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participatory medicine

Democratization of knowledge, healthcare edition

April 3, 2017 by Mighty Casey 1 Comment

OUP Shared Decision Making 3rd Ed cover

I was lucky enough to be asked to write the foreword to the 3rd edition of Shared Decision Making in Health Care: Achieving evidence-based patient choice, from Oxford University Press. Here’s the text of that forward.

We are at what appears to be a Copernican moment in healthcare, where everything that learned minds thought was true – that the sun revolved around the earth; that miasmas rising from the ground, or humours contained within the human body, caused disease; that only magical beings called doctors could understand or participate in medical care – is being disproved. Medicine stands at a crossroads unlike any other transformation point in its history. As access to information – what I call the democratization of knowledge – has become as simple as the movement of a human finger, the relationship between doctors and the people they care for has undergone a seismic shift. But like many seismic shifts, it’s happening at a level that only those tuned to pick up the signals from it can sense. That I, a patient voice whose only medical knowledge has been acquired as an autodidact with strong research skills, have been asked to write the foreword to the third edition of Shared Decision Making in Health Care is a strong indication that the earth is moving beneath our feet.

OUP Shared Decision Making 3rd Ed coverThe knowledge exchange that is the bedrock of shared decision making is creating the mutuality that has been missing in medicine, making a full partnership between doctors and the people they care for finally possible. As is made clear in many parts of this book, building literacy on both sides of the equation is a must for shared decisions – information has to be shared with people in ways they can understand, which makes solid communication skills a must for both patients and anyone in clinical practice. This is true in medical research as well, as the need to understand what people actually want from medicine becomes part of the research process. And the people who look to healthcare for their needs – which is all of humanity – must have a full voice in saying what the value is in the care they choose to receive.

Getting to that place of mutuality is still a big challenge for the healthcare system, though. The practice variation so well illustrated by the Dartmouth Atlas remains a roadblock, as does the lingering paternalism embedded within medicine itself. Co-creation of anything – from dinner to a decision about cancer treatment – requires all involved to be present, and equal, in the task at hand. That’s a particular problem for underserved or disadvantaged patient communities, and in the factory model that healthcare has become for much of the clinical side, of healthcare delivery.

So what’s a patient, or a doctor, to do? The most powerful force in healthcare system transformation is yet to be fully unleashed, but the shared decision making approach so thoroughly explored in this book could cry havoc, and unleash the dogs of full partnership. Because if people, and the medical professionals who care for them, actually form an ongoing partnership, “system transformation” will happen without the need for yet another million dollar blue ribbon panel convened in service of answering that thorny “what do patients want?” question.

Technology holds much promise for enabling and accelerating this partnership, but it also presents hazards moral and practical. How can we help someone understand their medical condition if they can’t read? How do we make informed choice a reality, and not just a radio button on an iPad screen? How can we ensure that the technology systems deployed to help us manage care don’t become our robot overlords? I see shared decision making – both science of and practice of – as the clinical pathway to resolving those questions, and to unlocking humanity’s full potential.

If that sounds like hyperbole, I invite you to envision a world where people, and the medical professionals who help them work toward their health goals, are fully engaged with each other in that work. That would create a landscape where people would feel empowered to live their lives to the fullest. Sure, chronic conditions would still exist. Cancer would still be with us. No one gets out of here alive, but being able to live to the full extent of whatever one’s gifts, and one’s time, are is a gift in and of itself. Which would in turn yield gifts in the way of productivity, creativity, and community on a global scale.

Homo medicus, meet homo sapiens. Partnership is not only possible; it’s essential if we are, as a species, to unlock our full potential. Starting with one of the most trust-imbued of human relationships – that of patient and doctor – and strengthening it through the mutuality of shared decision making, who knows what we could bring forth into the world? Let’s work together to find out.

Filed Under: Healthcare, Storytelling, Technology Tagged With: e-patients, evidence based medicine, health care, Healthcare, participatory medicine, science, shared decision making

Primary + People/Patients = Winning?

