Hello, Thursday – here’s your dose of ePatient vitamin-D-for-Digest!

Social workers are superb participatory medicine practitioners. They get it. Here’s a post from The Social Work Helper with a nifty little virtuous-cycle quadrant image that outlines how, and why, the e-patient movement matters. “The E-Patient Movement”

Our friends over at The Incidental Economist noticed an item in the White House’s proposed budget related to the agricultural use of antibiotics. With the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria, why are we still pumping antibiotics into cattle, pigs, and chickens to “promote their growth”? Modern farming practices promote growth just fine. The science of ag antibiotics, and why it should stop: “Agricultural antibiotics in the President’s budget request”

Cui bono (Latin, to whose benefit) in healthcare reform? Sarah Kliff has an interesting answer after studying insurance stock earnings reports. Health plans have far outstripped the S&P 500 for the last five years. “Health insurer stocks have crushed market averages since Obamacare passed”

Stephen Wilkins is a health policy thinker whose home on the web is something he calls the Mind the Gap Academy. He posted something on LinkedIn that is a pretty tight list of the Top 10 things a clinician can do to foster patient engagement. No tech required. “The Ten Commandments Of Patient Engagement”

The American College of Physicians (ACP) – the 2nd largest physician organization in the US, after the American Medical Association (AMA) – has jumped in to the pharma price fight with both feet. They announced this week that they were signing on to the Campaign for Sustainable RX Pricing. Here’s a piece from CNBC with the details: “Doctors group joins fight against ‘skyrocketing’ drug prices”

We love the internet. We wouldn’t be here talking to you if we didn’t. However, the Wild Wild Web can be a challenging place for advocates of all stripes. When I (Casey) came across a post on the Guardian’s site recently, it prompted me to put up a post about trolls on one of my own blogs. Here you go, weigh in with your thoughts. “Advocacy, trolls, and threats – oh my!”

Last but not least, our humor break for today, in which Dr. Grumpy ponders Zen and the art of cough drops. “Cough Drops“