Power to the Patient!
This is an updated clone of this 2014 post.
It is a time of celebration!
Since creating this domain seven years ago today (2009!) I’ve done:
and authored or co-authored:
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In September 2016 TrialReach rebranded itself Antidote, to shift focus away from the “solution” (the clinical trial), focusing instead on the patient’s need: “I have a problem, and I need an antidote.”
For the past several years my business has been diversifying – in addition to speeches, workshops and policy meetings, I’ve spent an increasing amount of time as an advisor to startups. One of my favorite clients, the most successful so far, is TrialReach, about which I’ve written before, when they raised another round of financing in 2015, and this year on their blog, reporting on Vice President Biden’s extraordinary speech about his son Beau’s cancer death last year, particularly the family’s search for information that might have saved Beau’s life.
In Beau’s case it was not to be: his glioblastoma is a nasty form of brain cancer. Yet still, Biden spoke of the several ways the doctors’ and families’ efforts to try everything possible were frustrated by factors in academic medicine and publishing that hindered the flow of information.
On Monday, August 8, my state’s Foundation for Healthy Communities (HealthyNH.com) is hosting an event where I’ll be speaking, titled “Improving Care at the Bedside through Effective Patient and Family Engagement.” It’s mostly intended for New Hampshire people, but organizer Tanya Lord says “I don’t think we would turn anyone away.”:-)
So come on down! Or up, or over, or whatever. Here’s a very short video introduction. (Email subscribers, if you can’t see the video, click the headline to come online.)
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This post is part brag, part teach, part challenge.
Last summer I did a webinar about patient engagement (here’s the replay) for Phreesia, a company that makes an iPad-like tablet that integrates a lot of steps to get you (the patient) into the provider’s computer system. Afterward, they said they “monitor the attention level of the attendees (it’s a GoToWebinar feature) … and it was the highest I’ve ever seen it.”
Really? GoToWebinar feature? Yep, the system keeps track of how long attendees stay, whether they ask questions, and even whether they listen but stop watching by switching to another window while listening to the audio.
There’s only been one post in this series in the past year, but for impact speakers, this book is real news. Best advice on how to have an impact I’ve ever seen. Not perfect IMO, but full of things I bet you’ve never thought about that can really help you up your game.
By “impact speaker” I mean a speaker who really wants to grab the audience’s thinking and have an impact. That’s not the only valid kind of speaking, and it’s certainly not the only valid way to tell your patient story. But if you, like me, truly want to change the world, it’s really useful to get people’s attention. And this book makes clear that how you go about it can make a big difference.
It’s full of examples on big topics and details. And it does it so well that I’ve decided to:
The author is Chris Anderson @chr1sa, founder of TED. When I first heard about the book I thought it might be some light fluffy cheerleading: “You can do it! Just be yourself!” Instead, it’s absolutely full of “This is what works,” “Do this; do NOT do that,” often including examples like “You might have done it this way:” followed by “But see how much better it is if it’s done this way?” Most points are accompanied by example TED Talks you can watch, and in the Kindle version those talks are even linked.
This is a verbatim copy of an extraordinary blog post last year, which I updated several times.
It was a year ago today that orthopedist Howard Luks @HJLuks replaced both my wife Ginny’s knees in one day, and as you’ll read, his method is so incredible that not only did she get no transfusions, her bandage didn’t even need to be changed until the follow-up visit weeks later. And as you’ll see, the progress of her recovery was extraordinary.
Want new knees? Read how Howard does it. Know anyone who’s considering new knees? Share this with them, please! I even gave it a memorable URL: bit.ly/ginnyknee
July 7, 2015
On Facebook Friday I posted this picture of my wife Ginny, saying “There is an astounding story behind this photo. Details Monday.” Well, it’s Monday.
As you read this, bear in mind, your mileage may vary – everyone’s different, this wouldn’t be appropriate for everyone, and Ginny herself played a big part in it.
The astounding story:
In this photo we were out to dinner, nine days after Ginny had both knees replaced. She walked into the restaurant using only canes – no walker, no wheelchair. The surgeon is Howard Luks, the social media orthopedist (@HJLuks), whom I met on Twitter in 2009, and the surgical approach he used is called muscle-sparing (or “quad-sparing”) minimally invasive surgery, part of a larger package of methods he uses, described below. Bottom line:
Of course she’s still on pain meds, tapering down, and her endurance is of course limited. But she is basically functional and able to live on her own if she needed to, or rehab wouldn’t have discharged her.
Here’s a video of her walking around the hospital floor – 500’ – with a walker for balance (not leaning on it), less than 48 hours after leaving the O.R., and on the right, at rehab, walking with just canes, a week after the surgery:
She was discharged from rehab after demonstrating (among other things) that she can safely walk up and down a full flight of stairs … six days after the surgery. She can get herself into and out of bed, into and out of our Prius, etc. She’s not speedy at any of it but she’s functioning reliably.
(Of course I have Ginny’s permission to talk about all this. Also, I’m an e-tool geek and she’s not, so I’m the one using the tools discussed here.)
Again, everyone, please read this: your mileage may vary – everyone’s different, this wouldn’t be appropriate for everyone, and Ginny herself played a big part in it.