June 20, 2016 by Mighty Casey Leave a Comment

I’ve been all over ever’where so far this year, invited to participate in a number of events that, taken together, seem to indicate there’s some progress being made on “healthcare system transformation,” even if it’s still happening at a glacial pace. One of these events was the Starfield Summit, put together by the Robert Graham Center, which is the policy think-tank arm of the American Academy of Family Physicians. I fielded an invite when the Graham Center reached out to the Lown Institute to ask if there was a patient-type human who might lend something to the conversation as an attendee.

So I took the “let patients help” rallying cry to DC for a couple days of lock-in with a bunch of primary care docs and the wonks who love them. Which, by the way, includes me, which you know if you’ve been paying attention. Primary care docs are the ideal partners for people/patients who are working to shift the USS Medical Industrial Complex aircraft carrier – both primary care MDs and patients are low on the medical-industrial complex power pole, so if we team up, we might be able to boost each other up to start showing up on the power radar.

If you’d like a good overview of the importance and impact of primary care on a health system, something that Ben Miller shared on the first day is a great précis. Money quote from the conclusion, IMO:

Primary care is imperative for building a strong healthcare system that ensures positive health outcomes, effectiveness and efficiency, and health equity. It is the first contact in a healthcare system for individuals […]. It provides individual and family-focused and community-oriented care for preventing, curing or alleviating common illnesses and disabilities, and promoting health.

What I heard, saw, and discussed over the two days tells me that a power amplification is not fully “there” yet, but it’s building. My ticket to the party is one indicator, the other is that I made it clear during my time there that I brought a penetrating view of the system as it is, the system as it could be, and how we might work together – primary care clinicians and people/patients – to turn our aircraft carrier away from grounding on the rocks of “sucks up 47 times its weight in GDP” economic disaster. Oh, and not kill folks in the process, since that’s also a good goal, right? Quality, lower cost, satisfied patients, satisfied *providers* – the quadruple aim that AAFP itself codified a few years ago.

The format of the event was refreshing – there was the usual “sit in a big room, listen to wonks, watch slide decks” stuff, but that was broken up over the two days by what I’ll call “working group breakouts” where we assembled in small groups, in separate rooms, to wrestle the Big Ideas under discussion, which were:

20160424_084730

Just a small topic, since it’s the core of everything, right? Primary care IS healthcare, but primary care clinicians are paid much lower reimbursement rates than, say, cardiac surgeons (thanks to the RUC, who make sure the *specialty* MDs get the big bucks re reimbursement), primary MDs/NPs/RNs have low-on-the-pole status when it comes to $$. And $$ = power in most cultures, including ours. My key takeaways from that segment of the session, which tackled

  1. Payment, measurement, and the primary care paradox
  2. What does effective primary care look like?
  3. Disruptive innovations in primary care payment
  4. Primary care payment, social determinants, and community risk

can be summed up in one statement from my breakouts, “we have internalized the oppressor.” This tweet also sums up the discussion pretty well.

The center of #healthcare should be the patient in their community, not the doctor, the health center or the hospital#StarfieldSummit

— Marguerite Duane (@mduanemd) April 24, 2016

Lunch featured a keynote by Shannon Brownlee of the Lown Institute. Ben Miller captured the essence here:

"We do not have a research agenda in this country that is driven by the patients" @ShannonBrownlee #starfieldsummit #healthcare

— Ben Miller (@miller7) April 24, 2016

Next on the Big Ideas discussion list was the metrics of primary care. Specifically:

  1. Measuring primary care: lessons from the UK quality outcomes framework
  2. Payment reform, performance measurement, and delivery system transformation
  3. Measuring the three Cs: comprehensiveness, continuity, and coordination
  4. Payment and measurement innovations in the primary care of children

My takeaways from the 3+ hours we spent wrestling those ideas and input can be summed up with:

  • Embracing the concept of a Learning Health System is the only way forward (next time, they must invite Josh Rubin to the party!)
  • Without the community fully embedded in the creation and governance of a healthcare system, you’re measuring the wrong stuff
  • Adding health literacy – “how my body works” and “how doctors/nurses/care workers can help me” – to K-12 education HAS. TO. HAPPEN.
  • We have to stop admiring the problem and start actually CHANGING the system

Core issue? This:

