During my senior year of track I competed in the pole vault and [...] Read More...
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As if we don’t have enough problems already. Just curious to hear if you think any of these are viable. What happens to the hospital business model if we see this type of vertical or horizontal integration? Primary care doctors outsource their up-market needs to hospitals, why can’t hospitals do...
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Hangin’ by a thread “It will feel better when it quits hurtin’.” Well duh. It will also feel better when we stop self-inflicting the hurt. To help me understand how things work I need to decompose issues, not into small parts, but into a series of pictures or shapes. The pictures I...
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encyclopedias newspapers movie rentals theaters airlines magazines libraries broadcast television wireline phone companies record companies DEC Xerox department stores SUN H-P GM A&P Circuit City Most US hospitals In his book, “How the Mighty Fall,” Jim Collins describes the path to a...