Mistakes
There are only two classes of people who never make mistakes—they are the dead and the unborn. Mistakes are the inevitable accompaniment of the greatest gift given to man—individual freedom of action. If he were only a pawn in the fingers of Omnipotence, with no self-moving power, man would never make a mistake, but his very immunity would degrade him to the ranks of the lower animals and the plants. An oyster never makes a mistake—it has not the mind that would permit it to forsake an instinct.
Let us be glad of the dignity of our privilege to make mistakes, glad of the wisdom that enables us to recognize them, glad of the power that permits us to turn their light as a glowing illumination along the pathway of our future.
The New Queen of Sunscreen?
Tired of taking 10 minutes to rub on your sunscreen at the beach? Uncomfortable with one of your dude friends covering your backside? Thanks to Kristen McClellan, that may all change.
So I was walking through the exhibit floor during the Cornell entrepreneurship celebration 2 weeks ago and came across Kristen McClellan’s display. Kristen is a Junior in the school for Industrial and Labor Relations – typically the home of budding lawyers not entrepreneurs. She is the proud founder of Snappy Screen a unique sunscreen application system. Here’s how it works: stand in front of the 8 foot high “free standing, weather proof” booth, choose your desired SPF and dispense. Kristen’s patent pending cartridges then feed sunscreen through multiple nozzles that spray you with an even mist. Dispense once for the front and once for the back and you’re covered evenly.
The idea was instantly appealing because it turned the “spray tan” concept on its head. Instead of spray tan, Kristen advocates “spray screen.”
Kristen built a prototype of her spray on, sunscreen booth in her driveway. She’s working with some engineers to perfect the design and will be testing the refined versions at a few Long Island beach sites this summer. She’s looking to market it to resorts, clubs with swimming pools and beach parks.
Time saving and healthy… could be a winner. Good luck Kristen.
The Coach
You probably have not heard of my college football coach. But soon that could all change. He just invented something that might sweep the country.
Soloflex, Total Gym, Abdominizer….The Bear Claw? Perhaps.
The Bear Claw is the creation of Pete DeStefano, defensive line coach at Cornell University for the last 20 years. Coach D recruited me and coached me while I was there. To call him a friend and mentor would be an understatement. “Pops” as the linemen affectionately referred to him, was our dad away from home in those formidable years. And we maintain an unshakable bond to this day. Fast forward a dozen years.
Thursday morning we met up for a little coffee and Coach proceeded to fill me in on his new venture. He told me how he had invented a simple, lightweight and portable training tool for football linemen. It’s called The Bear Claw. And his newly formed company “MAD athletic” is poised to now distribute it nationwide.
For me it’s an entrepreneurship story that has come full circle. When I was a player, I had the “pleasure” of testing the precursor of the Bear Claw in practice daily (rumor has it that a few of the prototypes ended up in the gorge. I cannot refute or deny these allegations). Then they were known as “the pipes.” None of us -not even Coach DeStefano knew at the time that he would patent the device and create a business.
The concept of the Bear Claw is simple, 2 linemen hold the device, get into a defensive position and perform lateral movement drills against one another. Check out the video. It will do a better job of describing it than I can.
Anyhow, I’m pumped for Coach D. I hope it sweeps the country. He deserves all the success in the world. The Bear Claw is authentic and original…just like Coach D.
The Professor
A chance encounter leads to new knowledge. How this professor pointed me to some data that confirmed my entrepreneurial intuition.
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After my symposium session last Friday morning I was approached by a distinguished, professorial looking gentleman (the bow tie was the tip off). Lo and behold he was a professor. His name was William White and he happened to be the head of the Cornell Sloan Health Policy program. He stated that he enjoyed the story of our start up journey -flattery always works. And he picked up on a point that I made in my talk as being a driving force in our venture.
That point was that health care information technology (IT) often hinders communication instead of improving it. And nobody is quite sure whether IT makes health care delivery more or less productive. It seems so intuitive: computerizing records should make them safer, more efficient and more productive. But that depends on how you define productive. Productive for whom?