#starfieldsummit #rightcare #s4pm #healthcarematters pic.twitter.com/tJeA1vOKUv

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) April 24, 2016

Day 2 kicked off with an examination of how primary care teams can impact the success or failure of a system of care. The pieces of that puzzle:

  1. Innovations in primary care teams
  2. Linking primary care, public health, and the community
  3. Integrated teams (primary care + mental health)
  4. Training a diverse primary care team

My time on the board of Virginia Supportive Housing (2004 – 2010) gave me a close-up view of the power of the “housing first” model in health/mental health care in an underserved population, and the exponential impact that addressing the social determinants of health has on the actual health of an individual, and therefore that person’s community at large. Help someone get off the street – “housing first” – and provide them with wraparound services, including basic healthcare, and magic happens. Yeah, it’s complicated, but as Winston Liaw said in his welcome on Day 2:

We need efficiency in #healthcare – this can come through work in teams #starfieldsummit pic.twitter.com/45kCIdyGJi

— Ben Miller (@miller7) April 25, 2016

My takeaway from that morning round of robust discussion lined up as:

  • Effective teaming will take agitation from the lower depths (citizens, community health workers) to shake up status quo
  • A shared leadership model has to emerge, one that includes PEOPLE (the ones called “patients) in system leader positions
  • “It takes time” can’t supersede the desperate need for rapid-cycle change in the healthcare system (stop admiring the problem!)
  • Until healthcare includes mental health, full-stop, we’ll be stuck in cycling #fail

The afternoon sessions tackled:

  1. Building primary care teams
  2. Advancing teamwork between the medical home and the medical neighborhood
  3. Shifting culture of primary care teams
  4. Statewide innovations in primary care payment

My favorite quick-hit presentation from that set was Andrew Morris-Singer from Primary Care Progress, who said, among many other things, that

Hilarious. @AMorrisSinger says his parents reacted to his coming out same way as his primary care choice: "No! Why?" #starfieldsummit

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) April 25, 2016

On the topic of building primary care teams, he said this:

Primary care teams need both structure and culture to succeed #MakeHealthPrimary @AMorrisSinger #starfieldsummit pic.twitter.com/lrFor2aMUP

— Glen Stream (@grstream) April 25, 2016

That one in the lower right – “trust” – is bedrock. Without trust, none of this will happen, and trust only happens when you have face-time to build a relationship. That’s true inside the medical team, and double-true when you’re talking care team/community relationship building.

Filed Under: Find the funny, Healthcare, Politics, Social media, Storytelling Tagged With: #starfieldsummit, AAFP, e-patients, health care, health care reform, Healthcare, healthcare policy, mighty casey media, participatory medicine, politics, primary care, robert graham center, Social media, Storytelling

Help us, IBM-Dell-Apple. You’re our only hope.

March 16, 2016 by Mighty Casey Leave a Comment

I’ve been on the road a lot over the last six months, getting the chance to interact with (and, I hope, influence), audiences in health tech and health policy. There’s so much desire for change, search for innovation, and just straight up “desperately seeking [something]” out there, it’s almost hilarious that no real change/shift/what-have-you has yet occurred in the giant $3-trillion/year-and-rising sucking sound that is the American healthcare system.

Which is why I concluded, long ago, that the system would not be re-invented from within, particularly when it comes to the tech side of the party. Since the medical-industrial complex is keeping the fax machine manufacturers of the universe in business, it’s hard not to snort with laughter at tech “innovations” that emerge from inside the complex’s ivory towers.

Tech innovation – on both the consumer and the system side – will come from companies with a proven history of delighting ground-level customers. The ones I like to call “people.” Here’s a Casey-ism that will be appearing in a new report on tech in healthcare from The Beryl Institute:

“My sense about technology, and whether it’s engagement or system improvement or anything in this zone, I think that the change is going to come from outside the healthcare industry. The solutions are going to be delivered by companies or entities that have a history of putting technology in the hands of consumers (people) and having those consumers (people) say ‘awesome!’ and just start using it.”

