January 28th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Announcements, News, Quackery Exposed
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In a press release dated January 28, 2009, the HealthCentral Network announced the acquisition of a company called Wellsphere from its young CEO, Ron Gutman. Many of my fellow medical bloggers are familiar with Wellsphere as they’ve received countless email form letters from Wellsphere’s CMIO, Dr. Geoffrey Rutledge. The form letters are flattering, and suggest that the company would like to feature the blogger’s writing on their platform.
But what happens next is disturbing – to become a member of Wellsphere, bloggers provide access to their blog’s RSS feed. Hidden in the fine print is the blogger’s consent for Wellsphere to publish the entire feed (in other words, all of the blogger’s written work) and that once it’s published on their site, they own the intellectual property rights to it.
Astonishingly Wellsphere convinced some 1700 bloggers to join their network, and have now sold their site (which is comprised almost entirely of blog post content) to HealthCentral Network for an undisclosed amount, likely in the millions.
How much did the bloggers get for their writing? As far as I know, zero dollars.
In the reference section below you will see copies of emails sent by Dr. Rutledge and excerpts from the website’s Terms of Use document.
Is this the biggest scam ever pulled on health bloggers? You decide. If you have any additional information, feel free to post it in the comments section below.
Addendum: HealthCentral Network CEO tells Wall Street Journal “most bloggers are happy about Wellsphere.” If you disagree, send protest Tweet #wellsphere or leave comment below.
References:
Here is the introductory form email sent out by Dr. Rutledge:
Hi Dr. Jones,
I was on a search for the best medical blogs, when I found you at X. I think your blog is great. I’d like to invite you to participate in the network of medical expert bloggers at Wellsphere, but perhaps I should explain a bit about myself and about Wellsphere as background.
My name is Dr. Geoff Rutledge, and, like you, I understand the power of the Internet to help people. I’m a physician (board certified in IM and EM) who previously practiced, taught, and carried out research at Stanford and Harvard medical schools, before I built and launched the first consumer ehealth service that became WebMD.com.
I now work with Wellsphere, which is a next-generation online platform that helps people achieve their health and healthy living goals – it is a major advance in the way people find and share information and services. Our platform connects millions of users with the valuable insights and knowledge from health leaders and medical experts like you — take a look at how the platform works at www.wellsphere.com. Stanford University was so impressed that they deployed our service for the entire campus (see stanford.wellsphere.com). We sell our service to employers and health plans – you won’t see today any ads or commercial services on our free public site.
I offer you the opportunity to be a featured medical expert blogger for a new Wellsphere community. Members and visitors will see your postings highlighted, featured, and clearly marked as authored by a true medical expert.
When you join, we will feature you on our medical experts page (here is the preliminary design for this page: http://www.wellsphere.com/medical-experts.htm), and I will highlight your participation and your postings in my personal blog, which is featured prominently on the homepage of wellsphere.com (Dr.Geoff’s MedBlog, http://medblog.wellsphere.com/).
We will republish the postings you’ve already written for you (through your RSS feed), and feature them not only on the community pages of the site, but also within a new dynamic magazine-like Wellsphere360 section, where we give users a comprehensive view of medical expert information, plus news, videos, local resources, and member postings on topics you write about. You can see a sample of a Wellsphere360 special section at http://www.wellsphere.com/Wellsphere360/diabetes-type-2.htm
Also, I will select the best medical bloggers to feature on our homepage at www.wellsphere.com.
Your posts will link back to your blog, so you will benefit from Wellsphere’s high ranking and large readership interested in your topic, which will give you more traffic, additional relevant audience, and a higher ranking for your blog. Wellsphere has well over a million visitors per month, and is growing rapidly.
If you would like us to feature you, just send me an email to Dr.Rutledge@wellsphere.com.
Good health,
Geoff
—
Geoffrey W. Rutledge MD, PhD
Dr.Rutledge@wellsphere.com
http://www.wellsphere.com
Here is a follow up email after I declined to join the network:
Hi Dr. Val,
We haven’t met, but I’ve been following your journey. We sent you an invitation to republish your blog from RevolutionHealth on Wellsphere, though I understood why that was somewhat problematic. I’m looking forward to seeing your new site at http://drvalblog.com/
Have you followed the advances that Wellsphere has made in creating a consumer-focused site that makes it easy to find both medical expert content and knowledge, and patient/community support?
