In managed care agreements, payers regard rural and urban hospitals as “hospitals”, all uniform in character. But in reality, huge variations in the demography, economics, culture, and environmental characteristics of different rural places make them very different from their urban counterparts and distinctly different from their other rural competitors. Large rural and suburban bedroom...
Continue readingPerils & pitfalls of methodological nationalism in medical tourism
In Social Science, Methodological Nationalism is a term used to describe an intellectual orientation and pattern in scholarly research and many commercially prepared advertorial and promotional pieces that conceives of the nation-state as the sole unit of analysis or as a container for social processes. So for example, rather than...
Continue readingFormer Hospital Owner Gets Over 5 Years in Prison for Paying Illegal Referral Kickbacks
A former California hospital owner will spend more than 5 years in prison, give up $10 million and liquidate his vintage cars after he pled guilty to orchestrating a 15-year health care fraud scheme involving more than USD $40 million in kickbacks to doctors and medical professionals in exchange for thousands of referrals for patients...
Continue readingHealthcare service design
Healthcare organizations tend to focus around products and delivery channels and customer-facing outputs, while internal processes (UX, employees) are overlooked. Maria Todd focuses on these internal processes in this latest article on medicaltourism and healthcare #servicedesign. Service design is not a new concept. It's been around since 1982. Lynn Shostack...
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