I don’t think anyone – consumer or clinician – has touched anything related to Electronic Health Records (EHR) tech and said anything resembling “awesome” about the experience.

ehr-no-one-ever

We, as a nation, have thrown $30+ billion at getting our healthcare delivery system into the 21st century, but have so far only seen it get to the point where it’s partying like it’s 1995 (Windows 95 – it’s AWESOME! Not.). Data exchange, a/k/a “interop,” is still a distant dream, which is why I have a QR code tattooed on my sternum as a political statement. “I am my own HIE,” essentially.

What we need here is a “1984” moment in healthcare. Not the George Orwell book, but the Mac computer ad that ran on Jan. 22, 1984 during the third quarter of the Super Bowl.

Epic Systems won’t deliver it. As much as Jonathan Bush would like athenahealth to deliver it … nope. Our “Obi Wan only hope” is going to have to come from a company that’s got a track record – distant or current – of delivering into the hands of consumers easy-to-use tech that has them saying “awesome!” and then … just using it.

ibm-dell-apple-3-way
“Help us, IBM-Dell-Apple. You’re our only hope.”

Which is why I’m saying “help us, IBM-Dell-Apple, you’re our only hope.” I’m not including Google, because they’ve already tried/failed, with GoogleHealth, and then (IMO, stupidly) abandoned the healthcare vertical after one play.

IBM might seem like an odd player to include here, but I know what they’re up to at the Serious Games lab at UNC under gamer-grrl extraordinaire Phaedra Boinodoris. (The Medical Minecraft project is of particular note there.)

Dell is in the personalized-medicine space, particularly in pediatric cancer, where they’ve built the Neuroblastoma and Medulloblastoma Translational Research Consortium (NMTRC) as a tumor board tool across 25 universities and children’s hospitals looking to build some real precision medicine/faster cures to fight children’s brain cancer.

Apple is the only player to serve up an actual consumer device with health apps – the iWatch and the ResearchKit, which turns an iPhone into a research contribution engine for a variety of projects looking at conditions from autism to breast cancer to Parkinson’s disease.

People, consumers, are ready (desperate?) to engage with the healthcare system using the same digital tools they use daily to manage everything from soccer practice to shopping lists to banking: their smartphones. The challenge to the healthcare system is to make tools to make that possible … which they have utterly failed to do, to date.

It’s time to hand the problem to proven consumer-delighters.

“Help us, IBM-Dell-Apple. You’re our only hope.”

Filed Under: Business, Entrepreneurs, Find the funny, Healthcare, Media commentary, Politics, Storytelling, Technology, Women in Business Tagged With: digital health, e-patients, health care, Healthcare, mighty casey media, mobile, mobile apps, participatory medicine, smartphones

Elephants, middlemen, and systems – oh, my!

November 6, 2015 by Mighty Casey Leave a Comment

system isn't broken image

I’ve been MIA here, but I’ve been loud/proud pretty much everywhere else in the last few months. Including here and here.  What follows is a rant based on what I’ve been seeing/doing since last seen on this page.

Elephants

There’s an old joke that goes like this: “What’s an elephant?” “It’s a mouse designed by a government committee.” There’s also the old “elephant in the room” bromide about topics that are not to be mentioned under any circumstances, despite their obvious impact on the issue under discussion. And the “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” motivational meme, along with the “blind guys describing an elephant” metaphor used to explain the impact of silo-ed thinking.

We’re up to our parietal bones in pachyderms in the healthcare transformation discussion. The biggest one – you can call him Jumbo, or you could call him Dumbo – is always in the room. What I call him is Huckster Nation.

elephant in the room by banksy
Image: Banksy

What do I mean? I mean the underpinning of pretty much all of American culture – the carnival barker sales guy (guy in this usage is gender neutral). We are a nation of flacks, flogging everything from Sham-Wow to space stations, and that includes our healthcare system. Hell, I’m selling myself, or at least I’m offering to rent out the contents of my cranium in exchange for coin of the realm, as are we all, in one way or another.

Americans have taken this to the level of a cultural art form, in that we’ve built our national myth around economic freedom. That it works out to be a literal myth for too many of us – income divide, I’m talking to you – is part of what I’m calling out here, but for the moment let’s focus on the carnival barkers sales guys in US healthcare, shall we?

