Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Jan 30, 2012, 11:39 pm
I’ve been on a blog vacation — the longest since I began writing this back in 2005, but for good reason.  Another former trumpet player, Kevin Taylor and I have been working on the creation of a research institute in Southwest Florida.  It will embrace a research mission, academic excellence ...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Oct 31, 2011, 12:26 am
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was in Santa Fe, NM for an ACHE educational training course. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the things that were said there by Master Instructor, Dr. Tom Atchison, Ed.D. (a/k/a, Yoda), the President and founder of Atchison Consulting Group. I...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Oct 25, 2011, 10:47 am
During this time of economic uncertainty, the recent loss of creative, innovative leaders like Steve Jobs and Dr. Lee Lipsenthal adds to a collective national and personal concern over what seems like a serious lack of truly inventive and ethical leadership. Who will represent the next wave of...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Oct 17, 2011, 3:51 pm
For the past three years, I have had a chance to dig heavily into the future, and I’m pretty convinced that the old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” has never been more true than in today’s healthcare environment.  What was a given before in healthcare management may no longe...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Oct 7, 2011, 4:34 pm
I have to admit that the 12-credit, continuing education course I signed up for was not supposed to be fun. In fact, I fully expected it to be two full days of classroom work, in a room with no windows, followed by exactly zero recreation time. I knew it would include a working breakfast, working lu...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Sep 28, 2011, 6:02 pm
The U.S. poverty statistics came out a few weeks ago, and things haven’t been this bad since 1993. Look to your left; look to your right. About one in every six Americans is now considered to be living below the poverty level. In 1993, the average new house was $113,000, the average income was $31...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Sep 22, 2011, 5:23 pm
We have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find…God. —Joseph Campbell Such has been my experience ...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Sep 18, 2011, 9:06 pm
From a blog entitled TTAG, The Truth About Genetics, comes a scathing indictment of the American Cancer Society. Truthfully, some of the contents are infuriating, but especially so, because as a co-founder of a research institute, I’ve lived them. First hand. When I saw that  the American Cancer...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Sep 6, 2011, 2:24 pm
“Walk the Walk” author Alan Deutschman’s previous book kind of said it all in the title, “Change or Die.” In that book, Alan carefully lays out the statistical survivability matrix, and poses the question: Alan Deutschman “What if you were given that choice? For real. What if it weren�...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Aug 27, 2011, 3:06 pm
While serving as a hospital administrator for over twenty years, I was aware of numerous people who had died in the emergency room because they had no insurance, had not yet qualified for Medicaid and were terrified that the cost of care would force them to live on the street.  Consequently, they w...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Aug 18, 2011, 10:06 am
Last weekend, I traveled to Barcelona. How does one afford to spend a weekend in Barcelona in this economy with the dollar at $1.40 to one Euro, one might ask?  Points, my friends, points. When you travel enough, it’s possible to build up quite a few of these delightfully-useful but quickly-dimin...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Aug 7, 2011, 9:38 pm
After a life-changing experience, Boston area businessman Dave deBronkart has re-named himself E-patient Dave.  My introduction to Dave took place on January 26th, 2010.  We were both invited to make presentations in Washington D.C. at the Health 2.0 STAT event. This was my first rapid-fire Ignite...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Jul 29, 2011, 6:56 pm
The other day, I was imagining a conversation between our U.S. elected officials about the Smurfs.  On one side of the aisle, the rhetoric would go something like this: “I believe that Poppa Smurf  represents Karl Marx. He is not the leader of the Smurfs but an equal who is admired by the others...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Jul 16, 2011, 2:47 pm
David Brooks wrote a very interesting column last week in the New York Times entitled  “Death and Budgets,” in which he explains the current Washington D.C. budget impasse and compares it to our collective inability to come to grips with our own mortality. David Brooks | Josh Haner/New York Ti...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Jul 7, 2011, 10:26 pm
When Health Affairs released a first-ever study of geographic variances in Medicaid spending on July 7th, it was a new twist on transparency that is just the beginning of what will become a detail-by-detail exposé of care and treatment of patients in the United States.  Just imagine a few years fr...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Jun 26, 2011, 12:17 pm
I’ve been periodically volunteering my weekend time to help establish an equestrian healing center where the horses help to heal the people. Although I’m not particularly connected to horses, I appreciate them and like to watch them run freely through the fields. It’s the people in this part...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Jun 9, 2011, 3:18 pm
As part of my continuing series of anti-bullying blog posts, this week’s post was inspired by a WDUQ/NPR interview of the authors of a book entitled: Unleashing the Power of Unconditional Respect: Transforming Law Enforcement and Police Training. It was written by Jack Colwell, a police veteran an...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - May 24, 2011, 10:51 pm
