Provider shortages are exacerbated by out-of-date medical licensing

If I could make one realistic change in our health system to improve access and cut costs, I’d change licensing. There is a shortage of healthcare providers: primary care doctors, specialists in neurology and psychiatry, pulmonary and critical-care medicine, mental health therapists and others.* The resulting access challenges  are predicted to get worse. Many businessesContinue

Why Mental Health Shortages Plague America

Mental health therapist shortages plague the nation. I’m a healthcare business leader who has worked for years to deliver mental healthcare to patients. Now my newsfeed is full of alarmist articles on the provider shortage. It’s finally acceptable for many Americans to seek the mental health support they need, but patients struggle to find aContinue

Unprofessional

I haven’t been listening to Anne’s advice so she says she’s going to hit me over the head with a two-by-four. Her advice has been blunt and forceful, so I brace for what’s to come. I’ve driven the hour or more down 280 and up into the Los Altos Hills to walk with Anne andContinue

Mental healthcare should be offered at trigger moments

First published on Medium, here, with my other mental health perspectives. For a decade I struggled against pain. Chronic, often debilitating pain. I cried the day I bought seat adapters to help me sit; I felt I was crossing from healthy to disabled. The pain upended my life: I was at the top graduate schoolContinue

After their death

It’s dark and past dinner time when Carrie pulls into her driveway. She has to make a choice.  She is not excited about Plan A. Plan A is to pop inside to get a snack from the cupboard and pee, then drive forty minutes to her graduate lab and forty minutes back, barely in timeContinue

Candid truths and follow-ups: I say out loud to the team of people I lead that I am struggling.

It’s Friday afternoon on a ten-way team Zoom and I want to know how each individual human is faring with this struggle. Like all good software teams we do a retro, a list of what went well, what could be improved, and follow-up actions. Usually it’s about teamwork, communication, changing processes or tools. But that’sContinue

The farthest journey

The doctors in the US were excited for my move to Switzerland; they told me the Europeans might have different theories and ideas that could help me. It’s a dull, aching worry that comes of realizing your doctors are pleased for you to leave because they don’t know how to help you. But at leastContinue

How to live a stable life on unstable terrain

Job skills: Finding them. Resilience. Comfort with short-term uncertainty. The year I ripped a hole in the cartilage in my hip was the year my first company imploded. En route to Oregon to cheer for my triathlon team, making the most of a deep disappointment, my company went bankrupt. When I landed for my layoverContinue