Dan Weissmann
What do the KGB and the previous CEO of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital have in frequent?
Eugene Litvak.
The Soviet intelligence company and the kids’s hospital have every individually regarded to the Ukrainian émigré with a PhD in arithmetic for assist. He turned down the KGB, however Litvak saved Cincinnati Children’s Hospital greater than $100 million a 12 months.
For many years, Litvak has been on a mission to save lots of U.S. hospitals cash and enhance the lives of docs, nurses, and sufferers. He says he has simply the method to do it.
Prominent specialists vouch for his mannequin, and he has documented spectacular outcomes up to now: monetary financial savings, fewer hospital-related deaths, decrease workers turnover, and shorter wait occasions. Still, Litvak and his allies have struggled to influence extra hospitals to attempt his methodology.
Host Dan Weissmann speaks with Litvak about his distinctive life story, how he discovered the repair that he says might revolutionize American hospitals, and why he gained’t cease combating for it.
Dan Weissmann
Host and producer of “An Arm and a Leg.” Previously, Dan was a workers reporter for Marketplace and Chicago’s WBEZ. His work additionally seems on All Things Considered, Marketplace, the BBC, 99 Percent Invisible, and Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting.
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Transcript: A Mathematical Solution for US Hospitals?
Note: “An Arm and a Leg” makes use of speech-recognition software program to generate transcripts, which can include errors. Please use the transcript as a instrument however test the corresponding audio earlier than quoting the podcast.
Dan: Hey there. Mark Taylor is a reporter, and when he began protecting well being care within the Nineteen Nineties, the beat wasn’t his first selection.
Mark Taylor: I believed it was a punishment. I believed, I don’t know something about healthcare. I used to be unhealthy at science, I used to be unhealthy at math. I didn’t perceive any of these things, however I simply was decided to not fail at it. And I dove into it head first and my spouse stated, you realize, you used to learn novels in mattress and now you’re studying the CDCs mortality and morbidity report.
Dan: About twenty years in, he picked up some medical journals — such as you do — and checked out some research about work by a man named Eugene Litvak.
Mark Taylor: I began studying these and going, wow, that’s an excellent story.
Dan: Litvak was a math PhD, with a background in operations administration, programs engineering. He’d spent the primary chunk of his profession making telecommunications networks extra environment friendly and dependable.
Many years later, One hospital that had carried out Litvak’s program had saved greater than 100 million {dollars} a 12 months.
But the outcomes have been about greater than cash. Mark Taylor saved studying…
Mark Taylor: Reduces mortality charges in-hospital. That’s an excellent story. Improves nurse retention. We’ve received a nursing scarcity. Reduces ready occasions in ER and affected person boarding.
Dan: Patient boarding sounds nerdy, however: We talked about this a few episodes in the past, once we regarded on the new HBO/Max medical drama “The Pitt.”
When hospital ERs get crowded — and means much less efficient — it’s usually due to crowding upstairs.
ER sufferers who want a mattress upstairs can’t get one, so that they wait within the ER. And clog it up. Wait occasions get longer. Medical errors occur. People die.
On “The Pitt,” and in a number of hospitals, this will get handled as a reality of life.
Hospital directors say they’ll’t afford to construct the brand new wings or rent further nurses to satisfy peak calls for.
But Litvak’s work confirmed: They don’t must.
Because — it seems — random ER visits don’t trigger these peaks.
Scheduled surgical procedures do. They get bunched up on sure days. Un-bunch them, and the peaks get smoother.
Nurses and docs get much less burned out. Fewer sufferers die. Hospitals waste much less cash.
In different phrases, Litvak’s work addressed among the largest issues Mark Taylor had been writing about for many years.
Mark Taylor: There’s an answer right here. It’s been confirmed to work, and it’s been validated in the very best medical journals within the nation and on this planet. How come this isn’t in each hospital?
Dan: That was ten years in the past. It’s nonetheless an excellent query.
Mark wrote some newspaper tales about Litvak’s work, beginning with one within the Chicago Tribune, and ultimately began engaged on a guide.
