Author Archives: Ted

About Ted

Edward B. J. (Ted) Winslow received an MD from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and an MBA by the Kellogg School of Northwestern University. Before getting his MBA, Ted practiced Cardiology and Internal Medicine at several Chicago institutions (University of Illinois, Veterans West Side, Illinois Masonic, Northwestern Memorial and Evanston Northwestern Healthcare – each one at a time). As a practicing physician, Ted has had experience in managing a medical practice, and implementing the adoption of electronic medical record systems

Does Insurance oversight of clinical practice improve either quality of care, or patient outcomes?

When outside oversight, based solely on published guidelines, interferes with clinical care there are potentially multiple adverse outcomes, including physician and patient frustration, waste of time and interference with delivery of optimal care. There should be ways for insurers to use their databases to mitigate inefficient and intrusive oversight. Continue reading

Posted in effectiveness/efficacy, General Interest, Guidelines, Quality, Quality in Medicine, treatment options | 2 Comments

Cook County’s Sweetened Beverage Tax of November 2016 – It’s A Matter of Choice!

The Cook County of Illinois Board enacted a Sweetened Beverage Tax. The purpose of the tax was twofold. Every tax is is intended to increase revenue. This is no exception. However, the tax is a “choice tax”, that people can choose not to pay, by not buying drinks with added sweeteners. If people don’t add sugar to their diet, every expectation is that obesity and its complications will become less prominent. This will be associated with reduced health care costs. Continue reading

Posted in General Interest, Health Information, Policy, Public Health | Leave a comment

Some thoughts on Health Care Legislation 2010 to 2017.

Legislation to overcome some of the flaws of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is flawed. The Senate and House bills are not as different as had been originally hoped. Insurance reforms may be overcome with “waivers” and Medicaid is being drastically changed. The individual mandate appears to have been continued, under different guises, in both bills. Continue reading

Posted in Affordable Care Act, American Health Care Act, General Interest, Patient Protection Act, Policy | Leave a comment

Rolf McMillan Gunnar, MD, MACP, MACC 1/22/1926 – 3/18/2017 – An Appreciation.

Dr. Rolf M. Gunnar died after a battle with Cancer. The Chicago medical community and the world lost a compassionate, and brilliant man. I met Dr. Gunnar when I was an intern at Cook County Hospital in 1966. My resident, … Continue reading

Posted in General Interest | Leave a comment

What is Quality in Medicine? – It Isn’t Easy!

The definition of Quality in Medicine is in the eye of the beholder. There are several good paradigms, but they all look at different components of the overall concept. Continue reading

Posted in General Interest, Policy, Quality | Tagged , | 4 Comments

How Can We Align Incentives As We Move From Volume to Value?

Changing payment for health care from volume to value will be facilitated if the stakeholders keep a close eye on “What’s in it for me” Continue reading

Posted in General Interest, Operational effectiveness, Quality | Leave a comment

How Do We Use Statistics?

How we utilize Statistical Inference is indeed a critical piece in the evaluation of new information in the Biomedical Literature. Continue reading

Posted in General Interest, Guidelines, Health Information, Statistics and Decision Making | Leave a comment

What Happens to my medical information? Where is it?

In this week’s MedPage, a medical information website, there is a post, by Dr. Leonard Lichtenfeld, about sharing personal health data. He was asked to sign a consent for information sharing that may have essentially taken away from him any … Continue reading

Posted in General Interest, Health Informtion Exchange, Medical Records, Personal Health Record | 1 Comment

We have “Information Overload” in Clinical Guidelines.

Guidelines should be useful to the provider of health care. However, there are more guidelines than can be digested by these providers. This may make guidelines less useful than intended. Continue reading

Posted in CV, Guidelines, Policy, Quality | Leave a comment

Helping our Patients and Ourselves Navigate the Internet for Reliable Health Information.

In June 2015 Dr. Arthur Caplan opined on Medscape that physicians should be prepared to help patients in some way as they try to navigate the morass of medical information that is available on the Internet[i]. One oft quoted study … Continue reading

Posted in General Interest, Health Information, Health Informtion Exchange, Literature | 11 Comments