Boston is truly beautiful! It's orderly, clean and European styled. Apart from the sub zero weather which gave us our first glimpse of snowfall (!!), it was an enjoyable week spent in New England. Won't forget that moment as R and I were sitting in the Hawes Hall and suddenly it was Hey! It's snowing! And we both just stared out the window to watch the snowflakes fall for the next while.
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| Bridge to the Harvard Business School, my daily commute. This was at -13C. |
Our excuse for being there was for me to attend Michael Porter and Elizabeth Teisberg's intensive seminar on value based healthcare. Organized by the Harvard Business School, I jumped at the opportunity to rub some genius off the esteemed folk from HBS. In the span of one week, we covered 11 case studies, examining their successes and pitfalls, organizing what is "in the box" or out, and making critical observations and suggestions on how to move value ahead in the healthcare system. It was also my first exposure to the American styled Socratic method of teaching, in which each lessons content is largely determined by what participants have to contribute to the class. As a result, almost at any one point in class, there will be 15 hands raised up to give an opinion in response to a question posed. Quite an unusual sight compared to what we are used to back in our Asian classrooms. I have my own reservations about the efficacy of such methods, but it has seemed to work well for the people here. In addition to learning via the HBS case method style, we were also taught that "No one is allowed to ask questions. You can only make statements."???? Haha. Land of the Free indeed.
One thing I thought was remarkable and very impressive was how HBS brought in the "protagonists" for each case study, be it the brainchild or CEO/COOs of each massive health network, to field questions on how they made their health systems work. In a room full of established businessmen, health administrators, clinicians and policy makers, one cannot help but feel dwarfed by the aura of these mighty men and women.
The content covered has given me much food for thought about the way our healthcare is delivered back home. While I am proud of the efficiencies of our system, there are definitely flaws to fix and ways to improve. Much to think about how all this talk translates into quality improvement in the context of home.
Thankful for friends J and S who extended warm hospitality. S is the most hilarious Korean American I've met thus far. Then there was S and J whom we had pizza with at Area Four (where Obama had his mushroom pizza topped with arugula) followed by a little MIT tour. And not forgetting D and A who took us out for dinner at Legal Sea Foods. :) Singaporeans are a well traveled bunch.
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| Most hilarious Korean American |
So it's back to NYC for the winter and I was almost gonna say that I'm all done traveling and about to dust and pack these suitcases for good, but it just occurred to me that Dwell Retreat is next weekend so up to the Spruce Lake we go!