It got here out in 2024, and it’s referred to as “Hospital, Heal Thyself: One Brilliant Mathematician’s Proven Plan for Saving Hospitals, Many Lives and Billions of Dollars.”
By the time Eugene Litvak began working with hospitals, he was in his mid-40s. He had grown up within the Soviet Union, the place he earned a PhD in math and labored as a programs engineer.
His profession there got here to a halt when he requested for an exit visa — and his request was refused for nearly a decade. There was a phrase for folks in that predicament, a number of them, like Litvak, Soviet Jews: refuseniks.
Eventually he received to the U.S. — the place he’s now spent many years attempting to get hospitals to attempt his strategies.
Eugene Litvak: I just lately began telling people who I’m a double refusenik, for 10 years refusing for the exit visa in Soviet Union, and now for 25 years in healthcare determination makers.
Dan: He’s not giving up any time quickly. And he thinks ultimately hospitals will come round. He thinks they’re gonna should.
This is An Arm and a Leg– a present about why well being care prices so freaking a lot, and what we will possibly do about it. I’m Dan Weissmann. I’m a reporter, and I like a problem, so the job we’ve chosen right here is to take one of the enraging, terrifying, miserable elements of American life, and produce you one thing entertaining, empowering and helpful.
Eugene Litvak was born in Kiev in 1949. Mark Taylor reviews in his guide that Eugene Litvak’s work in engineering and math attracted worldwide consideration within the Nineteen Seventies.
Litvak additionally confronted irritating obstacles. A controlling boss. Semi-official antisemitism.
But what lastly spurred him to attempt to depart the Soviet Union was a suggestion. From the key police– the KGB.
Eugene Litvak: And they have been so good, you realize, such as you’re speaking to your lengthy misplaced brother. They stated, you have got a variety of buddies. You talk with many individuals. How about you’re employed for us?
Dan: Eugene says the provide terrified him. Because he knew instantly he couldn’t settle for it.
Eugene Litvak: I’d not be any longer in peace with myself. In addition to that, I can let you know my father in all probability would cease speaking to me if he would be taught that I did one thing like that. So, these two components – look, I didn’t suppose whether or not I ought to settle for it or not. I didn’t take into consideration that. The solely factor that was instantly in my thoughts– how can I keep away from it to reduce the consequence for myself?
Dan: As he informed Mark Taylor, he didn’t face quick penalties for declining, however he knew he’d at all times be in danger. He and his spouse determined to depart.
As they anticipated, they received fired from their jobs the day they utilized for exit visas.
He says they have been ready to attend out a course of that they figured would take months, possibly a 12 months.
But their timing was unhealthy. While they have been ready, in December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The Cold War received hotter, and exit visas principally stopped getting authorized.
Eugene Litvak: So we, and lots of 1000’s of others, grew to become victims of that.
Dan: Eugene says for many of the subsequent decade, police and the KGB referred to as him in, searched his home, threatened him with jail — whereas he and his spouse labored primary jobs: she washed flooring in a manufacturing facility. He delivered telegrams.
When they lastly received to the U.S., in 1988, with Eugene’s dad and mom in tow, Eugene’s job prospects weren’t a lot better.
He says he had contacts with well-known scientists, however not nice English. He labored in a lodge present store, then behind the desk.
And practiced his English by cold-calling shops from the Yellow Pages.
Eugene Litvak: Like Home Depot. Asking could I purchase, you realize, the air conditioner? And then the grocery store. The CVS. I used to be doing that regularly till folks began understanding what I need from them.
Dan: He ultimately received some consulting work. And he discovered his calling — his obsession — bringing his coaching as an operations engineer to U.S. hospitals — when his father’s well being went downhill.
Eugene Litvak: I noticed the failures in operations on the hospital by spending a variety of time with my father.
Dan: And his chutzpah — and his persistence — all of that, actually reveals itself in what he did subsequent:
Eugene Litvak: I despatched a letter really to each hospital president in Massachusetts, providing my companies to assist.