I’m taking about the ….

Middlemen

Who are the middlemen in healthcare? Apart from the obvious ones – the health insurers, including Medicare, who administer the payment/money side of healthcare delivery – there are a metric sh*t ton of middlemen of all sorts threaded throughout the system. To use a biology metaphor, let’s call the ones that help Good Bacteria and the ones that don’t help Ebola Outbreaks. By the way, I’m defining “help” as an effort at improving something: making care more accessible, creating technology that improves care/care process, research that discovers new treatments.

Here are some examples of Good Bacteria:

  • Organizations that build health literacy tools to improve people’s access to and understanding of healthcare (click here for an example)
  • Open-access scientific journals (click here and here for examples)
  • Companies that build tech that helps patients, or clinical teams, or patients AND clinical teams (click here and here for examples)

Here are some Ebola Outbreaks:

  • Any commercial enterprise operating the healthcare sector that puts ROI above human lives (click here for an example)
  • Not-for-profit healthcare systems that treat humans solely as profit modules (click here for an example)
  • Health insurance companies that allow games of “gotcha” where their covered lives are the game pieces (click here for a Modern Healthcare piece on the issue)

Systems

Which brings me to the whole US healthcare system conundrum, which was summed up pretty well by my friend Dan Munro:

system isn't broken image
Image: Dan Munro

I attended the Population Health Alliance Forum conference recently in DC. I was surrounded by middlemen – some Good Bacteria, some Ebola Outbreaks – as I sat and listened to clinicians, analytics geeks, policy wonks, and carnival barkers sales guys talk about issues in population health. Population health is defined as “the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group.” Meaning that in most conversations where the phrase appears, you’re talking about Employer Sponsored Insurance (ESI), or Medicare. So the attendees were heavy on the big insurer and big health provider side, with a strong showing in the “we want to sell our stuff to big insurers and big health providers” cohort.

I was, as far as I could tell, the only person wearing the “I’m a patient here, myself” label. I guess I was the patient voice carnival barker sales guy. Hey, we’re all selling something, even if it’s only an idea.

Meanwhile, I’m surrounded by system players in a series of hotel ballrooms in DC. I found myself getting a little shouty with frustration on Twitter:

Hearing *part* of my song, but where are wellness or engagement programs co-designed by PATIENTS? #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 3, 2015

US Preventive Med has powerful mission statement, but what about SOCIAL DETERMINANTS of health not visible in workplace? #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 3, 2015

Population health needs to invite people/patients to co-design programs. Otherwise, stuck in Einstein's Theory of Insanity. #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 3, 2015

Truth bomb: most US policy regs around health/population health are pretty useless. #HIPAA #GINA = lotta words, signifyin' not much #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 3, 2015

OK, kidz, here's a reality sandwich: without Natl Patient ID (NPI), we're stuck on slow/stupid re pop-health. Srsly. #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 3, 2015

Hellllloooo. Can we start a K-12 effort "How to go to the doctor" or "How to buy health insurance" a la LITERACY, please? #healthlit #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 3, 2015

"People don't trust health plans." Helloooo, Captain Obvious. Whose fault is THAT, Pre-existing Condition Actuary Brigade? #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 3, 2015

Sam Glick calls for better leadership in healthcare. Cluetrain: DO NOT overlook expert/#epatient leaders in driving transformation! #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 3, 2015

.@SavageLucia saying "everyone who works" assumes ESI for all working adults. NOT the case. And ESI pollutes market for rest of us. #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 3, 2015

Imma call it as I see it: #HIPAA has passed its useful life in digital ere, needs *complete* re-write. #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 3, 2015

@pjmachado @SavageLucia Don't mind a monetization of my PHI, but … CUT ME IN, bitches! Hell, Amazon cards would work. #phaf15 #myIP

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 3, 2015

Imma just leave this here: in a $3T revenue/year industry (US healthcare) what players are willing to innovate themselves out of $$? #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 4, 2015

Why can't primary care be paid @ same level as neurosurg or orthosurg? That's cultural mindset sustaining sick-care, not healthcare #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 4, 2015

