e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

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Pricing policy

Updated Dec. 30, 2015. See the changes under the blue headings.

Prolog and principles

In 2013, in A turning point for patient voices and Prices must have integrity, I laid out my thinking: a professional price policy must make sense, and the rules must be real – fair to all clients and consistently enforced.  Re “making sense,” I’m an evangelist – an activist with a cause – so my price policy offers ways for clients to earn discounts by furthering the cause.

Update as 2016 starts: As the seventh year of this work starts, three things are newly clear, different from any past year:

  • The time has come to reach out to the public, including community health workers.
  • Nursing is turning out to be a great role in healthcare for making patient engagement a clinical reality. Nurses spend much more time face-to-face with patients and families.
  • The time has also come to get our claws into the world of medical education curriculum, so we start growing the next generation of doctors and nurses with patient empowerment “baked in” to their thinking.

As you’ll see, those three factors are reflected below. Here is the policy, fully aligned with my values as an activist for the “Let Patients Help Heal Healthcare” social movement.

1. Full price.

Event organizers, call or write for my current speech pricing. As my testimonials page shows, I deliver.

2. Add a Promoted Public Event: 25% discount (new for 2016)

It’s time to start engaging the public (ordinary citizens) in patient engagement – teaching people the rationale for (and the how-to’s of) being engaged, activated partners in their health and their care.  So, if I’m doing a speech for you, I’ll do a second speech open to the public (and tuned to them), if you will handle the logistics and get it promoted in the local media … and I’ll knock 25% off the price of your speech. (Note: a particularly great target for these events is community health workers.)

Yes, I’ll do two speeches for less than the price of one. In essence I’m buying your help in spreading the word to the general public.
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Vigilance is valid: New rule for the culture of safety

Photo of David NashDavid Nash is Dean of the School of Population Health at Jefferson University (@JeffersonJSPH) in Philadelphia. Last week at the Maine Hospital Association’s (MHA) Summer Forum he and I both spoke. His talk was titled “Demand Better: Revive Our Broken Healthcare System.”

I hear a lot of speeches, and this one hit me between the eyes in a number of ways, combining some facts I’d heard before in new ways, mixed in with personal experiences. I hope to blog about several of these points (with his blessing); this is the first.

The story

The appendix of Let Patients Help is titled “Stop the Denial.” It’s about the reality that medicine is inherently hazardous, and medical staff pretty much work without a net. As I like to say, “In my own work I live through the Undo key, but clinicians don’t have one.” And they don’t work in a system that prevents human error.

Result? As the book says,

Did you know that in the best hospitals in America, 1 in 20 surgical patients dies of a complication? After the surgery? [HospitalSafetyScores.org] (In the worst hospitals it’s 1 in 6.) Hard to believe, yes?

If you were considering surgery, wouldn’t that change your thinking? Wouldn’t it make “Let’s wait a bit” seem like a prudent thought?

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We the old(er) are getting REALLY old. And numerous. Think about it.

Forbes.com logoEight weeks ago on Forbes I noted an article I’d found that said half of all humans who’ve ever been 65 are alive today. (Actually the source said 60-75% of all 65+ people ever. But I’ll settle for half.) In less than two years that demographic bomb will include me.

Think about that.  There are 3x more people alive today (7 billion) than at the start of the baby boom (2.3 billion, 1946).  Combine it with the reality that because medicine is awesome, people who in those days would have died (e.g. me) are living much longer. Lots of old people coming. Zombie fields of old people. (We’re not “getting old” until much later, but there are a lot of us.)

Case in point: here are  the 34 obituaries in today’s New York Times.

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“Let Patients Help” gets two wonderful reviews

Let Patients Help front coverI got two wonderful surprises this week about Let Patients Help – unexpected, very favorable reviews of this little book.

The first was Tuesday on the Health Leaders web site. (They’re the magazine for medical management that in 2009 featured Dr. Sands and me in their cover story “Patient of the Future,” then included us in their “20 People Who Make Healthcare Better.”) In What the E in e-Patient Really Means, editor Scott Mace shows that he really gets it:

I’ve made a career out of documenting the empowering effects of technology. In the 1980s, among other things, personal computers were a way to engage students of all ages through the interactivity of educational software. In the 1990s, the Internet equipped us to get the most current data. In the 2000s, Web services enabled us to build “digital nervous systems” that automated the publication of that data, and our ability to subscribe to updates through the power of technologies such as RSS and search technologies such as Google.

But here in the 2010s, it’s ironic that the most personal of data we generate – that about our health – remains locked in healthcare’s vaults for a variety of reasons. …

It’s a long, perceptive essay – almost 10% as long as the book itself! The items he cites are truly the core of the message. Well done, Scott.

The second was today in Oncology Times – someone tweeted that they’d just seen it. (Why do I only learn of these things through Google Alerts and Twitter??) In the “Practice Matters” column, Lola Butcher writes Let Your Patients Help You.

Lola is informed and funny. Excerpts:

If you don’t know what [e-patient] is, click here and get with the 21st century. …

It only takes about an hour to read but if that seems like too much, skip to the “tip sheets” at the end. … Look for two sections — “Ten Things Clinicians Say That Encourage Patient Engagement” and “Ten Things Clinicians Say (or do) That Discourage Patient Engagement” — written by deBronkart’s primary care physician and co-author, Daniel Sands, MD.
I’ll just take issue with this closing item:
deBronkart has a big smile and a humorous way of making his points but physicians who do not support patient engagement should be very afraid of him.

Afraid of moi??  I wouldn’t say they should be afraid of me, but they sure will feel uncomfortable as the new reality unfolds. And that’s happening with or without me – I only talk about it, to spread the word and shed light on what’s possible.

Thanks to both Scott and Lola for drawing attention to this little book. Its tummy tickles every time someone says something nice.

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Extraordinary praise for Let Patients Help from a CEO

Let Patients Help front cover

Since Let Patients Help was officially released on April 15 there’s been lots of praise. The most exciting just arrived today: a hospital CEO who’s making the book’s ideas into something of a mission, starting now.

On her blog “Executive Rounds,” today Leslee Thompson posted “Let patients help” and other things I am learning. She’s CEO of Kingston General Hospital in Kingston, Ontario, where I spoke two weeks ago at their “KGH Connect” event. Please go read her post; these excerpts show how much she gets it:

One thing I do when looking at my calendar is to imagine what a patient in my hospital would think about how I am choosing to spend my time and energy. Would they approve of me sitting in my office reading reports about how to improve patient satisfaction? No. So I head on up to the wards and talk directly to patients and families.

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“If you’re interested in getting up to speed fast on patient engagement, Let Patients Help is your passport.”

Screen capture of Susannah's post (click to visit)
Click to visit Susannah's post

That’s what Susannah Fox just said on her blog.

It’s amazing: for years I’ve admired the wisdom of her research and insights at the Pew Internet and American Life project; heck, I quote her juiciest statistics in every speech I give. (To find them easily, I even suggested they create a tips page bit.ly/PewHealthTips – and they did, because they listen.) And since the book summarizes what I’ve learned in my travels, of course it’s in the book.

So imagine my surprise and pleasure when Susannah said today in a tweet [below right] that in Let Patients Help, she learned new things about her own data!

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