e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
Minnesota Supreme Court sides with patient on social media defamation suit
Guest post by SPM member @NickDawson, a former health system executive now focused on patient experience, staff happiness and healthcare innovation. He works for Frontier Health in Richmond, Virginia. There's a moment where something changes direction, irreversibly,...
Final HIPAA Privacy & Security Rule – What’s in it for Patients?
After years of delay, the federales finally finalized the HIPAA Privacy, Security, Breach Notification and Enforcement Rules. Introduction The Final Rule offers significant changes to patient rights and patient protections. (There is much more to the rule, but other...
How to Provide Emergency Medical Services to Everyone
News outlets across the country reported recently that the 2013 flu season is bringing so many people to the emergency departments of hospitals throughout the country that many hospitals are setting up tents to handle the overflow. The ED has been a...
The Case for Being On Top of Your Case
Guest post by Elaine Waples, one of our new (today) members of SPM (with her husband Brian Klepper). This story illustrates one of the core dysfunctions in American medicine today - lack of coordination - and makes a compelling case for patients and families to be...
Eric Topol at Rock Health
Thanks to Carla Berg for sharing this: Eric Topol was on Rock Center tonight. He talked about the patient empowerment and give us our data themes he brings up towards the end, he did everything but mention #gmdd and patients in the drivers seat explicitly. The key to...
HIMSS blog featured e-Patient Dave
The HIMSS blog features e-Patient Dave, the 5 Es of e-Patients and how social media can help. http://blog.himss.org/2013/01/25/part-1-value-of-social-media-in-healthcare-is-already-outlined-just-not-realized/ For whatever reason – whether it’s budget, time, buy-in or...
Thoughts on requirements for Patient-Centric HIT Systems
The latest buzzword in the Healthcare IT (HIT) world is “patient-centric”. It seems that everyone’s device/software/solution is designed to be patient-centric. On the Society for Participatory Medicine’s internal listserv we discussed what does it take for an HIT...
1 Million VA Patients Can Now Access Their Complete Health Record
This weekend is momentous not only for the 2nd inauguration of the President. History will say the Veterans Health Administration is innovative, truly patient centered and even a bit risky. Today, VA patients can view, print and download ALL their health record data...
NEJM: Post-Hospital Syndrome
SPM member Marge Benham-Hutchins (see her December post) spotted this item. It's a vital point for patient and family awareness, leading to patient engagement - patients as responsible drivers of their health. I added the italics below. From a recent Perspectives...
Breaking news: HHS publishes long-awaited HIPAA rule changes
On Twitter @HCI_GPerna just posted that the Dept of Health & Human Services has announced the long-awaited rule changes to HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. These are the changes to implement HITECH, the 2009 stimulus bill...
Medical Errors: Will We Act Up, Fight Back?
(Originally published on the CFAH Prepared Patient Forum January 16, 2013) Sometimes, angry patients and dissident doctors and nurses warn us about the impending patient revolution – how health care is so unsafe, of such poor quality and so expensive for us patients...
Our latest “doctor as e-patient”: SPM member Leana Wen
It's less common today but people used to think empowered patients were anti-doctor. One part of our response on this blog was to point out the many clinicians who are e-patients themselves, as in Let’s hear it for the d-patient e-patients (with dozens of comments)....
