by e-Patient Dave | Aug 14, 2009
Important update: it turns out the writer did get it right, and this was an editing error at the Boston Globe. See my comment August 17. —– As empowered, engaged patients we have a responsibility to evaluate the articles we read. A case in point is this...
by e-Patient Dave | Aug 11, 2009
Patient safety is important, and the safety of internet health data has been an ongoing concern for ages. We now have a great addition to the literature: “Trying to Measure the Quality of Health Information on the Internet: Is It Time to Move On?”...
by e-Patient Dave | Aug 10, 2009
Good piece on NPR this morning about what a KQED correspondent found when she went to Canada and talked to citizens and doctors about their experience of wait times. Click to go to their site and listen. One might ask, what does this have to do with patient...
by e-Patient Dave | Aug 6, 2009
I’m not making this up; it’s a wonderful thing. MassMEDIC, the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council, is looking at the future of “connected health” devices. They’ve got a survey that’s been given to all kinds of industry...
by e-Patient Dave | Jul 28, 2009
After hearing about 800 million mentions of “healthcare reform” in the past couple of months, this weekend I visited my normal (not-HC-geek) family in Maryland for Mom’s 80th birthday. (Woohoo! Large clan descends, six siblings and most of the...
by e-Patient Dave | Jul 23, 2009
Guest post by Kent Bottles, M.D., President of ICSI. Preface: The Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement is a Minnesota-based non-profit that “brings together diverse groups to transform the health care system so that it delivers patient-centered and...
by e-Patient Dave | Jul 15, 2009
Important addition 7/16/09 6:40 pm EDT: Be sure to read the HIPAA clarification by commenter “SLC” below, and any subsequent discussion. Dorothy Tillman was requesting her aunt’s records, not her own. This doesn’t change the need (IMO), but it...
by e-Patient Dave | Jul 10, 2009
I am sick of hearing politicians and money-making parties talk about savings projections “over ten years.” It’s STUPID. We’re stupid if we listen. Nothing (and I mean nothing) happens as projected ten years ago, not even five. It’s...
by e-Patient Dave | Jul 1, 2009
Tuesday night, endorsement #906 on HealthDataRights.org came from a Judy Beckman, who says: “I agree all the way I cannot get MY records unless I pay for MY records $1.00 per page WHY WHY these are MINE???????????” Indeed, why? Whose data is it, anyway? This spring...
by e-Patient Dave | Jun 23, 2009
Aliya Sternstein writes for NextGov, a site devoted to “technology and the business of government.” We spoke last week for her piece about the White House’s use of social media. There are some people who, when you speak with them, the conversation...
by e-Patient Dave | Jun 19, 2009
This is not going to be easy to absorb, if you really let it sink in. My wife’s a veterinarian, and we sometimes compare notes. So this headline caught my attention. Excerpt from the article: Economic Euthanasia On the Rise Euthanasia can be the last act of love...
by e-Patient Dave | Jun 10, 2009
This item from ABC News nearly brought tears to my eyes. The first signs that something was wrong with 11-year-old Connor Teare came when he was a toddler. His muscles were growing increasingly rigid and becoming more difficult to move. He went from leg braces to a...
by e-Patient Dave | Jun 6, 2009
Last Tuesday, June 2, I was on a consumer panel at a board meeting of the National eHealth Collaborative. This is a heady group to be addressing; as this press release says, nine of these people are on the advisory committees that are working directly with David...
by e-Patient Dave | May 28, 2009
As soon as you can, stop what you’re doing and devote 20-30 minutes to reading Atul Gawande’s important new article in the June 1 New Yorker, The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care. I don’t claim to be an expert about...
by e-Patient Dave | May 25, 2009
This is a special occasion for me, a guest post by Dr. Louise Glaser. Louise is a pediatrician in the Kaiser Permanente system, where among other things she’s Chief of Leadership and Communication Development in the Sacramento area. I met her a year ago at the annual...
by e-Patient Dave | May 20, 2009
The Boston Globe had a brief interview with me last Monday, and commenter “MikeScanlon” gave a great additional reason to go “e”: Doctors are required to respond to a lot of things – health insurance requirements, liability insurance...
by e-Patient Dave | May 15, 2009
Blogger John at the “EMR (EHR) and HIPAA” blog posted a musing that caused my business antennas to twitch. A vigorous discussion has started in the comments. Here’s the thing: we’re talking about the billions of incentives we’re offering...
by e-Patient Dave | May 13, 2009
John Halamka’s blog has a new post today announcing that the National Library Medicine has mapped 93% of his hospital’s “problem list” codes to the SNOMED CT set of clinical data codes that’s widely used. For more info on data formats see...
by e-Patient Dave | May 13, 2009
Precursor posts: The “meaningful use” debate (my thoughts); the Markle Foundation’s work on the subject Thanks to Josh Seidman of the Information Therapy Blog for steering me to the “meaningful use” work that’s been done by the...
by e-Patient Dave | May 10, 2009
Last night I posted my own thoughts on the definition of “meaningful use,” a term that will have significant impact on our next-generation medical records systems. To me it’s vital that the term be defined to include full access for you and me...
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