• Contrasting Personal vs. Professional Uses of Social Media: The Case of Healthcare Blogging | Trusted.MD Network - Assertion that physician bloggers didn't like the JGIM study "one bit." I liked it - it's informative of a new medium that will ultimately help patients be involved and a health system to be accountable. That's the goal.

I am always delighted to meet other physician bloggers, and such was the case with Bob Wachter, MD, who’s a physician that blogs, and from within academia. That’s rare, and welcomed, by me for sure.

He recently wrote this piece, Will Knols and Blogs Upend the Cozy World of Medical Publishing?, which echoes several ideas I have been having since I started blogging, especially around the idea of, as he calls it, “the democratization of peer review.” (I’m focusing on the comments about medical publishing - the world of Knols appears to be experiencing a rocky ride)

As I occasionally get requests to write for peer reviewed journals or books or I consider writing for them, I have been pausing to ask, “why?”

This is especially when the difference is between instant access and feedback to the people I serve, versus a smaller group of individuals with (potentially) limited experience in the ideas I’m writing about, and the medium I use to write them in. I say this without any predjudice to the publishing community - I am just not sure where physicians in my generation will fit in moving forward, unless the model is changed.

Bob refers to the difference between “Having an article peer reviewed by 3 experts is different than having 17 Joe Six-packs;” however, I’m not sure what the difference is, depending on the issue, between those two constituencies - what’s an expert in if she/he isn’t a person “just like me?” Also, what’s the value of a single (relatively speaking), private, review, that will be locked in time and space, forever? Robert Scoble speaks well to this in the post “Scoble Defends Blogging (Again), and He’s Right (Again).”

I do not work in academia, where people are incentivized/rewarded for the number of peer-reviewed publications with their names on them. I think a deeper question that should be asked, is, “What’s the best way, in this millennium, to produce portable knowledge that can be used by others?” I have talked with innovators in academia who have not shared their knowledge because of the effort required to publish to medical journals. That’s unfortunate.

How could the reward/incentive system in academia be reconfigured to respect the many different ways people can share knowledge, and put them to use to help people? I think it could be, and in turn a lot of great ideas could be unleashed.

Bob mentions in his post that he submitted his piece to two medical journals, who rejected it. However, we still get to read it thanks to Web 2.0.

I’m not even going to try with this one. And I sort of don’t have to.

• Creative Class » Blog Archive » Happy Jobs, American-style - Creative Class - Physicians and lawyers (the highest in prestige) score above average in satisfaction and happiness, but not in the top 12. Nurses score slightly lower than doctors. Physical therapists are #2, behind clergy.

JAY PARKINSON + MD + MPH

How long before HelloHealth comes to Washington, DC, with the most regional-serving walkable urban places per capita in the country?

Note: There’s been some buzz about walkability for other cities as well, also fine choices for those who love living in places that support walking.

May 15th through May 18th:

• CCR Product Compatibility List — AAFP Center for Health Information Technology - Adoption list of CCR - not up to date, but gives a glimpse of who has been involved.
• Montana Healthshare - Montana organization to use CCR to improve population health
• Solventus CEND/PHR - A reference implementation of a PHR using CCD, developed by Stephen Waldren, MD and David Kibbe, MD
• PDF Healthcare - A technology platform for enclosing historical documents - can contain a CCR
• SourceForge.net: CCR Acceleration Resources Project - The XSLT transofrm from XML -> HTML for CCR
• www.ccrstandard.com - Continuity of Care Record (CCR)Standard — Resource Site _uacct = “UA-2242673-1″; urchinTracker(); - Home base for CCR
• “I hope that some day you get your wish” - "Medicine has a 100% failure rate" - a discussion of physicians in information technology.
• The WETA Guide to Fine Dining | WETA TV 26 - A nice series on DC treasures
• The Health Care Blog: PODCAST/CONSUMERS/TECH: Interview with Joseph Kvedar, Partners’ Connected Health guru - Information about ConnectedHealth and the EMC pilot they are doing

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…

April 5th through April 8th:

