e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

By 17 Comments

My family’s disastrous experience with a growth-driven long-term care company

Photo of memorial tree at Quiet Waters park, next to the gazebo where she loved to sit
Mom loved to sit in this gazebo, along a tributary of the Chesapeake. Photo by my sister.

I’ve been blogging recently about what happens in American healthcare when predatory investor-driven companies start moving into care industries because of, as Pro Publica puts it, “easy money and a lack of regulation.” My first two posts were about recent articles in The New Yorker on companies that are more interested in sales growth than in caring:

As many of you know, my mother died in October. What we haven’t disclosed until now is that it happened in horror story #3: she passed after a single week of “respite care” provided by the local outlet of a growing chain of assisted living facilities.

[Read more…]

By 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…]

By 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…]

By Leave a Comment

“Superb! Superb! No other word for it. A knockout.” So, a winter sale!

A quick update on two aspects of my speaking business:

  • As the post title suggests, the “consultative speaking” approach I use continues to bring great results. (Yes, that’s what the client said.)
  • I’m offering a winter sale because I have more capacity in my calendar than usual in the coming months: half off my usual speaking fee for any bookings with contract signed by March 31. Bring it on! Use the contact page.

Recent speeches have been to audiences of software developers in Amsterdam, innovators (Exponential Medicine, San Diego), and a medication security company customer event then their internal company meeting (TraceLink, Chicago and Boston), and though the audiences were very different, each got very strong response, because every speech is carefully tailored to the sponsor’s needs.

My topics have expanded beyond the traditional “Dave’s cancer story” and “about e-patients.” In addition to custom requests, topics now include
[Read more…]

By Leave a Comment

The Polluted Stream of Health Care Information: Health News Review podcast

It ticks me off that the excellent site HealthNewsReview.org is going out of business due to lack of funding. More on that below. This independent website has for 12+ years been teaching us all how to watch out for BS in health news stories; they’re so important for informed health consumers that over on the e-patient blog I’ve written about them a dozen times.

[Read more…]

By 3 Comments

Book review: Augmented Health(care):
the end of the beginning, by Lucien Engelen

This book is so good I don’t know where to start. Just read it. (There’s an introductory 20% discount on the e-book below.)

Except – seriously – don’t read it if you demand a roadmap from here to the future. This is from the future. The image above, of a kid with a telescope, has been in the author’s office since I first met him, but until I was halfway through this book I didn’t understand why.

In Augmented Health(care) Dutch innovator Lucien Engelen of Radboud University Medical Center goes on a tour of the landscape that may strike the unfamiliar as manic or just plain nuts. Don’t trust that reaction – listen. He is unbound by the traditional view but absolutely bound to a future world where health – and care – are augmented such that things actually work.

[Read more…]