November 27th, 2010 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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I [recently] participated in an interview for an upcoming publication. As the interview wound down, the dialog downshifted into small talk that included, among other things, hospital blogs.
The interviewer (who had recently been exploring the blogging community) asked me what I thought about Thrive’s (Boston Children’s Hospital blog) recent birthday nod to Seattle Mama Doc (Seattle Children’s Hospital blog). More specifically, did I think it was unusual that one children’s hospital would congratulate a competing institution on its one-year anniversary?
I thought the question was odd but it got me thinking: Do children’s hospitals compete in the social space? I don’t think so. They shouldn’t. And if they were competing, what would they be competing for?
Children’s hospitals are inherently regional. Parents of the northwest see Seattle Children’s as the end of the earth. In the northeast, Boston Children’s is the bee’s knees. And while specialty service lines like congenital heart surgery may draw patients from around the world, most kids come from their corner of the world.
Then there’s the broader question about the point of a blog for a children’s hospital. Is it a marketing gimmick or does it serve a higher function? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
November 22nd, 2010 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News
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A new policy on professionalism in the use of social media was [recently] adopted by the American Medical Association (AMA). The AMA Office of Media Relations was kind enough to share a copy of the policy:
The Internet has created the ability for medical students and physicians to communicate and share information quickly and to reach millions of people easily. Participating in social networking and other similar Internet opportunities can support physicians’ personal expression, enable individual physicians to have a professional presence online, foster collegiality and camaraderie within the profession, provide opportunity to widely disseminate public health messages and other health communication. Social networks, blogs, and other forms of communication online also create new challenges to the patient-physician relationship. Physicians should weigh a number of considerations when maintaining a presence online:
(a) Physicians should be cognizant of standards of patient privacy and confidentiality that must be maintained in all environments, including online, and must refrain from posting identifiable patient information online.
(b) When using the Internet for social networking, physicians should use privacy settings to safeguard personal information and content to the extent possible, but should realize that privacy settings are not absolute and that once on the Internet, content is likely there permanently. Thus, physicians should routinely monitor their own Internet presence to ensure that the personal and professional information on their own sites and, to the extent possible, content posted about them by others, is accurate and appropriate. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
September 8th, 2010 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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There’s a conversation brewing over use of the term “e-patient.” The online health revolution is over, it’s been suggested. Web use, after all, has become so widely adopted that the term “e-patient” may have more historical meaning.
Dropping the “e” might indicate that we’ve arrived. I’m not so sure. Perhaps the revolution we thought was going on never entirely took off. Or maybe it’s all about how you define the revolution.
Here’s what I see: Day in and day out, over weeks and months, hundreds of patients visit my clinic. I talk to them candidly about the tools they use and how technology and community is changing how they see their problems. I do the same with friends and family members. And like it or not, they’re a lot closer to “e-Patient 1.0” than many of us would like to think. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
August 25th, 2010 by DrRob in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, True Stories
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My recent post on the subject of email from patients raised more eyebrows than I expected. It also put me in a position I’m unfamiliar with: Looking like a luddite.
Perhaps I’m not forward-thinking enough in my reluctance to embrace this advance. Perhaps I’ve gotten conservative as I’ve grown grey. Electronic communication is a great idea (I’m doing it right now), so why not apply it to my medical practice? Has Ned Lud gotten into my circle of influence?
This is, of course, extremely ironic. I lived so much on the cutting edge that my butt developed calluses. The calluses, however, were not just put there by the edge, they also came from occasional kicking.
The problem is I have an addiction: I’m addicted to change. I’m constantly looking for new and perhaps better ways to do things, then impatiently going after anything new and shiny. This served us well in the sense that I got us on EMR, got it working well, and have continued to keep us away from repeating mistakes too often. If something doesn’t work, I’m quick to look for the cause, and more importantly, how to fix it. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*
August 13th, 2010 by DavedeBronkart in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion, True Stories
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Next in our series on my experience with OpenNotes, a project sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio.
This item has nothing to do with OpenNotes itself –- it’s what I’m seeing now that I’ve started accessing my doctor’s notes. In short, I see the clinical impact of not viewing my record as a shared working document.
Here’s the story.
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In OpenNotes, patient participants can see the visit notes their primary physicians entered. Note “primary,” not specialists. I imagine they needed to keep the study design simple.
So here I am in the study, going through life. Five weeks ago I wrote my first realization: After the visit I’d forgotten something, so I logged in. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at e-Patients.net*
