Critical Condition: Dave Yost's blog

Yes, once again an inordinate amount of time has passed since my last blog post. Between work and school, there is so much going on that social networking and blogging are way, way down the list. I just don't have mental room for them now.

I know not to go into too much detail on what is happening at work. Let's just say that right now I am application lead for two huge strategic projects plus a major software upgrade. Both projects have executive level visibility and very tight timelines. In fact, both of them really should be spread out over three or more times what we need to get them done in. And, of course, there are all the other projects and assignments that the parties involved with them *think* are major. Need to stop there.

On the academic front, my thoughts at the moment are mixed. Just to keep everyone up to date, I started in January on my online Master of Health Administration program at Ohio University. As of tomorrow my cohort of 25 students will be halfway through the first of eight quarter-length modules. Each module is basically two four-quarter-hour graduate level courses. This module is called "Context of Leadership in the US Health System."

On the bright side, so far my grades are very good. Individual assignments have gotten very high scores. Now that is with a certain amount of my Type A personality perfectionism, spending the time needed to get everything just so before submitting. There may be opportunity to figure out what lesser amount of time it may take to submit work that is still A quality, maybe not quite so stellar.

An interesting sidebar. I think back to my first undergraduate experience, where there was also lots of paper writing. I marvel at how much easier it is today. (Part of me also marvels at the difference in the grades.) Maybe it has to do with the bazillion e-mails I have had to craft at work in the intervening time. They have forced me to get specific and to the point. That's a good thing.

But then there are the group assignments. Again, the right amount of effort vs. reward comes into play, perhaps even more so. The first one yielded my mates and me a score in the A- range, though below both the mean and median for the class. I was an average contributor, to be honest. My contributions were good, but I did not get as critical about my colleagues' contributions as I might have. Now, we're about to ramp up for the big group project for the quarter. The group members are different this time. We'll see where it leads. All I know is, I'll be plenty busy. Don't expect to see many blog posts in the immediate future.

Although Thanksgiving Day is a federal holiday with definite secular elements in its origin (e.g., rejoicing at the end of the harvest), people of faith understand intuitively that this is a day to praise and give thanks to our Creator for the many blessings bestowed upon us.

We are, every one of us, truly better than we deserve, and today we recognize and celebrate that.

We give thanks for our families, our friends and neighbors, and our God-given talents and abilities. We give thanks that we still live in a place that leaves us free to leverage those talents and abilities to improve our earthly station, provide for our families, and worship without state interference. We give thanks that we can heed God's call to share our blessings voluntarily with those who are materially less fortunate than we. For those of us (myself included) who work for non-profit entities, we give thanks that every day we do our job, we assist in providing tangible benefit to the communities we serve. We give thanks to those who safeguard our liberty, often at a great price paid by them and their own families.

So when we bow our heads today before diving into the holiday feast, let's be so very thankful for all that we have and all that we are. And let's remember the source of our blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The announcement just came out today. I am so honored to be named by Modern Healthcare magazine to this prestigious list.

According to the magazine, this program recognizes medical professionals who excel at using patient-care data to improve both the clinical and financial performance of their healthcare organizations.

Here is a link to the full article (subscription required). They actually did include one quote from my interview with them in the article!

Also, you can click here for a photo gallery of this year's 25 honorees.

Here is the page with my profile.

Finally, thanks to my employer for being supportive in so many ways. Here's the news release on the CHP public web site.

It is an incredible honor to be on the same list with some of the giants of the industry. My analytics teams, past and present deserve huge credit for doing so much of the accomplishments cited.

Also no tweets. Hopefully that hasn't caused followers to desert my Twitter feed entirely, although that's not top of mind for me currently.

The last couple of months have been very busy work-wise, and there's definitely no time for me to share social insights then. And the last seven weekends have been filled up by fall quarter clinical instruction. But, that has now drawn to a close. I'll have my weekends back. And, that may provide me the opportunity to get back in the swing of things with blog posts and tweets.

I know this is a teaser, but please stay tuned. There's a very special recognition coming my way. I think it gets formally announced tomorrow, November 7. I'm not allowed to disclose it ahead of the press release, but it's quite exciting and an honor I'm flattered to receive. Come back soon for more details and, I hope, a link to the story.

