Beth Israel

When a doctor's wife is diagnosed with breast cancer

adamg — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:13:55 +0000

Dr. John Halamka at Beth Israel reports on his wife's diagnosis and plans - with her consent - to blog about her treatment:

Last Thursday, my wife Kathy was diagnosed with poorly differentiated breast cancer. She is not facing this alone. We're approaching this as a team, as if together we have cancer. She has been my best friend for 30 years. I will do whatever it takes to ensure we have another 30 years together.

She's has agreed that I can chronicle the process, the diagnostic tests, the therapeutic decisions, the life events, and the emotions we experience with the hope it will help other patients and families on their cancer treatment journey.

His forecast: Cloudy, with a chance of downtime

adamg — Mon, 16 May 2011 11:14:04 +0000

John Halamka, in charge of network computing at both Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, considers recent public cloud outages (from Amazon to Blogger), says he remains optimistic about the basic concept, in part because:

Problems on centralized cloud architecture that is homogenous, well documented, and highly staffed will be more rapidly resolved than problems in distributed, poorly staffed one-off installations.

He describes some of the issues his own campus clouds have had over the past year, including:

HMS has clustered thousands of computing cores together to create a highly robust community resource connected to a petabyte of distributed storage nodes. In theory is should be invincible. In practice it went down. A user with limited high performance computing experience launched a poorly written job to 400 cores in parallel that caused a core dump every second contending for the same disk space. Storage was overwhelmed and went offline for numerous applications.

Do people who resign get severance packages?

adamg — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 16:07:20 +0000

The Globe reports on Paul Levy's $1.6-million severance from Beth Israel Deaconess.

Beth Israel Deaconess CEO to resign

adamg — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:55:35 +0000

Paul Levy announces his resignation to medical-center staffers and readers of his blog.

Hospital doctors try new payment system

adamg — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:17:48 +0000

Physicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have agreed to a new payment system with Blue Cross Blue Shield, in which they get paid a "global" amount based on their average number of patients, rather than per procedure - with bonuses for meeting certain quality and patient-satisfaction goals. Beth Israel CEO Paul Levy considers the effect on the medical center:

Signing out at Beth Israel

adamg — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 12:24:39 +0000

Beth Israel Deaconess CEO Paul Levy discovers that sign, sign, everywhere a sign works well in songs, but not so well on hospital walls.

Two local hospitals work to reduce major patient problem, but don't compare notes

adamg — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 15:51:44 +0000

Last week, Paul Levy, CEO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, cited some work by the staff at Brigham and Women's Hospital to reduce the number of falls patients take in the hospital. Today, he notes his own staff have taken a different approach to the problem. And then he looks at a map of where the two hospitals are and wonders:

This work at BIDMC and the work cited in the previous post from Brigham and Women's Hospital are exemplary and clearly complimentary. But what is striking is the lack of coordination between the two efforts. Two Harvard teaching hospitals, separated by only a few blocks, both concerned about patient safety, have had virtually no contact on this topic.

I hope I am misinterpreting, but I am concerned that this may be one of those instances in which the competitiveness among the Boston hospitals has spilt over into the safety arena. For sure, there are other areas in which information about quality of care is shared and protocols are examined together. But wherever there is a lack of discourse, opportunities for collaboration are lost.

Apps, shmapps: Why one local hospital is sticking with plain old Web browsers for wireless data

adamg — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:30:17 +0000

Cora Sharma talks to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's chief information architect about why the hospital is sticking with browsers even as doctors and other staffers increasingly call up data on smartphones and tablets. For one thing, browers are browsers - there's no need to constantly reinvent the wheel as new devices and operating systems come on the market - he says.

Ed note: Speaking of apps, the Universal Hub iPhone and BlackBerry apps are, yes, still under development as the vendor tweaks the underlying code to make it work better. Hopefully by month's end, you'll actually be able to download it (or use a mobile-ized Web site if, like me, you have an Android phone, or some other non-iPhonish thing).

Local hospital makes shrinking newsrooms work to its advantage

adamg — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:12:09 +0000

Jonathan Potts reports that Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is finding it a lot easier to build up its patient count through fluffy features in the local media now that local newsrooms have mostly gotten rid of dedicated health reporters.

For example, Beth Israel's hand surgery numbers had been down, so Mann pitched a four- to five-minute segment on carpal tunnel syndrome, making one of the hospital’s surgeon available to talk about the condition. Now, every month or so, the station brings in someone from Beth Israel to present common health tips. Doing so fills time and gives anchors a topic to promote for the next day.

One must wonder, however, if all that balances out the reporting and opining local media continue to do about the hospital CEO.

Via Dave Copeland.

State: Hospital directors waited too long to do something about CEO's relationship with employee

adamg — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:22:00 +0000

The state Attorney General's office says the $50,000 fine levied by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's board of directors against CEO Paul Levy was punishment enough. But the AG's office, which found no abuse of hospital funds, also criticized the directors for not putting a stop to the relationship earlier, even though some board members might have known about it as early as 2003:

Had (Levy) been called on his failure to act, or had his failure to act been reported to the entire Board, this acknowledged 'lapse of judgment' might never have occurred. For senior managers who reported to Levy, demanding a response was likely difficult. For Board members, it was their job.

Can what works for Southwest Airlines work for a teaching hospital?

adamg — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:28:23 +0000

No, not the "bags fly free" part, at least, not directly. Paul Levy, CEO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, writes hospital staff he was struck by the differences in the way Southwest and American Airlines handle luggage - and the passengers who own it - and began to wonder if Southwest had the right idea by giving passengers more of a say in the way they fly:

... This kind of approach is most successful when it is a partnership, where dependence in one direction is transformed into bidirectional interdependence. I'm not writing today to provide lots of details, but to give you a heads up: Over the coming months, look for an expansion in our engagement with these advisory councils and other outreach to our patients and their families. We also plan to work with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to encourage and enhance the activities of patient-run organizations in Boston and beyond.

If we can learn to be full partners with our patients in carrying out our purpose, the sky’s the limit. ...

SWAT unit called in when man attacks Beth Israel guard, then holes up in basement

adamg — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:38:43 +0000

8/1/10 - 5:45 pm

Alert New England reports a man with a knife apparently went after a security guard at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center shortly before 6 p.m., then barricaded himself in the basement at the hospital's Brookline Avenue facility. However, by 7:30 the man had managed to flee and was last spotted heading toward the Fenway. Police unleashed the hounds in pursuit.

Paul Levy goes public

adamg — Sat, 15 May 2010 14:04:35 +0000

Look for Levy interviews in local media through next week as he goes public and says he won't resign as CEO at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He links to three interviews so far; the Herald has the most details on the woman in question and her role at Beth Israel (more specifically, its Needham hospital).

The cost of an indiscretion: $50,000

adamg — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:27:04 +0000

The Boston Business Journal reports the board of trustees at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has censured CEO Paul Levy over that inappropriate relationship with an underling and fined him $50,000. Also, one trustee resigned, although he wouldn't say why.'

Levy posts his apology.

Beth Israel CEO apologizes for something

adamg — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:46:56 +0000

Exactly what, we don't know, but the "lapses of judgment in a personal relationship" were serious enough to warrant a daylong meeting of the hospital's board of trustees, at which Paul Levy apologized, the Herald reports. The Globe also reports.