Healthcare Ruminatio: Equal Justice

Friday, April 30, 2010

On Law Day - Support Equal Justice

Tomorrow - May 1 - is Law Day. It is a time to momentarily reflect on the rule of law in our society. In an "As I See It" column in today's Telegram and Gazette (link here), Joe Fournier and I advocate for support of civil legal aid - a program that provides legal assistance to low income individuals who cannot afford an attorney. We do so through the eyes of one Worcester man who was helped enormously by the great support of the Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts. Please read his story. And please do what you can to support legal aid and promote equal justice in our community.

Welcome

Ruminatio is the Latin word for rumination, which means "a musing or continued thinking on a subject." Healthcare is a subject in great need of continued thinking. In this blog, I bring my perspectives, gained from a number of vantage points working inside the system, to stimulate thinking around ideas for improvement and innovation in healthcare. I try to do so with a particular emphasis on areas that are not well developed in the media or well understood by the general public. My quest is to seek and provide greater clarity and understanding on a very complicated subject. And I may occasionally muse into some other areas as well. But most of all, I hope to avoid causing you to suffer from the other meaning of rumination: "a condition in which food after being swallowed is regurgitated."

My Published Writings

8-16-10 Boston Globe Op Ed Separate Doctors From Industry (UMass Memorial CMO Steve Tosi and I argue that it is time all of academic medicine establish more appropriate relationships between their faculty and industry.

5-30-10 Boston Globe Magazine What Really Ails American Health Care (My provocative piece, arguing that hubris, at all levels, drags the halth care system down, and no law can fix it).

4-30-10 Worcester Telegram and Gazette Let's Protect Legal Assistance (Joe Fournier and I advocate for support of civil legal assistance, through the eyes of one Worcester man).

1-11-10 Boston Globe Op Ed Providing Quality Care, and a Human Touch (Academic medical centers should start focusing as much on the whole person as they do on the diseased body part).

1-04-10 Trustee Magazine The Governance Imperative for Nonprofit Hospitals (My "call to action" to hospital boards to step up their governance and remain keenly focused on the goal of improving community health)

11-1-09 Fluff Cuts Across Party Lines, Apparently (My Letter to the Editor in the Sunday Globe pointing out some hypocrisy in the Legislature)

10-26-09 - Boston Globe Op Ed Hospitals Wage War Against Patient Falls (My "walk in the shoes" of hospital caregivers convinced me that hospital falls should not be included on the list of "never events").

See also these two letters to the editor in response to my 10-26 piece: For and Against

7-20-09 - Boston Globe Op Ed Retooling the Medicare/Medicaid Model (Highlighting a novel Massachusetts program to urge better integration of Medicare and Medicaid)

1-20-09 - CommonWealth Magazine Essay Pilot program: a pre-flight checklist can reduce deadly infections in hospitals (Relating my experience as a former private pilot to the use of a checklist in my hospital's ICU)

9-22-08 - Boston Globe Op Ed Shining a Light on Cardiac Surgery Results (My role - and that of my hospital - in the public reporting of cardiac surgery results in Massachusetts)

Healthcare Ruminatio

Friday, April 30, 2010

On Law Day - Support Equal Justice

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