As my Facebook friends know, the end of this year brings a transition for me. I conclude eighteen years of part-time adjunct clinical faculty duties, and at the same time I return to the degree-seeking world myself. In January I begin taking classes in the online MHA program at Ohio University. Oh well, a different way to spend a big chunk of time every week. But there are reasons for going back to school after almost two decades away from the student role. More on that anon.

This was -- so far -- the granddaddy of the fabled Friday document drops. Standard and Poor's downgraded the USA's long-term credit rating from AAA to AA+, in the bargain marking its outlook negative. The full report is here.

Are you surprised? I'm not.

Are you outraged? I am.

This ignominy was influenced by the recent debt ceiling sideshow, but it's deeper than that. Such follies of governance, accourding to S&P, "indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed." In other words, our elected and unelected federal overlords have screwed up, are screwing up, and are expected to continue screwing up.

S&P further sees "America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed." Are you outraged yet???

I work for a company that takes its fiscal responsibilities very seriously. When times are tough, we cut back. One of the annual highlights for the senior executive team is the trek to New York to meet with the credit agencies, followed by anxious waiting for a maintaining of, or perhaps even a small upgrade in, the company's credit rating. I am certain that if performance were poor enough to merit a downgrade on the basis of past performance, the Board of Trustees would have serious discussions about firing said team for cause.

It's time to have the same discussions about our country's executive team, and our Congressional legislators as well.

I'll make this post pithy. It's pretty obvious where I, as a fiscal conservative, proponent of free-market economic solutions, and limited federal government injection into every corner of our lives, stand on the current debate about raising the debt ceiling. Let me just quote a prominent national leader on the subject. Take a guess as to its author.

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies . . . Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

By the way, my representative in Congress, Jim Jordan, more than held his own this morning on Fox News Sunday against one of the more obnoxious Democrats out there. I am not at all certain that a Balanced Budget Amendment is the key to solving our fiscal problems (a budget with bloated spending and equally bloated taxes is balanced by definition but unacceptable!), but the common sense package Jim and his colleagues have proposed blow away anything else being proposed inside the Beltway.

Oh, yeah. The sage quoted above? Senator Barack Obama, March 20, 2006.

Just arrived today, a new toy: a nifty little (emphasis on little) folding Bluetooth keyboard called the Freedom Pro. You can find it at all the usual outlets; I would embed a link for you, but I'm actually using the keyboard to compose this blog post on my Nook Color tablet, and I'm not seeing an easy way to do it yet. It will probably be necessary, if I really need to include hyperlinks, to compose mobile posts using the word processing app in DocumentsToGo or some other Android app. Initial impression: great improvement over any touchscreen keyboard, but there seems to be a tendency for characters to repeat even when I know I only hit the chiclet once. Of coure I am a poor typist anyway (unfortunate for an IT director, I know); so maybe in more competent hands, this product would fare even better. Have not tried yet, but there should not be any reason why this little gem can't pair and connect with all my computing devices, most notably the BlackBerry and iPod touch.

Next conundrum: seeing if I can use existing devices to tide me over until I get a replacement XM radio receiver in my vehicle. As my Facebook friends know, I paid the price yesterday for leaving my Vue unlocked in MY OWN DRIVEWAY, as some low life filched the SkyFi 2. The jerk has likely already found that it's useless to him, but if his purpose was to hassle me, he succeeded. Gladly the phone support from SiriusXM was very kind and helpful. And I found a used replacement unit on eBay that I can plug right in to the intact cradle and wiring. Meantime, I wonder if there's a way I can press my Pioneer inno into play for vehicle use. Or, I could use my XM Internet service on the BlackBerry and play it over my Blue Ant Bluetooth speaker. I have a trip to Cincinnati coming up soon, so we'll see what I come up with.

Finally, I'm getting lots of good ideas from the latest edition of Lifehacker, the book that gleans the best tips from the web site of the same name. I bought the first edition in hard cover and implemented some of the hacks. I can see plenty of opportunities to turn up the geek and, hopefully, make life even easier. Maybe, more time to write blog posts?

