e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
What to do if your doctor wouldn’t fax YOU your records…
Our member Keith Boone with a great explanation of what to do when a provider's office gives you the "I can't do this because of HIPAA" about giving you your records: http://motorcycleguy.blogspot.com/2014/01/knowing-who-to-talk-to-is-half-battle.html A little teaser...
e-Patient Lisa Adams
In this guest blog post, member Carly Medosch describes Lisa Adams whom she knows from social media. Lisa Adams was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer and documented her journey in social media. In another post below we describe the media firestorm that was caused...
Husband-wife pieces in NY Times and The Guardian break ethics and lack a clue (re @AdamsLisa)
Update 9:20 pm ET: see important additions at the subhead below. When I wrote this today I didn't have time to dig for excellent links like those. Thanks to Susannah Fox's Twitter feed. One of the best social media patient figures I met, long ago, was @AdamsLisa -...
Hot Trends for 2014: Care Collaboration and Coordination Top the List
In 2014, the baby boomers (individuals born between 1946 and 1964) will turn 65 at a rate of nearly 10,000, individuals a day. Over the next five years 17 million baby boomers turn 65. That’s a lot of people retiring, joining the Medicare system developing chronic...
Response to “We need to talk about TED” from an evangelist’s perspective
The next day I made a correction per Dick Morris's comment, and toned down some of my adjectives to be more suitable outside of our private listserv. Dr. Bratton, of course we welcome dialog. In our Society for Participatory Medicine, part of our work is to change...
Patient Designed: Top 3 things hospitals can do today to be more participatory
The Society for Participatory Medicine, through its founders and mission, has a strong belief in the expertise of its patient members - many of whom identify as providers or journalists or have expertise in HIT, health economics and other areas. Patients, often...
How WebMD May Unfairly Influence Your Health Choices — Through Search
Go ahead and type in virtually any health or mental health condition into Google. Heck, even try a popular medication or two. Time and time again, you'll notice a reliable trend -- 2 or 3 of the top 10 search results are nearly always going to be WebMD. But not...
Breaking news: New Orleans health chief Dr. Karen DeSalvo Named to Head ONC
As we've said endlessly here (and in Washington), one of the key enablers of better healthcare is access to information. For that subject there's no more important job in the world than America's National Coordinator for Health IT, who runs ONC (Office of the National...
Matthew Katz on 23andMe: “Return to Sender, Genome Unknown: Seven Reasons I Will Return My Personal Genome Kit”
Radiation oncologist Matthew Katz is a lifetime member of SPM who blogs regularly for the American Society of Clinical Oncology and Mayo Clinic Social Media Health Network. In this guest post he offers his view of 23andMe, the personal genomics service that's in the...
My Reasons for Thanksgiving: On The Ultimate Loss of Control, Unclear Diagnoses, and Being a Patient
As we know participatory medicine is based upon mutual respect: the clinician respecting the self-knowledge, experience, and wisdom that the patient brings to the collaboration and the patient respecting the knowledge, clinical experience, wisdom, and technical skills...
Thanks from the Philippines
In this guest blog post, member Beatrice Tiangco describes some of the pain and suffering in the Philippines after the typhoon and expresses her gratitude for the SPM, local community and overall support. Beatrice Tiangco is a practicing Medical Oncologist from the...
Susannah Fox: Field Guide to Pew’s new report “The Diagnosis Difference”
Susannah Fox of Pew Research had an important new study published today about the highest cost part of the healthcare budget: patients with one or more chronic conditions. If you care about the suffering of patients with never-ending conditions or the suffering of the...
