Rahul Rajkumar

careful: if this technology falls into the hands of internal medicine docs, rounds may extend to 8 hours long

What a joy it's been to find our collective awe in something as a nation. It's a reminder that these missions not only have scientific value, but a civic, almost spiritual value. They remind us of who we are. A few reflections that I hope are worth your time. 🧵🧵🧵

This, from @ezraklein, is so well said:

@ashishkjha Ashish - Why was the entire discourse in the policy community pre-ACA on utilization not prices?

If you ever wonder whether we have a utilization problem or price problem in US healthcare This chart should help Here are four procedures by rates and prices, in the US, Australia, Switzerland and Germany We don't use more healthcare We just pay much higher prices

In Japanese, "tsundoku" means collecting books and letting them pile up, not from neglect, but for the joy of knowing they're there, full of untold stories.

It’s cool that Salman Rushdie has outlived 2 Ayatollahs.

And let’s talk about what’s possible next.

That’s the power of having 24/7 access to a team that knows your name. Healthcare CAN be personal, at-home, and high-performing all at once. To see the full data behind the Detroit turnaround, read the white paper here: whitepaper.accompanyhealth.com 🚀

I'm super proud and excited to share our #accompanyhealth quality white paper (thread) -- whitepaper.accompanyhealth.com

These days—when I reflect upon the remakable life of my late father (Subhash Jain) I think a lot about the unspoken loneliness of immigration. My Dad’s first stop in North America was a year of residency at the now-defunct Hotel Dieu Hospital in Chatam, an underserved area of New Brunswick, Canada. Dad grew up in the desert climate of Rajasthan, India and never saw snow before. And somehow he found himself alone in New Brunswick enveloped by biting cold. He was without a car and his simple existence involved walking in the snow to take his laundry to a local laundromat. International phone calls were cost prohibitive. Just him on his lonesome trying to learn medicine and advance his career. An otherwise stoic man, he wrote my Mom letters confessing his struggle in a new country where he barely knew a soul. And he rarely spoke of his time there with any of us. In retrospect, he likely experienced a deep unspoken trauma, though not in a million years would never call it that. When I asked him once how he did it all—he said, “Sometimes, son, you have to turn your heart to stone.” Dad persevered on to New York and built a successful career and rich life with friends, family, and artistic and spiritual pursuits. And yet, I think about that time in his life (before I was born) with sadness. So many people give up everything to take a chance at a better life for themselves in their families. I write this post to honor my Dad’s struggle and that of other immigrants like him who at some uncertain time in their lives took a bold leap of faith.

“The rounding will continue until morale improves” - a well-intentioned medicine attending somewhere, probably

When my mother first came to this country in the 1970s, my father was busy with his anesthesiology residency and moonlighting to make ends meet. One day, she saw an advertisement on a corkboard in the apartment building where they lived, “babysitter needed.” She decided to respond. She started with one child—the son of a nurse—for a few dollars/night. Word quickly spread and their small apartment was transformed into a daycare. Soon she was the go-to babysitter running a defacto daycare for the wide-range of people living in the building. The kids loved her and would marvel at the rotis she made that inflated on her stove. “Mrs. Jain has magic,” they would shout. Pretty soon she was making $200/week. Over the course of a year, she was able to save $10,000. That $10,000 became the down payment for our family’s first home in the United States. I will never cease to be amazed at the courage—and the hustle—of people like my parents who picked up their whole lives to make it in another country.