Each year American farmers must feed an additional 80 million people internationally. Image credit: ForeignPolicy.com During the first two decades of my adult life, it was commonplace to see story after story about the starving people in places like Biafra. Some three decades later, I now understa...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - May 19, 2011, 6:17 pm
Several years ago, at the Clinical Breast Care Project’s (CBCP) offsite retreat with the physicians from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, our biomedical informatics group had prepared a demonstration for the CBCP’s Scientific Advisory Board, a group of distinguished scientists, breast cancer con...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - May 12, 2011, 9:39 pm
Every once in a while, it’s important to write about things that are hot. (It keeps the blog numbers up.) Well, hydraulic fracking, Justin Beiber and bedbugs… yes, bedbugs are all very hot and in the news again. While the D’s and the R’s sort out the nuances of cutting $14 trillion or so fro...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - May 2, 2011, 1:56 pm
F. Nicholas (Nick) Jacobs, FACHE HealingHospitals.com The Risk Management and Patient Safety Institute 2011 National Conference The audience for these upcoming presentations and meetings will consist of risk and quality managers, patient safety officers, and hospital CEOs . Seattle, WA – May, 2...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - May 1, 2011, 3:11 pm
L-R: Senior Niraj Raju (trombone), junior Andrew Simmons (tuba) and senior Julia Maas (violin) of the Montgomery County, MD Youth Orchestra - http://www.mcyo.org Back in the 1970’s, I made a discovery that seemed unique to me. As a young teacher, musician, band, orchestra and Jazz ensemble direc...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Apr 25, 2011, 6:55 pm
One warm Sunday afternoon, in the early 1990s, Uncle Bert indicated to me that, after his death, he was going to leave the my brother and me the money that he had made from selling the little house that he had built for our grandmother. My brother decided to take his share to physically trace ou...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Apr 2, 2011, 7:15 pm
Avery Johnson of the Wall Street Journal wrote an excellent explanatory article this week about accountable care organizations – ACO’s. They’re a potential spin out from the Health Care Reform Act which are about to begin taking shape within the U.S. healthcare system.  The four hundred plus ...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Mar 27, 2011, 12:47 pm
I’ve tried to avoid controversy, but since my reading audience has dropped by a few thousand readers after departing my previous CEO position a few years back, I doubt that this will cause me any more problems as a consultant than I’ve already caused by expressing my opinions in previous posts....
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Mar 17, 2011, 7:20 pm
Dr. Pauline W. Chen’s March 17th New York Times article answers the question, “What Makes a Hospital Great?” In this article, Dr. Chen finds: Pauline W. Chen, MD | Blog: paulinechen.typepad.com “Hospitals have long vied for the greatest clinical reputation. Recent efforts to increase pu...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Mar 8, 2011, 9:57 am
This might be one of those blog posts that you cut and paste to forward to your friends, family, peers or boss …or you may forget that you read it as soon as you have finished it. My experiences in healthcare leadership have placed me face to face with thousands of people who communicate in remark...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Mar 2, 2011, 8:12 pm
From Modern Healthcare: The Thirteen Top States 7,345,000  California 6, 433,000  Texas 4,118,000  Florida 2,837,000  New York 1,985,000  Georgia 1,891,000  Illinois 1,685,000  North Carolina 1,643,000  Ohio 1,409,000  Pennsylvania 1,371,000  New Jersey 1,350,000  Michigan 1,...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Feb 20, 2011, 6:20 pm
Get up at 3:00 AM, get to the airport at four, fly out at five, arrive in Austin, Texas at 10:20 AM, wait until 1:30 PM to meet three other board members, rent a car and drive to the retreat center. Check–in, have a quick dinner and go to the first evening board meeting; in bed by 11:30 PM, up at ...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Feb 13, 2011, 4:45 pm
The definition of a medical home can be confusing to those who have not been dedicated students of this terminology. As the medical home concept has been added to the healthcare landscape of  the U.S., many uninformed healthcare professionals look at each other and shrug as if they seem to expect t...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Feb 3, 2011, 5:19 pm
For the past 25-plus years, my personal commitments, both intellectually and emotionally, have been directed toward helping to make positive changes in the healthcare system worldwide. It’s been my great pleasure to have had the opportunity to connect with such organizations as Planetree, and to ...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Jan 31, 2011, 12:52 am
Two years ago I began this new journey, but not until a few months ago did my work in consulting really begin to take shape in a way that could never have been predicted. As the challenges of our present economic times have become increasingly daunting, my personal and professional journey has beco...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Jan 21, 2011, 12:38 pm
This week, NBC’s Today Show featured another story about bullying. As I have have mentioned in previous posts here and elsewhere, I believe that bullying is the quintessential cancer on our lives in places of business, in the military, politics, and relationships of all types.  The good news �...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Jan 11, 2011, 10:33 pm
