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January 11, 2023 By e-Patient Dave 24 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.

This story is not unique. Read the many comments at bottom of even worse treatment others have suffered after paying for “skilled nursing” care.

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:

  • “For-profit hospice is a vast crime scene, and private equity is holding the knife”
  • Healthcare’s moral crime scene, part 2: private equity takes over a nursing home

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…]

Filed Under: consumerism, long-term care, patient safety, Patients as Consumers, respite care, Uncategorized 24 Comments

December 20, 2022 By e-Patient Dave 1 Comment

Hello again!

I’ll spare you the details :-) but it appears the reason you haven’t gotten any emails from me in a while is that things got broken! I’ll be in touch soon to catch up.

Filed Under: Uncategorized 1 Comment

September 17, 2021 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

“The Birth of a Battle Cry”: new e-book on how “Gimme My Damn Data” started

It’s been twelve years(!) since my first healthcare keynote speech, September 2009, at Gunther Eysenbach’s “Medicine 2.0” conference in Toronto, which was the genesis of the battle cry “Gimme my damn data!” Reflecting on how that all started – it was just a series of blog posts expressing curiosity about how to improve healthcare – I decided to publish them at no charge as a compilation e-book, for convenient reference. The book’s page is here.

[Read more…]

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July 30, 2021 By e-Patient Dave 3 Comments

End of an Era: Mayo Social Media Network will “sunset” July 31

Bringing the Social Media #Revolution to Health Care cover

This weekend the Mayo Clinic will “sunset” its Center for Social Media, the only project of its type that I’m aware of: professionalizing the use of social media in the business of healthcare, with a real focus on how to be methodical and competent, not just hip and edgy.

One of their first projects was to publish a small book, Bringing the Social Media Revolution to Health Care, of essays by various authors (I was one). In 2017 they re-published each of the articles on their blog. Now, with that site closing, each of us has the chance to publish our contribution so it can still live on the Web. Here’s mine.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized 3 Comments

March 26, 2020 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

My new Swiss cousin. Pancreatic cancer (back when), and *mega* attitude.

Taking a break from virus news … OMG, yesterday long-time friend Silja Chouquet in Basel shared this TEDx Talk with me: Martin Inderbitzin. 19 minutes.

I’m declaring him my newfound Swiss cousin. Now I have to go find him. (I already went to the website he started … I’ll leave that to you, if you want.) … ah, @MarBitz on Twitter. And he started My Survival Story.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Leave a Comment

January 24, 2020 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

Thanks for eight great years, Kristin

Anyone who’s worked with me in the past eight years has gotten to know Kristin Gallant, the terrific assistant who’s helped with all my administrative and customer service work since 2013. With a workload that’s ranged as high as seventeen speaking events in a month, she’s been rock solid, indispensable.

Our working relationship has also been a perfect example of flexible hours, virtual office, apps, and “cloud everything,” enabling each of us to stay on top of things regardless of which time zone I was in. A professional executive assistant and bookkeeper before we met, she adapted hours as her growing kids’ school hours changed, often screen-sharing as we juggled tasks, client communication, and administrative housekeeping. And as a “cancer kicker” herself, she’s understood exactly what this work is about.

[Read more…]

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