OwenBloggers: Isha - MBA '08

Go bankrupt – wipe your debt clean

Of course I’m not in denial – isn’t the economy doing fantastically well? It is definitely doing well, just that the definition of “well” is slightly skewed… Somehow the news of Lehman Brothers's bankruptcy filing filing hasn’t shattered my world. As unreal as it might be that one of the largest US investment banks in the world is having liquidity issues, all the signs were there. I’m not specifically referring to the recently posted losses by the Lehman Brothers, but the generally shaky ground the world financial institutions are standing on. Now, the speculation soar as who will buy them. The bidders included Barclays Plc and Bank of America, but it seems that BAC went another way and started sweet talking another investment bank - Merrill Lynch. But with the current situation will for $5 billion be too much? Maybe they should wait and see if MER follows suit: maybe they can get them at a bargain price too…

Either way, the situation’s effect on the global economy is quite substantial. As BBC put it:

“Its impact is being felt around the world:

• Stock markets and the US dollar have tumbled in reaction to Lehman's collapse, with banking shares hardest hit. UK bank HBOS saw its shares plummet 30%.
• Central banks have moved to reassure markets. The US Federal Reserve has broadened its emergency lending scheme and the UK and European central banks have injected a total of $39bn (£22bn; 28bn euros) into the financial system.
• There are fears AIG, once the world's largest insurer, could also face collapse. It is taking steps to raise money amid reports it is seeking a $40bn emergency loan from the Fed.
• Bank of America's move to buy Merrill in a $50bn deal means that three of the top five US investment banks have fallen prey to the sub-prime crisis within six months.
• In the UK, accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers have been appointed as administrators for Lehman.”

So what does bankruptcy do for a company? Quite a bit actually. I had a class at Owen on the subject and for some companies bankruptcy is a blessing and a well defined tactical decision. Considering implications of bankruptcy proceedings – especially when we are considering restructuring rather than liquidation of a company – in a strategic move a company can wipe out loads of debt by properly structuring debt classification. Think of the oodles of money “saved” on salaries, pensions, healthcare obligations, and other “minor” expenses related to the workforce. And that’s just beginning. Of course, it’s a bit different for investment banks, yet the fact remains – heaps of money on one side, shattered lived on another. As I sad, for some it’s a tactical decision, but for some it’s just a sign of utter failure.

When the financial markets opened in the US, LEH started trading at $0.25 - yes, that's 25 (twenty five) cents. I think it has gone down since then...

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Fates and reality check

The Fates sure can plays tricks on you, even if you are looking. All I can hope for is that they know what they are doing and are doing it for the best. I just got my reality check - with complements of three blind Greek women.

My stubbornness and pickiness (and indecisiveness) about the next career move after graduation extended my job search well into the "dry" season - or rather, straight into the recent economic downturn of the world economy. With my lease running out and no interesting prospects in the US I was already leaning towards an international career. And then my mom started complaining about her health. Now, her complain is nothing new, but inventing new symptoms is quite unusual. So I packed my bags and moved across the ocean – it’s amazing how easy it is to make such a move if you put your mind to it.

Maybe the Fates have served me a reality check, but they do watch over me. I could not imagine being five thousand miles away and finding out that my mother has a tumor. Believe you me, it’s hard enough when you are close by.

Here starts my new reality: face to face with Polish healthcare system. I wonder if my Healthcare MBA got me prepared for this...

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EHR - theory and practice

Medical records are trying to go digital. Operative word here is trying, as the word “try” indicates the possibility of failure.

The goal in the US is to have EHR for all Americans (or rather patients in the US) by 2014. The main problem lies not in the fact that it costs about $40,000 for a practice to put the system in place. The more troubling notion is lack of a common standard. What’s the use of having an EHR when you change doctors, and the new one can’t read it?

"Researchers found that just 4 percent of physicians have adopted "fully functional" computerized health records systems that help them make decisions about patient care or order tests. Another 13 percent have a more basic system." - Reuters article

That's not much, now is it? What about the other 87%? Where are they? How likely are they to install and fully utilize a EHR system? There is a very interesting read from EHR/EMR implementation project by Wendy Wickham. She goes into excruciating details of EHR implementation for a large hospital (over all seven geographic locations) and about 3000 users (including doctors, students, nurses and all the support staff). Imagine training the lot!

