Tuesday. Day 57.
Frustration. I cancel the early morning swim so I can make a breakfast meeting. As I walk outside the rain I had listened to during the night has turned to snow. There is a mix of rain and the biggest snowflakes I have ever seen. Cool, odd and a bit eerie, but cool. Arriving downtown, my breakfast meeting is late. An email lets me know how late… he is in NY! Rats! I could have put my swim in, a swim I really need. Oh well. I take the time to get some extra work done.
The show I am attending is huge. It perhaps the largest healthcare show, the booths and time spent preparing for this show for many companies is easily in the millions. I stop and wonder, if this much time and energy was put into interoperability and transparency in healthcare cost, the administration of healthcare in the country would be a lot better. The fact is our healthcare is second to none, but a third party system of payment has created a payment and reimbursement mess that distracts healthcare providers from their true mission. The clinical mission.
It is getting better, technology and a push toward greater patient responsibility, re-introduce consumerism to the healthcare market will help. We have already seen as banks become increasingly more important as the insurance companies look for ways to reduce their liability to our well being.
At the end of the day, the insurance company's best customer is the one that pays their entire lifetime and drops dead immediately with no prolonged complication or artificial support to exist, essentially we are better off dead to them, at least by the ledger.
No time for deep thought today, heading out of the show I am searching for a place to connect… inside the building for too many hours I am ready for some fresh air… it is cold air, but it feels good. I head to a coffee house that is on my new favorite part of Atlanta, the West Side!
Entering the coffee house 9 of 10 people are on their laptops. Social networking. I have to laugh, uh, turn to the guy next to you and say hello. I am not a coffee guy, but the hot chocolate is yummy with a cool whipped cream design on top. I find a couch and am lucky that Monica, Ross, Phoebe, Rachel, Chandler and Joey have just left, plenty of room for me.
I hit the emails and settle in for a few good hours of work. I’ll sit here a while longer than it is off to yet another evening of meetings and entertainment.
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