My nephew is applying to a design school at Western Washington State University and decided that he needed a new wood working project to round out his portfolio. I have a very modest wood working shop in my garage, so he came over looking for some ideas and he decided that he wanted to turn a wooden bowl with a resin lip. Of course, I…
Do Christians have better morals than Atheists?
Every few weeks, I see a question posted by Christians on Quora questioning if atheists have morals. For example: “If there is no God, no hell and no heaven, then why have we developed a conscience? Why don’t atheists commit crimes and what stops them?” “This may sound naive, but what keeps an atheist from committing adultery and doing other things that a Christian wouldn’t…
I spoke at a community event about homelessness
I was invited to speak on Jan 23, 2025 at a community event in Shoreline, WA on the topic of homelessness, with the goal of raising support for Camp United We Stand (a county sanctioned homeless camp for which my wife and I volunteer). The event was attended by various church leaders and by the mayor of Shoreline, WA. I gave the first speech of…
Additional complexity operating value based health programs
Complexity 1: We generally do not receive claims in a timely manner If we always received the claim data during the same month in which the visit occurred, things would be much simpler, but we receive the claim data only after it has been paid and that can take several months. Medicaid pays 99% of their claims within 90 days, whereas commercial payers generally average…
Pipeline logic for a Value Based Healthcare Program
While this description seems complicated, it is greatly simplified (and excludes all discussion on episodes of care for simplicity, which is like a program on tip of other programs). Terminology Member The person covered by the insurance (i.e. the patient) Partner The insurance company. Provider The entity that contracts with the value based program. In some programs, this may be a doctor’s office, while in…
The Basics of Value Based Healthcare
Payment in the US Healthcare has traditionally been a fee for service model. If I go to the doctor, the doctor receives a certain amount of money. The more that I go to the doctor and the more procedures are done to me,, the more money the doctor receives. If I’m healthy and never go to the doctor, the doctor makes no money. This model…
My Career – Part 24: Nuna
At the time that I joined Nuna, their core business was focused on supporting value based healthcare. My job at Nuna was tightly intertwined with the business logic needed to support value based healthcare. Rather than forcing you to understand all of this logic, I will put the details in links that you can read if you want to understand the space and the unique…
My Career – Part 23: Joining Nuna
My experience joining Nuna was so bizarre and unexpected that I figured that it warranted its own chapter. In October 2021, I decided to leave Niantic after a phone call with Piaw. Piaw then sent two emails introducing me to the engineering manager at Nuna and to a recruiter at Aurora. Nuna’s response was instantaneous – I was on a call with them later that…
My Career – Part 22: Leaving Niantic
I always thought that companies fell into one of two categories: evil or insignificant. Most companies have very little impact in any meaningful way. These companies might do fun work, but in the grand scheme of things they are fairly insignificant. A few companies stand out and make a real difference in the world (for good and for bad), but these companies always have some…
My Career – Part 21: Niantic: How I made #1 on a Cracked listicle
One day I was scrolling through cracked.com (as I do almost daily) and while reading an article titled “5 Security Flaws In Games that Caused Catastrophes”, I found that I had made #1 on the list! This was NOT my life’s goal. This article requires a little explanation. In anticheat, we are always looking for good signals that help us understand that people are cheating….