A real artificial kidney… Come on, you know that sounds funny. But, oh, so critical. Because transplantation needs kidney donors that are compatible- and we- not just America, but the world- find kidneys in short supply, and compatibility an even tougher hurdle.
Continue reading A real artificial kidney?
Don’t you just love science fiction? Because the best science fiction involves conjecture of the world as it could be. I remember being mesmerized by Tom Swift, Jr., as a young boy. Other than the delusion perpetrated that Victor Appleton II wrote the series (instead of Harriet Stratemeyer Adams), they were wonderful books. (I only read the first 16; then I graduated to Robert Heinlein.)
Continue reading SciFi or just Sci?
Every business is different. Yet, every business has many, many similar components. Serving as the CEO for jewelry manufacturing venture is different from serving as the CEO for a dialysis clinic- and different still from being the managing director for a law firm. Right now, I am considering whether I wish to help start- and then manage a new health care clinic- one with a business model that will be radically different than what is normally seen.
Continue reading Are you ready?
It’s Kidney Week. OK. It’s kidney 5 days… Starting today and ending on the 10th. A ‘week’ to make all of us more aware of one of our biggest killers- certainly one of our most expensive diseases- that is, often, undetected. Why is that so? Because most subjects (they are not yet patients) exhibit no symptoms, until a crisis has developed.
Continue reading Kidney Week 2013
Here it comes again! On 1 July, CMMS (the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) proposed cutting the payment of dialysis allocations by 12%. (For those of you not well versed in math- that’s about a 1/8 cut.) But, that’s not quite right, since they also offered a 2.6% increase in the “bundle” payment rate, so the cut comes to about $ 24 less per treatment.
Continue reading The Sky is Falling! Really?
I wrote earlier about how one company managed to get a bonus slipped into the Fiscal Cliff bill. One that “made them” $ ½ billion. Well, they are about to take a big hit, if no one tries to overrule Medicare (or slip another ‘mickey’ to the American public in another bill).
Continue reading Dialysis Boondoggle
Many of you know I spent a great portion of my life in the dialysis arena. From the time I was eight years old, I wanted to develop an artificial kidney. So, I’ve seen a lifetime- and then some- of changes to the therapy. From the first “washing machine” devices, to flat-plates that required soaking-spreading-tightening, to the disposable devices of today.
Continue reading Really? This is the Fiscal Cliff Act?
While we were all sitting down to our Thanksgiving dinner, a pioneer passed away from the complications of an hemorrhagic stroke. Dr. Joseph E. Murray of Peter Bent Brigham (now Brigham and Women’s Hospital), who won the Nobel Prize in 1990 for developing the first living transplant, sharing the honor with Dr. E. Donnal Thomas, who pioneered bone marrow transplants (who died just one month earlier).
Continue reading Au Revoir to a Pioneer
I know. If I mention engineering, science, or economics, then your eyes glaze over. But, these things are important- it’s how we make things, how we solve problems, and how we run our companies and our country. (OK, the politicians are making those last two things a little problematic.)
Continue reading Wait- this really is cool!
O.K. I read a document today that reminded me of how life used to be. But, it’s not going to be quite the way you think or the way our government thinks. Today’s publication in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report can be considered to be a very good thing- or not. (Note: My queue ranges from 12 to 40 posts; this was written on 17 August)
Continue reading Attention all Baby Boomers (Everyone else, too.)