Beth Israel Deaconess CEO Paul Levy explains why: Basically, the shrinking economy is now affecting even hospitals.
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Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
By adamg - 2/12/09 - 4:07 pm
Beth Israel Deaconess CEO Paul Levy, who has long publicly chronicled Beth Israel Deaconess's efforts to reduce infections among patients with tubes going right into the chests for medications, reports on the reaction when he called on other area hospitals, insurers and doctors to develop a formal program to fight these often fatal ailments: Complete silence.
By adamg - 1/27/09 - 9:23 pm
Beth Israel Deaconess CEO Paul Levy wants your suggestions on how to improve life in the ICU for patients and families.
Chaka Khan? When you click there, look at his headline and tell me Levy didn't get down in the '80s with Chaka Khan.
By adamg - 1/26/09 - 9:38 am
Paul Levy, CEO at Partners HealthCare frenemy Beth Israel Deaconess, reports he dismissed complaints from friends at Norwood Hospital about the MGH/Brigham clinic under construction in Foxboro - until this past Friday, when he gave a speech at a meeting at neighboring Gillette Stadium and was stunned to see how huge the thing is:
... [T]he two facilities are merely 8.5 miles apart, making them indistinguishable to many patients in terms of transportation access. Since insurance companies pay community doctors in the Partners system substantially more than those in the Caritas Christi system, it will be easier to recruit physicians to offer services in Foxboro than in Norwood. Does this difference in reimbursement rates reflect a documented difference in the quality of care between the community-based doctors in the two systems? No.
Now, let's acknowledge that MGH and the Brigham are powerful brands. To the extent patients are influenced by that reputation or other factors to migrate to the PHS facility from Norwood Hospital, the overall health care bill for the state will rise for no documented additional value to those patients or society. ...
By adamg - 1/19/09 - 5:12 pm
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Paul Levy praises Tufts Medical Center for its "gutsy move" in trying to get more money from Blue Cross/Blue Shield, discusses how his hospital is also trying to negotiate a new contract with the insurer, one that gets Beth Israel more money in exchange for a "capitated" payment system in which Blue Cross pays a set amount per patient regardless of how long his or her stay is:
By adamg - 1/7/09 - 1:38 pm
The Boston Business Journal reports on a man who has lost his chance at suing his doctors at Beth Israel for malpractice because his lawyer failed SIX TIMES to file legal documents on time.
Oh, if only Neil Chayet were still around to come up with a suitable pun for this story.
By adamg - 11/24/08 - 10:48 pm
Paul Levy at Beth Israel Deaconess discusses the full-page ad Brigham and Women's and Mass. General took out in the Globe today to tell us how wonderful they are (no doubt out of a sense of bursting pride, not because of a Globe Spotlight article on how they are using their muscle to boost their reimbursement rates).
By adamg - 11/21/08 - 1:01 pm
Beth Israel Deaconess CEO Paul Levy explains why the medical center is buying a fancy-shmancy robotic surgical system even though it still has its doubts about the thing's clinical usefulness: Basically, all the other hospitals in the area - even some community hospitals - are buying one and BI is beginning to lose business:
... And, these factors are now spreading beyond urology into the field of gynecological surgery. So as a matter of good business planning, concern for the quality of our training program, and to continue to attract and retain the best possible doctors, the decision was made for us.
So there you have it. It is an illustrative story of the health care system in which we operate.
By adamg - 11/11/08 - 8:41 am
Beth Israel Deaconess CEO Paul Levy posts the memo he sent to hospital staff about the hospital's current finances.
By adamg - 11/9/08 - 12:14 pm
Keith O'Brien at the Globe fills us in on what led up to the death of Kent Cambron, a once promising doctor whose body was found in a Beth Israel storage closet last month.
By adamg - 10/20/08 - 1:56 pm
John Halamka, over at Beth Israel, will be posting his personal medical info and DNA details on the Web around 4 p.m. today:
As part of the PGP's first 10 participants, I contributed my entire medical record, phenotype, and genotype in the hope that this data will support research to enhance personalized medicine for future patients.
You can already read about his genetic history.
By adamg - 10/14/08 - 10:19 pm
The Globe reports the body of Dr. Brent Cambron was found today in an operating-room storage closet at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Officials suspect suicide by Cambron, who battled drug addiction and who was dismissed by the hospital in June, 2007; they are investigating how he gained access to what is supposed to be a secure part of the hospital.
In 2005, Cambron was one of three recipients of the chief resident's award at the hospital.
By adamg - 9/23/08 - 8:54 am
Paul Levy, CEO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, is amused to read some know-it-all explain that CEOs should never blog because their time is too valuable to waste:
... [P]oor misled Mr. Brooks, thinking CEO time is precious. In fact, it is the least valuable time in an organization if things are working right. And, if things are not working right, it is even less valuable.
By adamg - 7/6/08 - 12:25 pm
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CEO Paul Levy posts the memo he sent hospitalwide following that incident in which doctors operated on the wrong side of a patient. Apparently, the team failed to do one last "time out" to ensure "right patient, right procedure, right side."
... What a horrifying story. What important lessons. We learned that when teams are busy and distracted, it makes it easier to overlook something. We learned that key safety steps, like the "time out," need to occur every single time, since even one failure can be serious. We learned that serious events rarely relate to the performance of any single person. We learned that we have vulnerabilities that we were not even aware of, and that there are surely others out there.
Actually, we re-learned all these things, because none of these observations are new and all of them apply to the entire work place. ...
But Levy adds that things went right following the mistake - the surgeon reported it immediately when he realized what had happened, hospital quality-care staffers began an immediate investigation, the surgeon and others apologized to the patient and senior medical staff agreed to inform the entire hospital about what had happened.
By adamg - 5/20/08 - 10:09 am
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is an initial partner with Google on a GMail-like system designed to give consumers easy access to all their medical records - and background information on any conditions, drug interactions and the like (and also targeted ads?). Medical Center CIO John Halamka explains the system, including ways patient data will remain confidential.
Mark Baard, a Beth Israel patient, immediately signed up. Didn't work - his records didn't transfer over.
... I deleted my Google Health account after this failed experiment. I will eat my hat if the data have truly been deleted from Google's databases.
Any possible benefits to consumers from Google Health clearly outweigh the privacy risks at this point. ...
By adamg - 1/17/08 - 9:09 am
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CEO Paul Levy discusses a new initiative to dramatically reduce the number of medical mistakes at both its Longwood and Needham campuses - and says he'll post results over the next couple of years.
By adamg - 1/4/08 - 12:23 pm
Six years ago, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center was in such bad financial shape that state Attorney General Tom Reilly was pressuring the board of trustees to sell the whole thing to a for-profit company. Paul Levy posts a copy of the first memo he sent to medical-center doctors and employees when he took over six years ago this month - and adds:
By adamg - 8/10/07 - 2:18 pm
Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center, posts the entire report by the Joint Commission, which accredits hospitals, and discusses the findings.
By adamg - 7/30/07 - 8:21 pm
A resting heart rate of 190 sends Lyss to the ER, where they keep trying an IV drug called Adenosine to slow her heart:
By adamg - 1/15/07 - 10:00 pm
A few weeks ago, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center replaced its old-fashioned paper-towel dispensers with new automatic dispensers designed to save money and reduce the chances of infections spreading. Beth Israel CEO Paul Levy reports the new dispensers - more specifically, the towels - were awful:
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