Tag Archives: Personal

Renewed Posting

I found a bunch of unpublished posts some months ago. It seems I don’t know how to work wordpress, or maybe one of the updates threw me for a loop. Well, I kept on  writing, sometimes offline, and finally found the time to fix the problem.

This morning at Rotary, I made the observation that a year ago I had a lot of projects going but didn’t know if I would get traction with any of them. Now I have the opposite problem; everything is firing on all cylinders at the same time. Patient Direct Care came out of nowhere, PanZoe has transitioned to an effort on 360Care, a local integrated charitable clinic. EverMed is pitching for 20,000 lives in the next few months.

This morning Clark County Public Health disseminated the information on 360Care’s community meeting.

Paul Levy feels his direct reports should be practiced at writing at least 1000 words a day, in order to communicate with their stakeholders. It is time to jump back on that bandwagon.

So if you see posts dated some time ago that weren’t there before, please accept my apologies. I’m still catching up.

Christmas and Change

I wrote this 6 years ago. It is oddly suited today, because the more we learn, the more we discover to learn. The better I get, the worse I was.

 

Merry Christmas. Christianity was seen by Bertrand Russel as an excuse for mediocrity. I think this perception can arise from Christianity’s insistence on the potential for change.

Christianity is (or at least should be) about forgiveness and redemption above all. That means no matter how inadequate we are, how erroneous our ways, how mediocre our performance, there is always the opportunity for improvement. This position can sometimes seem to excuse past mediocrity, perhaps even celebrate it and reward it.

I was an awkward child, and a certain social awkwardness has penetrated into my adult life. But I am getting better. I have made many mistakes and continue making them. But I need to be free of the baggage of past errors in order to progress. For this reason perhaps, Christianity seems so ready and willing to forgive everything, in heaven if not on earth.

There can be no redemption without guilt. There can be no change without mediocrity. They are the catalysts for change.

Have a warm and happy day.

First Post

I used to write a blog several years ago under a pen-name. I became disillusioned around that time; not with blogging as much as with my job. I stopped writing as my anger was leaking into my writing. I was supposed to be “The Physician Executive” but found myself unable to hold a job, buffeted by my own ego and surrounded by some more than disingenuous people. Nothing in my career as a physician, teacher, manager or self-described policy commenter had prepared me for the foulness of the human struggle.

Yes, I got involved in a political battle at work and found myself oddly unprepared for the interpersonal and political battles which presented themselves. The blow to my confidence was such that my next job, accepted mostly because I needed a job, went just as badly. Well, ’nuff said.

I have since gotten back on my feet.I worked my way into a private practice, where I am now a principal and am working on developing a medical home and honing our quality performance. During my Master’s, I particularly honed interests in Outcomes and Management with a view to quality management. I feel reasonably well-integrated in the community; I get along with most people, but am already aware of some people who stand in opposition to my ideas, attitudes and practices. That’s OK, nobody in the world only makes friends without being a little obtuse.

Over time, I have regained confidence in my insights and my ability to communicate them. I no longer intend to write just about health care, management and policy items, or be in search of ideas for persuasive essays. This is not a blog with its own brand identity. Writing for a local magazine, I requested republication rights. Everything I publish should eventually come under the umbrella of dinoramzi.com.

My wife and I have started two companies, one was a consulting company that took in some revenue between jobs, and is now a small holding company with investments in several healthcare (and non-healthcare) fields. SanZoe Health is in pursuit of ideas that can improve the delivery of primary care, because it is the best way to improve the health of populations (at least as far as health services are concerned). SavingHealth.com is a web site that will deliver evidence-based medicine (EBM) insights from the perspective of a practicing physician. There was a time I would perform reviews for the teaching program when I was involved in teaching at Emory. I have published an evidence-based review in a large circulation continuing education journal. Now that I am in practice, I find I still use the skills. These skills may be scarce, but they are definitely not unique but nobody is actively blogging them. So we’ll get this one up when we get the time… between patients, you know.

We also started PanZoe, which should begin accepting donations within a month or two to help deliver innovative primary care to uninsured or underinsured Americans. We will begin locally, in the Camas/Washougal area, suburbs of Portland Oregon. This is our status as of June 2013 and I do not intend to update this first entry.

At this time I am also the President of the Clark County Medical Association, an alternate delegate to the Washington State Medical Association, and an active member and delegate to the Washington Academy of Family Physicians.

Politically, I am conservative, but you might not recognize my ideas as conservative given that the current crop of right-wingers are merely radicals to my eye. Many of them would call me a liberal. At the end of the day, I am an Independent who supports No Labels and the Congressional Problem-Solvers. Being a bit of a gadfly and calling out inconsistencies on both sides, I could be regarded as uniter of the parties; both sides can always rally behind the idea of throwing me out of the room!

The simple and effective communication of complex ideas is not at easy thing to do. It is a skill that requires a great deal of practice. I have not invested enough time in doing this, but have become aware that my head is exploding with innumerable multi-step ideas. There is no way to describe the role direct-primary care combined with reinsurance and a disappearing deductible for employers to avoid the Obamacare tax and improve the health of the population without building ideas one by one. I need this venue to develop the articulation of these ideas.

The greatest paradox and struggle of my life is that an intellectual path eventually takes you to a place of uncertainty, unknowing and doubt, which inevitably leads to either a sort of intellectual nihilism or on the other hand, to a succumbing to faith. I came backwards to the faith of my ancestors, to the world of Eastern Orthodoxy, mostly as a cradle Greek Orthodox. I accepted this world because of its inherent mysticism; although there is dogma in this church, there is much we acknowledge as unknown. All revelation is short of the blinding reality of God. I find echoes of Orthodox Christianity in the non-religious methodology of mindfulness meditation and most recently in “happiness” research and the concepts of “flow” and “social altruism.” My old professors are guffawing as I write, but this too is something by which I stand.

If by way of advocating for the things I am most passionate about, I run into something offensive, please forgive me in advance. It is not my primary purpose to advocate for any single entity; not for primary care or family medicine, not for the Clark County Medical Society, the AMA, the AFP or its state affiliates, my wife’s for-profit holding company or my non-profit foundation, EBM, mindfulness meditation or the Orthodox Church. But these things are reflections of who I am and what I care about.

I hope you will enjoy the blog and follow its evolution.