e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

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I’ve hung out my shingle – at last!

Photo of my first office signI’ve reached a milestone: after three years, my startup has reached breakeven. For the first time, I’m not living hand-to-mouth.

So I’m now able to have my first little office outside the home. I can go to work, and I can come home from work. See sign at right: my name, and my motto, “Let Patients Help.” I’ve hung out my shingle.

Thank you, clients and sponsors.

Words can barely express my gratitude to the people who helped me get started, through their early support when nobody had ever heard of me, and as far as I know nobody ever paid to hear a patient speak at a conference.

Who was first to offer me pay for a speech? Kent Bottles MD (@KentBottles), who at the time [Read more…]

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The flak evangelists draw

Edited 7:45 pm – saved some content for a later post

I need to get this off my chest. I know to some it will sound like whining. Well, it’s my blog and my life, and on my blog I get to express myself.

One of the challenges of this path I’ve chosen – evangelizing in social media, starting with no business model – is that the more visible I’ve become, the more people have…

  • …plucked at my sleeve saying “I know you’ll love this – I just wrote it- please read it” or “please review it.” Truly, I wish I could, but I can’t. Sometimes it breaks my heart. But it disgusts me when people get mad at me or interpret it as me not caring. [Read more…]

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Collapse couldn’t happen in law, and it can’t happen in medicine. Right?

If you care (or worry) about the crunch-time that’s beginning in medicine, read this post last Tuesday on the Harvard Business Review blog:

Creative Destruction Visits the Legal Profession

It has strong echoes of what I wrote last month in As the crunch hits, will the best survive? That post talked about how much pain there’s likely to be as we try to solve the $750 billion of unnecessary spending in US medicine.  Until now I wasn’t aware of how much the legal profession has been hit by changing realities. Items from the HBR post:

  • “In the ten years or so since running that course, the assumptions underpinning a lot of the business models at law firms have come unraveled. Just as we argued, a lot of the lower-end, but profitable, work is now being done by cheaper providers or has been automated”
  • “Legal budgets have come under intense scrutiny as the Great Recession’s aftermath grinds on.”
  • “And — gasp — lawyers are now realizing that if nobody is looking after the business end of things — ahem — in other words, being strategic, the entire operation can come to a crashing halt. Witness the spectacular bankruptcy of once high-flying Dewey & LeBoeuf.”

Yeah, the bankruptcy of a once-high-flying law firm. More:

  • “The problems started to become urgent when young lawyers, armed with freshly minted degrees, either couldn’t get legal jobs or, worse yet, couldn’t get jobs at all.” Only 55% percent of 2011 graduates had a law-related job nine months after graduation.

Imagine if only 55% of med school graduates could find a job. Can’t happen, right?

That’s at the low end. And at the top?

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e-Patient request: epilepsy community?

From time to time I post a request from someone who seeks a community of patients for a particular condition.  I’ve been accumulating them on the communities page on this site. Sure wish we had a grant to grow a list and manage it well!  How many people would THAT help??

This one is from a person who’s had mild epilepsy symptoms for years.  It’s been well managed, allowing normal life, but it may be time to look for “what’s next” sorts of treatments. So, in addition to working with their medicos, the family’s wondering about astute patient communities.

I know about the one at PatientsLikeMe. Any others?

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Pricing visibility – video interview with HealthWorks Collective

Last month I was interviewed by Joan Justice of HealthWorks Collective. She’d picked up on my “visible pricing” rant, and couldn’t agree more, so we did this nine minute Skype interview.  Her full post about it is here.

Her entire series of interviews on high quality, low cost healthcare is here. Thanks for including me, Joan – it was stimulating!