Dan: No takers. No responses. But in 1995, the vp of an enormous native hospital, Mass General, gave a lecture about how new market situations meant hospitals would want to get extra environment friendly.
Afterwards, Litvak stepped up, launched himself– and received an invite to drop by for a chat. In that assembly, his new pal the Vice President gave him a small task — one which Eugene didn’t get to complete.
Eugene Litvak: He interrupted me earlier than even implementation. He stated, we’ve a extra essential challenge and that’s working room.
Dan: Operating room. Surgeries.
Eugene Litvak: So that’s the way it began.
Dan: A physician named Mike Long, who ran logistics for the hospitals surgical procedures, had been pushing to get issues extra environment friendly.
Some days, surgical sufferers crowded the hospital, so docs and nurses sweated by way of costly additional time. Others, the place was quiet and the hospital misplaced cash staffing empty beds. Nobody might work out why.
Long and Litvak grew to become a group, with two huge strengths: One, they have been kindred spirits.
Eugene Litvak: As he described it, you realize, lengthy misplaced twins.
Dan: And two, that they had complimentary experience:
Eugene Litvak: He knew healthcare very effectively, which I didn’t, and I knew operations administration, that he didn’t know.
Dan: They dove in collectively, pulling knowledge, speaking to folks, and observing. The two of them labored and labored. For months, Litvak watched the weekly 6am conferences the place surgeons would set their schedules.
They had a speculation: Sometimes extra folks simply confirmed up within the ER: More damaged legs, extra burst appendixes. The ER received crowded, and so did the remainder of the hospital.
So they searched their knowledge for methods to foretell or handle that downside.
And then sooner or later, a completely totally different reply actually confirmed itself to them.
This was the Nineteen Nineties, earlier than PowerPoint. To share their knowledge, they printed charts onto transparencies — plastic sheets for an overhead projector.
One day, in Mike Long’s workplace, they observed a few these sheets sitting one on prime of the opposite.
One had a line exhibiting scheduled surgical procedures — extra this present day, fewer that day. The different had a line exhibiting, day-to-day, what number of hospital beds have been full.
Eugene Litvak: And we glance. Wow, it’s virtually the identical. We put it towards the sunshine within the window they usually virtually coincided. That was an aha second.
Dan: When the road exhibiting scheduled surgical procedures went up, so did the road exhibiting full beds — crowding. They went down collectively too.
Eugene Litvak: It was clear message.
Dan: The query they’d been engaged on– why does the hospital get so jammed typically?
The reply wasn’t random in any respect. It had nothing to do with random surges in sufferers exhibiting up within the ER.
The hospital received jammed — and the ER received backed up with sufferers ready for a mattress upstairs — when there have been extra surgical procedures scheduled.
And there was a particular sample: There have been a LOT extra scheduled surgical procedures early within the week, on Mondays and Tuesdays.
He’s taken to calling it “weekday-related disease”
Eugene Litvak: Weekday associated illness that manifests on a specific week days.
Dan: On these days, there was no give within the operating-room schedule, lots fewer open beds on the wards. When a traditional day’s batch of emergency instances confirmed up– wham. Things received jammed.
I informed Eugene: Hearing all this after the actual fact, it simply appears — apparent. You schedule a bunch of surgical procedures, you’re gonna refill the hospital, proper? He was like, effectively, yeah.
Eugene Litvak: As one of many hospital’s chief medical officers stated, Eugene pointed us to utterly surprising occasion that in the course of the winter we’ve snow.
Dan: Right, however this hadn’t form of occurred to anyone earlier than.
Eugene Litvak: No. And the primary folks response was virtually calling me names.
Dan: People within the hospital didn’t need to imagine what Eugene’s knowledge confirmed.
Which is simpler to know given what Eugene had seen when he noticed the surgeons doing their 6 a.m. scheduling conferences for these six months.
Each surgeon principally referred to as dibs on a block of time for every week. And sure blocks have been extremely coveted:
Eugene Litvak: Every surgeon wished to do the surgical procedure Monday morning.
