
There’s no telling when or why a memory returns, or you could say, arrives like a dream. Today my mind goes way back to 1977, the summer before I started college. My friend Todd Parker, from the cross country team, has finished his Freshman year at Oregon State University, where he studies Forestry Science. This summer he’s marooned at a remote fire watch tower in Western Oregon. A group of us, all fellow cross country veterans, make the trip to visit him out in the deep woods, driving for hours over rutted dirt roads under a vast canopy of trees.
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In 1999 Annie Dillard published
My physician neighbor works in several urban emergency departments where mental illness and substance abuse cases run rampant. When I ask him about the impact on readmissions, he lights up: “Are you kidding? It’s off the charts!”
You’ve probably noticed it’s been a bumpy regulatory ride for bundled payments of late. On November 30, 2017, CMS cancelled two “mandatory” bundled payment programs that targeted cardiac and joint replacement care episodes. Then, on January 9, 2018, they announced a new “voluntary” bundled-payment model for 32 clinical-care episodes. What are we to make of this? Will a voluntary approach work? And what does this have to do with teamwork?
Late one night in April 2018, my good friend and work associate finds it so difficult to breathe she wakes her husband to drive her to Emergency. One day she’s on her feet at work, the next she’s in the ICU, diagnosed with Streptococcus Pneumonia, on oxygen, intravenous antibiotics and pain medication. 