My second encounter with Fred Holliday’s Medical Record, Regina Holliday at Medstar’s CMIO Bootcamp, Columbia Maryland

Regina Holliday holding Fred Holliday’s (paper) medical record

Yesterday I had the privilege of bringing Regina Holliday (@reginaholliday), who is really no longer “patient” Regina Holliday as much as “faculty member” Regina Holliday, to the first ever CMIO “Bootcamp” learning session for local health system Medstar Health. The learning session was coordinated by Washington, DC’s @Clinovations and designed to augment and infuse the innovation of health information technology with physician leadership.

(sorry about the quality of the photo – it takes effort to keep up with Regina….)

I of course heartily endorse this, especially when it includes the experience of someone like Regina.

As the subject of the post says, this is the second time I have seen or been in the same room with Fred Holliday’s medical record. The first time was in May, 2009, so this provided some reflection about how things have changed.

In May, 2009, very few people knew what meaningful use was, there was no 73 cents mural, and patients going to e-Health conferences to ask about being included in the health information technology revolution looked into the eyes of confused people. The rest, as they say, is history. And it’s only about a year later.

On our way to and from, we talked about the things that Regina’s learning about and what she knows. Maybe a lot of people don’t know this, but she’s really well versed on all aspects of the retail industry – everything from international trade issues to customer service management, and I like picking her brain about her experience.

This time we talked about loss prevention and how a retail business connects with its customers to prevent theft. People are trained to engage with people who come into stores because the ones that are not engaged are the ones that put your business at risk. As Regina describes, they are the ones that dart around corners, they gaze away when you say hello to them, and they are the ones that staff are trained to pay attention to, to keep them engaged, to keep everyone safe. People with this behavior in the health care system (patients and doctors and nurses) worry us too, because the kind of loss that they are at risk of is one that hurts all of society, not just themselves or the health care institution. We hope that health care is among the best at spotting disengagement and paying attention to it for this reason.

Just a thought that I had as we ended our journey, driving by the most famous donated gas station wall in the United States….

Here are Regina’s slides. Can you tell she’s a former theater major?


5 Comments

Ah, Ted just as I am writing my blog talking of you, here I find you talking about me. Do you notice the color backgrounds on the slides? These are the colors of the rooms in "Mask of the Red Death." There is so many layers to all that we do, I am so glad we can work on this "loss prevention" together.

-Regina

Regina,

Yes we should…and one day if you have it in you, perhaps a course on what health care can learn from retail, in the spirit of, "If someone else is doing this better than us, we would like to know about it…"

Always a pleasure,

Ted

Wow. Just read both Regina's post and yours – heartening to see that the patient voice is, if not fully heard, at least making some noise at the barricades.

The retail analogy is dead-on – today, a patient's typical experience with the healthcare system is like a trip to Walmart. You might get a "hello" at the door, but after that? You're on your own. Would be terrific to see a real customer service mentality rise in medicine, particularly in the larger systems, where "next!" is the only greeting you get.

Ted Eytan, MD