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Saturday, December 1, 2012

Specialization, not privatisation

I believe that Mr Jacoby has drawn the wrong lesson from the commercial and scientific success of the Lasik Vision Institute.

It is not necessarily being a corporation that makes it a success; rather it is the laser like focus on one ailment, weak eyes, that provides success.

General Hospitals are not specialized they have to provide healing for a vast number of ailments. Lasik, like the Shouldice Hernia Clinic outside Toronto, focuses on a single issue. Lasik's doctors perform hundreds of similar surgeries so their success rate is excellent; its doctors learn what better techniques and tools might be needed, so they drive innovation.

Diffuse focused hospitals cannot do that. They have to be all things to all comers.

To bring focus into the hospital setting, we might experiment by setting up "focused services" that were stand alone entities with budgetary and clinical independence. We could see if this focus might result in the positive outcomes evident with Lasik.




Sent to Boston Globe

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