Dan: The depth of the scramble for these occasions had puzzled Eugene. He requested his companion Mike Long about it.
Eugene Litvak: I stated, Mike, I hear they’re combating for this morning, block occasions as they’d struggle for his or her spouses. And he stated, Eugene, you don’t get it. He stated they’d slightly hand over their spouses than the morning, Monday, block time.
Dan: Would slightly hand over their spouses than Monday morning block occasions. There have been causes– past simply wanting the remainder of the week clear.
Like: Surgeons wished to return in and do their greatest work once they have been recent from the weekend.
They wished the early-morning slot for a similar cause frequent vacationers need early flights: Later within the day, your schedule might get delayed due to some issues that occurred earlier.
And for those who operated on someone later within the week, they could should spend the weekend within the hospital. When, yeah, you would possibly get referred to as in to test on them.
But additionally: hospitals function with skeleton crews on weekends. Fewer nurses, much less workers round for companies like bodily remedy.
Surgeons could have been searching for themselves, Eugene says, however they have been additionally attempting to look out for his or her sufferers. And failing on each counts.
Eugene Litvak: They’re the at first sufferer together with their sufferers of this mismanaged operation. They’re attempting to do their greatest, however, however the system is screwed up.
Dan: And they did NOT need to hear some engineer telling them when they need to function.
Eugene Litvak: I talked to one of many outstanding cardiac surgeon, actually gifted individual. And, he informed me, Eugene, how dare you’re to show me once I imagined to function on my sufferers. Even my sufferers have no idea when they need to be operated on. How are you able to do this? And I stated, okay, uh, your level is effectively taken. May take a look at your knowledge, speak to your knowledge folks. He stated, certain. So I talked to the information folks. I got here again and I stated, look, I wish to be your scholar. As such, I wish to be taught what sort of a illness your sufferers have that manifests itself each Tuesday
Dan: And how did he reply?
Eugene Litvak: From that time, he prevented speaking with me.
Dan: In his guide, Mark Taylor reviews that resistance like this from surgeons prevented Mass General from really implementing Eugene Litvak and Mike Long’s suggestions.
Mike Long retired from Mass General in 2000, and Litvak’s consulting contract ended.
But by then that they had compiled sufficient proof to begin publishing their findings in medical journals. And attracting allies within the discipline.
At Boston University, Litvak arrange a tiny analysis heart with huge names in medication on the advisory committee: Like the CEO of the group that accredits most U.S. hospitals.
Hospitals introduced Litvak in to seek the advice of — together with the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins. Mark Taylor’s guide says they undertook restricted tasks that achieved spectacular outcomes –however by no means expanded.
And then in 2004 a few docs from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital went to considered one of Litvak’s talks, and got here away… impressed. Litvak ended up speaking with the hospital’s CEO, Jim Anderson.
Jim Anderson CCH: And I believed this could be a enjoyable journey to pursue.
Dan: So he did. The journey they undertook at Cincinnati Children’s stays Eugene Litvak’s largest success so far. That’s subsequent.
This episode of An Arm and a Leg is produced in partnership with KFF Health News– that’s a nonprofit newsroom protecting well being points in America. Their reporters do superb work and win every kind of awards yearly. We’re honored to work with them.
As a primary step, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital had Eugene Litvak do an analysis and current suggestions to the lead medical workers.
Eugene Litvak: Vice president, chief of surgical procedure, chief of anesthesia, et cetera, et cetera.
Dan: Eugene’s prescription: Change the way you schedule surgical procedures, unfold them out throughout the week. As he remembers, all people appeared agreeable, and the CEO Jim Anderson made a proposal on the spot.
Eugene Litvak: So he requested me, Eugene, okay, would you do this for us now to implement what you’re preaching for? And I stated, no. And he stated, how come? I stated, as a result of these very individuals who smile at me would create roadblocks, and I’m unsure I’d overcome it. So he look across the room and stated, okay, for those who face any resistance, you name me instantly. He checked out me once more and stated, would you do it now? I stated, completely.
