Ashish Jha

See the following -

Pay For Hospital CEOs Linked More To Technology, Patient Satisfaction Than Quality, Study Finds

Jordan Rau | Kaiser Health News | October 14, 2013

[...] A new study of CEO pay at nonprofit hospitals finds that executives at institutions that have a lot of fancy medical technology and high patient satisfaction are paid more than their peers. But running a hospital that scores well on keeping more patients alive or providing extensive charity care does not translate into a compensation bump. Read More »

A Regulator, Harvard Prof. Walk Into An ER ...

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | June 30, 2014

Between the health reform’s goal of avoiding acute hospitalizations, the rise of urgent care clinics and the new possibilities of digital health, emergency rooms are poised for transformation. Indeed, a much needed one...

Read More »

Can the Healthcare System Change Its Spots?

Just a few years ago, things were looking up for the American health care system. We were going to start finding better ways to pay for care: call it pay-for-performance (P4P), value-based purchasing (VBP), or similar terms. We were going to nudge -- or, rather, push -- providers into more clinically integrated systems (e.g., ACOs) to help improve outcomes and to control costs. And, of course, with wider use of electronic health records (EHR), we'd be able to better coordinate care and make decisions based on actual data. It all sounded very promising. Now, though -- what's that old expression about the leopard not being able to change its spots?...

Deaths By Medical Mistakes Hit Records

Erin McCann | Healthcare IT News | July 18, 2014

It's a chilling reality – one often overlooked in annual mortality statistics: Preventable medical errors persist as the No. 3 killer in the U.S. – third only to heart disease and cancer – claiming the lives of some 400,000 people each year...

Read More »

Healthcare Has Cost Problems, but IT and EHRs Do Not Have to be One of Them

I’m proud to lead a group of intelligent and energetic technology professionals committed to developing a robust healthcare IT system that is (1) easy for clinicians to use, (2) improves patient health and (3) doesn’t bankrupt hospital budgets. We think any sustainable system must have those three key requirements. And how is healthcare doing thus far? The EHRs available today are developing rapidly. Vendors are making frequent and impactful improvements to improve system usability. Clinicians are getting better at maximizing the contribution healthcare IT makes to patient health and safety. It’s not hard to see how healthcare IT can meet the first two requirements and broadly contribute to improved healthcare.

Read More »

Healthcare's Death Star Thinking vs. Human Centered Design

I missed it when it first came out, but a providential tweet from the always perceptive Steve Downs tipped me to a most interesting article from Jennifer Pahlka with the wonderful title “Death Star Thinking and Government Reform.” The article is not directly related to healthcare, although it does include healthcare examples, but Ms. Pahlka’s central point very much applies to most efforts to reform healthcare: The need to believe that a Death Star-style solution is at hand — that we have analyzed the plans and found the single point of failure — runs deep in our culture.

Read More »

Interoperability: Quick Route To Better Care

Neil Versel | InformationWeek | November 12, 2012

Healthcare quality and efficiency could move forward 20 years in a matter of months if only there were true interoperability of electronic health information, according to a noted critic of the health IT industry. Read More »

Is U.S. Health Care Unprepared For Ebola?

Garance Burke | Top Tech News | October 30, 2014

The U.S. health care apparatus is so unprepared and short on resources to deal with the deadly Ebola virus that even small clusters of cases could overwhelm parts of the system, according to an Associated Press review of readiness at hospitals and other components of the emergency medical network...

Read More »

More Work Is Needed On The Safety And Efficacy Of Healthcare Information Technology

Stephen Soumerai and Ross Koppel | The Health Care Blog | July 17, 2013

If one were writing about the improvement of gastronomy in America, one would probably not celebrate “over 300 billion hamburgers served.”  But that’s very much the type of success Dr. Ashish Jha is celebrating in last week’s piece on recent US healthcare IT sales. [...] Read More »

Practicing in an Age of Uncertainty

If you've ever had a hard time trying to decide what's best for your health (e.g., Sorry, There's Nothing Magical About Breakfast), perhaps you can take comfort in the fact that physicians often aren't so sure either. Or perhaps not. A new study in Annals of Surgery, and nicely reported on by Julia Belluz in Vox, focused on surgical uncertainty.  The researchers sent four detailed clinical vignettes to a national sample of surgeons, seeking to get their assessment on the risks/benefits of operative and non-operative treatment, as well as their recommendations. You'd like to think there was good consensus on what to do, but that was not the case...

Practicing in an Age of Uncertainty

If you've ever had a hard time trying to decide what's best for your health (e.g., Sorry, There's Nothing Magical About Breakfast), perhaps you can take comfort in the fact that physicians often aren't so sure either. Or perhaps not. A new study in Annals of Surgery, and nicely reported on  by Julia Belluz in Vox, focused on surgical uncertainty.  The researchers sent four detailed clinical vignettes to a national sample of surgeons, seeking to get their assessment on the risks/benefits of operative and non-operative treatment, as well as their recommendations. You'd like to think there was good consensus on what to do, but that was not the case...

The Meaningful Use Stage 2 Finish Line

Hospitals across the country have until September 30 to complete their 2014 reporting period for Meaningful Use Stage 2. Recently Ashish Jha and Julia Adler-Milstein published important articles in Health Affairs about the current state of EHRs  and Health Information Exchange .  What can we learn about the status of Meaningful Use Stage 2 across the country? Read More »

VA's $400K History Book Sidetracked By Crisis

Dennis Wagner | AZ Central | January 19, 2015

When the media, investigators and Congress exposed the Department of Veterans Affairs' broken and dishonest health-care system last year, VA officials were forced to postpone publication of a $400,000-plus history book that glowingly portrays the agency's achievements...

Read More »