Why Smart, Ticked Off Computer Guys Are Looking to Destroy Your Hospital

Having gone through my venture capital financing hazing in the late nineties, one of the features I’ve noticed about businesses that get funded are those which have a “disruptive” model to them.   VCs enjoy the idea that their investments will not only create value for their own businesses but, in the words of a (very...

A crazy idea: update your homepage.

An article from the Neshco newsletter, about engaging patients online. Here’s a crazy idea: next quarter, when you take a new service line to market, update your homepage. Put the service line front and center and, much to the chagrin of the Director of the Wound Care “Center of Excellence” and the doctors who wield the latest CyberUtensils...

Pretty hospitals make for healthier patients

Here’s a no-brainer from the Atlantic: dingy hospitals rooms have a negative impact on patient care. Over the past decade, most public places have gotten noticeably better looking. We’ve gone from a world in which Starbucks set a cutting-edge standard for mass-market design to a world in which Starbucks establishes the bare minimum. If...

What the free market thinks about patients

I was fascinated by this article about the challenges of healthcare content startups. No so much about why such companies exist, but in hearing about how the general market views “patients” and “consumers” and what implications that has for healthcare institutions. After an afternoon discussing the challenges of...

How to Fix Healthcare: A blog entry from a client CMO

From Southwestern Vermont Medical Center CMO Blog: This week I had an interesting conversation with my son. A college senior, he’s considering job options in his field of environmental science. Possibilities include various types of nonprofits, research, and environmental education organizations. As we talked about his ideas, and he does job...

A new reality show: America’s Next Top Surgeon?

My wife and I have been watching the latest wave of reality TV shows — Oprah’s Big Give, etc. — and I thought, with all the new rankings of hospitals and physicians out there, perhaps we could combine the two. I title it “America’s Next Top Surgeon” and it would go something like this. We pick 10 nationally...