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Milton Packer asks in a Med Page Today piece if biomarkers will eventually replace physicians. He concludes:

“{I}F you are a non-procedural physician — someone who is paid to interact with patients, make a diagnosis, order tests, and prescribe non-procedural treatments — your days may be numbered. Artificial intelligence can easily do all of these things, with no need for an expensive intermediary.

“Artificial intelligence can even be programmed to say hello, ask about symptoms, and provide comforting words. The computer would be very thorough and can be programmed to be very empathetic. Arguably, some patients might not even notice the absence of a human presence, or miss it.

“Fortunately, that day has not yet arrived.

“However, if you are a physician who robotically moves through their daily routine with minimal patient interaction and with a heavy reliance on ordering and treating biomarkers, you are only one step away from making yourself obsolete. In ten years from now, who will need you?

“So here is my advice to all healthcare providers: The mission of delivering healthcare is being a healer — a uniquely human experience. If you do not want to be replaced by a computer, then you should stop acting as if you are following a programmed algorithm.

“Think about that the next time you order your next routine biomarker.”

To read his whole piece, please hit this link.

Madeline Bell, the CEO of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, discusses how to cultivate a better culture in hospitals. Among the observations of the former nurse in Becker’s Hospital Review:

The infrastructure has to be in place so you have collaborative space with ways to mine new ideas, cultivate them and take them to the next level. On the people side, it’s about hiring people with new ideas from outside of your organization and, at the same time, promoting the right people from within. Half my team is promoted from within and half come from the outside, so there are new ideas and ways of looking at things. The cultural piece is always a journey. Hospitals used to be relentlessly standardized and deliver things the same way, because you want to be highly reliable and not harm patients. That’s really important, but it has to coexist with the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship. Hospital leaders and staff have to coexist with the idea that they can make mistakes and learn from them to think about new ways of solving problems.”

To read the whole article, please hit this link.

In a MedPage Today piece, Stephen Parodi, M.D.,  chairman of the Council of Accountable Physician Practices (CAPP), a coalition of multi-specialty medical groups and health systems,  presents five things needed to improve America’s mediocre medical-delivery world.

An article in Medical Economics discusses how providers can benefit from patient safety organization (PSO) alignment.

The article concludes:

“By aligning with a PSO, a provider’s internal deliberations and analysis conducted within its own patient safety evaluation system are also privileged and confidential PSWP (patient safety work products).  As a result, a provider can evaluate its own data before sending it to a PSO, and can also consider a PSO’s recommendations in a completely privileged and confidential setting that avoids the scrutiny of regulators and potential litigants.

“The other major benefit of alignment with a PSO for providers involves improvement of patient safety and clinical outcomes. By contracting with a PSO, providers gain immediate access to evidence-based recommendations on quality issues confronting their peers, as well as empirically-based recommendations on how their practices might be improved and made more efficient. ”

To read the article, please hit this link.