I would define productive as any activity that ultimately leads to improvements in efficiency and delivery of patient care and satisfaction. Anyone who’s been a patient knows that it’s possible to get lost in the system. The system is just so complex. Health care, however is still about human to human interaction. Patients want face time with their caregivers. It is part of the healing process.
To the extent then, that EMR’s improve that human to human interaction, they are good. But there’s the catch. They do often interrupt the interaction. For example, if a doctor used to be able to write his note in 2 minutes and it now takes 5 with the EMR, those 3 minutes are potentially shunted away from true human interaction.
I’d like to thank Professor White for alerting me to 2 interesting articles that hit on this point. You can check them out for yourself if you want here and here. I’ve summarized a few of the salient points below:
EMR’s are not all good or bad. They do add unique changes to the clinician patient interaction that at times improve care and at times hamper it.
How they work well:
-they allow clinicians to rapidly access reports and data in their office
-they can link to scheduling and billing systems and better coordinate the two processes
-they make medication look-up, easy
-they can code in automatic reminders for clinicians
Where they are lacking:
-data overload. Cutting and pasting and template formation encourages overly verbose records. Finding the needle in the proverbial information haystack may slow record review
-record keeping becomes a billing exercise. Many EMRs are designed around maximizing billable charges by allowing clinicians/ hospitals to hit coding “bullet points.” The system becomes divorced from the patient care and revolves more tightly around patient charges. The two are not equal
-Interoperability between systems is poor. Clinicians are forced to fax records anyway
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Bringing it back home… At TouchConsult we’re all for technology. But we’re advocating technology that works within the natural rhythm of the of the doctor patient relationship; technology that encourages more human interaction and better communication. We’d like to see more companies tackle the health IT problem from this angle. We believe that the market will eventually move this way. And we’ll do our best to help push it in that direction.
Interesting People
As I mentioned in my last post, I attended the Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration this past week. Some foggy weather in NYC delayed my arrival into Ithaca a few hours but it did not damper the experience one bit. It was an absolute blast. I met a bunch of interesting people all passionate about entrepreneurship in their own way. Fields ranging from healthcare to energy and hospitality were represented. I hope to go back next year.
One of the most enjoyable aspects was watching the “pitch” competitions. There were 2 levels of competition. The undergraduate program is called “The Big Idea.” Any undergrad can enter and the finalists (I believe a dozen) got to present and compete for a prize. The Venture Challenge was open to anyone with a connection to Cornell and was for groups with a more sophisticated start up plan. A field of 48 was whittled down to 5 finalists. They presented to some hard hitting VC’s and the winner picked up a $10,000 prize.
Over the next few posts I want to feature some of the more interesting stories that I came across while I was at the conference. Some are cool ideas. All center around interesting people just trying to change the world for the better.
Entrepreneurship@Cornell
I will be going back to “The Hill” as a panelist for the 2 day Entrepreneurship@Cornell Celebration starting Thursday. The symposium is called Health and Medical Services: Successful Transitioning from Employee to Entrepreneur, the College of Human Ecology’s Sloan Program in Health Administration and eCornell.
Should be fun. Will also try to catch some spring football while I’m back.
And congrats to the men’s lacrosse team who knocked off Syracuse earlier this evening. Go Red!
Work Hour Restrictions to Pinch Residencies Further
New regulations starting this July will restrict intern work hours even further. Nobody yet knows how the system will cope…
Rotator Cuff Tears: WSJ highlights treatment options
The “rotator cuff” is a term used to describe the four main muscles that attach directly to the head of the humerus and that help stabilize and move the shoulder. When to get surgery on a torn cuff depends on a lot of factors. One thing that this article does not go into depth about is the age of the tear.
Acute or sudden tears are a different animal altogether than chronic tears. Acute tears are best addressed on a more urgent basis. They are MUCH easier to repair in the first few months.
