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Democratizing Healthcare

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May 4, 2020 By e-Patient Dave 17 Comments

The problem with “herd immunity” as a COVID-19 strategy

Caution: This post is not a prediction. It’s just a tutorial about the concept of herd immunity, with an eye to why it’s probably not an approach the US wants to take in solving the complex problems we’ve gotten ourselves into with COVID-19.

Click this graphic to go see a six second animation of these images, created in 2017 by Reddit user TheOtherEdmund. You many need to watch a few times. Get a feel for the differences in what happens in the different blocks, and come back to discuss:


[Read more…]

Filed Under: Coronavirus, Health policy Tagged With: coronavirus, covid-19, herd immunity 17 Comments

April 19, 2020 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

Please support this health data victim’s legal fees

This post is an unusual project for me, and not everyone will want to do it, but I know some will want to pitch in, and maybe someone out there will have a magic wand to undo the harm that’s apparently been done by years of stonewalling.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Health data, Health policy Leave a Comment

April 8, 2020 By e-Patient Dave 1 Comment

A decade advocating for OpenNotes

Today in an email thread I realized it’s a decade since the OpenNotes work started, via Tom Delbanco and Jan Walker, and now promoted so brilliantly by Liz Salmi. How great that back then my PCP Danny Sands and I were among the first crew of OpenNotes study participants!

I decided to mark the occasion by creating an /OpenNotes page on my site, listing all the blog posts and articles that have emerged as part of the work.

(Interesting to observe: before cancer rearranged my life, I don’t think I ever stuck with any cause for ten years straight. Funny how that happens.)

Filed Under: Advisory work, Culture change, Health data, Health policy, Innovation, Leadership, patient engagement 1 Comment

April 29, 2019 By e-Patient Dave 3 Comments

Getting ornery on social media: What I’m doing in 2019, episode 2

Sunday night I blogged this:

I haven’t been blogging nearly as much as I did five years ago, largely because my early blogging was all about trying to figure out “what the heck is up with the American healthcare system???” … it’s been two years since I had any new realizations.

Why would “figuring it out” make me stop blogging? Because as a change activist who’s also a public speaker, I’m gripped by one question: “What could be said that would make any difference?” There literally is no point in saying anything else. So once I realized how locked-in the system is, how intractable it is to change, I lost interest in flapping my gums and fingers.

But new things are in the wind, and it’s time to start pushing out those top learnings as foundation for what’s next. So, game on – in responses to two tweets, I got ornery:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: consumerism, cost cutting edition, Culture change, Evolution, Health policy, Patients as Consumers, Social media 3 Comments

April 28, 2019 By e-Patient Dave 8 Comments

What’s up with the US health system?? (What I’m doing in 2019, episode 1)

Click to enlarge this composite of images from previous posts

I haven’t been blogging nearly as much as I did five years ago, largely because my early blogging was all about trying to figure out “what the heck is up with the American healthcare system???” and it’s now been two years since I had any new realizations. Here’s a summary of that, then some quick hits on recent and upcoming events.

No, wait – this part turned out long, so I’ll continue tomorrow with the “quick hits.” For today, here’s the baseline I reached two years ago.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: cost cutting edition, Evolution, Health policy, Patients as Consumers, The Big Ugly, Uncategorized Tagged With: american healthcare, health costs, patient empowerment 8 Comments

April 11, 2019 By e-Patient Dave 4 Comments

50th anniversary of the first Our Bodies, Ourselves meeting! May 10, Boston

Updates May 8:

  • Address correction! It’s 120 Tremont St, not 20 Tremont St.
  • Not surprisingly, it’s sold out with waitlist. If you want to add yourself to the waitlist, write to cwhhr@suffolk.edu
Click image to register on Eventbrite.

I’ve often blogged and spoken about the many parallels between the women’s movement and the patient empowerment movement. Here’s one perfect quote from Miriam Hawley, one of the founders of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, whom I met last year:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Culture change, Health policy, Innovation, Leadership Tagged With: culture change, feminism, our bodies ourselves, patient empowerment, patient engagement, women's health 4 Comments

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