DJP Update 4-20-2010 Read & view original words of individual in context rather than talking heads’ summary
A quick update with a plea to go to original documents or video when evaluating someone.
Here is one example. Dr. Donald Berwick is President Obama’s nominee to head up CMS of HHS. That important agency has a lot to do with Medicare and Medicaid payments as you already know. Many of us know of Dr. Berwick’s pioneering work advocating quality. No doubt you will see lots of info pro and con about any nominee but you should use your own experience with the individual PLUS read and view original sources rather than accepting someone else’s conclusion. Here is a link to Dr. Berwick’s site at IHI: http://www.ihi.org/ihi and his Wikipedia bio is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Berwick
Toward that end, here are some references for you to add to your research.
The first is an interview by the president of the American Health Lawyers Association with Dr. Berwick. He discusses, among other things, his view of NICE in the United Kingdom. You also will note the discussion of information technology (IT) and privacy at the link. I posted a link below to that interview on Twitter today.
“The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the UK, for example, is widely disparaged in the U.S., but it is completely unfairly disparaged. It’s a brilliant organization, precisely existing to look at all comparative information and understand what works and what doesn’t.”
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www.twitter.com/DJPNEWS
DJPNEWS
Prez AmerHealthLawyersAssn AHLA interview Nov2009 with #DonBerwickMD, CMS of HHS nominee/PrezObama http://tinyurl.com/y2l288l
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Also see his interviews in “Money-driven Machine” videos, “Opening Sequence” and “Intensive-Care 2” at:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18969.cfm
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CMS Website is: http://www.cms.gov/
One may agree or disagree with Dr. Berwick’s views and that is the American way, but reach your conclusion on the true facts and not some distortion.
With your knowledge and experience dealing with Medicaid and Medicare, you no doubt realize that whoever heads CMS has a herculean task. Not sure why anyone would want to tackle that bureaucracy. Good luck to Dr. Berwick in his adventure with CMS.
One last thing. Imagine if everyone on Medicaid got voucher for health insurance and had an array of private insurance they could buy across state lines PLUS privately contract with physicians without penalty. There could be a lot smaller CMS staff and doctors would stay in practice!
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Stay well,
Donald
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Donald J. Palmisano, MD, JD
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