e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
Finally! An initiative from *within* science to reproduce studies. (And not everyone likes it.)
Addition Oct 2014: added link to the Reproducibility Initiative, now at validation.ScienceExchange.com Correction Monday morning: the project is called the Reproducibility Initiative, not Project. Also, note that we got a comment from co-founder Elizabeth Iorns -...
PCORI and Micro-Contracts
Susan Woods responded to my previous post, PCORI and Just-In Time Decisions with the research funding system doesn't really work for anyone. It is in concrete, Agreed.  Micro Contracts could be a small intervention that could help move the dial. (As a reminder, the...
Science Fraud site is shut down by legal threats
Jan. 3 update: See important update at bottom - the site owner has identified himself. I'm extremely troubled by this development, so much so I'm stopping a tight-deadline task to write this. Let's hope that as things unfold this will resolve. Ivan Oransky, executive...
“Arm” ourselves with information: Health News Review and 2009’s “war on cancer” post
Some things are what they call "evergreen" - persistent value, never out of date. Two come together for this year-end post. __________ A lot's changed since our society was formed in 2009, but year after year a core skill for participatory medicine is ability to think...
PCORI and Just-in-Time Decisions
SPM member Danny van Leeuwen @HealthcareHatsis an active member of PCORI's patient engagement workgroup. A month ago he mentioned a post about PCORI on WBUR's CommonHealth blog, Medical Research: By Law, It’s All About You. I said "You should make short blog posts...
MedKaz blog: “Where’s the urgency, the anger, the outrage?”
Merle Bushkin of MedKaz (a secure PHR device) is extremely unhappy with the reality that although we've spent years and billions on EMR adoption, the practice of healthcare hasn't transformed yet. In "Where's the urgency, the anger, the outrage?" he cites, among other...
“The Patient as Partner” in Medical Research at Radboud University
This encouraging news is adapted from the November cover story of Radboud University's magazine Radbode (PDF, in Dutch, 1.6MB). Thanks to @LucienEngelen, initiator of this project, for forwarding it to us. Not surprisingly, Lucien's also the creator of the heavily...
Top 5 Posts of 2012
I was curious to see which were the top 5 posts, traffic-wise, and figured readers might be interested, too. Here's the line-up: #1: Open knowledge saves lives. Oppose H.R. 3699! by Gilles Frydman The e-patients.net post with the highest number of views is a clear...
When the doctor-patient relationship splits up (Boston Globe)
In the Society for Participatory Medicine we talk about professionals and patients being full partners in care. And sometimes, as in any partnership, the two part. Have you ever "fired" anyone? Before it got to that point, did you express your concern ("I want to talk...
Taking Stock: Managing Your Health Care Costs
As we approach the end of 2012, it is a time to take stock, regarding your finances. This has been a year when the economic climate has been far from upbeat; a year when U.S., spending on health has continued to accelerate as health insurance premiums, higher...
ONC’s new visual companion to their great vids about EHRs
Most of our readers are familiar with the brief animated video introduced last summer by ONC, the health IT group in the US government. (If you haven't seen it, you can watch it below, in long and short versions.) Now they've introduced a new poster (click the tiny...
Can Patient-Centered Care Reduce Hospital Readmissions?
A recent Press Ganey white paper highlights an association between HCAHPS performance -- patient experience scores -- and lower rates of readmission. (Performance Insights - The Relationship Between HCAHPS Performance and Readmission Penalties.) With Medicare payment...