Dan: Jim Anderson remembers that a part of the change a bit in a different way.
Jim Anderson CCH: I bear in mind telling them and stated, look, we’re gonna do that anyway. We’d like to have you ever concerned for those who’re not. That’s positive. Go away. But, uh, we’re dedicated.
Dan: However that change went, the comply with up was actual.
With Litvak’s steering, the hospital reorganized the way in which it scheduled surgical procedures– and saved 100 thirty-seven million {dollars} a 12 months. They’d been planning to construct a hundred-million greenback new tower to extend capability, however with their new programs, they determined they didn’t must.
Actually, Jim Anderson informed one other interviewer: with out including a single mattress, the hospital took on extra instances, AND wait occasions for sufferers went down by 28 p.c. Nurses, surgeons, and anesthesiologists reported they have been in a position to take higher care of sufferers.
Jim Anderson says the hospital was making different modifications too, however he provides Litvak a number of credit score.
Jim Anderson CCH: Eugene was an exquisite stimulus, to serving to us, suppose outdoors the field and reorganize and actually, uh, be simpler at what we did.
Dan: And but, virtually twenty years later, he’s had shoppers right here and there. But few establishments have gone so far as Cincinnati Children’s in following Litvak’s recommendation.
Jim Anderson CCH: It’s been a thriller to me for many years now. I’m astonished by the shortage of response.
Dan: That’s the thriller Mark Taylor stumbled throughout when he began studying about Eugene Litvak’s work years later. He began calling sources for a actuality test.
Mark Taylor: Most folks within the hospital enterprise knew nothing of him, hadn’t heard of him in any respect. But a few of my greatest sources as a healthcare journalist, informed me, you realize, this man is actually onto one thing. and it was like, Jesus, this man’s proper. How come no person else is aware of this?
Dan: He began reporting his first story on Litvak for the Chicago Tribune and principally requested Litvak himself: Who are your opponents?
Eugene Litvak: He stated, Eugene, I’m well being care reporter. I needs to be goal. You have the names of supporters and coauthors. I wish to know the names of naysayers so I can interview them, and I stated, here’s what I can do. If you discover the one, I owe you a dinner.
Dan: He’s had a variety of time since then. Since that was like what, seven, eight years in the past?
Eugene Litvak: Yeah.
Mark Taylor: I talked to effectively over 100 sources and I referred to as every kind of hospital executives, consulting companies, and I couldn’t discover anybody who stated, a, this doesn’t work. B, his, algorithms are fallacious. C it is a fraud. They’re making up particulars in that.
Dan: So what’s the holdup? In my first dialog with Eugene Litvak, we talked about why extra hospitals don’t go together with his suggestions– even after they hear about successes at establishments like Cincinnati Children’s.
Eugene Litvak: I’ve been informed by different hospital management, these are particular hospitals. Our hospital is totally different. Our sufferers are sicker. Uh, at one hospital, they requested me, it was in South Carolina. They requested me whether or not I ever carried out that in South Carolina.
Dan: Implemented his concept that by reorganizing surgical procedures, hospitals can lower your expenses and take higher care of sufferers.
Eugene Litvak: And I stated, that’s a administration regulation has nothing to do with the state. And they stated, no, no, no, it does. Uh, and I stated, then let, let me, I’m curious whether or not gravitation regulation works in South Carolina.
Dan: How did they reply to that?
Eugene Litvak: Uh, folks simply get indignant from a few of my feedback.
Dan: Political maneuvering, might not be your sturdy go well with, to not let you know something you could not have heard earlier than.
Eugene Litvak: Yeah.
Dan: So I left that dialog with a speculation: Maybe this man simply doesn’t have the diplomatic abilities for this type of work.
But once I ran that speculation by Mark Taylor, he had a counter-example from Litvak’s work at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
The administration was backing him, however they stated ultimately the assorted division heads would vote his particular plan up or down– so he wanted to safe *sure* votes.
