Neil Versel, a HIT journalist, relates a very touching story of his father’s care at two different hospitals: one was uncoordinated and prone to errors and near misses, another one was quite a good experience. Unfortunately Neil’s father had a rare poorly known disease (MSA) and he died from it. The whole story with details is here:

http://www.meaningfulhitnews.com/2012/05/17/mark-versel-1944-2012/

An extract of the post below:

I am now vowing to dedicate my own career to educating as many people about MSA as possible and about the danger of uncoordinated care and poorly designed workflows. Interestingly, one of the last stories I wrote before my father passed and before I took leave was a piece in InformationWeek about patient engagement. I love the mantra of the Society for Participatory Medicine that I mentioned in the story: “Nothing about me without me.”

We send our condolences to Neil and thank him for writing about the Society for Participatory Medicine and our Meaningful Use Stage 2 comments in his Information Week article.