Modern Physician just named Adam Singer, the founder of IPC-The Hospitalist Company, its first annual Physician Entrepreneur of the Year. Adam and I don’t always see eye to eye, but I want to congratulate him and highlight some of his contributions. When the hospitalist field launched in the mid-1990s, Adam was there – I recall seeing him at ...

Today came the announcement that Suzanne Delbanco, founding director of the Leapfrog Group, has assumed the presidency of a company that tracks compliance with safety and quality practices via remote video. Big Brother, meet the Joint Commission. The report, in today’s Modern Healthcare, describes the process this way:Video auditing refers to a ...

The explosive growth of Facebook and MySpace illustrates the market for electronic tools to enhance communication and collaboration. Could there possibly be another workplace more in need of social networking tools than the modern hospital?If you are not familiar with Facebook, find yourself a teenager and take a look over his shoulder while he is ...

This is one of the most commonly asked questions in IT World, and my answer has always been “CPOE first” – largely because that has always been David Bates’s (the world’s leading IT/safety researcher) answer. But I’ve changed my mind. Here’s why.Before I start, I promised that I’d let you know if I ever blogged on a topic in which I have a ...

Great quote by USC cardiologist Leslie Saxon (a reporter reached her on her cell phone as Leslie was shopping) on this week’s NEJM study on delayed defibrillation: “You’re better off having your arrest [here] at Nordstrom [than in a hospital]… because there are 15 people around me.”You’ve probably seen the study, a detailed analysis of ...

The Entertainment Blogosphere was atwitter yesterday with the story of actor Dennis Quaid’s twin newborns, who reportedly received a 1000-fold heparin overdose at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in La La Land. Cedars’ Chief Medical Officer Michael Langberg may win this year’s Oscar for fastest public apology – having learned the lesson from the 2003 ...

The pharmaceutical industry’s influence in clinical care is increasingly being viewed under a high-powered microscope, and the result is tightening restrictions on what pharma can do with/for/to doctors. Having lived through the era of sun-baked golf and beach “conferences” (with the invited physicians paid handsomely as “consultants”), this extra ...