John D. Halamka, MD, the CIO of CareGroup Health System, writes about issues he faces as a provider of EHR technology. In his blog he often stresses the incompatibility of systems an wrong functionality of it.  What is the use of the greatest data sharing system, if it only has limited access? His company has several ideas how to manage single patient records from multiple (not always same network) locations. But we will have to wait a few years to see the degree of success of this approach.

Finishing off, we are still faced with the other, almost minor, issue - the rising costs. If it takes about $40,000 per doctor to set up a family practice of five doctors in the local community will be set back roughly $200,000 just to get the system up and running. What about maintenance costs? Simply put: with the planned freeze on the reimbursement rates how will clinics be able to afford it? More importantly, the $150 million dedicated by Medicare to 12 cities to set up EHR is a drop in the bucket of the ocean of financial need.

Song of the day:
The Cranberries - Time Is Ticking Out

Technorati Tags: Owenbloggers.com,EHR,Healthcare,IT,Medicare

In Praise of Idleness

Yesterday a friend told me where to find live internet broadcast of Polish Public Radio, so ever  since I’ve been listening to Trójka. This morning (well, my morning, but in Poland mid afternoon) I listened to a long discussion about not wanting to do things. Some callers were funny, others not so much, but the most interesting thing was mention of an essay by Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness. For someone still looking for a job, it’s a very refreshing thought. Maybe more so, for someone who sees work is a means to a happy life, and not the goal of it.

He writes: “The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.” Then he continues with the following thought.

“This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. No wonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take an illustration. Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?”

Is then our relentless pursuit of “more” coupled with ambition causing misery, because we are expected and we expect ourselves not to have leisure? Maybe, just maybe we should get a little lazy…

Technorati Tags: Owenbloggers.com,Philosophy,Economics,Worklife Balance,Work

Footballer dreams

Too bad there is no sound with pictures. I walked into 8:10 cafe and the room was full with people watching football.  The real kind played with a round ball and none of that protective gear...   It was pretty amazing.  For the 10 minutes that I was here the place was alive and buzzing with life. I have seen so many games being watched here, but rarely do they have such excitement exhibited like it was today. Not even the Vandy basketball games. UEFA brings people together...

Match of the day was Liverpool - Chelsea 1:1

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Weekend catch-up: Alumni, Incoming class, and lots of work

I kept on putting it off: when I have more time to think I’ll write – I thought. But there is no “more time” anywhere in my near future, so here is the recap of last weekend.

Oh, the buzz of excitement!  This weekend was a combination of great fun and lots of work (at least for me). Friday night was a combined reception for Owen Alums and beginning of the Welcome Weekend for the MBA class of 2010 and MSF and MACC class of 2009. As much as the night was fun, I had to cut the celebrations short, since my Saturday stated at 8 am with a breakfast at Owen. Then it was meetings, meetings, and more meetings with a brief break for Welcome Weekend lunch. I met a LOT of great people on Friday and Saturday – the incoming class is a great mix of personalities and backgrounds. Almost makes me wish I had another year at Owen to get to know them. One thing I am convinced of is that the incoming class will be a great addition to Owen family. YOU WILL LOVE IT HERE! Yes, you know who you are.

After the mingling with new students was done, the real work began. After a full day at Owen on Saturday, I moved into the library on Sunday. Somehow, this is not how I envisioned my last two weeks at Owen to be so schoolwork busy…

Song of the day:
Jack Johnson - What You Though You Need

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Beauty of the Google Reader

If there is a shadow of a doubt why I'm not writing, then I have a one word answer: finals. But I am trying to keep up with my daily blogs - reading them that is. That's why I love google reader. There are probably other feed aggregators out there that do a spectacular job of keeping it all organized, but it's not about the engine, it's about the content.  As I plough through 100+ blogs (on a slow day) it's great to have the opportunity to star items to come back later.  So right now I have more starred items then unread ones --> things to come back to when I have some time (anytime after 9pm CST today that is). And there is plenty to get excited about: malaria, vaccines, politics, healthcare costs, antidepressants, airlines and biofuel, inflation, and old ladies. The last one is a real treat...