If you would be interested in reaching the Wellsphere audience (now significantly exceeding that of RevolutionHealth, with over 2 million visitors per month), I would be pleased to extend the offer to republish your blog postings on Wellsphere.
We also could list you as a Notable Wellsite on topic pages of your interest (for which we ask only that you either list us on your blogroll, or take advantage of our free Health Knowledge Finder widget, or post an “I’m featured on Wellsphere” badge on your site.)
Cheers, Geoff
Here is a follow up email sent to a blogger who declined to join the network:
Hi XXX,
I just wanted to follow up on the invitation I sent you to be a featured blogger on Wellsphere.com. I was impressed with your blog at XXX, and invited you to be a featured blogger in the new General Medicine community. We can also promote your blog in our new dynamic, magazine-like WellPages (with no extra work for you)! If you’re interested in being featured and promoting your blog to the larger Wellsphere audience, please drop me an email!
Good Health!
Geoff
–
Here is more information on how this works:
We republish your articles on our site, and include links back to your site. We also publish your profile with a link back to your site, and we feature you on special sections on topics that you write on, and in your topic-based community.
We will set up your profile if you don’t already have one, so you don’t have to do anything but give us permission to republish your content on our site. We don’t require a particular schedule for posting, though we have invited you to become a Wellsphere health blogger based in part on your history of posting on your blog.
Our growing network of bloggers (now over 1700) have told us they value what Wellsphere is trying to accomplish – helping people of all walks of life and across the spectrum of health to achieve healthier lives. They also appreciate the opportunity to reach the larger (and also rapidly growing!) Wellsphere audience, and to benefit from links in each posting that drive traffic back to their blogs.
We would be happy to include you in our network as we expand into health topics.
——
Geoffrey W. Rutledge MD, PhD
Chief Medical Information Officer
Wellsphere, Inc.
http://www.wellsphere.com
Here is an email from Wellsphere mistakenly sent to my webmaster (he’s not a blogger):
Hi john,
We are excited to recognize you in our new YES, WE CARE! Campaign that honors everyday heroes, like you, who put themselves on the front lines in the quest for a healthier, happier world by spending their time and putting their hearts and souls into helping others in need. We’re particularly excited to have this chance to honor you, for dedicating your time and writing to help people improve their health and well-being. We’ve nominated YOU as one of our Everyday Heroes!
As part of the YES, WE CARE! Campaign, we are creating a special video to highlight some of the amazing stories we’ve heard that demonstrate that caring for others is alive and well today all over the world. We would love to include YOUR story in the video! If you would like to send us a short video (cell phone or webcams are just fine!) about what moved you to start your blog, or to share a moving story of caring that you were involved in or heard about, we’d be happy to include it in the video. You can also interview someone you think is an Everyday Hero, or tell their story. Please keep the length of your video between 20 seconds and 2 minutes. The video can be very casual and definitely does NOT need to be professional or polished – just be yourself!
Please send us the video ASAP, and no later than Sunday, October 19th.
We can’t wait to see your videos and are looking forward to recognizing you and other Everyday Heroes you know for your extraordinary contribution to the world!
To submit your video, send us your video as an attachment via email to wecare@wellsphere.com. If you would like to send a video directly from your cell phone, just email me at Dr.Rutledge@wellsphere.com and I’ll send you the cell phone number you can send a video-text message to.
Good health!
Geoff
—
Geoffrey Rutledge MD, PhD
Chief Medical Information Officer
Wellsphere
Dr.Rutledge@wellsphere.com
Here is an email from Wellsphere about their plans for a health blog conference:
Hi ,
This week, I’m excited to share the warm words we’ve heard about all of you and the early feedback we’ve heard about the Yes, We Care Campaign, and announce the world’s first Health Blogger Conference! We can’t wait to meet you in person…
Yes We Care!
