Atul Gawande at Health Data Palooza Session on ACOs: A Keynote

By Gregg A. Masters, MPH

Since he authored ‘The [healthcare] Cost Conundrum‘ piece some three years ago, positing the question of who will emerge as the ‘anchor tenant’ business model in healthcare, I’ve been ‘waving’ at Atul Gawande via social media including Twitter and blog.

When I saw that he was faciliating a breakout session at ‘Health Datapalooza‘ aka HDI Forum III or as some would label it the ‘friends of Todd Park love in’, titled ‘Accountable Care Organizations: Using Data to Deliver Patient Centered Care and Improve Population Health While Lowering Costs‘ I thought I finally get to shake his hand and thank the public health colleague in person for his incredible work.

As a member of the digital media press corps at the event, I was also committed to covering both via Twitter, @ACOwatch and video of certain events. I was not about to let this one go undocumented, so I trained the video camera on Gawande and captured the entire session.

There are some memorable quotes in this piece (e.g., ‘from cowboys to pit crews’), as he draws poignant insights derived from two seemingly conflicting sides of the equation: ‘systems of killing’ and ‘systems of healing’.