This should be a very interesting high-level panel discussion, with Robert M. Pearl, M.D., Executive Director and CEO, The Permanente Medical Group, Victoria Sweet, M.D., Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, UCSF; Author, God’s Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine, Josh Adler, M.D., Chief Medical Officer, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and Lisa Aliferis, KQED Health Editor – Moderator  at the Commonwealth Club, this Thursday, in San Francisco, 6pm – 7pm.

The Hotel-Dieu in Paris, founded in 651 AD, and to this day, right next to Notre Dame, is having exactly the same kind of troubles as our own hospitals in the US. In the interest of economics and efficiency, its beds are being gradually whittled down, and now an effort is taking place to close its emergency room. The idea is to “bring the Hotel-Dieu into the twenty-first century,” which apparently means shutting it down, and tearing yet another hole in the French safety net. For details and for readers of French, see here: http://www.lejdd.fr/Societe/Sante/Actualite/La-bataille-de-l-Hotel-Dieu-593297. This is noteworthy because the French healthcare system is often held up as an example for our own, although, apparently, it is having exactly the same kind of problems, and worse, the same kind of solutions.

Read the interview here: http://www.bastyr.edu/news/general-news-home-page/2013/02/victoria-sweet-talks-slow-medicine-and-gods-hotel

Dr. Sweet will be giving her TED talk at Middlebury College, March 9 at 3:30 pm; free and open to the public: http://www.middlebury.edu/newsroom/node/447777 and

http://sites.middlebury.edu/tedx/tedxmiddlebury-2013-the-road-not-taken/2013-speakers/

See here: http://www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/compassion-and-justice/slow-medicine-dr-victoria-sweet-of-gods-hotel/

Gradually, slowly, the concept of Slow Medicine–of doctors having enough time to do a good job with patients, and patients having enough time to heal–is popping up all over the place. In Italy, as a spin-off of the Slow Food movement; in the US, in several different ways, and now in England: http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2012/12/17/richard-smith-the-case-for-slow-medicine/

Yes. We are very pleased: http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Best-books-of-2012-100-recommended-books-4139185.php#page-5

Taste, taste, taste. Isn’t that what Marin has? Good taste?

MARIN NONFICTION for December 30, 2012

1. “Help, Thanks, Wow” by Anne Lamott

2. “God’s Hotel” by Victoria Sweet

3. “Thomas Jefferson” by Jon Meacham

4. “Barefoot Contessa Foolproof” by Ina Garten

5. “Safari” by Dan Kainen and Carol Kaufmann

6. “The Signal and the Noise” by Nate Silver

7. “The Generals” by Thomas E. Ricks

8. “Dogfight” by Calvin Trillin

9. “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed

10. “Patriarch” by David Nasaw