Life at Owen does get intense sometimes. You can see it in the faces that pass you by at the school over the past few days. I don't think the first years feel it yet, but even though many of 2008 class have jobs already, we are still here to learn. And sometimes learning is hard...

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Pounding heart

As I was plowing through my RSS feed aggregator yesterday, I came across an article on BBC how managers work 40 days more a year then other employees. So I actually looked at the article instead of just checking out the first paragraph, and to my horror, 40 days a year equals to working an hour longer a day! This is outrage, isn’t it!? The article then goes on and talks about the negative impact on health and performance that such overworking has. My heart was pounding with excitement that some has raised that issue.

And then I realized that I would be glad to work for a company which required me to work at most 48 hour weeks. As I am job searching and going through the notions of finding the right fit company for me, it frightens me how many “great” employers don’t really care about the well being of their workers. How corporate culture reward those that are willing to sacrifice their private lives for the company and work 70 hour weeks. How the society pushes us to live to work and not work to live, and, which I think is worse, that majority of people don’t have a problem with that.

We are so involved in winning the rat race that we forget that there is life out there. We forget that there are other ways of doing things and that the world will not end if we slow down a bit.

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Psychoterapia?

Dla wielu osób blogi o chorobach to jedyny sposób na utrzymanie nadziei. Do tej grupy zaliczają się zarówno Ci, co je piszą i Ci, co czytają. Nie ma to nic wspólnego z jakąś niezdrową potrzebą roztrząsania cudzego nieszczęścia tylko z własnym poczuciem bezsilności.

Niektóre choroby są wyrokami, inne takimi się wydają, ale wielu nie wie nawet ja się za coś zabrać, czego oczekiwać, gdzie szukać specjalistycznej pomocy, etc. I choć dla wielu blogowanie jest psychoterapią, dla innych i jest szansą na spokojniejsze chorowanie.

Właśnie pisze plan marketingowy dla takiej firemki, która zajmuje się blogami, poradami, forum, i paroma innymi rzeczami na temat diet dla osób uczulonych na różne artykuły spożywcze. I nie mówię tu o orzechach, ale o glutenie i tym podobnym. Dla wielu osób, takie miejsce jest zbawienne. Bo co młoda matka może wiedzieć na temat diet bezglutenowych i komplikacjach, jakie mogą wystąpić? Może wiedzieć wszystko, ale bardziej prawdopodobne będzie, że nie będzie wiedzieć nic. Internet ma niesamowitą penetrację w społeczeństwie i ma niepowtarzalne możliwości. Każdy może mieć do niego dostęp i wydaje mi się, że często właśnie blogi są pierwszym źródłem informacji. Czy blogi są psychoterapią? Na pewno, ale też są bramą do całej gamy doświadczeń, do których nie mielibyśmy inaczej dojścia.

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I saw (RED)

Over the past few weeks my computer has been driving me insane. Maybe not the computer per se, but the software side of it. Or to be more concise, it’s the MS Office 2007 compatibility with MS Office 2003 that is driving me insane. Knowing that my commuter can’t handle the new Office, nearly died when I had the trial version installed, I started window shopping for a replacement system. So here I was creating the perfect system on dell.com, one that not only peeked my interest, but also got me eager to buy, when Dell announced that they were joining (PRODUCT) RED^TM. As much as I love the idea of (RED) and the fight to eliminate AIDS in Africa, I found the idea a bit annoying, because, of course, I picked a red top for my future laptop. 

Let us consider consumer incentives to purchase a laptop, with or without joining (RED). I did a quick comparison and built exactly the same system under the current special offers and as a part of the (RED) thing. Over all, the price difference was about $900 in favor of not going (RED)! I really feel incentivized NOT to join (RED) and contribute my $50 to fighting AIDS. How come iPod (RED) is the same price as the regular one and Dell doesn't? Great idea, but messed up on the implementation.  Granted, if they waited few days until the current promotion on XPS computers runs out, no one would have noticed. But they didn't. So instead of more seriously considering a purchase, I thought to myself “I can wait, the price is bound to go down sometime...”

Song of the Day:
Sublime feat. Gwen Stefini - I saw Red

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