Only took 70+ minutes for someone to mention PATIENTS as contributors to healthcare transformation efforts. Jayzus. #s4pm #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 4, 2015

I'm hearing of all sorts of new players in population health game. I repeat: who pays? $3T/year, and we're Chronic Nation. WTF. #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 4, 2015

"What's the ROI?" question in pop-health analytics session. My answer, "Human life, dude." Srsly. Too much $$-think in US system. #phaf15

— Mighty #WearAMask Casey ☀️ (@MightyCasey) November 4, 2015

That last one – the “what’s the ROI?” thing – was fueled by rage. The US healthcare system, which sucks up $3 trillion-with-a-T every year – making it the most expensive healthcare system in the world, but 11th on the Top 10 list on health outcomes – is stuck on a “what’s the ROI?” loop, driven by the carnival barkers sales guys, while human lives sink below the metric radar. In other words, loot trumps lives.

In the metaphor I’m using in this post, Ebola Outbreaks are overwhelming the Good Bacteria. So here’s what we gotta do – we gotta call out Ebola Outbreaks when and wherever they appear. If you see one, shout it out – preferably in public, like on Twitter! – and tag me. I’ll be “Nurse with the Good Bacteria,” and whistle up both some outrage, and some common sense solutions.

Let’s not keep the insanity that is $3T+/year in exchange for “sorta OK” on a lather/rinse/repeat cycle. Who’s with me?

Filed Under: Find the funny, Healthcare, Politics, Storytelling, Technology Tagged With: Business, e-patients, entrepreneurs, health care, health care reform, Healthcare, healthcare costs, humor, media, medical monopoly, mighty casey media, participatory medicine, politics, Social media, Storytelling, technology

UPDATE: Patients ARE smarter (and louder) … here’s proof

June 18, 2015 by Mighty Casey 1 Comment

quality scoring image

It’s been a fun week here in Mighty Casey Media Land. We kicked off the week a little early (on Sunday) – the 411 on that is available here, and some of the social exhaust is available on Storify here and here. One member of the e-patient posse worried that the guy was gon’ have to enter witness protection, given the avalanche of opprobrium aimed his way from the expert-patient community.

Thank god. I was worried this guy might need to go into the witness protection program. TY @MightyCasey – #FTW! https://t.co/xIayus5Gao

— Hurt Blogger | Britt (@HurtBlogger) June 17, 2015

In an email thread among a group of expert patients working on aggregating and curating patient-useable outcomes reporting tools, Dr. Corrie Painter said she had called the Brookings Institution, the think tank where the author of the US News piece that set my hair on fire does his think-tank thing, and left a terse message on the Governance Studies main line about pontificating patriarchal putzes (technical term).

Given my willingness to talk to anyone, any time, if it moves the needle on healthcare system transformation, I went one better and called the *other* number on the guy’s bio page. I expected to wind up leaving a voicemail, but …

He. Answered. The. Phone.

We talked for about 30 minutes, during which I assured him that I did *not* think that Yelp reviews were the ne plus ultra, or even a thing, when it came to outcome metrics on physicians and other clinical providers of medical services. But, as I pointed out in my “I’m channeling Lewis Black, with boobs, in healthcare here: righteous rage + cutting humor = driving that point home!” post, what real metrics are *available* to patients seeking intel on the expertise and outcomes of the doctors they go to for care?

There are PQRS and Physician Compare data sets, but they’re pretty small beer. Physician Compare serves up Medicare data – just *try* to find intel on a pediatrician, or an obstetrician, in that reporting tool.

In a follow-up post of his own, Yaraghi clarified his position on online review sites like Yelp *not* being the right place for medical provider ratings based on medical training, outcomes, or efficacy of care. His closing graf is the money shot for me:

Patients’ involvement in their medical care is the best thing that could happen to our severely sick health care system. Patients should have access to reliable and valid data to help them decide about their medical provider. They should have the capacity to shop around and visit multiple providers. Healthcare is the most important service we obtain in our life and being able to choose who provides it, in my opinion, is a fundamental patient right. Currently available online patient reviews however, are not the correct measure to rely on when making such a decision.

