Could we organize ourselves in a different way?

Frederic Laloux, in "Reinventing Organizations", a revealing book, at least for me, invites us to rethink the way we manage companies. The age of the internet, he says, has precipitated a new vision of the world that contemplates the possibility of a distributed intelligence instead of a vertical hierarchy. According to Laloux we should be able to invent a more powerful and meaningful way of working together if we would change our belief system.

In the first part of the book, the author makes an evolutionary analysis of the way in which humans organize companies, which I found colourful and insightful, and that is why I have prepared a summary (for more details I recommend going to the tables that are at the end of chapters 1.1 and 2.3):

Weapons of mass distraction in the National Health System

Salvador Casado

When we go to a health professional's office there are recurring constants, white coats, stretchers, blood pressure monitors and a computer on the table. The medical record is no longer a folder full of paperwork, but an electronic form on which health professionals work. There is no doubt that it has many advantages over the previous format but it has not yet been able to correct its major flaw: its great power of distraction of the professional who uses it.

The limitations of design and usability mean that at each clinical meeting a considerable amount of time has to be devoted to registering, filling in numerous protocols and making requests for analyses, consultations to other professionals or issuing prescription, bureaucracy  or reports of any kind.  The perception of many patients is that health professionals look at their screens more than they do at themselves, and that's usually not cool.  Nor is it a dish  for nurses and doctors who see how their limited time is spent on tasks that prevent them from devoting dignified attention to the people they attend.

Debate with Vinay Prasad on the value of clinical practice and doctors’ training

Vinay Prasad (University of Oregon) and Adam Cifu (University of Chicago), authors of "Ending Medical Reversal: Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), point out 146 clinical practices that should be ditched because it has been proved that they do not deliver the promised results. The list of these practices affects the whole range of the health activity; however, making a detailed reading, it has been observed that these are mainly found in four specialties: cardiology, gynaecology, orthopaedics and family medicine. It’s because of this reason that the Section of Clinical Management of the Catalan Society of Health Management (SCGS), in its Annual Conference to be held on May 18, in agreement with the team of the project Essencial of AQuAS, has organized a debate between one of the authors of the book, Vinay Prasad, and representatives of the 4 mentioned specialties: Xavier Viñolas, president of the Sociedad Catalana de Cardiología (SCC), Juan José Espinós, gynecologist at the Hospital de Sant Pau, Joan Miquel, orthopaedist at the Hospital de Igualada and Marta Expósito of the Sociedad Catalana de Medicina Familiar y Comunitaria (CAMFIC). The debate, which will rely on the moderation of Sandra Garcia Armesto, director of the " Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud ", aims to not only find out first-hand about the work of Vinay Prasad, but also to find out what the related specialists think of these practices and what is the impact on our situation, differentiated in many aspects from that of the United States.

On the other hand, Prasad and Cifu, in the book, propose to significantly modify the training programs in medical schools, in order to train new physicians that are more demanding with regards to scientific rigor, more critical of practices with poor value, more sensitive to the needs of patients and more oriented to the evaluation of results. The proposed formula is very simple: the clinical sciences should be the priority, while the basic ones (as we understand them today) should be complementary. It’s not about studying models and then checking them (current system), but about doing it the other way around: from the findings of the clinic, doctors should review (or accept) the theories. Given the importance of the proposal, we thought it appropriate to organize, in the same framework of the Conference, a second debate moderated by Xavier Bayona, with three academic authorities in the training of doctors: Francesc Cardellach (Universitat de Barcelona), Ramon Pujol (Universitat de Vic - UCC) and Milagros García Barbero, president of the Sociedad Española de Educación Médica and, logically, also inviting Vinay Prasad to join them.

The program of the Conference is attached, with the clear purpose of encouraging all readers to register, because nobody should miss out on the opportunity to listen to and pose questions to Vinay Prasad and all invited speakers.

Organizes:

• Clinical  Management  Section  –  Catalan  Healthcare  Management  Society 

In  collaboration  with:

• IDIBAPS.  Institut  d’Investigacions  Biomèdiques  August  Pi  i  Sunyer  
• Centre  de  Recerca  en  Economia  i  Salut  (CRES)  –  Universitat  Pompeu  Fabra  
• Institute  for  Healthcare  Management  -  ESADE  
• Agency  for  Health  Quality  and  Assessment  of  Catalonia  (AQuAS)  
• Hospital  Clínic  de  Barcelona  
• Aragonese  Institute  of  Health  Sciences 
• Catalan  Society  of  Family  Medicine  (CAMFIC)  
• Catalan  Society  of  Cardiology    
• Catalan  Society  of  Gynecology  and  Obstetrics  
• Catalan  Society  of  Traumatology  and  Orthopedic  Surgery  
• Cochrane  Iberoamérica  

Sponsors:

• Vifor  
• Unió  Catalana  d’Hospitals  
• Consorci  de  Salut  i  Social  de  Catalunya  
• Novartis  

To optimise the expense, the cost must be reduced

Josep Mª Monguet

It’s well known that the budget allocated to health services has endured brutal cumulative reductions over recent years. This is a detrimental fact, but one can not deny the merit of having suffered and then having survived the cut, the professionals - in the first instance and the users alike. It’s sad but praiseworthy.

The health budget is unlikely to improve in the short to medium term because the situation is what it is and by definition the public deficit has a ceiling. Lamenting that resources were not well managed during the "good times" doesn’t change anything. Although it seems a contradiction, the financial management cannot be improved if the health system and its users, collaboratively, are incapable of reducing the avoidable costs that weigh us down. Only thus we can free up resources and allocate them to make the system more efficient.

Home sweet home and some other lessons

David Font

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine explains that the Department of Health in Victoria, Australia in 2010, announced the construction of a 500-bed hospital without using bricks. This virtual hospital currently receives 33,000 patients per year. And the introductory paragraph of the article ends by asking: What was the incredible technological progress that made it possible? Caring for the patient at home!

Let's continue without leaving the house. I remember post by Jordi Varela introducing the experience of Buurtzorg Netherlands, the Dutch home care company, described as a success story by King's Fund. During a Congress in Barcelona, I heard Jos de Blok, the leader of the project, explaining the experience as a paradigm of innovation success. Let's see why.

Plea for the end of clinical practice guidelines

James McCormack, a professor of pharmacy at British Columbia University, posted on his YouTube channel, a video clip that adapts the song of the Traveling Wilburys group, "End of the Line", to become "End of the Guidelines". The video begins with a scene from “Life of Brian" where the actor Graham Chapman as a fake Jesus Christ, addresses his followers from the window of his house and says: "You are wrong; you have no need to follow me. Follow no one; be yourselves, each of you is a different person."