by Tony Chen

I'm very excited to announce our newest blogger at Hospital Impact: Mr. Joe Wasserman.

Wasserman is the President and CEO of Lakeland Healthcare, a three-hospital system that includes two long-term facilities, an assisted living center, 3,500 associates, and 325 physicians located in Southwest Michigan. He has been in this role since 1985.

Joe received his Masters of Health Services Administration from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. He is also a Fellow of the ACHE.

Joe: Welcome to the community and the team, and we look forward to working with you.

by Tony Chen

Follow Hospital Impact on Twitter. There, I'll be providing daily links, "recently heard" quotes, & commentary on the news of the day.

What is twitter, you ask? Well, think about it like a blend between a blog and an instant message. Entries are limited to 140 characters and show up on your "followers'" homepage. See wikipedia's explanation of Twitter.

At the end of the day, twitter is basically a new communication tool. You can blast information out, you can interact with like-minded followers and readers. And you can learn more about your market - real-time. Every day, I'm getting at least a couple of hospitals who sign up for twitter and start following us. More on how hospitals can use twitter in a later post.

In the meantime, head over to twitter.com/hospitalimpact and tell me what you think. Waste of time or useful communication tool?

by Tony Chen

As you have probably figured out by the new look here at hospital impact, we have made some big changes. As I eluded to in an earlier post, I am excited to announce that the Hospital Impact blog is now a part of the FierceMarkets family. For those visiting for the first time, welcome! Read about us.

How We Decided to Team Up
After 3+ years of blogging, I've realized that Hospital Impact has become a great, fresh "hospital leader" perspective, one that is still very much needed in our industry. I have been getting the FierceHealthcare daily email newsletter for almost 3 years now, and have found them to be filled with great tidbits and even new business ideas. Those newsletters have even occasionally linked to posts here on the blog. With their fresh approach in delivering healthcare news and Hospital Impact's emphasis on the "insider" perspective and analysis, we think it's a great match going forward. For me, it's also a realization that Hospital Impact can be so much better with me out of the way and just involved with the work I enjoy most about it - the writing itself.

What This All Means for You
The main thing is that Hospital Impact will continue as a blog for hospital leaders by hospital leaders, and if anything, we'll be seeing a lot more traffic, and subsequently, more comments and discussions.

Read more!

by Tony Chen

Just a quick note to say that we are looking for a few good hospital executives to join the blogging team here at Hospital Impact. Here's a refresher of what we're looking for. email me at tony [at] hospitalimpact [dot] org if you are interested.

We also have a big announcement to make in the next few weeks. I'll share the details as soon as I can, but the upshot will be that Hospital Impact will be getting a lot more exposure in the coming months.

by Tony Chen

I'll be at PDMA's "Front End of Innovation" Conference in Boston next week. If anyone is around and up for drinks, let me know.

Last time I checked, I couldn't find any other hospital members of the PDMA (Product Development and Management Association). Think of them as the ACHE for innovation & product development people. As I interact with this group, I'm definitely stretched by their progressive thinking about how to bring innovation into any culture/organization (apparently, the Russians did a lot of innovation theory work back in the day that are still being utilized widely today).

What can hospitals learn from the likes of Dow, Staples, Google, Starbucks, IBM, Kraft? I'll let you know.

by Tony Chen

A quick tangent from the world of hospitals, healthcare, HIPAA, and DRGs. I love being in healthcare, but some of you know that the birth of my son Timothy almost 2 years ago has been a life-changing, exhausting, and exhilarating experience for me. And that experience (coupled with a lot of soul-searching) led me on a mission to create a website dedicated to fuel this passion to be a great dad. Check it out at savvydaddy.com.

If you like what you see, could you help me get the word out? Email it to your friends(dad and moms!), become a fan on facebook, link to it on your blog, subscribe to the rss feed, and stalk me on twitter. And most importantly, sign up as a registered user in 30 seconds (for free!) and start commenting on articles, posting questions/stories, and enjoy! Thank you!

It was really through my experience here at Hospital Impact that I experienced the value and the power of web 2.0 to catalyze conversations and bring awareness to new areas. Don't worry - I'll still be blogging here (though no where near the 6 times/week that I used to!) Thank you for all your support, comments, and friendship here on hospital impact. Let's keep the conversations going and let's keep fighting for better hospitals.

by Tony Chen

Want to trade notes and chat with other progressive hospital and health care leaders?

