What works? It is a deceptively simple question. Writing the question “what works” almost makes me feel I’m asking too naïve a question—as if “what works” isn’t worthy of a blog post about one of the hardest challenges in healthcare. Yet in discussion after discussion—from in-person conversations to web debates to healthcare innovation conferences to [...]
Healthcare is undergoing an unprecedented transformation with CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) and commercial payers increasingly tying reimbursement to performance on quality measures. Accountable Care Organizations, Bundled Payments, Value-Based Purchasing, and the Patient-Centered Medical Home are among the programs that heavily depend on the reporting of quality data sets by hospitals, physicians, and [...]
Have you ever noticed how much time and energy can be burned without actually accomplishing anything during the course of a day? Here’s my list of the top things that keep me from being truly productive. I suspect it will sound quite familiar to many of us, so I don’t claim any unique insight. I [...]
Nothing better exemplifies the transforming world of healthcare than the emergence of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). To be effective, an ACO must create an efficient delivery model that constantly improves upon the quality of care while reducing the total cost of care for an assigned population of patients. To make matters more challenging, this needs to be done [...]
I was chatting with one of our key employees today. She indicated she was struggling with what she perceived to be a conflict of statements I have made to our company. On one hand, I tell our folks we want to hire the best, most capable people we can, and on the other hand I [...]
There are Little Myths and Big Myths. Little Myths are untrue, but they only keep us from doing something that might otherwise be valuable. For example, until the 19th Century people thought tomatoes were poisonous because they are related to deadly nightshade. But the only bad thing this little myth caused was less-delicious salads and [...]
Lord, please don’t let me as a manager ever put someone in that position. A software engineering job is thankfully one of the jobs that allows you to be creative and helpful and requires you to be a life-long learner. This is the kind of profession I wish all people were able to pursue because it means [...]
I am sometimes asked about the origin of the name of our company – Chiliad. My frequent (tongue-in-cheek) answer is that Chiliad is a Greek word meaning “iterative discovery in Big Data!” Some people pronounce it like “kill-ee-ad”, while others say “chill-ee-ad” (inside the company, we use the first pronunciation). Actually, Chiliad truly is a [...]
I spent a number of years at Gemini Management Consulting. As you may know, selling consulting services is a significant challenge. In consulting the only thing you have to sell is your collective brainpower – no product to test, nothing tangible you can try out before you buy. This is a much more intangible sale than software [...]
For many years, the companies where I have been CEO have practiced variations of Agile development. We have all seen numerous papers and blogs about the Agile, as well as the benefits of using this approach; so I will avoid covering the same ground. Other than to say this, in my experience it is less important [...]
