March 15th, 2011 by Maria Gifford in Announcements, Medblogger Shout Outs
Tags: Best Of The Medical Blogosphere, Better Health, Call For Submissions, Clinical Medicine Blogs, Grand Rounds, Health Blogs, Healthcare Blogs, Maria Gifford, Medblogger Shout Out, Medbloggers, Medical Blog Carnival, Medical Blogs, Physician Bloggers, Science Blogs
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Grand Rounds will be hosted right here at “home” at Better Health on Tuesday, March 22th, 2011.
Please send your blog-post submissions via e-mail by 12:00AM midnight CT on Saturday, March 19th, to: maria.gifford@getbetterhealth.com.
Please include:
- “Submission for Grand Rounds” in the subject line of your e-mail.
- Your name (blog author), the name of your blog, and the URL of your specific blog-post submission.
- A short summary (1 to 3 sentences) of your blog post.
There’s no specific theme for this edition of Grand Rounds — just send us something really smart or deep or profound that will move us and make us all think harder about health and medicine.
For more information, please see the Grand Rounds Submissions Guidelines. We look forward to receiving your submissions and featuring them here next week. Thank you!
– Maria Gifford, Director of Content, Better Health
December 13th, 2010 by EvanFalchukJD in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Medblogger Shout Outs, Opinion
Tags: Best Doctors, Cutting Healthcare Costs, Employee Health, Employee Healthcare Benefits, Employer Healthcare Contributions, Employer-Provided Health Coverage, Evan Falchuk, Healthcare Quality, Healthcare reform, Healthier Employees, Medical Blog Carnivals, Medical Blogosphere
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Welcome to The Benefits Package — the very first employee benefits blog carnival. After healthcare reform, employee benefits move to center stage as one of the most important issues facing Americans.
So what are employers, insurers, and the government really doing to rein in healthcare costs, get their employees to live healthier lives, and improve healthcare quality?
The Benefits Package is the first-ever blog carnival dedicated to these issues. With benefits executives starting to make the leap into the blogosphere, The Benefits Package will highlight the best insights and opinions on this important subject. You will discover new blogs, learn new things, and hopefully think about issues a little differently. I’ll host the first couple of Benefits Packages, and then others will take their turn.
Below you’ll find a terrific set of posts by some true thought leaders. If you like what you see, please submit a post of your own next time. Enjoy the first Benefits Package!
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At the Health Business Blog, David Williams explains why mini-med plans aren’t as bad as some people would have you believe.
At Hank Stern’s Insure Blog, Mike Feehan explains how the federal government makes private coverage more expensive in a way that makes its own coverage cheaper.
Jen Benz of the Benz Communications Blog explains that companies who fail to put their benefits information online are making a big mistake. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*
November 27th, 2010 by DavidHarlow in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, Medblogger Shout Outs, News
Tags: Advance Directives, Blog Rally, Choosing How To Die, David Harlow, Death Panels, DNR, Do Not Resuscitate, End Of Life Care, End-Of-Life Planning, End-Of-Life Preferences, End-Of-Life Wishes, Engage With Grace, HealthBlawg, Healthcare Advocate, Healthcare Decisions, Healthcare Power Of Attorney, Healthcare Proxies, Living Will, Loved Ones' Wishes, Medical Ethics, Social Media, Terminal Illness, The One Slide
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As patients, as family members, as friends, as health care providers, we have all faced end-of-life issues at one time or another, and we will face them again. And again.
This weekend the “Engage With Grace” message is being broadcast virally, through a “blog rally,” at a time when many people are with family and friends over the long weekend. The point is: We all need to have the potentially uncomfortable conversation with people close to us about what kind of treatment we would want, and they would want, if incapable of making or communicating healthcare decisions. CNN ran a story on “Engage With Grace” yesterday.
End-of-life decision-making has long been an issue of great personal and professional interest to me, and I am proud to have played a role in having out-of-hospital DNR orders recognized in Massachusetts by EMS providers, as an example. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*
October 19th, 2010 by KerriSparling in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Medblogger Shout Outs, News, Opinion, True Stories
Tags: 33 Charts, Blog World Expo 2010, Dr. Bryan Vartabedian, Dr. Kevin Pho, Health Bloggers, Healthcare Social Media, Kerri Morrone Sparling, KevinMD, Kim McAllister, Medical Bloggers, Medical Blogosphere, Online Medical Communities, Six Until Me, Social Health, Social Networking Technologies, Social Networks
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I was in Las Vegas, but it wasn’t all just spending quality time with blogging buddies. There was work to do — we were there for the Social Health track of BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2010 to help inform others about the discussions taking place in the medical blogosphere, and the power of these communities.
The panel that I was participating on was Social Networks & The Medical Blogosphere: Compatible or Competitive, with fellow panelists Kevin Pho and Bryan Vartabedian (see photo) moderated by the fabulous Kim McAllister. The big question was: “Are these social networking technologies helping or hurting the blogosphere?”
We, as a panel, gave this a lot of thought as we prepared for our discussion, and we ultimately settled on the answer of “Well…both.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*
October 8th, 2010 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in Better Health Network, Medblogger Shout Outs, News, Opinion, Research
Tags: 33 Charts, Breaking Oncology News, Cancer Research, Cancer Treatment, Chemotherapy, Childhood Cancers, Children's Health, Children's Hospital Blogs, Children's Oncology Group, Cinchcast, COG, CureSearch, Dr. Bryan Vartabedian, Dr. Katherine Matthay, Facebook, Healthcare Social Media Camp, Hematology, Medical Blogosphere, NEJM, Neuroblastoma, New England Journal of Medicine, Pediatric Hematology-Oncology, Pediatric Medicine, Pediatric Oncology, Press Release, Social Media In Medicine, Twitter, UCSF, University of California-San Francisco
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I [recently] received a press release from a friend in the Bay Area. Investigators at UCSF have published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that less chemotherapy can be effective at treating some childhood cancers.
The paper was the result of an eight-year clinical study in children with neuroblastoma. In this particular population, researchers were able to reduce chemotherapy exposure by 40 percent while maintaining a 90 percent survival rate. You can read about it here.
The press release sparked a brief email exchange between me and my friend: Who might be interested in writing about this study and is there any way to get it to spread? What would make it sticky in the eyes of the public?
Here are a few ideas:
Figure out who cares. Sure it’s niche news, but there are people who would think this is pretty darn important. Think organizations centered on parents of children with cancer, adult survivors of childhood cancer, pediatric hematology-oncology physicians, pediatricians and allied professionals in pediatric medicine like nurse practitioners and hematology-oncology nurses. Networks form around these groups. Find them and seed them.
Make a video. Offer powerful, visual content beyond a press release. A four-minute clip with the principal investigator, Dr. Matthay, would be simple and offer dimension to what is now something restricted to print. The Mayo Clinic has done this really well. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*