Category Archives: Health care

Burning Toast: American Health System Style

Posted on October 4, 2016 by John Hunter

Democrats and Republicans have created a health care system in the USA over the last 40 years that “burns toast” at an alarming rate. As the symptoms of their health care system are displayed they call in people to blame for burning toast. Their participation in the “you burn, I’ll scrape” system is even worse than the normal burning then scraping process. They create a bad system over decades and ignore the burnt toast just telling people to put up … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Health care, Management, Public Sector | Tagged blame, Economics, global, government, health care system, organization as a system

Decades Later The USA Health Care System is Still a Deadly Disease for Our Economy

Posted on March 30, 2016 by John Hunter

Decades ago W. Edwards Deming named 7 deadly diseases of western management. One of those was excessive health care costs. Sadly that deadly disease has become much worse in the last several decades. Americans pay 300% more for this prostate cancer drug than much of the rest of the world Xtandi, a prostate cancer drug co-licenced by Japan’s Astellas Pharma and Medivation Inc. was developed at a U.S. university with grants funded by taxpayer dollars. That gives the federal government … Continue reading →

Posted in Competition, Economics, Health care | Tagged deadly diseases, Deming, Economics, government, Health care, patent | 3 Comments

The Aim Should be the Best Life – Not Work v. Life Balance

Posted on May 13, 2015 by John Hunter

My father had the most job satisfaction of anyone I have known. He had no separation between work and life. We toured factories on vacation. I visited Davidson College in North Carolina because he was consulting with a client in Charlotte before we went up to Duke and North Carolina for visits and asked the CEO what school I should visit. His grad students would call the house frequently. Many of his best friends were colleagues. That is how I … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Psychology, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged Bill Hunter, Career, commentary, Creativity, curiouscat, John Hunter, Joy in Work, Popular, Psychology, respect for people, Systems thinking, tips | 11 Comments

Some Thoughts on Investing from My Recent Interview

Posted on February 12, 2015 by John Hunter

In the first few years of this blog I posted occasionally, but still much more than the last few years, on investing and economics. Now I mainly post on those topics on the Curious Cat Investing and Economics blog (see how the name and that practice are in sync with each other?). I was recently interviewed about investing strategies and thoughts and decided to share that with the readers of this blog. Some excerpts from the interview: I have maintained … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Investing | Tagged Apple, Google, Health care, Investing, John Hunter

Management Blog Review 2012: Gemba Walkabout

Posted on January 9, 2013 by John Hunter

This is my second, of two, 2012 management blog review posts. In this post I look back at the last year on Mike Stoecklein’s Gemba Walkabout blog. Mike is the Director of Network Operations at Thedacare Center for Healthcare Value. In a very long post, Some thoughts on guiding principles, values & behaviors, he provides a sensibly explanation for one the real difficulties organization have making progress beyond a certain point (project success but failure to succeed in transforming the … Continue reading →

Posted in Carnival, Deming, Health care, Process improvement | Tagged Deming, Health care, Process improvement, Quality tools | 1 Comment

Management Blog Review 2012: Not Running a Hospital

Posted on January 3, 2013 by John Hunter

Paul Levy started the Running a Hospital blog when he was the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Thankfully he has continued the blog, renamed to Not Running a Hospital, after leaving that position. Paul provides a huge number (the lowest number of posts in a month was 32) of valuable posts focused on health care, but worthwhile for everyone interested in improving the practice of management. In addition to his blog, during 2012 Paul published a wonderful book … Continue reading →

Posted in Health care, Management | Tagged Health care, Lean thinking | 4 Comments

USA Spent $2.6 Trillion, $8,402 per person,17.9% of GDP on Medical Expenses in 2010

Posted on January 19, 2012 by John Hunter

The federal government financed 29% of total health spending in 2010, a substantial increase from its share of 23% in 2007. Meanwhile, the shares of the total health care bill financed by state and local governments (16%), private businesses (21%), and households (28%) declined during the same time period. Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Health care, Systems thinking | Tagged business, economic data, Economics, economy, Health care, health care system, USA | 2 Comments

More Reasons to Avoid Layoffs

Posted on February 11, 2010 by John Hunter

Lay Off the Layoffs by Jeffrey Pfeffer As its former head of human resources once told me: “If people are your most important assets, why would you get rid of them?” … In fact, there is a growing body of academic research suggesting that firms incur big costs when they cut workers. Some of these costs are obvious, such as the direct costs of severance and outplacement, and some are intuitive, such as the toll on morale and productivity as … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Health care, Lean thinking, Management, Management Articles, Psychology, Respect | Tagged Deming, health care system, layoffs, Lean thinking, Management Articles, managing people, Psychology, respect for people | 1 Comment

