• More on iPhone 3G availability at sharding/blog - For those of us intently interested in this right now. It's interesting that Apple has decided to centralize distribution to just its stores and not take advantage of a more dispersed AT&T retail presence. I think they will look back at this as a mistake.

• Maintaining Metro - washingtonpost.com - For those who live in Washington, more information about what's happening during those 30-45 minute delays on weekends when they are replacing switches. Things related to place matter even to those working to change the world. The world is not flat.

• Think Before You Voicemail - Sentiment about older modes of messaging. If the general public doesn't like it, maybe we shouldn't force our patients to, either.

• Just A Language Change, Or A Step In Slouching Towards Gomorrah? - Interesting change in CMS incident-to rules. This does have impact in EHR installations.

• Health Populi: Corporate reputation: pharma, gas and finance tie for the penultimate position - Nice analysis from Jane Sarasohn-Kahn about the latest data around corporate reputations

Running a hospital: The message you hope never to send

As with many stimulating blog postings, the comments are as interesting as the post itself. Kudos to Paul Levy for doing his best to handle this differently than is the norm in health care - that’s an important role for a CEO who wants to change health care for the better.

I’m particularly drawn to the comment(s) by Ray Poses, MD about doing a “5 Why’s” type exercise to see what is happening upstream (why are teams being pulled in so many different directions regularly) that causes protocols to be slipped.

I also think there’s an opportunity for BIDMC to bring in patients and families to own the solution together. What would care be like if there was a family member in the operating room during surgical prep (Medical College of Georgia does this)? Or if the family had access to the patient’s electronic medical record in real time while in the hospital? Preventing this for another patient may be less about “what” to do in the operating room, but “how” teams (that include patients and families) are involved in the design of the system.

Given the work BIDMC has been doing to be transparent and involve more, rather than less, people in designing and improving their care system, it seems that they’ll do their best for their patients this time, too.