Several years ago Tiger Wood’s former golf coach wrote a book with the above title. Among providing glimpses of Tiger’s personal life, his work ethic, practice routines, diet, interaction with his wife, etc… the author of course talks about Tiger’s presence on the golf course, his swing mechanics and level of focus on the course.
Cut Waste and Increase Quality of Care with New Technology
I’m sure you’ve thought about it. Every time a package arrives at your pathology practice, it represents a patient anxiously waiting for results at the other end.
What would happen if you could significantly reduce the time it takes to return an opinion? How would your practice benefit if you could reduce the costs involved?
As a medical student/intern/resident in the early to mid-1990s, most of the pathologists I was exposed to in a university/medical center setting were pathologists who were-first and primarily-general pathologists, general surgical pathologists and clinical pathologists. Everyone did everything in terms of surgical pathology subspecialties, with a few notable exceptions (bone marrow examinations and liver biopsies, depending on the nature of the case and the particular pathologist assigned the case). In addition, the staff pathologists I worked with also covered some area of the clinical laboratory and were responsible for any issues referred from house staff during evening and weekend call.
In a previous blog post, we shared key steps to a successful digital pathology system implementation. This is the second article of a two-part series designed to assist you in managing the whole process.
Two weeks ago, healthcare news headlines and Twitter made hundreds of thousands of references to Dr. Eric Topol’s keynote address at the 8th Annual Health 2.0 conference. For a review of Dr. Topol’s thoughts and comments, click here.
I read with interest a recent article entitled “If A Computer Can Diagnose Cancer, Will Doctors Become Obsolete?”. The discussion in the article has several purely economic points and focus, but what caught my eye of course was being made obsolete by a computer!
An old (-er, I mean experienced) pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon once told me, “The heart is not a music box, it is a pump, why should I use a stethoscope to listen to it?” An experienced neurosurgeon once told me, “Neurologists are the tool we used to use before the CT scan” and a critical care intensivist friend has reminded me several times of the value of a stethoscope when you have arterial blood gases, central venous pressure monitoring, and ventilator settings you can adjust for optimum care.
Some time ago I came across some videos and a TED talk by Dr. Zubin Damania aka ZDoggMD. Born of Indian parents, educated at the finest colleges, medical schools and residencies, he felt his career had hit a wall. He felt he wasn’t making the impact he’d planned to when he first entered the medical field as a physician. So Dr. Damania transformed himself into an entrepreneur, motivational speaker and social media cult figure.
A friend of mine recently put me on to some old, and not so old, articles about radiology services being outsourced, including this story entitled “Who’s Reading Your X-Ray?" in The New York Times, published more than a decade ago, and another article a few years old from NBC News entitiled “Is a doctor reading your X-rays? Maybe not”.
Current technologies can enable real time access to expert pathology specialists for case review and 2nd opinions and are particularly valuable for patients in areas where specialists are in short supply. But other barriers to widespread adoption of these technologies remain. One of the key issues that must be addressed to spur that adoption is remote licensing for specialists.