Hospital Providing Better Health Care While Reducing Costs

Posted on January 19, 2010 by John Hunter

Business Week has a good article on the strides one hospital has been able to make at reducing costs and improving quality. Hospitals: Radical Cost Surgery [the broken link was removed] Walk into Providence Regional Medical Center, in Everett, Wash., and you will see a hospital trying something different: It brings the equipment to the patient. In 2003, Providence opened one of the few “single stay” wards in the nation. After heart surgery, cardiac patients remain in one room throughout … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Health care, Innovation, Management | Tagged Creativity, Health care, Innovation, management

Systemic Health Care Failure: Small Business Coverage

Posted on December 27, 2009 by John Hunter

There are many significant problems with the medical care system in the USA. It makes sense that a system that costs over 50% more than other countries and has no better outcomes, from all that extra spending, suffers from many failures. Coverage for small business is one of the problems we face now – When Health Insurers Dump Small Companies: In June testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee, Potter said insurers “dump small businesses whose employees’ medical claims exceed what … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Health care, Innovation, Systems thinking | Tagged Economics, health care system | 2 Comments

Video Overview of the PDSA Cycle

Posted on December 20, 2009 by John Hunter

Robert Lloyd, PhD From the IHI Open School‘s, presents a nice overview of the PDSA Cycle (plan-do-study-act). The webcast includes an example of using PDSA to improve the discharge process for a hospital. As I have said many times the keys to success are to turn the PDSA cycle rapidly, predict the results in advance, and analyze the results to continually improve. the Improvement Handbook is an excellent resource. The IHI Open School is a great resource and exactly the … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Health care, Management, Process improvement, Quality tools, Science, webcast | Tagged Deming, Health care, management webcast, Process improvement, Quality tools | 2 Comments

Blame the Road – Not the Person

Posted on August 19, 2009 by John Hunter

The system is responsible for 90, 92, 94, 97% of problems – W. Edwards Deming. Fix the system, don’t blame the people. When you seek system fixes you approach situations differently than if you search for people to blame. By the way, I am often asked about the data supporting Deming’s contention that the system was responsible for 97% of the problems. This statement was not based on a set of data but on Dr. Deming’s decades of experience. And … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Data, Deming, Economics, Health care, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged Creativity, Deming, Economics, Health care, health care system, Innovation, Systems thinking | 5 Comments

Community Medical Care Successes

Posted on June 18, 2009 by John Hunter

The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande, New Yorker (The Power of a Checklist was published there in 2007 by the same author) For example, Rochester, Minnesota, where the Mayo Clinic dominates the scene, has fantastically high levels of technological capability and quality, but its Medicare spending is in the lowest fifteen per cent of the country—$6,688 per enrollee in 2006, which is eight thousand dollars less than the figure for McAllen. Two economists working at Dartmouth, Katherine Baicker and Amitabh … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Economics, Health care, Systems thinking | Tagged Deming, Health care, health care system, Systems thinking | 1 Comment

CEOs Want Health-Care Reform

Posted on May 28, 2009 by John Hunter

Decades ago Dr. Deming emphasized the deadly disease of excessive health care costs in the USA. Since then, year after year, the situation has become worse (reaching $2.2 trillion in spending in 2007 – 16.2% of GDP). During that time senior executives has put forth very little serious effort (in comparison to the huge cost) to fix this problem. Finally, in the last few years, more and more senior executives are actively moving to address the ever worsening crisis (including, … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Economics, Health care | Tagged Deming, Economics, government, Health care, health care system, leadership | 6 Comments

USA Spent $2.2 Trillion or $7,421 Per Person on Health Care in 2007

Posted on March 16, 2009 by John Hunter

Health spending in the United States grew 6.1 percent in 2007, to $2.2 trillion or $7,421 per person. For comparison the total GDP per person in China is $6,100. This continues the trend of health care spending taking an every increasing portion of the economic output (the economy grew by 4.8 percent in 2007). This brings health care spending to 16.2% of GDP (which is yet another, in a string of record high percentages of GDP spent on health care). … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Economics, Health care | Tagged economic data, Economics, Health care

ER Checklist

Posted on March 13, 2009 by John Hunter

The popular ER TV show highlighted the importance of using checklists in surgery yesterday. Such powerful quality tools, like the checklist, are just waiting to be used. But far too many fail to use these simple improvement tools. And in health care those failures are potentially critical. Related: Checklists Save Lives – The Power of a Checklist – management improvement dictionary – Articles on Improving the Health Care System

Posted in Health care, Quality tools, webcast | Tagged Health care, health care system, lean healthcare, Quality tools, webcast | 1 Comment