Very appropriately, while enjoying the long weekend, I'm reading the classic apologia of Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose. The Friedmans systematically debunk the tenets of the liberal mindset in a most concise and readable way. They point out how, under the big-government model we have been enduring for decades, we lose many of the freedoms our founders fought for, and which we celebrate on Independence Day. Though the cases in point were different thirty years ago than they would be if the book were written today, the principles hold. Highly recommended reading, especially for you liberals who have so much trouble understanding what makes us free market conservatives tick. I regret not getting to meet Milton and Rose during my three years in Hyde Park.

Can we stop yet with the Casey Anthony trial coverage? Here's yet one more sad young woman who acted out in a most regrettable way; even more regrettably, her daughter paid the price. Lock her up and move on already.

I'm getting closer to a decision on a master's degree program specializing in nursing informatics. The last week has seen me do lots of information gathering and phone conversation with advisors at various schools. It's interesting that three of the four institutions on my short list are private, for-profit entities. There are critics who wrongly label all such schools "diploma mills" though that appellation is deserved by only a minority of bad apples in the private barrel. Can it be more of the statist mentality that profit is bad, and by extension government-supported is good? Hmmm....

Finally, the GOP Presidential sweepstakes is starting to come into focus. Some started with high expectations but have failed to move the needle (Pawlenty, Gingrich), others have had trouble gaining any traction at all (Cain, Huntsman). So far I am not seeing an ideal candidate out there. That said, one flawed entrant I'm beginning to warm to is Michele Bachmann. (As I told my Facebook friends and Twitter followers last evening, it sure doesn't hurt to hear that her favorite composer is J.S. Bach, as revealed in the National Review cover story just out.) For me, much more important than her social conservatism is her conviction that when it comes to the national government, less is more; those who make and execute the laws need to be closer to and more accountable to their electors. Yes, her political résumé is a bit thin, owing to her getting into politics relatively late in life and almost literally by accident. So her list of accomplishments in Washington is meager. And she does occasionally make a misstatement or two. Funny though, how the B in BDS no longer stands for Bush. The media are so quick to slam Bachmann for every syllable they take to be inaccurate (even when she's right and they're wrong), yet the incumbents in the highest offices in the land suffer no such slings and arrows from the mainstream press. This could be an interesting run.

"The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade with shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this continent to the other from this Time forward forever more." -John Adams.

Adams's prediction was wrong on the day, but the sentiment is entirely correct. (The day we celebrate ended up being the day the Declaration was formally approved by the Congress, two days after adoption of Richard Henry Lee's resolution which declared the colonies to be free and independent states.)

Note that in the late 18th century, the term "state" denoted a sovereign, self-governing entity -- much like our current usage of "country" or "nation." As we celebrate our independence, we reflect on what has happened to that sovereignty over the intervening 235 years. And, on how the "solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty" specified by Adams no longer dare be performed by any governmental entity. Times have certainly changed. Fortunately we still have many patriots in our midst, the Paul and Paulette Reveres of our day, re-founding fathers and mothers. With them, there is still hope for this great land; and with them we celebrate the defining moment of these United States.

Happy Independence Day!

Let's all take some time to reflect on the reason why we observe this day -- the sacrifices made by countless brave men and women who gave their lives in service to these United States. As with so many holidays in our "modern" society, this one has accumulated so much extra baggage that those just growing up may think we're celebrating the "official beginning of summer" or some such rot. No, it's to remember those who served and didn't come back home, so that we can continue to enjoy our freedom and liberty. Will I also be firing up the grill later today? You betcha. But, first things first.

At the same time, I ask that we soberly consider the mentality that continues to put our soldiers and sailors in harm's way on the other side of the globe. Maybe at one time America was good at nation building, but in the twenty-first century, not so much. Yes, we need a strong defense to preserve our liberty at home. Seems like for some time now, we have been spending lots of blood and treasure not in our own defense, but in a futile attempt to create little clones of ourselves in places without the philosophical or religious soil in which they can thrive and prosper. Hopefully we will come to terms with this in time to keep the rolls of the fallen heroes we commemorate each May from growing unnecessarily larger.