It was 1991 when one of  my professors at Carnegie Mellon University began discussing health policy in the United States.  He told us about Arizona, where the state government had decided to stop paying for transplants.  Then he went on to explain that desperate families were moving from Arizona...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Dec 19, 2010, 12:46 pm
On those snow-covered roads of the 50’s and 60’s, the drive to my grandparents was always unforgettable. It seemed that the roads were hardly ever plowed, and there was no salt – just those coal black ashes mixed with tiny pieces of metal that would puncture a tire at least once or twice each ...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Dec 9, 2010, 12:00 am
LONDON (Dec. 8th) —Held without bail in Wandsworth prison, Julian Assange has been deprived of his trusty laptop, so the WikiLeaks founder can’t supply an inside scoop on life behind bars. But if the pro-transparency campaigner could leak just one word about conditions in Britain’s biggest jai...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Nov 26, 2010, 8:42 am
Excerpts from: Chapter 18 of  “Taking the Hell out of Healthcare“ by Nick Jacobs When Dying is Finally Enough The Dichotomy of Death On Thursday evenings from 1970 until 1975 there was a standing invitation to play pool at Jim’s Dad’s house.  Now, the truth of the matter was that, as...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Nov 20, 2010, 11:27 am
Courtesy of Michael D. McCumber Photography My apartment is about two blocks away from Pittsburgh’s Cultural District and the same distance from the Sports District where the theaters, stadiums and plenty of restaurants are all nearby. Last night was the 50th anniversary celebration of “Light ...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Nov 9, 2010, 7:59 pm
In an article in New York magazine by Mark Levine entitled, “St. Vincent’s Is the Lehman Brothers of Hospitals,” we are taken on an extremely in-depth and comprehensive review of the sickness and death of one of New York City’s oldest hospitals. It is not my intent to re-create or completely...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Nov 2, 2010, 10:46 am
I’ve been living in hotels and airports lately speaking at and visiting Planetree hospitals in places like Colorado, Alaska and Iowa.  I’ve had some really fascinating and also some creepy experiences. For example, a few weeks ago, I was eaten by bed bugs in Denver. My legs looked like they wer...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Oct 26, 2010, 12:10 pm
In a recent conversation with a long time healthcare CEO, he made the following observation: “There are about 2,750 pages to Obamacare.  I have no idea what the implications are of the first 2,700 pages, but I do know that at least 50 pages allude to the fact that $500B will be cut from hospita...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Oct 14, 2010, 9:40 pm
Every few weeks or so, I take the time to read articles produced by The Pew Research Center, a non-partisan fact tank. Pew does not take sides in policy disputes, but they do provide a valuable information resource for political leaders, journalists, scholars and citizens. I believe that I come und...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Oct 3, 2010, 6:24 pm
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. —Albert Einstein At a recent conference I had the opportunity to learn about the Himalayan nation of Bhutan. Most of us had not heard of this country, but we should have, because they have done something t...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Sep 21, 2010, 9:30 pm
On Saturday night a group of people will gather at a restaurant  for a celebration of life since graduation from high school. I won’t be there. Neither will Joe, Butch, Tommy and half a dozen others,  but their absence is for a very different reason: they have passed away. I, on the other ha...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Sep 9, 2010, 11:35 pm
The Modern Healthcare edition of September 6, 2010 has a cover headline that reads: “Passing the Buck,” and the descriptor goes on to explain that “Yet a new report says workers’ share of benefit costs is skyrocketing.”  The actual opening line of the article starts with “Workers a...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Sep 3, 2010, 1:38 pm
I received this quote from a friend today: He who knows only his own side of the case knows little. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Aug 27, 2010, 4:19 pm
RM&PSI, the Risk Management and Patient Safety Institute provided a forum for me to not only give a speech today on patient advocacy, but also to passionately press for its members to take up the cause of transparency, patient and patient family support, and healthcare quality.  Yes, the speech to...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Aug 12, 2010, 9:43 am
These blog posts are supposed to be directed toward creating healing hospitals. That objective seems to be compromised from time to time as I post genuine opportunities for hospital CFO’s and CEO’s to trim monies from their budgets, to find money that their hospitals should have received, or to...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Aug 8, 2010, 11:24 am
Several months ago, I met a white-haired gentleman of average stature at a meeting.  When I asked him what he did, he replied, “I’m a patient advocate.”  “So am I,” I said. “I even wrote a book, ‘Taking the Hell out of Healthcare’ about it.  “...
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Nick J. posted an article on Ask a Hospital President - Aug 1, 2010, 8:10 pm
Get Modern Healthcare on Kindle The July 19th edition of Modern Healthcare had a very revealing article by Melanie Evans entitled “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” The cut line under that title was “A third of physicians in a  study don’t feel obligated to report impaire...
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