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HIMSS: Oh My Gosh, Rob Kolodner Has My Shirt

April 7th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Announcements, Expert Interviews, Health Policy, True Stories
1 Comment »

I had another exciting day at HIMSS today in Chicago. I interviewed a team of nurses about hospital communications lapses, met with the COO of Healthline, the CMIO of Elsevier, HHS’s National Coordinator, Dr. Rob Kolodner, and had dinner with Rich Carmona, the 17th Surgeon General of the United States. I have about 10 blog posts that I need to publish about all of the above – but just wanted to mention one of the funniest things that happened.

I nervously approached Dr. Rob Kolodner with my husband in tow today, wondering what interesting thing I could possibly say to the father of health IT interoperability (we had never met in person before). Just as I was searching for an interesting opening line, Dr. Kolodner says to me:

“Oh you’re Val Jones! I have your shirt!”

Of all the things Dr. Kolodner could have said to me, that was NOT what I was expecting. I smiled quizzically at him, trying desperately to figure out how he’d come to possess one of my shirts. My husband shot me a sideways glance. Fortunately for me, Rob didn’t leave me confused for more than a few (very long) seconds.

“You’re the cartoonist… I picked up one of your t-shirts at the Health 2.0 conference last year. It’s really funny.”

“Oh, I see…” I chortled. “You must have the one of the ER nurse who can’t read the doctor’s handwriting.”

“That’s the one!” said Kolodner, beaming. “I got one for my friend who’s an ER doc.”

And so I asked my husband to take the photo of us above.

My husband just shook his head… I think we met my first fan.

Cartoon Caption Contest Winners!

January 16th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Friday Funny, Humor
5 Comments »

Thanks for the many entries in Better Health’s first cartoon caption contest. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted some of them several days after they’d been submitted (I was too aggressive with my anti-spam efforts). But they were all included in the contest. Our judges really struggled with choosing a winner… so they narrowed it to 2 and made them both winners!

Would you agree that it’s a toss up? Both authors will receive a Better Health t-shirt. I hope it makes them as happy as this guy. Thanks for participating!

Winner #1: Kerri Morrone Sparling “Please sign here and here and then I can write about you on my blog.”

Winner #2: Rob Falconer “Yes, we do normally weigh patients naked, Miss Saggar, but I think we’ll make an exception in your case.”

And just for a bit of trivia – the artist’s (Dr. Val’s) original caption read: “Mrs. Chen’s medical questionnaire was unremarkable except for her fine print at the end of page 3: ‘allergic to geodon.'”