e-Patient Dave

Power to the Patient!

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Seven days to go; 81% there! Please back Regina’s film project!

Please click this image, watch the two minute video, and donate what you can.  This is THE famous Regina Holliday, who has been called “the Rosa Parks of healthcare.”  You’ll see why.  A humble but immensely strong woman who has become the leader of a movement made almost literally with her bare hands.

This modest $10,000 fundraising project (very little for a film) is one week away from completion, and has less than $2,000 to go.  As I said on Facebook when it was $2500, let’s find two $1,000 donors and dozens of $20 ones!

Click it and read. Get your name in the credits, if you’ve got the scratch!  (If you have one of these jackets, you must donate; even if you don’t and you just love supporting a great new future, pitch in!  I did.)

Screen capture - click to donate

Incentives include a shirt, a copy of the DVD, and all the way on up to Regina coming to your company or club and doing a speech or even a lecture!

And she might even paint for you.

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Terrific event in Long Beach, Monday – act now – last minute opportunity

I know this is last-minute.  I’ve been busy and disorganized, and thrown for a loop (frankly) since the death in my family earlier this month.

Don’t miss this. It’s Monday. Act now! (How often do I say that??)

If you’re a health geek, or a patient centered care geek, or anything of the sort, and you’re in southern California, don’t miss this. Tell your boss right now that you should go – it may be the best conference deal of the entire year (and I see a lot):

Monday, June 3, Long Beach, CA, 8:30-5:00
(Details are at the form link below.)

$150 for one person in the health professions
$99 each for three or more (bring colleagues – 3 for the price of 2!)
$65 for patients and family members!

The event: Patient & Family Centered Care Partners @PFCCPartners – fourth annual conference. Speakers:

  • Dave with Bob Wachter 4-25-13Opening keynote (8:40 a.m.): Bob Wachter @Bob_Wachter, whom I recently heard speak at the Michigan Hospital Association (right). He’s chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine (I’ve worked with some of their people – really terrific), and Wikipedia says he’s “a prominent academic physician on the faculty of UCSF … regarded as the academic leader of the hospitalist movement, the most rapidly growing field in modern medical history.” He is a true leader and a great speaker.
  • Closing keynote (4 pm): Me

Also presenting will be Martie Hatlie, a terrific moderator I worked with at a PCORI meeting earlier this year. Tons of experience in patient and family centered thinking.

All this for $150 or less, with extra-special pricing for patients and family!

Let them know you’ll be coming: fill out this info form (site includes full event details). Walk-ins will be welcome but it helps a LOT if they know you’re coming!

See you there – two global keynote speakers, bookending a great day for a great price, hosted by a great organization!

(And who knows, maybe a beverage afterward… I hear Long Beach is lovely in the evening, and I’m staying over. :-)

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Difficult choices with imperfect information

On 9/11 I was in Chicago at Print ’01, a huge exhibition in the print industry. I turned on the TV in my hotel room just in time to see the second plane hit. It was unworldly – and I was 1200 miles from home.

During my cancer I learned that although we long for certainty, sometimes it’s just not possible. We can only choose from available options, with imperfect information, and see how it plays out. I was desperately sick and wanted a sure treatment, but there wasn’t one. When I learned about interleukin I wished I could know if it would work for me, and they couldn’t say – even Beth Israel Deaconess, one of the best places in the world for this disease, couldn’t say. Today I know they acted professionally by telling the truth: no false hope, and no false despair – just the truth, which my primary physician Dr. Danny Sands might say this way: “Sometimes we just don’t know.”

As regular readers know, that was freshly reinforced when my younger brother died unexpectedly eleven days ago. (See A death in the family and A sister’s perspective.)

Now, due to another uncertain family circumstance, we’ve decided my June trip to Australia must be postponed to another time.

[Read more…]

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Continue the #Quality2013 discussion!

BMJ-IHI bannerI just finished a talk at the Internatioal Quality Forum hosted by the British Medical Journal and the Institute for Quality Improvement. (The Twitter hashtag is #Quality2013.) What a thrill to talk here – making the case to Let Patients Help!

There was a timing glitch, though – they accidentally ended my talk 15 minutes early, so there was no question and answer. Attendees, if you’d like to discuss, leave a question in the comments here.

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Saskatchewan Health Quality Council Summit: a rousing conference with SIXTY patients

click to view the video on their siteUpdated 4/21 – URL for the video changed. Thanks, Joanne!

Here’s a two minute video from the Saskatchewan Health Quality Summit, where I spoke Wednesday and Thursday. (Click the image, or click here, to go view it on their site – the video isn’t embeddable here.)[2015 update: the video has expired]

What a WONDERFUL conference, here in Regina, Saskatchewan. First, the Health Quality Council is WAY ahead of most regions in the world re patient involvement: fully TEN PERCENT of the conference (60 out of 600) was patients who were there simply to be LISTENED TO and be part of the event. This region is much, much farther down the road than most people are, re viewing patients as partners.

Heck, most events can’t imagine spending a dime to include patients; then some of them have sessions trying to figure out what patient-centered means! (I’d like to include a smiley on that, but – really, people. THINK!)

Wednesday morning I had the thrill yesterday of discovering Helen Bevan, extraordinary speaker, in charge of transformation at the UK’s National Health Service. A title like that is often pretty empty, but this woman is deep and analytical and full of heart; what she talked about was real and tangible. (And we discovered we’ll both be presenting in a week in London, at the British Medical Journal / IHI International Forum!)

This morning the opening keynote was by the superb Brent James of Intermountain Health. Listening to him talk about fact-driven (data-informed) improvement efforts, with decades of real results, was like listening to gospel for me – a gospel that so many people can’t believe is real, despite the evidence. What a privilege.

And then I got to close the conference, ending with a standing ovation. What great people; what a thrill. Watch what these people are doing.

I wish I had a complete roster of all the truly impressive people – leaders, patients, and everyone – I met and talked and worked with. I’ve been to a lot of good events, and this one earns extra stars.

AND, this all happened because Paul Levy connected us, after he attended the same meeting a year ago. And in case you’re not yet convinced of the value of social media for connecting people, THAT came about because a few months earlier Paul had noticed the quality of their tweets at another conference, having previously blogged about them.

Remember when finding good like-minded people required a strong network of personal connections, or you’d never find anyone with important information? It was ages ago.