Tag

hospitals

How Many Doctors Are Needed to Run a Hospital?

September 20, 2020

When I was a resident physician the chief of cardiology often argued that there should only be two departments in a hospital – medicine and trauma. I’ve often thought about that view over the ensuing decades as the number of medical specialties proliferated like mushrooms after a downpour. How many specialties would be needed if […]

How Many Doctors Are Needed to Run a Hospital?

Don’t Look Back

July 26, 2017

The most poorly managed institution in modern western society is the hospital. I say this after half a century of steady exposure to hospitals of all sorts. I was a student, resident, fellow, staff member, section chief, department chair, chief of staff, and even a patient. Inertia at all levels was unconquerable. Newton’s first law […]

IRS Should Force Churches to Pray More

February 13, 2009

A new report by the IRS has documented that most not for profit hospitals don’t take care of poor people. The author of the report could have asked his mother and she’d have told him that hospitals only take care of non-payers at the point of a gun and she’d have done so at no […]

Why Nothing Works

December 24, 2008

The title is a bit hyperbolic – almost nothing works. Good service usually can not be purchased at any price unless you are in the billionaire class. Why do businesses that provide only a service – like the airlines – perform so terribly? In this case (airlines) it’s our fault. We don’t want to pay […]

About the Editor

Neil Kurtzman

Physician. Professor. Writer.

Neil A Kurtzman MD is the Grover E Murray Professor Emeritus and University Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of Internal Medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock. He has combined careers in clinical medicine, education, basic research, and administration for more than 40 years.