I’m on clinical service now and my patients are dying left and right. And I’ve never been prouder of my own care, and that delivered by my colleagues and hospital. When I was in training, a patient’s death was invariably considered a medical failure, and thus an occasion for shame and silence – the Outcome-That-Must-Not-Be-Named. We treated it ...

Today my pals Peter Lindenauer and Andy Auerbach (and colleagues) published the largest hospitalist outcomes study to date, in the New England Journal of Medicine. It is a rigorous, important piece of work. Let me try to add a bit of context.First, the What’s What. Using the massive database of the Premier system (which Peter has mined to ...

While driving into work earlier this week, I heard a wonderful interview with Jim Dierke, principal of Visitation Valley Middle School here in San Francisco. VV is one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, and this gentleman – who recently won a national middle school “principal of the year” award – has managed to increase attendance rates ...