If you’re over 50, have had a recent fall onto your shoulder and are having significant shoulder pain and weakness, you might want to get it checked out.
Doing Good in Business
I’ve been following Michael Masterson for the last few months now. He is a successful marketer that writes a weekly journal of insights. I found this one prescient. He makes the argument that there’s a better path to success than ruthlessness. Hope you enjoy this article
The Ten Commandments of Doing “Good” in Business
1. The customer is always right. Even when he is wrong.
2. Don’t promise what you know you can’t deliver.
3. Honor your verbal contracts with the same seriousness as you honor written agreements.
4. When negotiating, always aim for a deal that is as good for your partner as it is for you.
5. If a deal turns out badly for your partner but stays good for you, change it to be fair to him.
6. Always pay your employees as much as or more than they are worth – or, if that is impossible, as much as you can afford to pay them, with the promise of making it up to them later.
7. Share your business wisdom with everyone, including your competitors.
8. Never engage in gossip. Speak as if the person you are speaking about will find out what you are saying. (Because he will.)
9. Never take advantage of your vendors simply because you can. Your goal should be to compensate them fairly, even if it means paying them more than the market demands.
10. Never engage in recriminations and try to avoid litigation. In the long run, it is better to be the screwee rather than the screwer.
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Why Orthopedic Surgeons (or anyone for that matter) Should Use Dropbox
If you’re not using Dropbox, you’re wasting time and energy and needlessly inconveniencing yourself. I’m not sure how many of you use Dropbox. Maybe you already do. If you don’t, or if you want to learn another way of using it, keep reading.
Dropbox is a freenweb based file storage program. It’s simple. Go to www.dropbox.com, and open an account. Then in seconds begin to securely upload any file that you want to the Dropbox servers. Presto! The files will follow you wherever there is an internet connection. No more lost USB flash drives. No more emailing files to yourself and hoping you’ve updated and shared the latest copy of a document with your other computer.
As a surgeon I use it to help store my physical therapy protocols. I work out of 3 separate offices and have a series of about 15 different therapy protocols for patients depending on their condition/ surgery. It’s hard to keep copies of all of those protocols on file at each office; especially when I use some of them only rarely.
With Dropbox, I store all of my therapy protocols in my account and can pull them up wherever I am. Hell, I could do surgery half way around the world and still be able to pull up my own protocol. I can also share folders with colleagues without having to email attachments.
Full disclosure, I have no financial interest in Dropbox, but I do find it useful.
Many New Docs Break Work Hour Rules
A few years ago, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) put into effect work hour restrictions on doctors in training (residents). Residents are now, not allowed to work more than an average of 80 hours per week. Sounds like a lot by most standards but it isn’t when compared to the 120 hours that many used to work prior to these rules.
Well new studies show that many residents are fudging their time cards. Check out our new post on this at the Touch Consult blog. There are some implications to this, namely that hospital systems have yet to really adapt to the changes. Residents have been a form of cheap labor for years and lessening their work hours drives up costs and stresses and already stressed system. Not to mention the effect on communication problems…
Broken Window Fallacy Resurfaces
The natural disaster of a tsunami could actually provide a temporary boost to the global economy.
Larry Summers, former director of President Obama’s economic council and a former head of the World Bank, said rebuilding could temporarily boost the Japanese economy.
The logical extension of his argument is that we should destroy multiple major metropolitan areas around the globe to “provide a temporary boost to the global economy.” Read Bastiat to gain a better understanding of the implications of the above statements. This is similar to the argument that war “stimulates” growth.
It’s nonsense of course. Using “economic growth” as a monolithic metric like this creates a gross distortion. This is why figures like GDP are deceptive. They fail to quantify the overall measure of wealth in a society.
Japan’s overall wealth plummeted overnight in the wake of the tsunami. Implying that rebuilding will “boost” the economy fails to acknowledge the vast destruction of existing wealth and the opportunity cost of unrealized progress which will never occur due to resources expended in rebuilding.
