e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
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...
Mobile Devices: Know the RISKS. Take the STEPS. PROTECT and SECURE Health Information
I haven't blogged about it much this year due to the pressures of my own work, but I'm seriously impressed with the relevance, quality and user-friendliness of the work being done by the folks at ONC (the health IT branch of the department of Health & Human...
PCORI Puzzle: Can a Marriage of Goo-Goos and Pinky-Ringers Transform Health Care?
The new Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has been asking different stakeholders about the most important issues to address with the hundreds of millions of dollars the quasi-governmental group will shortly be doling out in grants. Not surprisingly,...
Give us our damn data – or at least stop screwing up when *you* use it.
A guest post by SPM member Marge Benham-Hutchins, PhD, RN, an assistant professor of nursing informatics at Texas Woman's University. This is an email she sent me today, citing an online discussion of the appalling death in the Health Affairs column that Susannah Fox...
“As She Lay Dying” – a son calls on the health system to involve patients and families in improving safety
Warning: this doesn’t end well. Not for anyone in the story. Unless it changes you, as it did me. Jonathan Welch, MD, teaches at Harvard Medical School and practices in the ER at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. But, as is often the case in life, the...
Monthly introduction to e-Patients.net, blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine
This is our monthly introduction to e-Patients.net, blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Follow the Society on Twitter (@S4PM), Facebook, and LinkedIn.  Here's how to become a Society member, individual or corporate. Our publications: This blog...
