This gives me hope for the US health care system. Gawande’s ‘Being Mortal’ really helped me understand what was happening when my dad was dying. Highly recommend it
Surgeon Atul Gawande selected as CEO of new health care company from Amazon
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Re: Surgeon Atul Gawande selected as CEO of new health care company from Amazon
#12Atul Gawande is a brilliant person with interesting ideas on how to make healthcare more humane and robust. This is still probably a terrible choice of CEO.
To my knowledge he has never run a large organization or dealt directly with the complex backend of the healthcare system. The was healthcare is delivered and paid for is full of independent, semi monopolistic players that have often conflicting incentives. Oh and lets not forget that we have 50 states and 50 different sets of regulations.
Unless the plan is to create a brand new completely vertically integrated system, you’re gonna have to deal with the existing infrastructure, and I’d be much more confident in success if the person leading that effort had experience there. Having worked with many physicians and insurance companies, I can say from experience those skill sets are not the same.
Even if the idea is to be vertically integrated, someone like the CEO of the Mayo Clinic or Kaiser would have been a better choice.
Re: Surgeon Atul Gawande selected as CEO of new health care company from Amazon
#13I can thoroughly recommend reading Atul Gawande's "Checklist Manifesto". The premise, on the face of it, is mundane, but the stories that back up the claims are thoroughly enjoyable to read. http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-manifesto/
The book is good, but the article it‘s based on is better, because there‘s simply not enough material for a whole book, so it feels a bit forced.
Re: Surgeon Atul Gawande selected as CEO of new health care company from Amazon
#14"The new company will be based in Boston." Just wondering if there's a big regulatory benefit to being in Massachusetts.
Not to my knowledge, but it is one of nation's healthcare and tech hubs.
Re: Surgeon Atul Gawande selected as CEO of new health care company from Amazon
#15I love Gawande; he's an amazing author and very thoughtful, systematic physician. That being said, to my knowledge he has never actually run anything before or operated on the back end of healthcare, so it seems like sort of a strange choice for an org this size and of this type.
Additionally, his (publicly stated) thinking seems to primarily revolve around systematizing routine practice to reliably increase outcomes for the majority of patients (ie what he espouses in Checklist Manifesto). While this is certainly important, routine patients are not responsible for most health care spend, edge case patients are. A tiny minority of very sick people account for a majority of health care spend, so I would argue that cost recovery should center around creative management of these patients rather than more systematic management of routine care, and the org should really be led by someone whose thinking centers on that.
Re: Surgeon Atul Gawande selected as CEO of new health care company from Amazon
#16Solid choice. He's a brilliant guy and obviously has deep knowledge of current flaws in out system.
Re: Surgeon Atul Gawande selected as CEO of new health care company from Amazon
#17Curious, what are the n-order effects of large corporations reducing the cost of providing health insurance for their employees? My wages won't go up (probably), their profits will go up but I'm sure many other things happen in the middle. How will this affect taxes at the fed, state, local level? Will one level see an increase/decrease in taxes collected? etc.
Re: Surgeon Atul Gawande selected as CEO of new health care company from Amazon
#18Atul Gawande is a brilliant person with interesting ideas on how to make healthcare more humane and robust. This is still probably a terrible choice of CEO. To my knowledge he has never run a large organization or dealt directly with the complex backend of the healthcare system. The was healthcare is delivered and paid for is full of independent, semi monopolistic players that have often conflicting incentives. Oh an…
I’d say hire that person as the COO. This will be a big organization. I think the person at the top needs to have a strong ideals about the direction of the organization
Re: Surgeon Atul Gawande selected as CEO of new health care company from Amazon
#19I can thoroughly recommend reading Atul Gawande's "Checklist Manifesto". The premise, on the face of it, is mundane, but the stories that back up the claims are thoroughly enjoyable to read. http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-manifesto/
Thanks for bringing this up! The name of the CEO didn't ring any bells for me until your comment. I've read the book and loved it; I second the recommendation.
Came here to say the same - book is an excellent read applicable across many professions.
Re: Surgeon Atul Gawande selected as CEO of new health care company from Amazon
#20Atul Gawande is a brilliant person with interesting ideas on how to make healthcare more humane and robust. This is still probably a terrible choice of CEO. To my knowledge he has never run a large organization or dealt directly with the complex backend of the healthcare system. The was healthcare is delivered and paid for is full of independent, semi monopolistic players that have often conflicting incentives. Oh an…
He's certainly a mismatch for the likes of Amazon and I'll bet won't have a long tenure. Reading about their worker healthcare ("AmCare"), one pictures a rusty tin of stained bandages. And a permanent mark on one's employee record if the tin is opened.