November 21st, 2011 by Shadowfax in Opinion
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We respond to certain “Code Blue” situations in our hospital. In the ED, of course, and in the outpatient areas and radiology, and if needed as back-up in the inpatient units. The hospital issues one of those overhead calls when there is a code blue — a cardiac arrest or other collapse, person down, injury, etc., but we also carry a pager in the ER in case we don’t hear the overhead call. The pager also signifies which doc is designated to respond to such a call, since we often have 8 docs working at once. It’s a little ritual we have at change of shift, passing off the pager and the spectralink phone, like the passing of the torch to the oncoming doc.
So of course I took the pager home the other day and had to make an extra trip to the hospital to return it. Ugh.
As I was driving back in, I took a moment to really look at the thing, and it struck me that this pager is the exact same model I used in medical school and residency, way back in the mid nineties. The exact same one: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Movin' Meat*
November 5th, 2011 by AndrewSchorr in Opinion
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I can’t get the 1989 baseball movie Field of Dreams out of my head. That’s especially true right now as I can’t wait for the seventh game of the World Series. My son, Eitan, and I sat on the couch and watched the sixth game last night and it was probably the most exciting game I’ve ever seen. Plot twists galore. You can bet the audience for tonight’s game will be HUGE.
What’s so cool in thinking back about the movie is the famous line said to the baseball fanatic farmer: “If you build it they will come.” So he built a baseball field behind his house and the greats of baseball history came to play. I have never forgotten that line and have applied it to what we “build” at Patient Power – interview programs for people living with serious health concerns.
In the past few weeks, and continuing from now on, we have been focusing on two blood-related cancers: multiple myeloma and chronic myelogenous leukemia. While there are other educational resources out there, people living with these serious conditions always want more – as well they should. Fortunately, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Andrew's Blog*
October 6th, 2011 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Opinion
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Irrational exuberance was a term once used to describe the stock market before the last crash. It also seems an apt description for much of the talk these days about empowered health consumers.
To be sure, patients today have unprecedented access to health information. Patient decision-support tool can be found on just about every provider, payer and self-insured employer website. Consumers can go to any number of websites to find quality data about hospitals, physicians and health plans. Personal health records (PHRs) promise to make our personal health data portable for meaning that all our treating physicians will be “singing off the same song sheet.”
That’s what the industry experts tell us. But what’s really going on? Here I will describe what I see as the top 5 myths about empowered health consumers. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*
September 29th, 2011 by Michael Sevilla, M.D. in Opinion
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Hey Docs out there! What if your patients found out about your most embarrassing moment from college? What if they saw a picture of it? I was watching and listening to one of my favorite technology shows over the weekend called “The Tech Guy” with tech journalist Leo Laporte.
In the brief video here, you’ll see the host take a call from an attending physician. The caller stated that back before medical school, he posed for PlayGirl magazine and now some of those pics are showing up on websites and the caller was trying to figure out how to have them taken down. It sounds like the pictures were taken in the pre-internet days. For the full exchange, click here and fast forward to the time 13:21hrs on the clock behind the host.
This call opened up the larger issue of Online Reputation which has been talked about in Health Care Social Media circles for a long time. But, it is interesting seeing what this non-medical tech journalist (and the caller) says about it: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Family Medicine Rocks Blog*
September 17th, 2011 by Berci in Health Policy, Interviews
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Pascal Lardier, International Director of Health 2.0 asked me for an interview about the future of health 2.0. Here is the interview and an excerpt:
Basically, the medical acts remain the same: doctors will continue to receive their patients. But both stakeholders need to adapt and be able to deal with the rapidly growing amount of information available online. As the patient’s motivation is clearly more important (their health is at stake), they are more open to these innovations/developments while medical professionals use the internet and social media for other purposes: education, collaboration, diagnostic technologies, etc… Patients and doctors basically use the same type of technologies for different purposes. I’m sure social media, used with strategy and caution, will help fill the gap between patients and their physicians.
*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*
