Len Zwelling

The Problem With Patient Satisfaction As A Key Metric of Physician Performance By Leonard Zwelling Satisfaction. What is it? Simply stated it’s the absence of desire. It is also very rarely attained by humans. Everybody always wants something more, even if it is just to live another day. If any people should understand this, it […]

Wishful Rumors About The Next MD Anderson President By Leonard Zwelling I got an email. A friend was checking in with me about what I had heard with regard to who the finalists are for the MD Anderson presidency. From at least two sources, I have been told that the advisory committee to the search

The Return Of Civility To MD Anderson By Leonard Zwelling In this editorial in The New York Times on Saturday, July 29, Bret Stephens explains that the beginning of the coarsening of our national discourse that culminated in the recent profanity-laced rants by the now-fired Anthony Scarimucci to The New Yorker began with the permissiveness

The Importance of A Working Staff By Leonard Zwelling It is apparent by now that President Trump does not have a functioning White House staff. The press secretary is gone. The Chief of Staff is now gone. The new communications director lasted ten days. Many others have left and there are tens of vacancies throughout

“You’re Fired”: Why Can’t They Say It? By Leonard Zwelling When Ray DuBois fired me as a vice president on his first morning in office as Provost, he didn’t really do it. He was physically there, but Dan Fontaine did the firing. He told me that my position was being eliminated and that I would

Speaking Truth To Power: Never Easy, Always Necessary By Leonard Zwelling I only did it a few times. One day the president of MD Anderson who I was serving had a cool idea. He wanted to genotype every patient with cancer (and the cancer, too) that walked through the front doors of MD Anderson and

The Real Key Faculty: Those Who Develop A Treatment By Leonard Zwelling For the past twenty years or so, the key to faculty success at MD Anderson has been excelling in the rather traditional metrics of academia—papers, grants and awards. Most of the emphasis has been placed on scientific accomplishment and much of that has

MD Anderson Is Not Immune To The Ravages Of Health Care Reform By Leonard Zwelling What is health care reform anyway? My friend the American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein says, “Everyone’s idea of health care reform is the same. I pay less.” That’s pretty much it. Health care reform in America could be about shrinking

Why I Am For The Republican Health Care Bill By Leonard Zwelling Not surprisingly, The New York Times’ editorial page hates the bill that might emerge from the Republican-controlled US Senate. If it at all reflects the House version of the bill it will displace the health insurance of over 20 million Americans, many of

Needed: An Operational Visionary And I Don’t Mean A Surgeon By Leonard Zwelling There is one sure way to improve the balance sheet of MD Anderson. Spend less. It’s already working as June’s financials demonstrated. This seems like an obvious solution, but it is not, because everyone at Anderson is convinced that his or her