e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

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Writings and upcoming events – July 2015

Like last month, here’s this month’s update on travels, events, and articles (including a first for me!).

In my travels if you’re in the area and want to connect, contact me.

Writings:

  • Do you use online symptom checkers? Go for it but be wise: Last Friday I was interviewed by the Boston Globe (see below) to comment on a new BMJ article. It was such a stimulating topic I wrote a much-mentioned post about it on e-patients.net, and I hope to be writing more

Media mentions:
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Upcoming events & media – June 2015 edition

Clip art of newspaper boy
Public domain

This spring I had a couple of cases where people said “I wish I’d known you were coming – we could have had coffee!” (That’s always compelling to me…) So I’m going to try publishing a monthly update (more or less) of upcoming travels, newly added future events, and maybe a few other things. Short & sweet. Thank you to Casey Quinlan, a focused production machine if I ever saw one, for making this happen!

Underway now:

  • June 7-13, Lucerne, Switzerland: IKF’s annual Swiss tour. Multiple keynotes and private meetings.

Upcoming travels & webcasts

Recently added events (stay tuned for details!)

  • Early September: Europe (to be announced)
  • Mid September: 10 day tour of Alaska! These people are getting it bigtime and spreading the word!
  • September 23-24: Medicine-X | Ed Bringing e-patient thinking to the medical education curriculum!
  • November 4, DC: American Psychological Association Presidential Innovation Summit
  • November 11, Sacramento: Transforming Healthcare Summit

My first-ever article in a clinical practice journal where I’m listed as First Author(!)

  • “Open Visit Notes: A Patient’s Perspective and Expanding National Experience,” in ASCO’s Journal of Oncology Practice. It’s open access (free), to allow reading and sharing by patients.
    • Full text, or PDF of the print pages; article extract page here.
    • Thank you to Beth Israel Deaconess OpenNotes team, and to the journal for making it open access.

Recent media mentions:

 

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Daily Digest: The West Wing, lab coats, and more

West Wing replay: Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said something recently that had Aaron Carroll reflect on the West Wing over on The Incidental Economist blog. “When real life imitates ‘The West Wing,’ Surgeon General edition”

Less is more, health IT edition: On the HL7 Standards blog, Michelle Ronan Noteboom looks at the idea that too much is way too much when it comes to several things, including portals and medical treatment. “When Less Is More in Health IT”

You can get it at Lowe’s: Not hardware, although they do certainly have plenty of that. In this piece on the Health Affairs blog, Bob Ihrie and Alan Spiro take a look at how Lowe’s retooled their employee health insurance coverage with an eye on behavioral economics, trust, and relationship dynamics. “Engaging Health Care Consumers: the Lowe’s Experience”

Tattoo you: I (Casey) have been making the health IT event rounds lately as a patient voice on panels about health tech and patient engagement. Since I took a very out-there step related to my own health data, my appearance in the room can start some interesting conversations. An example, by Jim Tate in the HITECH Answers blog: “Patient Engagement: I Tattoo, Therefore I Am”

Lab coats – yes or no? A meta-analysis of the study data available on patient satisfaction scores and physician attire shows that patients are likely to rate a doctor who’s dressed professionally higher than one who isn’t. What’s your thinking there – would you prefer a tie (which can be an infection vector), or are scrubs OK with you? From Lena Weiner in HealthLeaders Media: “Physicians’ Attire Linked to Patient Satisfaction Rates”

From the This Will Never Get Old desk: A film director and his wife took to YouTube back in 2010 to illustrate the user experience when you’re a patient booking healthcare, setting that illustration in the context of air travel booking. The results were, and are, hilarious. The New Altons on YouTube: “If air travel worked like healthcare“

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Daily Digest: Short stories, mea culpas, and more

Short story, long impact: A haunting, thought-provoking piece of “what if” fiction on The Health Care Blog drives home the point that healthcare comes from human hands, but not necessarily human hands on a keyboard. “Please Choose One”

Privacy for sale: On The Doctor Weighs In, Paul Levy tackles the thorny topic of employer-sponsored health insurance plans offering incentives for “wellness” activities. Are we selling our (privacy) birthrights for what amounts to a mess of pottage? “Selling your right to privacy at $5 a pop”

Mea culpa from on high: From the Hospital Leader blog, the President of the Society of Hospital Medicine, hospitalist Dr. Burke Kealey, takes a look at the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM)’s recent rethinking of its Maintenance of Certification (MOC) rules. It may sound like inside-baseball, but Kealey’s post is very readable, and shows that large professional organizations – like, say, ABIM – who ignore their members’ input do so at their own peril. “We got it wrong. We are sorry.”

Too much of a good thing? If you’ve gone “krazy for kale” you might want to read this, and adjust your intake accordingly. Moderation is a virtue, even when it comes to virtue. From WBUR in Boston: “The Dark Side Of Kale (And How To Eat Around It)”

Patients included, lab edition: There’s a new journal in town. Specifically, a journal about and for patient involvement in medical research. It’s called Research Involvement and Engagement – and it’s an open access journal, meaning no pay-wall. Here’s a post announcing its birth on BioMed Central: “Partnership with patients in a new publication”

Caterpillar races: In a thread on the SPM email listserv, one of our members shared a link to this article with the subject line “the caterpillar is coming,” meaning that the slow roll that is medical practice change might be shifting. In a 2012 research paper re-published this month in Wiley Online Library, a group of researchers share the findings of a study about how a feeling of powerlessness can kill patient engagement before it arrives. “Patients’ engagement in primary care: powerlessness and compounding jeopardy. A qualitative study”

Tongue in cheek: We found a new (to us) site/blog, Life in the Fast Lane, that has a great sense of the absurd in medicine, along with some great content on emergency and critical care. Here’s some satire from their archives: “Reducing the budgetary burden of disease“