Net/net here: Niam Yaraghi is a guy with an open mind on the idea of patient expertise. In the days and weeks to come, I hope that the e-patient community turns out in force to engage him in conversation, and to make their case for both patient expertise and the deep need for effective, accessible physician scoring – on number of procedures, on patient satisfaction, on recurrence rates, on all stats relating to the efficacy and humanity of their care – that people can use to find the best doctor for their healthcare needs.

If you’d like proof of the kumbaya here, [now updated with video capture] here’s the Google Hangout on Air  hosted by David Harlow, HealthBlawg, who started this whole thing with a Twitter DM.


Print

Filed Under: Business, Crisis communications, Find the funny, Healthcare, Media commentary, Social media, Storytelling, Technology Tagged With: #epatient, #medx, #shitstormsisters, branding, comedy writing, david harlow, e-patients, expert patients, health care, health care reform, healthblawg, Healthcare, healthcare system transformation, humor, media, mighty casey media, niam yaraghi, participatory medicine, smart patients, social exhaust, Social media, Storytelling, technology, twitter

Report from the front lines: Technology, engagement, and killing paternalism

March 25, 2015 by Mighty Casey 1 Comment

ned stark Game of Thrones patients are coming

I’ve spent a good portion of the last two months on the healthcare equivalent of the political stump – called the “rubber chicken circuit” in political circles. Thankfully, there was no actual rubber chicken served during these sojourns, although there was the incident of the seductive breakfast sausage, followed by my solo re-enactment (off stage) of the bridal salon scenes from the movie “Bridesmaids.” I will draw the veil of charity (and gratitude for travel expense coverage) over the details of that incident, and just advise all of you to stick to fruit, cereal, or bagels at conference breakfasts. ‘Nuff said.

My original editorial calendar plan was to turn this into a series of posts, broken down by focus into technology and clinical categories. However, since a big part of my goal in standing on the barricades at the gates of the healthcare castle, waving my digital pikestaff in service of system transformation, is breaking down silos … well, go grab a sandwich, and a beverage. This is gon’ be a long one.

HIMSS Patient Engagement Summit

In early February, I headed to Orlando for the first Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Patient Engagement Summit. I was asked to participate in two panel discussions, one titled “Patient Perspectives: The State of Engagement,” the other “Can We Talk? The Evolving Physician-Patient Relationship.” Both were moderated by Dr. Patricia Salber, the bright mind behind The Doctor Weighs In.

Being a person with no letters after her name (like Elizabeth Holmes [update: she’s trash, so redacted] and Steve Jobs, I’m a college dropout), I’m used to showing up at healthcare industry events and being seen as something of a unicorn fairy princess. That’s how people commonly called “patients” are usually viewed in industry settings outside the actual point of care. Healthcare professionals/executives are so used to seeing us as revenue units, or data points, or out cold on a surgical table, but not as walking/talking/thinking humans, they can do a spit-take when meeting an official “patient” at an industry conference. Which is fun if they have a mouthful of coffee, but I haven’t seen anyone actually get sprayed yet.

All kidding aside, I really have to hand it to HIMSS for their uptake speed on seeing people/patients as valuable voices in the conversation about healthcare IT and quality improvement. In the time since they first noticed (in 2009, I believe) that people like ePatient Dave deBronkart, Regina Holliday, and others might have something to add to the discussion, they’ve made a visible effort to include people/patient voices in their national programs. Of course, had they not invited patients to present at their Patient Engagement Summit, they would have been line for a public [digital] beating … and so there we were: Amy Gleason, Kym Martin, Alicia Staley, and yours truly, ready to grab a mic and speak some truth.

A favorite tweet during the opening keynote by Dr. Kyra Bobinet, a friend of mine via our mutual membership in the Stanford MedX community:

“Patient engagement is nourishing healthcare”-@DrKyraBobinet #Engage4Health

— Simone (@MyrieTash) February 9, 2015

I see patient engagement as healthcare that nourishes the people it serves, and also as a nutrient for the healthcare delivery system itself. Healthcare itself will get better, in its body (clinicians and all other folks who work inside the system) and in its spirit (its culture), with authentic connection – engagement – with the human community who seeks its help in maintaining or regaining good health.