Want to know how other hospital leaders are dealing with the issues that you are facing?

Looking for new business development ideas, trends, and insights?

Want to know how to help make your hospital the best hospital it can be?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, this is the community for you! Click here to join!

We've been blogging for almost 3 years now and honestly, some of the best insights on this blog have been your comments. While we'll still be blogging here, I want to open it up more and give you a chance to set the agenda and converse amongst yourselves as well. Join the Hospital Impact Online Community to trade notes, brainstorm for new ideas, or just chat away with other progressive hospital and healthcare leaders. So what do you want to talk about today?

Sign up today and start a discussion and/or join a group!

Visit us at hospitalimpact.ning.com

by Tony Chen

Sorry I haven't been posting as often recently. All the long-term bloggers know - blogging is fun, but it is indeed a lot of work. There are waves of ups and downs. A lot of people ask me, "how do you find the time to blog?" My answer for the last couple of months is that I don't.

Nonetheless, even as I've been preoccupied with other things, the blog has continued to surprise me. Got calls from editors of Spirit Magazine and the American College of Physicians to get quotes from me as an "industry expert" (little do they know how little I know). Through the blogosphere, I also met up with long-time blogger and knowledge management guru Jim McGee. Tomorrow I've got lunch with someone who I was introduced to via facebook from someone I met at a blogging conference.

Yes, blogging is about great insights and great content. But for me, the greatest value has come from the real-life conversations with real-life people I met through the blog. It's about community and relationships as much as it is about information. Look out for an announcement related to this in the next few weeks.

We're very pleased to have Dr. Cohn as part of our Hospital Impact community of bloggers. Dr. Cohn is a board-certified general surgeon who obtained his MD degree from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons Medical School, completed his residency at the Harvard-Deaconess Surgical Service, and performed fellowships in endocrine and oncologic surgery at the Karolinska Hospital and at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, respectively.

He has also served as Assistant Professor of Surgery at SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn and as Associate Professor of Surgery and Chief of Surgical Oncology at the VA Hospital at White River Junction.

With the change in the medical economic climate, Dr. Cohn entered the MBA program of the Tuck School at Dartmouth and graduated June 1998. He worked initially as a consultant at Health Advances, assisting six firms to commercialize new products. At Cambridge Management Group, he led change-management initiatives for physicians at affiliated hospitals within the Yale New Haven, Banner Colorado, Cottage Santa Barbara and Sutter Sacramento Health Systems.

He remains clinically active, covering surgical practices in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. He has been co-mentoring physicians in leadership development since 1999, finding that physicians enjoy learning from fellow physicians.

Dr. Cohn's writing experience includes over 45 published articles in peer-reviewed healthcare journals. His article, "The Tectonic Plates Are Shifting: Cultural Change vs. Mural Dyslexia," won the Dean Conley Award in 2009 from the American College of Healthcare Executives for the best article in a healthcare management publication.

He has written two books, Better Communication for Better Care: Mastering Physician-Administration Collaboration, and Collaborate for Success! Breakthrough Strategies for Engaging Physicians, Nurses, and Hospital Executives, published by Health Administration Press, 2005 and 2006.

Dr. Cohn is also the editor of The Business of Healthcare, a three-volume set, published December 2007 that comprises practice management, leading healthcare organizations, and improving systems of care. He is also the editor of Improving Physician-Hospital Relations: A Field-Tested System, a multimedia distance-learning program helps hospital leaders engage physicians to improve care, improve operating room productivity, deal with disruptive physicians and implement cutting-edge physician recruiting and retention strategies.

And in his spare time (yes, he actually does have some!), he also blogs bimonthly on Healthcare Collaboration.

by Tony Chen

Is your organization seeking to make an impact in healthcare?

If you are interested in purchasing a link (see the sidebar) under our "Healthcare Impacters" area or learning more about other partnership opportunities at hospital impact, please feel free to contact me for more information.

tony [at] hospitalimpact [dot] org

Hospital Impact consistently attracts ~10,000 unique visits per month. Our readers tend to be tech-savvy, progressive, forward-thinking healthcare and hospital leaders - could be a great niche for the right company.