The Yes We Care Campaign launched last week, and we’re thrilled to be able to honor you and your colleagues on the Map of Caring. The response has once again been quite dramatic. Many of you have already posted your Everyday Hero badges and the heartwarming Yes We Care! Video on your blogs. Here are a few of the comments we’ve heard about the campaign:
“I am thrilled to participate in your “YES, WE CARE !” Campaign and am most humbled in your nomination. What an amazing idea! Our blog continues with the hope of “paying it forward” and helping others, just as you are doing with Wellsphere. .. Thanks for doing such an amazing job!” – http://www.ranaesheart.com/
“Thank you so much for recognizing my site and the effort that went into creating it!!! It’s amazing people like yourselves that keep me going and make a contribution to the greater good of all !! thank you again my friends !!!” -http://liftheavy.wordpress.com/
“Here is the video from Wellsphere! It is very cool it’s a 10 minute video with people from all over trying to help heal the world! Awesome video guys!” http://thelifeofthomascslater.blogspot.com/
“I want to take this opportunity to thank Wellsphere for calling me a “Everyday Hero” for the lives I have touched. I want to say thank you for giving me that opportunity to do so.” http://ucanhope2.blogspot.com
Many of you commented that the Yes We Care video let you see and connect with other members of the Health Bloggers Network for the first time, and asked if we would consider organizing an event for everyone to meet and connect with each other. WHAT A GREAT IDEA!
I am very pleased to announce the world’s first Health Blogger Conference (“ HBC -09”)! This conference will be the largest gathering of health writers in history! The Conference will be by invitation only, and as a member of the Health Blogger Network, you will automatically be guaranteed an invitation. This will be a great place for you to meet fellow health bloggers, share best practices, discuss sources of ideas, learn how to promote your blog, and meet some of the most prominent figures in the world of health. There will be a series of organized information sessions and seminars, as well as fun events and ample opportunities for you to meet and mingle in a relaxed atmosphere. We will announce the location soon – somewhere you will enjoy a healthy, rejuvenating, experience.
If you’d like to get involved in the Conference, here are some of the opportunities available to you:
– become an organizer
– become a volunteer
– give a talk or seminar
– organize a panel presentation
– suggest a topic for a talk or a panel
– suggest a speaker to invite to give a presentation
Here Are Excerpts From Wellsphere’s Terms of Service Document:
Ownership
…All Website Materials, including any intellectual property rights in such Website Materials, are the property of Wellsphere, its affiliates, licensors, or the designated owners, and are protected by applicable intellectual property laws. You should assume that everything you see on this Website is copyrighted unless otherwise noted, and may not be used without our written permission except as provided in these Terms…
Content You Submit to or Post on the Website
…You agree that any and all comments, information, photos, videos, feedback and ideas that you communicate to Wellsphere or submit or post to the Website or give Wellsphere permission to post to the Website (“User Materials”) will be deemed, at the time of communication to Wellsphere or submission or posting to the Website, to be the property of Wellsphere, and Wellsphere shall be entitled to full rights of ownership, including without limitation, the unrestricted right to use or disclose such User Materials in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed, and for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, without compensation to you. In the event that you have any rights in the User Materials that cannot be assigned or waived you hereby grant to Wellsphere a royalty-free, paid-up, exclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual license to (i) use, make, sell, offer to sell, have made, and further sublicense any such User Materials, and (ii) reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and publicly display the User Materials in any medium or format, whether now known or later developed.
When you post your own copyrightable content on the Website or give Wellsphere permission to post your copyrightable content on the Website, you retain ownership of any copyright you claim to your submitted content. However, by posting your content or giving Wellsphere permission to post your content you automatically grant Wellsphere a royalty-free, paid-up, non-exclusive, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual license to (i) use, make, sell, offer to sell, have made, and further sublicense any such User Materials, and (ii) reproduce, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and publicly display the User Materials in any medium or format, whether now known or later developed…
January 28th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Opinion, Primary Care Wednesdays
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By Steve Simmons, M.D.
When I graduated from the University of Tennessee’s Medical School sixteen years ago, my last act as a student was to take the Oath of Hippocrates with my classmates and 98% of the other medical students graduating in the United States that year. This oath still resonates within me today and connects me to all physicians reaching back over 2,500 years to the time of Hippocrates.
