• What Healthcare Could Learn from Amazon - ClickZ - Article I was interviewed for. Sadly the experience described by the patient in the article is not uncommon. And more sadly, they probably didn't know how common it was until it happened to them. Nice commentary from my former boss, Matt Handley, MD, at Group Health Cooperative, nice to know they are still setting an example.

Health care found to be better with online help - Nice localization of the landmark Group Health study on managing hypertension using Web services, from the Seattle PI.

So…if the study and the community agree that this kind of care is better, and there is data to show that diagnosing “white coat” hypertension is cost-effective, and payers already have reimbursement policies for ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (and older type of technology to figure this out), why not create more modern policies for home blood pressure monitoring?

I am posting this presentation that I created, commissioned by the California Healthcare Foundation, and supported by the Center for Information Therapy and indirectly, Group Health Cooperative.

It is the presentation that created the need for me to define Health 2.0. It is also the last presentation I will give as as a Group Health employee, and the only time I will be able to give it, due to my my career change.

It’s in slide show format, so feel free to click on any of the images and page through. I had a lot of fun putting it together because it allowed me to reflect on what I learned and how much I have changed in my thinking in just the past year. May the same trend continue.

I would like to extend special thanks to Crosskeys Media, producers of the excellent show “Remaking of American Medicine,” for allowing me to use portions of the content in the interest of supporting patient centered care. I encourage anyone interested in this topic to view or purchase the show. There is an educational license available that allows for use in teaching (as a whole piece, not intended for editing by users). It’s worth it.

Feedback and comments welcomed.

Published! The report I co-authored with Josh Seidman, Ph.D. from the Center for Information Therapy is now online. It describes our experiences out “in the rest of health care” understanding the environment that supports patient centered health information technology. My conclusion: we can make it happen.

Helping Patients Plug In: Lessons in the Adoption of Online Consumer Tools - CHCF.org

I was interviewed by journalist Kyung Song from the Seattle Times for this article, which appeared in today’s paper:

Local News | Group Heath trolling cyberspace to learn what patients think | Seattle Times Newspaper

This was the first interview I have done representing both the organization I work for, and myself as a blogger at the same time. Usually, it’s one or the other, because the words on this blog are my own and not those of my employer (although obviously our approach to patient centered health care is well aligned). The worlds are starting to collide….

I definitely believe that there is content that’s traditionally outside of the physician-patient relationship that can and should be brought in via blogs and the like. We saw it with secure e-mail between patients and physicians to be sure. It changed our relationships, in a healthy, helpful way.

My personal belief about blogs and Web 2.0, though, needs to be coupled with an organization’s need to have a workflow and platform that brings in the right information at the right time. I definitely don’t expect a physician to review the 2,000 RSS feeds of their patients (and I don’t think the patients do, either).

That’s the fun intersection, and it is good pressure, to bring everything about a patient that matters to them into every clinical interaction.

See what you think…

December 16th through December 18th:

• Edelman Trust Barometer - a “person like me” is more trusted than a physician
• Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li’s Blog): Blogging policy examples - Examples of organizational blog policies
• Managing Health Online Discussed on NPR?s ‘Talk of the Nation’ | Kaiser Permanente News Center - KPNewsCenter coverage of NPR Talk of the Nation, December 13, 2007
• St. Louis-Based Company Attracts Gen. Y Grads — and Used Car Customers - George?s Employment Blawg: St. Louis labor & employment lawyer looks at HR, labor law, and today?s workplace - Example of a company that is catering to GenY - Enterprise rent-a-car
• Secretary Mike Leavitt’s Blog: Electronic Medical Records and the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate - The Administration proposes a requirement of EHR’s at the same time the SGR is fixed. The comments on this post are worth a read as well.
• Permanente Journal - Summer 2006 - Special Issue - Sidney Garfield Centennial, one of the fore-parents of health informatics