The Harvard Business Review has a
feature on how people who feel strongly about their choices make better business decisions.
I can think of a couple of former bosses who could have benefited by not crowding out the emotionality with which I have approached key decisions in the past. I do my best not to say "I told you so" because I know there are other occasions that an apology would be more in order.
But the times I was most chastised for being emotional with respect to a business decision were the same times I was most committed to the best course for the organization.
This applies in other aspects of health care as well. Most health care purchasing decisions are made by the physician, the patient and the patient's family. Public health experts tend to miss the fact that these decisions are inherently emotional and resist the imposition of analytic processes based on measures such as cost-effectiveness, medical necessity and a paternalistic intervention by an impersonal and well-meaning body of reason.
Economists would say value is best determined (in aggregate) by how much a person is willing to spend for a given benefit. In any market where the real cost to the consumer is minimized by insurance and government-sponsored coverage, "value" becomes difficult to determine and extensive distortions give rise to what we have now: a crazy patchwork system of competing interests struggling against common goals.
Public health is impaired by thinking in the vertical silos of disease processes. There is a program for TB control, another for heart disease, yet another for accident prevention... Health care delivery must be better integrated by context: eg. school health, primary care, diagnostic and therapeutic intervention, and hospital-based care.
Health economists are impaired by not thinking enough about the range of potential economic benefits of interventions for specific diseases and conditions within those environments.
Many people appear to be missing the point that health care is not something anyone wishes to use, with the possible exception of preventive care. When someone is sick, health care consumption decisions are made in the context of emotionality, not reason and, if the HBR article is correct in its assertion, those decisions are made better by their lack of rationality [assuming that reason and emotion rest in opposition].
The Harvard Business Review has a feature on how people who feel strongly about their choices make better business decisions.
I can think of a couple of former bosses who could have benefited by not crowding out the emotionality with which I have approached key decisions in the past. I do my best not to say "I told you so" because I know there are other occasions that an apology would be more in order.
But the times I was most chastised for being emotional with respect to a business decision were the same times I was most committed to the best course for the organization.
This applies in other aspects of health care as well. Most health care purchasing decisions are made by the physician, the patient and the patient's family. Public health experts tend to miss the fact that these decisions are inherently emotional and resist the imposition of analytic processes based on measures such as cost-effectiveness, medical necessity and a paternalistic intervention by an impersonal and well-meaning body of reason.
Economists would say value is best determined (in aggregate) by how much a person is willing to spend for a given benefit. In any market where the real cost to the consumer is minimized by insurance and government-sponsored coverage, "value" becomes difficult to determine and extensive distortions give rise to what we have now: a crazy patchwork system of competing interests struggling against common goals.
Public health is impaired by thinking in the vertical silos of disease processes. There is a program for TB control, another for heart disease, yet another for accident prevention... Health care delivery must be better integrated by context: eg. school health, primary care, diagnostic and therapeutic intervention, and hospital-based care.
Health economists are impaired by not thinking enough about the range of potential economic benefits of interventions for specific diseases and conditions within those environments.
Many people appear to be missing the point that health care is not something anyone wishes to use, with the possible exception of preventive care. When someone is sick, health care consumption decisions are made in the context of emotionality, not reason and, if the HBR article is correct in its assertion, those decisions are made better by their lack of rationality [assuming that reason and emotion rest in opposition].