Implicit in an oath is the understanding that the profession chosen will require more sacrifice than the average vocation, that the occupation’s rewards should be more than a paycheck, and that a paycheck would impart less value than the enrichment gained from nobly serving others. The high standard which society holds physicians to is still accurately described by the Hippocratic Oath. Regardless of what changes seep into our profession from outside influences, doctors will always be held to the ideals written in the Hippocratic Oath.
When I was a young medical student, the hope that becoming a physician would bring value and meaning to my life was more rewarding than thoughts of job security or financial stability. This helped propel me and my classmates through many long nights of study. One sentiment oft-heard in my medical school, and I suspect many medical schools today, was that no one would put up with ‘this’ just for money–usually stated prior to a re-doubling of the effort to get past a particularly challenging task. Painful physical effort often was required, such as waking at 3AM to make hospital rounds, or spending 24-hour long shifts stealing naps and bathroom breaks, sometimes even working over 100 hours a week during demanding rotations. Steven Miles, a physician bioethicist, wrote, “At some level, physicians recognize that a personal revelation of moral commitments is necessary to the practice of medicine.”
I would proffer that few students would endure the sacrifices necessary to graduate without understanding this point.
In Paul Starr’s 1982 book, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, he stated that in the future the goal of the health industry would not be better health, but rather the rate of return on investments. This unfortunately has come to pass. Arguably, medicine now is controlled by CEOs and other executives in the health industry — individuals who are not expected to take an oath. Physicians, remaining loyal to the Oath, are an unwitting weak and junior partner in today’s health care industry. Worse, doctors are now employees, often seen as interchangeable parts with one doctor considered no different than another. Third party providers in the health care industry fail to place any value on the personal interactions between doctor and patient. It may be better that the CEOs of health insurance companies are not required to take an oath, since many are on record, admitting loyalty to the share-holder alone with profits their first consideration.
Before the Great Depression, only 24% of the U.S. medical school graduates were given the Oath at graduation. Does this suggest they were less ethical? I don’t think so. I believe the increased use of the Oath demonstrates a growing awareness on the part of our educators that business has taken a controlling interest in the practice of medicine and that their graduates should be reminded that society still expects them to deliver on the noble promises of the past. Hippocrates’ Oath helped pry medicine away from superstition and the controlling interests of Greece’s priesthood in the fifth century B.C. Hippocrates plotted a course towards science using inductive reasoning while his Oath anchored his fledgling art on moral truths unassailable even today. I suspect he would see little difference between those profiting within the priesthood of his day and those monopolizing healthcare today. He would find familiarity in those putting forth their difficult-to-decode rules of reimbursement, recognizing these rules as intentionally confusing, pejorative, and detrimental to patients and physicians alike while profiting those few in control.
How would Hippocrates advise today’s students and physicians when shown how monetary realities have finally subsumed us all? He might remind us that money was not our motivation in pursuing this career and show us how a return to the reverence for our art, embodied by the Oath, could become a modern conveyance to the ideals of the past. By regaining our reverence for what motivated and guided us through medical school and residency we should find ample courage to do whatever is necessary. Much is needed to wrest control of today’s broken healthcare system from those making huge profits…. and an oath can remind us why it is important.
Until next time, I remain yours in primary care,
Steve Simmons, MD
January 27th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Announcements, Audio, Expert Interviews
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Better Health’s policy writer, Gwen Mayes, caught wind of an interesting new conference being held tomorrow in Miami. She interviewed Ken Thorpe, Ph.D., one of the conference organizers, to get the scoop. You may listen to a podcast of their discussion or read the highlights below. I may get the chance to interview Billy Tauzin and Donna Shalala later on this week to get their take on healthcare reform initiatives likely to advance in 2009. Stay tuned…
[Audio:http://blog.getbetterhealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/gwenken2127.mp3]
Mayes: Tell us about the upcoming conference in Miami on January 28th called “America’s Agenda: Health Care Policy Summit Conversation.”
Thorpe: The conference will start a conversation on the different elements of health care reform such as making health care more affordable and less expensive, finding ways to improve the quality of care and ways to expand coverage to the uninsured. The conference is unique in that we’ve brought together a wide range of participants including government, labor, and industry for the discussion, many of whom have been combatants over this issue in the past.
Mayes: Will there be other meetings?