Mark Taylor: He stated, Mark, I, I lied a bit bit. I’d meet with these totally different constituencies, the orthopedic surgeons, the anesthesiologists, the nurses, the administration, and each I’d go to, I’d inform now don’t inform anybody else, however your group is gonna profit disproportionately from this
Dan: And then — as Eugene informed me — the leaders met to vote on his plan.
Eugene Litvak: So all people elevate his or her hand and take a look at his friends round with a slight smile. Say, oh guys, I do know one thing you don’t, you realize, I profit greater than you.
Dan: Eugene Litvak’s diplomatic skils — or lack thereof — possibly aren’t the entire subject.
He and his supporters have one other speculation.
Namely: It’s laborious to vary establishments.
Surgeons are educated to struggle for these Monday morning block occasions– and in hospitals, they’ve a variety of clout. They usher in sufferers, and directors are afraid to cross them.
Here’s considered one of Eugene Litvak’s most vocal allies
Peter Viccellio: My title is Peter Viccellio. I work at Stony Brook on Long Island, and I’m an. Emergency doctor
Peter Viccellio: and I’m in my forty eighth 12 months of practising emergency medication
Dan: Peter’s printed huge research with Litvak, goes on convention panels with him.
And he’s received a really lengthy view on medication and hospitals. Not solely has Peter himself been practising for many years, his dad was a health care provider. Peter used to go along with him on home calls when he was a child. He says in these days
Peter Viccellio: If you had a stroke, you stayed at house. If you had coronary heart assault, you stayed at house. ’trigger the hospitals had nothing to give you. So it made sense to have a hospital 9 to 5, Monday by way of Friday with a skeleton crew on evenings, nights, and weekends.
Dan: He’s seen the position of drugs and hospitals change dramatically
Peter Viccellio: When I used to be in medical faculty, for those who had lupus, you died once you have been 18 years previous. Now I see 70 12 months olds with lupus. It’s superb what I’ve seen. I feel once I graduated from medical faculty, the one most cancers that you can actually remedy was Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. That was it. And there are such a lot of cancers now that may be cured, or a minimum of will be considerably slowed down and contained. So it’s only a dramatic change.
Dan: But although hospitals achieve this rather more now, they haven’t modified their primary schedule.
Peter Viccellio: We have a seven day every week downside, and we’re nonetheless attempting to unravel it with a 5 day every week. Solution. And once I say 5 days every week, I imply eight hours every day of these 5 days every week. So that’s 24% of the week that we’re working full fledged.
Dan: And simply altering the schedules for surgeons wouldn’t be sufficient– as Peter says a surgeon would let you know.
Peter Viccellio:If you wanna do a hip case on a Thursday or Friday, is there sufficient bodily remedy current on weekends to get the affected person up and strolling round? Do you have got the wanted ancillary companies and whatnot to get stuff completed?
Dan: And he says hiring further workers for weekends could sound costly. But…
Peter Viccellio: for those who’re doing extra stuff on the weekends. But you have got the identical quantity. It means you’re doing much less someplace else. So it’s referred to as redistributing the load.
Dan:And folks’s lives get extra predictable — much less emergency additional time. And based on Eugene Litvak’s modeling, you don’t essentially must go twenty-four seven.
Peter Viccellio: for those who went at this for six days every week, so {that a} Saturday was identical to a Tuesday, you then’d get an enormous achieve.
Dan: But Peter says the previous five-day-a-week schedule — and the issues that include it– aren’t simply U.S. phenomena.
Peter Viccellio: I’ve been to Italy and Korea and England and Scotland and all kinds of various locations speaking about the identical actual issues that we’ve right here.
Dan: So whereas the capability of drugs has exploded, the tradition of hospitals is entrenched.
Instead of asking, Why haven’t extra hospitals completed what Cincinnati Children’s did, it may need been smarter to ask: How did Cincinnati Children’s determine to leap in with each ft?
The reply seems to be: Jim Anderson, the CEO, had taken a reasonably uncommon path. Before changing into the CEO, he had by no means labored for a hospital earlier than.
