e-Patients Blog
The blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. Want to be a contributor?
Would Your Doctor Pay for Wasted Time? (CNN.com)
Strictly speaking this isn't about participatory medicine, but it is about being an empowered consumer of care. There are several dimensions to empowerment, including (but not limited to): Knowing what you want Recognizing whether you're getting it When you're not,...
Shared Decision Making in the News
Media coverage of the challenges we face in making good treatment decisions often focuses on and sensationalizes medical errors, catastrophes and risks. So it was great to see this impressive TV news clip circulated by Gary Schwitzer of HealthNewsReview.org in his...
Examples, please: peer-to-peer healthcare
I'm writing an article and would love to tap into this community's knowledge. I know of a few examples of clinical practices using Facebook and Twitter to connect with patients, such as MacArthur OB/GYN, but I'd love to learn about other examples, especially ones...
Bye Bye Google Health
Like so many attempts before it -- drkoop.com and RevolutionHealth.com to name just two -- Google has found that implementing personal health records in a meaningful way is really, really hard. So hard, in fact, that it has given up and is shuttering its Google Health...
2011 Socialnomics video is out
On this blog we try to understand and explain how the world has changed and is changing, with the goal of helping everyone - policy people, patients, clinicians, administrators, businesses - optimize for the world as it changes. Nowhere is that more apparent than in...
Richard Smith: Beware journals, especially “top” ones (BMJ blog)
e-Patients who want to collaborate with their physicians, and be responsible for their medical decisions, need to clearly understand what constitutes good evidence. It’s not always easy…
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FICO’s new Med Compliance score: #FAIL
This is a cross-post, plus commentary at end, starting with an item today by SPM member Alexandra Albin (@MsAxolotl, a frequent patient herself), from her blog: My life in the Bush of Doctors. It arose from a boiling discussion on the SPM member listserv. To...
NYTimes: Smaller hospitals often perform double CTs unnecessarily
Engaged patients and families, alert: the NY Times reports (here) on a form of unwarranted practice variation that has been exposing elders to excess radiation. Many smaller hospitals have been needlessly exposing their Medicare patients to double CT scans on the same...
Rating the Better Business Bureau
Thanks to SPM member Janice McCallum for this tweet: "Required reading for all HC & doc rating sites: RT @infocommerce: Rating the BBB." Good, concise depiction of the perils of creating an evaluation system.
Two roads ahead: “I fear to be a patient” vs. “Opportunities for Patient-Clinician Partnership”
Treat yourself to 3 minutes of Don Berwick's 2009 speech on patient-centered care, which at a certain point becomes an elegy: Now cheer yourself up with the latest article from the Journal of Participatory Medicine: "The Cancer Supportive Care Model: A...
Do e-Patients Cross the Line With Clinician–Patient Responsibilities?
RA Warrior Kelly Young inquires in a post on Dr. Howard J. Luks’ blog. Dr. Bryan Vartebedian of 33 Charts adds his answer in a post on Better Health. What do you think: Are there lines that patients shouldn’t cross?
Meredith Gould: Why Go Public Now About My Fibro?
Guest blogger Meredith Gould is on Twitter as @meredithgould and @HealthFaith. Over a year ago, I agreed to write about my personal experience with fibromyalgia for a new health and wellness site. The piece wasn't going to be published for a while and although I was...
