This blog is meant to be an outlet for health care professionals and employees of WakeMed to discuss important issues.  We are pleased to welcome commentary from our first guest blogger, Laura Aiken, community health specialist with WakeMed and director of Advocates for Health in Action (AHA).  Learn more about AHA by visiting their Web [...]

Uwe Reinhardt’s recent commentary on CNN.com highlights the economic dangers that threaten the American middle class if efforts to reform the health care system fail. Reinhardt, a political economy professor at Princeton University, made some very interesting points about the relationship between health insurance and employment in our country.
Reinhardt warns that without health care reform [...]

The big health care reform news of the day as reported by CNN, NY Times, News & Observer, Washington Post, L.A. Times and Wall Street Journal is whether or not to remove the public option from the health care reform package.
The debate over the public option has completely overshadowed the real issue: Our current health [...]

NAMI Wake County (National Alliance on Mental Illness) has expressed concern over Wake County’s lack of hospital beds for psychiatric patients, and has called on WakeMed to fill this void. Below is my response to Ann Akland, Co-President of NAMI Wake County.
Dear Mrs. Akland:
As you know, over the past three years Wake County Government,  Holly [...]

A reader recently posted a thought-provoking comment – one that I believe many of you may have considered.  The question: “Is healthcare a fundamental right??
The answer, I think, is that we must view basic health care in a similar way that we see defense and public safety in this country. We have collectively decided as [...]

If you’re looking for a sure sign of the need for health care reform, you should take a visit to an Emergency Department.  It has become the de facto “front door” to our health care system for millions of patients who turn to hospitals to provide routine medical care not because they want to, but [...]

I had the chance to attend President Obama’s town hall meeting on health care reform in Raleigh this afternoon.  It was a delight to have the President here in our backyard.  WakeMed’s Senior Vice President Judy O’Neal was even fortunate enough to sit on stage and get a “President’s eye” view of the crowd.  Afterwards, [...]

North Carolina health care industry leaders met last week in Raleigh to discuss health care reform. Participating in the Health Care Policy Forum were:

Jack Bailey, GlaxoSmithKline
Bob Greczyn, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina
Bob Seligson, North Carolina Medical Society
Hugh Tilson, North Carolina Hospital Association

It was reassuring to hear all of the panelists agree that health [...]

In health care we have an acronym for everything. I’m sure you have heard HIPAA, EMR, ICU, etc.  I’ve created an acronym of my own – ACQ or Access, Cost and Quality.  In my mind, these are the three fundamental issues that have to be addressed when working to reform today’s national health care system [...]

This post from Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein is a must read.
Klein cuts through the sometimes overly-dramatic rhetoric that we hear on TV about health care reform and reveals a cogent analysis about where things stand. And where things stand, he argues, is entirely predictable. But he also points out that health care reform is [...]