On the blogs: collaboration vs. competition, theme from the boss

On Running a Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess CEO Paul Levy muses on the collaboration that brings Harvard-affiliated hospitals together and the competition that keeps them apart. In the case of organ transplantation, he argues, separate programs don't make much sense.

"If there are fewer than say, 400, adult liver, kidney, and pancreas transplants in all of Eastern Massachusetts per year, does it make sense to spread them out among six or seven hospitals located within 15 miles of one another?" he asks.

On WBUR's Commonhealth, state Senator Richard T. Moore, co-chair of the legislature's Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, takes Bruce Sprinsteen as his muse. "One step up and two steps back" from his 1997 song "One Step" describes the state's success in insuring more of its residents after passage of the healthcare law two years ago, Moore says, but cost-cutting is a concern.

"If the Patrick administration and the Legislature hope to close the revenue gap and restrain budget growth in years to come, reining in the cost of health care, improving quality and safety, and expanding access to primary care providers needs to be a priority," he writes. "The latest round of state budget cuts suggests that they are not!"