• Headzoo » WP Anti-Wares - Now it looks like we have to worry about insecure wordpress themes, too.
• Electronic Prevention - washingtonpost.com - Nice writeup of the New York PCIP program. What the writer doesn’t realize, is that a patient portal is coming, so a visit isn’t always going to be required….
• Jack and Suzy Welch: Leader vs. Manager - ‘We’d wager it only comes into play when you don’t want to offend an employee who crosses t’s and dots i’s but couldn’t excite a busload of kids bound for Disney World. In such a case, what do you say? You got it. “You’re a good manager.”‘
• Generation Y’s Bad Rap - It’s not really that bad, according to Jack Welch. I agree.
• The National Physicians Alliance encourages all doctors to join our Unbranded Doctor Campaign — a national network of physicians committed to reducing the influence of pharmaceutical marketing on our profession. - NPA appears to be a grown up version of AMSA. They include consumers in their governance
• Macworld | Mac OS X Hints | Add more power to 10.5’s screen sharing - Economical screen sharing alternatives using Leopard
• Total Value, Total Return: Invest in Health Management Programs -
• Office 2004 for Mac Solution Center - Office 2004 downloads for Mac. Time to upgrade

March 7th through March 11th:

• Frist Advocates Higher Medicare Payments for Doctors Who Use EHRs - iHealthBeat - An idea to promote network preference among physicians who adopt HIT.
• Marissa Mayer’s 9 Principles of Innovation | Fast Company - I love number 5
• The Curious Genius of Twitter - Evan Williams - Tweet | Fast Company - Will Twitter go the way of friendster? I think there could be applications of Twitter in Health Care (really)
• Area Tap Water Has Traces of Medicines - washingtonpost.com -
• Farm Workers Service Wheel - Services for farm workers in Sonoma County. Showing that the Internet can serve everyone

January 12th through January 13th:

• Prometheus Payment, Inc. - A new payment model that supports outcomes, evidence-based care, and transparency
• The music industry | From major to minor | Economist.com - “Then they had the money and could have built the competence by buying concert agencies and merchandise companies,”…Now it may be too late.
• Coverity Incorporated Scan - Company working with the US Govt to harden open source code for use by agencies including Homeland Security. They are finding bugs and the bugs are being fixed.
• Online Real Estate Sites Work To Get A Listing Standard - Another industry that is seeing the benefits of standards, and the challenges of disruption
• Gone Indie ? Thought Palace - Interesting insight on the work environment at Apple. LEAN production? You decide. I will say, though, that even though Apple is not embracing Web 2.0 like other companies are, I have solved many problems using their hosted discussions. These actually work well on Apple’s site I think because they do a great job of leveraging their loyal customer base. Yet another blog “goodbye” to an employer.
• Lean Manufacturing Blog: 1 Hour Kaizen - Excellent template and approach to small improvements. Just takes an hour. Can we have physicians shadowing nurses and vice versa?

• Providence Health Care - What’s New - Providence Legacy Project, St. Paul’s Hospital, Mount Saint Joseph Hospital, St. Vincent’s Hospitals, Arbutus, Brock Fahrni Pavilion, Heather, Langara, Holy Family Hospital, Youville Residence - The project has yielded great results, with an 87 per cent drop in the time from blood collection to the time of arrival in the lab, and a 45 per cent decrease in turnaround time from blood collection to result reporting.
• Primary Care And Health System Performance: Adults’ Experiences In Five Countries — Schoen et al., 10.1377/hlthaff.w4.487 — Health Affairs - Information about access and secure e-mail use, as well as quality measures across several countries.
• How NOT to lead geeks - This is an interesting post, although I think the title is at odds with the content (this is about leading people who develop great things for society). It adds more information to the LEAN idea that people are not the problem, it’s process.
• Toyota passes Ford as No. 2 in U.S. sales - Toyota’s ability to have humility in this situation is something a healthcare organization would be envious of.
• Running a hospital: Looking back after six years at BIDMC - I liked this. Compliment: It represents Hansei in a good way. Constructive Criticism: Thinking about applying LEAN to be more direct in the communication. Overall: More people should do this.
• Your New Title: Chief Inspiration Officer - I think I want to be this. Actually I think I try to be this. And I love it.