Business of Patient Engagement

June 16, 2014 By e-Patient Dave 21 Comments

“The Big Ugly” meets Speaker Academy #19: What’s up with expense checks??

This is the latest in the Speaker Academy series, which started here. The series is addressed to patients and advocates who basically know how to speak on a subject but want to make a business out of it. I’ll try to be clear to all readers, but parts may assume you’ve read earlier entries.

I’m really not happy to be writing this, but push has come to shove. Two thirds of my expense reimbursements are past due, and fully a third of them are more than 90 days out. I’ve seen some people stretch payments at times, but I’ve never seen anything like this.

The stories I’ve been getting about “gosh, sorry, there’s nothing we can do about it” or “gosh, the only person who can write checks went on vacation” or “we only print checks on Thursdays and she was out when she came back from vacation” are familiar, but this year they’re much more common. What’s up, healthcare? Is The Big Ugly coming home to roost?

I wrote about The Big Ugly last year:

… something I’m starting to call The Big Ugly – a wave of suffering that will happen as the medical industry contracts, and everyone tries to find ways to maintain their income. Unfortunately when an industry shrinks, everyone can’t maintain the same income. As anyone knows who’s seen an industry die (like mine, typesetting; or steel in America, or what Detroit went through), it’s painful. Good people get hurt, and organizations fight for survival.

It’s interesting, because the people I work with, for the event are good and almost entirely on time with paying my fees. But expense reimbursements? They seem to go through a different approval and payment process. I mean, things get lost in the expense rabbit hole, and even my good-to-work-with friends are unable to extract them.

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June 2, 2014 By e-Patient Dave 6 Comments

Speaker Academy #18: Client Honor Roll – great and valued business partners

In #16 I said “For a small business, cash is king.” This is especially true for patients who are trying to build a small business in speaking, with no financial backing. In this post I want to “spotlight the spotless” – my clients who have honored our partnership by paying every single invoice within the agreed time of 30 days. Thank you!! A couple of foonotes before we start:

Date range: This is for events starting January 2013 and ending April 2014. (This May’s events haven’t reached 30 days yet.)
- I hope to dig back earlier, but before 2013 I was in survival mode and my records were sometimes not accurate. Meanwhile, clients – if you remind me that you paid promptly I’ll be glad to include you – just let me know!

Special honor: Some clients are so great that they’re in a special category – they paid on-site or EARLY! (And they reimbursed my out-of-pocket expenses promptly.) So I’ll start with them:

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May 14, 2014 By e-Patient Dave 1 Comment

Patient Voice Institute launches

On May 14, PVI founder Pat Mastors closed the Health 2.0 “HX Refactored” conference by announcing PVI. See the hxr2014 Twitter archive here.
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As regular readers know, I’ve been running a series called Speaker Academy, to share with other patients some of my methods as a voice of the patient. I do this because

The audience for patient voices has expanded dramatically in the past few years. Conferences and policy meetings need more patient voices.
Medicine (the profession and the policy world) need to hear from more diverse voices
Hundreds, if not thousands, of patients and family want to be effective voices in fixing or transforming healthcare. But wanting to do something is a far cry from being effective at it. We need to develop professional skills among patient voices.

And that’s what’s behind the launch today of the new Patient Voice Institute, “gathering and sharing the wisdom of patients.” Check out the rich set of information on the website.

This is a logical next step, a maturing of, the excellent Patients Included initiative started by @LucienEngelen at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands. He’s the crazy Dutch innovator who produced the TEDx conference where I and many other patients gave speeches.

“Never forget that a small group of
thoughtful, committed people
can change the world. Indeed,
it’s the only thing that has.” – MargaretMead

Conceived and brought to life in just a few months by Pat Mastors and Diane Stollenwerk, with copious work by Diane’s colleague Emily Henry, PVI intends to bring professionalism and a reliable brand to the world of incorporating patient voices in medical work.

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March 20, 2014 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

Web keynote: “Successful Engagement Strategies for your ACO”

This was Thursday, march 20. The archive will be available for viewing online, before too long.

Successful Engagement Strategies
for Your ACO

It’s sponsored by Krames Staywell (Twitter @KramesStayWell), a visionary patient engagement company. Why do I say visionary? Because they were the first company to ever hire me for an event. It was a private client meeting in Manhattan, June 2010.

I’ve long been saying that patient engagement will someday be seen as a real business with both commercial and social value; Krames Staywell was the first to act on it, and now we’re doing it again – in a world that’s vastly changed.

January 28, 2014 By e-Patient Dave 12 Comments

Speaker Academy #16: Getting paid (being businesslike about cash flow)

Cash is King image from Image: mobilepaymentsworld.com — Image: mobilepaymentsworld.com

Update 4/11/2014: Substantially expanded the section “submit bills electronically”
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This is the latest in the Speaker Academy series, which started here. The series is addressed to patients and advocates who basically know how to give a speech but want to make a business out of it. I’ll try to be clear to all readers, but parts may assume you’ve read earlier entries.

This post is about cash flow – an important part of being responsible for ourselves financially. In earlier posts we discussed getting agreement from your client on the value of your message and the need to get paid: Ratty Boxers, A turning point for patient voices, and Speaker Academy #15: The Contract. This post is about managing how the cash actually gets to you, because many hearts have been broken along that road.

1. For a small business, cash is king

One of the most common causes of small business failure is running out of cash. So if you want to build a business, even a small one, it’s your responsibility to be businesslike about cash flow. On About.com, Scott Allan put it this way:

Cash (Flow) Really Is King

One of the most important lessons entrepreneurs have to learn, often painfully, is that cash really is king. I’m not talking about paper money — I’m talking about cash flow. Simply put, it doesn’t matter how much money is coming in the future if you don’t have enough money to get from here to there.

Don’t plan to spend money you don’t have yet.

And, looking forward…

“Never forget that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that has.” – MargaretMead

1. For a small business, cash is king

Cash (Flow) Really Is King

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“Never forget that a small group of
thoughtful, committed people
can change the world. Indeed,
it’s the only thing that has.” – MargaretMead