e-Patient Dave

May 29, 2015 By e-Patient Dave 1 Comment

“The unfolding science of patient engagement”: foreword in a new book

Photo of the foreword page In 2013 I was interviewed during the creation of a book called Person-Centered Care, part of a project called Co-Creating Healthcare produced by Danish firm Sustainia and the German firm DNV GL. It’s a remarkable project – a series of three substantial books, all distributed as free downloads on the project’s site. (They also have print editions, but I don’t see any way to buy one!)

In January they completed the third phase of the project, a series of roundtables in Europe, China and the Americas: The State of Healthcare: From Challenges to Opportunities. I participated in the Washington meeting, and they asked me to write a foreword for the final book, which was released last month.

Because the foreword focuses on the “defining a new science of patient engagement” theme I’ve been writing about, I want to re-post it below.

As you can see by browsing the books on the project site, the whole Co-Creating Healthcare project is amazing in its depth (and the beauty of the book spreads), so I’m just thrilled that for the foreword of the final book, they chose this idea. Thank you!

The unfolding science of patient engagement

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May 17, 2015 By e-Patient Dave 1 Comment

Speaker Academy #23: First, get into their world (presentation at CGT)

This is the latest in the Speaker Academy series, which started here. The series is addressed to patients and advocates who basically know how to speak on a subject but want to make a business out of it. I’ll try to be clear to all readers, but parts may assume you’ve read earlier entries.

I co-presented Saturday at the 15th annual Conference for Global Transformation (CGT), a talk that was very different from any other I’ve done, because the context wasn’t healthcare per se – the context this time was, well, global transformation. This year’s theme is “Listening for Workability.” I haven’t discussed it much, but this company’s principles form the foundation of my approach to communication, which is a big part of this series.

This was a very short talk, because after my co-presenter (neurologist Dr. Rochelle Frank) spoke from her perspective, we got into discussion with the whole group, to see what they see as newly possible. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many hands go up – because that’s what this event is about: new possibilities.

(I’ve padded out the slides here, for more clarity as a standalone slide deck. Dr. Frank and I were greatly assisted in planning this session by another clinician, nurse practitioner Lorin Bacon.)

Nerve alert: this advice may not be easy to hear, especially for people who’ve been harmed or have suffered great loss, as many of our patient voice friends have been. But I implore you to review #6 in this series: What could be said that would make any difference? There isn’t much point in saying anything else, is there?

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May 12, 2015 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

Join us at NEHI’s “Innovation in Oncology” in DC, May 27

This an open invitation to a free event in Washington, Wednesday morning, May 27, sponsored by NEHI, where I have my patient engagement fellowship. Anyone’s welcome, but a key focus is how new insurance payment models will affect cancer patients, so I particularly encourage patient voices, and especially people who are interested in how insurance plans affect patients.

From the event page: (remember, this is about payment innovations, not new treatments)

As alternative payment models emerge in areas like oncology, it is critical to explore the impact of these new models on patient access to innovation. The stakes are high for patients, clinicians, innovators, and the system at large.

Join us for a multi-stakeholder roundtable to explore how new payment models will impact patient access to innovation in oncology and what policy actions are needed to sustain innovation.

I’ll have more to say (more background information) about these payment innovations as the day grows closer. One place to start is this 90 minute webinar recording from last August.

Event format

This kind of NEHI event is highly interactive. A panel of seven (see agenda page; I’m one) will hold two 75-minute discussions with much Q&A from the audience. Moderator is Tom Hubbard, NEHI’s vice president of policy research – a great guy – very knowledgeable, approachable, and personable.

Why patient presence matters

As I say over and over, “patient needs and perspectives” are now an official priority in healthcare. The Institute of Medicine said it in 2012:

A learning health care system is anchored on patient needs and perspectives, and promotes the inclusion of patients, families, and other caregivers as vital members of the continuously learning care team.

NEHI gets this: You can’t include the patient perspective if patients aren’t there. For years patient advocates have appealed to meeting organizers to have patient voices at the table – not just talked about, but actively in the discussion. If you as a patient, or your organization, is interested in this subject, register and come to this half day event.

May 3, 2015 By e-Patient Dave 1 Comment

Speaker Academy #22: Diary of an invited speaker :)

Update: I’ve edited the post’s headline because the original came across completely wrong. If you saw that one and were put off, rest assured – so was I when I saw it later!

The occasional Speaker Academy series, which started here, provides a bit of free advice (worth every penny) for patient voices who know how to give a good talk and want to make a business out of it. Today’s informative edition is a post by Edinburgh professor Geoffrey Pullam on the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Lingua Franca blog: Diary of a Visiting Speaker.

