Last year, I joined Zeke Emanuel and some other great people in publishing an article on how to use the insights of behavioral economics to nudge physicians towards providing high-value care. Here is a link to that article. To give you a teaser, here are some of the principles we drew upon:
And here are ways to make use of the principles:
Eager to see these ideas put into practice!
In areas of the country hardest hit by COVID-19, clinicians are already being forced to make tragic rationing decisions: about who to admit to the hospital, who to transfer to the ICU and who to place on scarce ventilators. These decisions feel out of character with our national identity. We normally think of ourselves as…
For my entire life, a half century and counting, healthcare spending in the U.S. has almost always risen faster than inflation. Sometimes it’s relatively slow, sometimes it’s relatively fast, but no matter the time, healthcare spending is climbing. Getting healthcare spending under control is really important for us to do if we hope to have…
Heuristics is jargon used by decision psychologists and behavioral economists to refer to cognitive shortcuts we humans take to make judgments and decisions. One of the first heuristics identified as such by Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky was the anchoring heuristic. I would define it for you, but it is wonderfully captured in this cartoon:
It is gratifying to occasionally see some of my blog posts picked up and developed by other folks, to spread the word about the topics I care about. Here is a blog post, and a video, that expands on one of my recent Forbes essays. Increase sales, add excitement to the store, and you’re set….
It all comes down to willpower, right? Strength of purpose. Muster the resolve to skip dessert, and you have a shot at losing that spare tire hanging off your belly. Succumb to your temptations, however, and you are simply being weak. But is it just weakness that causes us to overeat? A study in Psychological Science suggests…
In a 1967 experiment, psychologists trained pigeons to peck a red key to get food. (Pigeons were huge back then, research wise!) Then they tested whether the pigeons could learn to delay gratification. They set up the pecking booth so that those pigeons who waited a little longer before pecking the red key would get…