Thorpe: This is the first of several. There will others in other parts of country over next several months. President Obama and HHS Secretary Designee Tom Daschle have talked about engaging the public in the discussion this time around. So part of this is an educational mission and part of it is to reach consensus among different groups that have not always agreed in the past.
Mayes: What encourages you that these groups will be more likely to reach consensus now when they haven’t in the past?
Thorpe: The main difference is that the cost of health care has gotten to the point that many businesses and most workers are finding it unaffordable. In the past, most businesses felt that, left to their own devices, they could do a better job of controlling health costs by focusing on innovated approaches internally. What we’ve found, despite our best efforts, working individually we haven’t done anything to control the growth of health care spending. The problems go beyond the reach of any individual business or payer and we need to work collectively.
Mayes: How will health care reform remain a priority in this economy?
Thorpe: The two go hand in hand. As part of our ability to improve the economy we’re going we have to find a way to get health care costs down. Spiraling costs are a major impediment to doing business and hiring workers. To the extent we can find new ways to afford health care it will be good for business and workers.
Mayes: Health information technology is also an important aspect. What are the common stumbling blocks to moving forward?
Thorpe: There are three issues we have to deal with. First, we have to have a common set of standards for how the information flows between physicians and physicians, and with payers and hospitals. What we call interoperability standards. Second, we have to safeguard the information. Finally, cost is the biggest challenge because most small physician practices of 3 or 4 physicians don’t have electronic record systems in place. To put in a state-of-the-art system can cost $40,000 per physician and most cannot afford this expense. I think the stimulus bill will provide funds to help with these costs.
Mayes: There’s always growing interest in the patient’s role. How will this be addressed?
Thorpe: We have to find a better way to engage patients in doing better job of reducing weight, improving diet and those with chronic disease to follow their care plan they worked out with their physician. We also want to make it more cost effective for patients to comply with the plan. Patients who comply with health plans will have better outcomes at lower costs.
Mayes: Who’s on the agenda in Miami?
Thorpe: It’s at the University of Miami so it will be hosted by President Donna Shalala who was Secretary of HHS under the Clinton administration so she is well versed on health policy. Also attending is the head of PhRMA, Billy Tauzin, a former Congressman and former majority leader of the House, Dick Gephart. There will be some lay people as well for a nice cross section of consumers, labor, providers, business and others.
Mayes: How can people learn more about American’s Agenda and the conference?
Thorpe: The executive director of American’s Agenda is Mark Blum. He can be reached at 202-262-0700 or at America’s Agenda.org.
January 27th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Uncategorized
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My favorite blog posts of the past week or so, organized loosely by topic/theme. Enjoy!
Kids Dying From Vaccine-Preventable Illnesses:
Dr. Rob: These parents probably thought “what’s the harm? Why can’t we just wait to do the immunizations until the risk is less?” A 7-month-old infant died from this logic.
Dr. Whitecoat: Should parents who fail to take steps to prevent a largely preventable illness be held accountable if their children suffer a bad outcome?
Rules Meant To Be Broken
Dr. Scalpel: Protocol-driven medical decision-making is always going to be inferior to expert clinical judgment. This is also one of the reasons you should be suspicious of the current fad of the various “accreditation” merit badges hospitals proudly display. They are equally worthless.
Increased Costs Without Increased Value
Paul Levy: Now, let’s acknowledge that MGH and the Brigham are powerful brands. To the extent patients are influenced by that reputation or other factors to migrate to the PHS facility from Norwood Hospital, the overall health care bill for the state will rise for no documented additional value to those patients or society.
Dr. Wes: According to the Illinois Fair Patient Billing Act, hospitals can charge 35% above cost for services provided to the uninsured. The natural question we should ask, then, is why the insured should have to pay “full price” if a profit margin is already built into the price offered to the uninsured.
The reason, of course, is simple: someone has to pay for the insurer’s offices and staff salaries, don’t they?
10 out of 10: The cost of confirming the obvious: The scan came back showing “likely early appendicitis.” I examined her yet again and she now had clear localization to the right lower quadrant. Lucky for me it was positive I thought, at least now I won’t get dinged for overtesting.