He’d been a lawyer for many of his profession — however had taken just a few years out to run an area manufacturing firm. While in that job, he joined the board at Children’s — and stayed on it for nearly twenty years.
Jim Anderson: I ended up being chairman of the board and we wanted a brand new CEO. And, um, we regarded round and I misplaced management of the search committee they usually turned on me and wished me to do it. And so I agreed.
Dan: That was in 1996. By the time Eugene Litvak got here to Children’s, Jim Anderson had been the CEO for ten years. He had been a part of the group’s management for 1 / 4 century.
Jim Anderson: I’m rather more comfy, rather more comfy taking dangers and pursuing adventures, than the standard medical group.
Dan: And although he had that outsider’s perspective, he had the insiders’ belief.
Jim Anderson: The presumption was as a result of all of us knew one another and had labored collectively for thus lengthy that I wasn’t gonna do loopy issues.
Dan: And to Jim Anderson, there was nothing loopy or unfamiliar about operations administration. Because like Eugene Litvak — and, so far as he is aware of, not like most well being care executives — he had labored in trade, in manufacturing.
Jim Anderson: I imply, for those who went out and laid these out as standards to your subsequent CEO, you’d have a tough time filling it. It’s lots, a variety of luck concerned.
Dan: Eugene Litvak has continued to draw shoppers separately — a hospital in Toronto, a clinic in New Orleans — and typically extra. He says he’s presently working with the Canadian province of Alberta.
His concepts haven’t been adopted at that form of scale within the U.S., however he thinks ultimately hospitals will come round. Because they’ll should. Many of them are in hassle financially.
Litvak compares hospital CEOs to a man falling from a skyscraper.
Eugene Litvak: And, in the midst of his fall, he stated, oh, the place I’m going, however touching his legs and arms are up to now so good.
Dan: Republicans in Congress are speaking about slicing a whole bunch of billions of {dollars} from Medicaid. That’s lots much less cash for hospitals.
Eugene Litvak says the federal government might save rather more by providing hospitals technical assist to undertake his program. He couldn’t do all of it himself.
Eugene Litvak: We are a small group, however we will educate many different huge sharks like Optum, Ernst & Young consulting firm, Deloitte, McKinsey, how to try this. We might certify them and educate them how to try this. They have thousand, hundred thousand boots on the bottom, so you are able to do that.
Dan: One means or one other, he’ll hold at it. He tells me about an change with considered one of his advisory board members, a man named Bill.
Eugene Litvak: At considered one of our board conferences, he informed me, Eugene, I like your persistence. And my reply was, Bill, if at one level, you’re feeling such as you need to name me an fool, don’t mince your phrases.
Dan: If Eugene Litvak is an fool, I wish to meet much more idiots like this.
Meanwhile: We’ve been working laborious on a two half collection for subsequent month. About coping with the excessive value of medication.
Some time again, we requested you to share your tales about sticker shock on the pharmacy
Listener: The pharmacist would burst out laughing each time I confirmed as much as decide up the prescription and he noticed the cost.
Dan: And we requested you what you’d realized. You got here by way of in an enormous means. Your responses taught us issues we hadn’t understood earlier than. And in our subsequent two episodes, we’ll be sharing all of it.
That begins in just a few weeks.
Till then, deal with your self.
This episode of An Arm and a Leg was produced by me, Dan Weissmann, with assist from Emily Pisacreta and Claire Davenport — and edited by Ellen Weiss.
Adam Raymonda is our audio wizard.
Our music is by Dave Weiner and Blue Dot Sessions.
Bea Bosco is our consulting director of operations.
Lynne Johnson is our operations supervisor.
An Arm and a Leg is produced in partnership with KFF Health News. That’s a nationwide newsroom producing in-depth journalism about well being points in America – and a core program at KFF: an impartial supply of well being coverage analysis, polling, and journalism.
Zach Dyer is senior audio producer at KFF Health News. He’s editorial liaison to this present.
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