Lift Off!: The Launch of the prakashpatelmd.com Blog

Thanks for joining me on this journey from the beginning, as this is my first blog post on prakashpatelmd.com. I’ve wanted to start a blog for some time now because I believe there are so many big and little issues that should be highlighted, discussed and maybe even solved. And for me, the first step in meaningful change is dialogue.

In my travels throughout the health care system, in business in general, as a physician, and as a husband and father of two, I’ve developed a worldview that I want to share, test, change and cultivate, with your help. I want to debate, convince, and be convinced. I hope to advance solutions, birth a cause, and make people think.

Through it all, I promise to be forthright, and convey exactly what I see, know and feel predicated on the facts to the best of my knowledge and that are available regardless if they make us uncomfortable or are major disruptors to the status quo; and I expect the same from those engaging in this blog, emerging as potential competitors with one another..

I’m going to tackle some weighty issues related to health care in general, and surgery and implantable devices in particular. I’ll talk about big data in health care, the sometimes evasive pursuit of quality care and sustainable outcomes, and cost containment. And of course the critical importance of transparency throughout the health care system so that we can all understand what’s being purchased from whom, for how much and the end-value of that purchase.

Convergence of critical attributes has been on my mind, too, where quality, sustainable outcomes, cost of care, reporting, reimbursements and overall financial performance converge to drive health care in this post-reform era. Yet at the same time a divergence is occurring in terms of marketing and positioning of these attributes to those who will pay the bills, all of which will lead to some interesting market dynamics. The concept being that going forward, all health care entities whether you’re a hospital, a physician practice, a health plan, etc., will at the same time be seeking a symbiotic relationship with others in the care chain but simultaneously a number of these same entities will look to be more than they are today. For example, will some hospitals transform themselves to become fully integrated bed to managed care benefit players? Or will healthcare providers come to create their own brand of insurance product sold locally without an intervening payer aggregator of employee lives in the middle? What will become of the traditional health plan? How do they differentiate their model going forward?

I also have an interest in the expansive and meaningful possibilities I believe exist in forging private/public partnerships to solve some of our most intractable problems. So I’ll address that at some point, as well.

Sometimes I’ll be doing field correspondence reporting when I’m traveling to conferences and other meetings, sometimes from my desk at Access MediQuip’s HQ, and sometimes from the sidelines of my kids’ games if the score is tied going into the final minutes and I just have to tell someone.

I hope you’ll comment on these posts, and together we can expand our footprint to reach more people with more ideas, as well. So thank you again for joining me in this kickoff post. Let the blogging begin!