• A Rant - And A Proposal
• FutureScans
• The Shifting Ground
• People
• Useful links

This is normal?

• A lot of things that are considered normal in healthcare would get you fired, indicted, sued, or run out of business in any other industry. The quick rant "This Is Normal?" displays the absurdities of our present healthcare system - and charts some directions to look for paths out of the quagmire. (12k)
• A proposal to completely re-engineer healthcare in the United States to provide dramatically lower cost, high quality, total coverage, and both local and individual choice. (30k)

FutureScans

• The Revolution In Our Assumptions About Healthcare charts eight beliefs or assumptions that form the foundation of our every decision about healthcare - particularly in the United States - what they were in the past, and where they seem to be headed in the future. (5k)
• The Future of Healthcare shows the trends and forces shaping healthcare throughout the world. (14k)
• A table of notes on Factors Influencing the Future of Healthcare lists U.S. and world trends likely to have an impact on the future of healthcare, particularly in the U.S. (5k)
• Technologies Emerging In Healthcare offers a brief scorecard of some of the new technologies we can expect over the next few years. (9k)

The Shifting Ground

• The Seven Revolutions of Healthcare details the converging chaotic shifts that are turning healthcare into something we have never quite seen before:

  The great "healthcare" debates in Washington over the last few years have not really been about health, or even healthcare, but about insurance and access. They have obscured vast and deep changes taking place throughout healthcare, the practice of medicine, and the communities in which we live.

  (11k)

• Healthcare and the "New Management" briefly describes one of those shifts: how the plethora of new management techniques are affecting healthcare. (6k)
• Outcomes takes a detailed look at how two competing Florida hospitals used a careful and deep application of information technology to drive cost down and quality up at the same time. (30k)
• The "Healthy Communities" movement and Healthcare looks at another shift: how the new economics of healthcare are driving even profit-making healthcare organizations to attempt to build healthy communities. (15k) What if you could build it? looks specifically at Celebration Health, Florida Hospital's radical collaboration with Disney to build a healthy community from the ground up. (25k)
• HOTS: Health-Oriented Telecommunications describes a third shift: how computers and telecommunications are re-shaping the future of healthcare. (36k)
• Getting Paid To Keep People Healthy: Two Ways Of Integrating A Healthcare System delves into a fourth major shift, by evaluating two radically different ways of achieving healthcare integration within a metropolitan area. (15k)
• For Profit.Not For Profit takes a new look at the decades-old argument over whether healthcare providers should be for-profit businesses - and finds some new answers. (39k)

People

• T. Berry Brazelton, one of America's best-known pediatricians, gives his views on American healthcare. (9k)
• Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop discusses the health prospects of American children. (24k)
• In Sound Body, Sound Mind Dr. Ken Pelletier of Stanford shows how a true understanding of the mind-body-spirit connection can revolutionize healthcare. His message to healthcare executives:

  The old system does not work. If you cling to the old system you are dead, a dinosaur, your hospital is going to close, you are going to lose your job and your employees are going to get fired. Change or die.

  (35k)

• Rick Scott and the Columbia/HCA Healthcare System: Icon of Greed or Prophet of True Reform? profiles an emerging phenomenon in American healthcare. (42k)
• In What's Love Got To Do With It? Bernie Siegel, author of such popular books as Love, Medicine and Miraclesand How To Live Between The Office Visits paints a picture of a humanized health care system. (24k)

Useful Links

• HealthOnline: There is no place as lively, as dense with discussion and information about managing healthcare, as this proprietary, 2,000-member system. The Healthcare Forum, the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), the American Hospital Association (AHA), and the Catholic Hospital Association (CHA) are all active partners with vigorous presences. A large library offers a range of significant sources for quality work, community assessments, and re-engineering efforts, for instance. Discussion groups range from the future of healthcare and healthy communities to architecture, financing, and alternative health. It's proprietary, but a "Guest Registration" will allow you to look around and even participate in some forums.
• HealthSeek: This massive and growing Web site bills itself as "the healthcare community's premier site for industry related news, information and resources." It does pretty much cover the waterfront, from medical specialties to consumer health information, plus a big index of over 240 more specialized healthcare and medical web sites.
• Medical Source: HealthSeek's big rival seems smaller, but it has its own section of articles for providers, and its Internet Health Directory includes the services of "Dr. Net Rater," who visits and reviews hundreds of health and medical sites.

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