Weekend Rounds: Innovation and change at Cleveland Clinic

The Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit is the health system’s signature event, but it was among five must-read subjects over the past week.

• Cleveland Clinic Innovation Summit highlights. This year it included a speech by the FDA commissioner, the prediction for next year’s 10 medical innovations and a little bit a breaking news: Schering-Plough’s pre-announcement of its schizophrenia and bipolar drug treatment Saphris.
• More change at Cleveland Clinic. The Clinic’s plans for its big-ticket reference lab has changed. It’s lost its leader and revised other plans, including building a larger lab on its main campus but scaling back potential future employment by 20 percent to 30 percent.
  
• Doctors and insurance companies, working together. Ohio joins New Jersey in a pilot project to streamline administrivia and provide one portal for doctors to manage insurance claims. What’s driving the change? High deductibles and wasted time (read: money) in administrative costs.
• What is Within3? Within3 has a new Web site, new customers, a new identity and new funding — and also thinks it’s solved the riddle of social networking in health care. But will people see the Cleveland company as a social networking business or niche Web designers?
• Scut is good. Cleveland surgeon Dr. Jeffrey Parks gets sentimental over scut work and wishes residents had more time to do it. “You find yourself seeing things and experiencing events that change you fundamentally. Little things like chatting with an elderly man while you wheel him down to CT scan, making small talk, learning about him as a human being, rather than simply a name on the list.”

Have a great weekend.