He chronicles the 37 hour trip he took recently to deliver a two hour speech with Q&A, “over and above several days of lecture preparation. Don’t get me wrong, I like visiting new places and giving invited lectures, and this one was eminently worth doing. But being a visiting speaker is hard work.”

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April 30, 2015 By e-Patient Dave 12 Comments

Mayo’s “Healing Words” program – reading from “Facing Death – With Hope”

A month ago I posted about my trip to the Mayo Clinic as Visiting Professor, and noted that the morning before my Grand Rounds lecture, I went into a video studio and recorded a reading about facing death, from my first book, Laugh, Sing, and Eat Like a Pig. (The title is explained in the video.) Here’s the video. (Email subscribers, if you can’t see the video, click the post headline above to come online.)

As I noted in the previous post, this was recorded for Mayo’s “Healing Words” program for their in-patient TV channel, produced by Mayo’s Dolores Jean Lavins Center for Humanities in Medicine (@MayoHumanities on Twitter and on Facebook). The first 25 minutes are discussion with host Jacque Fletcher about the book and about my experience of facing death. Then there’s an 8 minute reading – the section that later became my tiny second book, Facing Death – With Hope, then Jacque closes the program, talking about the therapeutic value of patients blogging.

As always, looking at it afterward, it doesn’t look polished enough – but it was done in one take, with no rehearsal, no mirror to see if my hair was okay:-), and – for those who’ve been following my fitness saga on Facebook – it’s pretty obvious that my clothes had become too big! (The shoulders on the suit are an inch down the arm, you can see air between the shirt collar and the neck… oh well!)

But it was real, and I hope it will be of value to future viewers. I’m pretty sure that those of you who lived through those months in 2007 with me will be reminded of what that time was like. Words will never express the value of your support back then – but they don’t need to, because we know it was real.

Thank you to the Humanities department for this production, and thank you especially for granting permission to present it outside of Mayo.

April 27, 2015 By e-Patient Dave Leave a Comment

Washington Post: “How is the doctor-patient relationship changing? It’s going electronic.”

It appears the Washington Post is getting seriously interested in both the value of, and the consumer perspective on, health IT. This is a good thing, because (a) the whole purpose of healthcare is to take care of patients, (b) patients (that would be you) are the ultimate stakeholder, (c) no patient can contribute their best to their care if they can’t see the information, (d) nor can any doctor or nurse do what they’re trained to if they don’t have all the information, and (the good news) (e) we all can do better if we have the information.

This is not some crazy call-to-action from the fringes: it’s mainstream. I mean, three years ago the Institute of Medicine (the pinnacle of medicine in America) said medicine depends on “Patient-clinician partnerships” with “Engaged, empowered patients” and must be “anchored on patient needs and perspectives.” And, as my primary physician Dr. Danny Sands often says, “How can patients participate if they can’t see what I see?”

Tuesday’s Post has a pair of articles by Suzanne Levingston. I’m quoted in the first, and Dr. Sands is quoted in the second:

How is the doctor-patient relationship changing? It’s going electronic (above, ~1500 words) is a broad survey of how medicine’s landscape has altered because you and I have the internet, which means we can for the first time in history connect to two pivotal resources: information we could never see before, and each other. (My own story, including how the internet helped saved my life, is on my About page; it was also published in the British Medical Journal two years ago.)

There’s lots of health-care technology out there. How do you choose? (490 words – a sidebar, I presume) is a brief overview of the wide range of apps and info tools available today. As regular readers know, I view these tools as exactly analogous to the hundreds of desktop publishing tools that became available in its early years: examples of what can be done when data gets free, not all of which should be done, or even has any reason to get done.

But that’s the whole point: when information gets loose, innovators all over creation get to try things – at their own risk, with their own investment – and we-all out here get to make up our own minds about which of it is worth anything. The world shifts. As I’ve often said, “To innovators, data is fuel.” And I’ll never forget Todd Park (the US Chief Technical Officer) shouting from the stage, “Data Liberación!”

Also quoted in the bigger article are my respected colleagues Susannah Fox and Wendy Sue Swanson MD. Fox is widely felt in healthcare circles to be the wisest observer of what you and I actually do online (a debunker of many myths, with facts and heart), and Seattle pediatrician Swanson is almost legendary for her sober, reality-based, compassionate advice to parents in today’s ever-changing world.

Also cited is Dr. Eric Topol, who wrote the introduction to Let Patients Help, which I co-authored with Dr. Sands, and which is now in 7 languages (and a Chinese company just bought the rights). I’ve just finished reading Eric’s new book The Patient Will See You Now, which goes very very deep and wide into these articles’ topics. I hope to review it soon.

More later on why these realistic articles are important at this moment in time. Because just as with the rise of desktop publishing, and just as with Topol’s book, not everyone is happy with the coming change.