Posted by on in NEJM Highlights

Surgical volume and referral for surgery: The impact of surgical volume on outcomes has been well documented, but is it top of mind with physicians referring patients to surgery? Readers of the Journal were polled on a hypothetical scenario whereby a community physician would be referring a patient in need of a major surgical procedure to either a nearby community hospital with a well-respected general surgeon doing approximately 5 of these cases a year versus a tertiary medical center 40 miles away. The great majority of readers chose the option to refer to the tertiary medical center. This does not… Read More

Posted by on in Biopharma, Medical Devices

The recent World Medical Innovation Forum on Cancer convened by Partners Healthcare in Boston was attended by leaders in oncology from around the world including top: clinicians, bench scientists, policy leaders, and executives from hospitals and life-science companies.  Two plus days of intense discussion and sharing of perspectives ably curated by Partners Innovation head Chris Coburn covered a range of topics from technology developments, to the healthcare system, and the patient/ doctor perspectives. The mind-map below is an attempt to organize the key themes that I heard through the conference and to try to convey why I came away feeling incredibly optimistic about the future of cancer care. The… Read More

Posted by on in Consumer Health, Digital Health, Medical Devices, Population Health

I have been conducting an informal test for the past year and a half.  And while it has not been a full statistically-significant clinical trial with test and control groups, and “double blind” testing methods, the results have been striking… The way this test works is that when I meet someone new or reconnect with someone I have not seen in a long time, I ask them to describe themselves and then listen carefully to the answer.  Some clear patterns emerge: It’s most common for people, and particularly my American friends and colleagues, to identify themselves by their occupation…as a… Read More

Posted by on in NEJM Highlights

RBRVS: an acronym we ought to think more about RBRVS stands for the Resource Based Relative Value Scale, and codifies the time and effort involved for a comprehensive set of physician activities on which Medicare payments are based. In this perspective, the authors highlight that most value-based payment (VBP) systems currently under development are essentially built as modifiers on top of the RBRVS. But the RBRVS has two major issues with it: it is “downward sticky” and has not evolved to take into account increased efficiency (e.g. automation), and it underestimates E/M (Evaluation/Management) activities which have become more and more… Read More

Posted by on in Network strategy, Providers

Please see update at the end of the post. With new two affiliations, Ochsner Health has solidified its clinically integrated network in the most populous parish (East Baton Rouge) and built a beachhead in the one part of the state where it lacked a partner (the northeast). The two new partners are General Health System in Baton Rouge (announced in late March) and Glenwood Regional Medical Center in Monroe (announced in early April). These affiliations have a several implications: Ochsner Health Network is now viably state-wide. Its affiliates are directly present in 11 of the most populous 15… Read More

Posted by on in Biopharma, Payers, Population Health, Providers

A couple of years ago, we addressed the question of whether drug companies could use new business models to capture more of the value they create. At the time, we pointed out that drug makers had struggled to get payers interested in new models, and that any potential solution would need to consider aspects of the drug (as it relates to the overall care paradigm and system), and of the payer. Fast forward to 2016, and there are a number of factors that suggest that now may be the right time for drug makers and payers to partner in creating value by sharing clinical and… Read More

Posted by on in NEJM Highlights

Could Uber happen to healthcare? A Perspective article that points out that the success of Uber is rooted in the flaws of an industry where customer convenience and value for money took the backseat to the interest of a set of service providers highly protected by regulation. Sounds familiar?  Obviously, the regulatory moats of healthcare are much wider and deeper, but in a curious mix of warning (watch out!) and encouragement (this will be good for you if you embrace it!) the authors argue that the medical profession should not consider themselves immune from the disruption that has affected… Read More

Posted by on in Agile Strategy, Biopharma, Consumer Health, Digital Health, Payers, Providers

“Agile corporate strategy” (as defined in a previous post) is already the established the weapon of choice for small, early-stage innovators trying to re-invent their marketplace, where the product is the company and uncertainty is the hallmark new emerging markets.  Startups like agile strategies – often referred to a “Lean Startup” – because they effectively counter the scale advantage of incumbent competitors without requiring massive initial investment.  But contrary to the conventional wisdom that firms must abandon agility as they get larger and more complex, in the right market context an agile business unit or corporate strategy remains… Read More

Posted by on in Agile Strategy, Consumer Health, Digital Health

The dirty little secret of the booming agile training and coaching industry is that most Agile implementations ultimately fail, meaning that the companies revert back to their previous working methods.  Even ones that experience dramatic early success and drive their entire industry to implement similar approaches typically lose momentum after several years or with a change in leadership. It is telling that, of the first wave of companies to implement Scrum in the mid 1990’s, not one is still using the framework today.  In light of this, it is tempting to blame agile principles or the specific execution frameworks themselves… Read More

Posted by on in Agile Strategy, Consumer Health, Digital Health

In a previous post, I explored Maxwell Health as an example of agile product development strategy in healthcare.  For small single-product companies the product strategy is the corporate strategy, but agile principles can yield profound benefits for larger multi-product business units and even entire firms.  This blog focuses on Agile Corporate Strategy, and specifically how a subset of companies in the right strategic context could greatly benefit from institutionalizing agility across the entire enterprise. Agile corporate strategy “Agility” is a term that gets thrown around liberally, often in a very loosely defined way, and most commonly as one… Read More