Rural Doctoring: Noo’s chart missing most of the pathology reports from her recent procedures, despite the 25 phone calls made to various providers offices to release this information. However, I am an excellent historian and fill in the blanks.
The Best Sarcastic Blog Post Of The Week
Edwin Leap: The Leap non-severity score.
Anti-Quackery Efforts
Dr. Dinosaur: If the next Surgeon General were to adopt the elimination of Quackery — whether known as “alternative,” “natural,” “complementary” or “integrative” medicine — as his or her major issue, that bully pulpit might help generate enough of a popular political groundswell to overcome the few credulous members of Congress who pushed the whole thing onto us in the first place.
Somehow, I don’t think Sanjay Gupta is up for that, so I hope President Obama picks someone else.
Science Based Medicine: NCCAM not only funds studies of dubious “alternative” therapies, such as reiki and homeopathy, that estimates of prior probability alone would argue to be so close to impossible as to be not worth spending millions, much less thousands, of dollars upon, but it also promotes quackery by funding “fellowships” at various institutions to teach “complementary and alterantive medicine” (CAM) sometimes also called “integrative medicine” (IM). Given that it spends over $120 million a year on mostly dubious studies and CAM promotion, we all have called for NCCAM to be defunded and disbanded.
Weird Factoid
ACP Internist: Brown recluse spiders only bite when you press against them.
Scary Death
KevinMD: Although most infectious disease specialists acknowledge that contracting a Pseudomonas infection outside the hospital is not common, this is a sobering reminder that drug-resistant infections are not only possible, and may be on the rise.
January 26th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Uncategorized
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When I was invited to join a blog conference at the Consumers Union headquarters in Yonkers, I had no idea what to expect. It hadn’t dawned on me that the company is as large as it is – employing 630 people (most of whom work out of the warehouse-sized building in NY) with a 60 million dollar/year budget. The facility itself is a beehive of product testing labs – with rooms devoted to the analysis of product performance for everything from washing machines to baby strollers.
And what were health bloggers doing in the midst of this? Apparently Consumer Reports is dipping their toe into the health ratings game, and they wisely decided to ask providers what they made of that. I explained my experience with the lack of consumer incentives to rate doctors – and offered a cautionary tale of a failed rating database at my previous company. Others suggested that quality ratings are impossible to quantify without consistent data reporting, and that care is provided to most patients by teams of providers, not one single physician, so ratings might not mesh well with outcomes anyway.
We had a productive discussion with familiar faces and old friends (Jan Gurley, Micheal Breus, Edwin Leap, Dr. Rob, Amy Tenderich, Scott Hensley, Julie Deardorff, Alvaro Fernandez, Jennifer Huget, Wendy Lawson, Craig Newmark, Gary Schwitzer, and others) but my favorite part of the program involved cookie taste- testing.
We bloggers all filed in to the sensory testing lab and were asked to sample some commercial chocolate chip cookies. Each of us had our own little plastic container with two cookies inside, and we were instructed to taste and describe them in as detailed a manner as possible. I offered “chalky” as my adjective of choice, and Scott Hensley (of the Wall Street Journal Health Blog) seconded my notion as another blogger added “chemically.”
There was general consensus that we didn’t like the cookies – and we began inquiring as to their brand name. The Consumer Reports lab director dutifully declined to disclose the manufacturer’s name, at which point Scott Hensley reached into a nearby garbage can and produced an empty cookie package. He held the wrapper aloft and asked with gleeful sarcasm: “Might it be this brand here?”
We all burst into laughter as a triumphant Hensley proved his investigative reporting skills in the midst of us. It was one of those surreal moments that you never forget.
But on a more serious note, I was struck by the scientific approach that Consumers Union takes in its product testing. It struck a chord with me since I worry about the evidence (or lack thereof) behind certain medical practices and treatments. The Internet seems to be teaming with subjectivity rather than tested and true information. How are consumers to know what’s real anymore?
I certainly hope that companies like Consumers Union can weather the financial storms and continue to empower people with carefully tested, controlled, and unbiased information. Without them we’re left with a bunch of anecodotes in a sea of opinion. Perhaps physicians and health scientists have more in common with Consumers Union than we know? I for one am convinced that our common interests go even deeper than chocolate chip cookies.
