http://e-patients.net because health professionals can't do it alone Sat, 03 Jan 2009 05:10:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I don't know who Stanley Feld is, but he just became my friend, with a terrific post on doctor as coach, patient as player. It starts: The role of patients with chronic diseases and their physicians must be clear to both patients and physicians. Physicians are coaches. Patients are players. This resonates ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/physicians-are-coaches-patients-are-players.html This is the second in a series of posts about the California HealthCare Foundation’s Chronic Disease Care conference (the first was Happy Dogs in a Pile of Sticks). Patient Voices: Managing Chronic Conditions, Living our Lives Ted Eytan snapped a photo that captured this session: Patient Involvement Makes People Smile Here is each ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/patient-voices-at-chcfs-chronic-disease-care-conference.html Are women dying of cancer the way they die of heart disease, because physicians trivialize their complaints and they are powerless to get second opinions? How many decades has it taken for cardiologists, practitioners at the apex of the medical profession, to acknowledge that symptoms of heart disease for women may ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/women-and-health-care-disparities-who-dies-and-who-profits.html Your perspectives please? On my own blog a somewhat surprising discussion has started about the cost impact of malpractice issues, as part of the total American healthcare budget. I cited some Congressional Budget Office data and some newcomers have shown up. I'd very much appreciate further data; I'll summarize here. http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/malpractice-cost-impact.html Pass the Valium! Previously on e-Patients.net I recounted the crazy-making quest for a second opinion on an abnormal mammogram (microcalicifications) as per the advice of New York Times health columnist and breast cancer survivor Jane E. Brody.  The gynecologist who ordered the mammogram refused to authorize a second opinion, however, deferring ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/in-the-spin-ii-you-and-your-billing-code.html NIH is sponsoring a summit this week, The Science of Eliminating Health Disparities. I heard about it from Mary Brophy Marcus's article in USA Today and I found this press release online, but I haven't seen other coverage of the event. If you spot stories about the summit in the ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/nih-summit-on-health-disparities.html Our savvy e-patients over at NeuroTalk noticed the launch of a new service by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, one of the leading Parkinson's disease advocacy and research organizations. The new service, called PD Online Research, is billed as a "new web community of scientists, industry professionals, grantmakers and financial ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/neurotalk-parkinsons-group-brings-about-change-at-michael-j-fox-foundation.html Andrew Schorr is the founder of Patient Power, LLC, and shares this dispatch, his second for e-patients.net: I had a whirlwind weekend at the Moscone Center in San Francisco where I broadcast five and a half hours of live interviews with leading hematologists and hematologist/oncologists on the latest news in a ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/breaking-news-at-hematology-meeting-for-patients.html Nancy B. Finn is a journalist with an expertise in the implementation of digital communications in health care. This is her second guest post on e-patients.net: When an individual patient visits his or her doctor with a problem, traditional clinical diagnosis is made and treatment is administered based on the ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/personalized-medicine-the-next-frontier.html What if there was a simple, old-school style procedure that could save tens of thousands of lives every year? Better yet, what if it could be implemented at minuscule costs (about $3 million to rollout nationwide), and would require very little change in anyone's procedure or daily lives? What if that procedure ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/saving-lives-old-school-style.html On Friday Senator Tom Daschle announced a campaign to get input from the public about what healthcare reform should look like. "The Transition will host Health Care Community Discussions across the Country over the holidays this December to help his Policy Team put together their final recommendations for the New ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/virtual-participatory-medicine-town-meeting.html This guest post is an article written by Lisa Neal Gualtieri, published in her local paper. It's an example of widening distribution of principles and practices documented in the e-patient white paper. I'm grateful to Lisa for sharing these true stories of patients taking matters into their own hands, sometimes ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/internet-diagnoses-trust-them-or-toss-them.html The Association of Health Care Journalists has launched a new blog called Covering Health and it's well worth adding to your blogroll. http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/new-health-journalism-blog.html This is what I know about death. Admitted to a nursing home with a broken hip-dehydration, my ninety-eight-year-old grandmother awoke from a deep slumber, laughing and clapping her hands when my five-year-old daughter played the violin. A week later she had a stroke and could not swallow. We wanted to leap in and save ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/how-we-die.html This week, many news outlets reported on how residents should be given 5 hours of sleep after working 16 hours straight. Think about that for a moment. In what other job -- any job in the world -- would it be acceptable to even use the term "after working 16 hours." The ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/a-fatally-flawed-medical-educational-model.html Dr. Alan Greene has been on a mission to find out all he can about organic food.  You can read all about his three year journey as "The 100 Percent Organic Man" on the New York Times article and Blog post by Tara Parker-Pope. He just ended a year as the ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/the-100-percent-organic-man.html Just before Thanksgiving, Microsoft released a study entitled, "Cyberchondria: Studies of the Escalation of Medical Concerns in Web Search." Ryen White and Eric Horvitz took advantage of a data set that few people have access to (log files from Microsoft's Live Search engine and MSN Health and Fitness) as well ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/12/cyberchondria-old-wine-in-new-bottles.html A tip of the twitter-hat to @TimOReilly for this, from Science News: When Florence Nightingale arrived at a British hospital in Turkey during the Crimean War, she found a nightmare of misery and chaos. Men lay crowded next to each other in endless corridors. The air reeked from the cesspool that ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/11/florence-nightingale-passionate-statistician.html Paul Grundy MD, of IBM, chair of PCPCC, is interviewed in the current Crain's Benefits Outlook, a business publication about employee benefit programs. This quote alone is worth the price of admission: I can buy a damn good amputation for my diabetic, but what I can’t get is a good system ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/11/i-can-buy-a-damn-good-amputation.html A lot of effort and study is going into improving healthcare and untangling its cost structure. So methinks it's nearly criminal when someone blocks adoption of a treatment that's better, especially when it's also less expensive. Case in point, from yesterday's NY Times: The Evidence Gap: The Minimal Impact of a Big ... http://e-patients.net/archives/2008/11/the-evidence-gap-pharma-impedes-patient-access-to-better-treatment.html