Do you want to be a machine? What happens when your employer wants to treat you like one? What does this do to health care? The digital economy allows you to measure much. What gets measured gets managed. The ideas of “scientific management” achieved their first apotheosis over a century ago with Frederick Taylor. Henry Ford […]
The Coming Boom in Mental Health
What Kind of Future? What are the future needs of mental health in this country? Many mental health workers worry daily about their jobs. Will they be replaced by smart cognitive behavioral programs delivered over the net? Will insurance companies pay for what’s coming? Below are a series of factors that will potentially produce a booming […]
Checklist Medicine Checks You Out
Why Your Doctor Doesn’t Look at You Anymore Should you treat the chart, or the patient? Increasingly over the past decades healthworkers of all stripes – doctors and nurses, therapists and technicians – buff the chart first. Legal, insurance and regulatory requirements have burgeoned to overcome the concerns of health. Checklists work very well in military and […]
What We Talk About When We Talk About Health
Defining Your Health In 1947, the World Health Organization defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.” Do most folks take that expansive view? The kinds of statements you’ll get from people are more like these: “The doctor says I’m in great shape.” “I eat real healthy.” “You really are doing […]
Going Sleepless to War
Sleepless in Seattle War is hell, said General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose 1864 march to the sea changed the course of American and military history. And the practice of war, even in “peacetime” can be hell on the human body. That is the lesson of a panel at this year’s national sleep meetings in Seattle, […]