Both panels went well, and the audience seemed to be both awake, and interested in what we had to say. For those of us who have been working the user – PATIENT – side of healthcare transformation, it’s frustrating that we’re still saying the same things to professional audiences that we’ve been saying for (in my case) close to 20 years now. But those of us on the patient side of this change management rodeo can sense a paradigm shift, and are starting to believe that we’re seeing transformation slowly deploy across the healthcare system. As the oft-repeated William Gibson quote goes, “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”

I should be able to, via dashboard radio button, select EHRs to share my #qself data with. YES, REALLY. #engage4health — Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey) February 9, 2015

“The patient value needs to be recognized and compensated.” @kymlmartin #Engage4Health

— Tom Sullivan (@SullyHIT) February 10, 2015

Patients ARE engaged. We’re working our butts off to get medical professionals and healthcare execs on the same page as us. Like the old story goes, when it comes to bacon and eggs, the chicken’s involved, but the pig’s fully committed. In the bacon-and-eggs of healthcare, patients are the bacon. We’re all in, and we know more, in many ways, about how to fix the system than the “professionals” do. Alicia Staley said, again, what she says consistently to healthcare audiences, “You need a Chief Patient Officer on your board.” So … get one. And we all need to be wary of blaring headlines, which can be very misleading when it comes to the real health risks we all face:

This is going to be my favorite slide for this meeting. #Engage4Health pic.twitter.com/Xi2V3OC8DP — Kathy Nieder MD (@docnieder) February 9, 2015

HIMSS Privacy + Security Forum

Healthcare doesn’t have to reinvent the #infosec wheel. Finance/banking, another high-reg/high-risk industry, is great model. #hitprivacy — Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey) March 5, 2015

In early March, I winged my way out to San Diego, one of my several hometowns (growing up a Navy kid means you get more than one) for the HIMSS Privacy + Security Forum. I was a panelist for the last session of the conference, which I knew meant that many of the attendees would already be in the TSA screening line at Lindbergh Field, but I was going to share my thoughts with whomever stuck around, even if it was just the busboys. Our session was titled “What Matters Most: Patient Perspectives on Privacy & Security,” and what happened at the end of our panel was something I had hoped for – several of the folks who had stuck around come up to us and said, “that panel should have opened this conference!”

When it comes to IT security, the healthcare industry is rightly terrified, given the epic bitch-slap that a HIPAA fine can be ($1.5 million dollars per incident) – and the irony of the Anthem data breach affecting up to 8.8 million of their members making headlines the week before this conference was not lost on me … or any of the other folks at the HIMSS Forum meeting. Yet it’s critical to note that access, by patients and by clinicians, particularly at the point of care, to all the relevant data necessary to deliver the right care at the right time to the right patient, is still an undelivered promise across the health IT landscape. So don’t be Mordac, Dilbert’s Preventer of Information Services – we have enough of him. He’s like a freakin’ virus.

De-identification is a quaint notion of the past. — @johnemattison #HITprivacy

— Tom Sullivan (@SullyHIT) March 6, 2015

“#HIPAA has become a magic incantation.” — @MightyCasey #HITprivacy

— Tom Sullivan (@SullyHIT) March 7, 2015

“We killed healthcare in the US when we started to mass produce the office visit.” — @CareSync CEO @travislbond#HITprivacy — Tom Sullivan (@SullyHIT) March 7, 2015

Hilariously, the day before I traveled to San Diego, I had to threaten a HIPAA complaint to get my records transferred from one provider to another. I had been asking for TWO MONTHS for the rads practice where I had gotten my mammograms 2009 through 2011 (twice a year in 2009 and 2010, given my Cancer Year of 2008) to send my scans and reports to my current mammography radiologist, and it took a voicemail with a HIPAA violation threat to get someone to call me back. My records are so damn secure that NO ONE can get them, except for “Robert in the basement” at [rhymes with … Bon Secours]. It felt like I was talking to Central Services in the Terry Gilliam movie “Brazil.” And people wonder why I have a QR code linked to my health history tattooed on my sternum …

I for one threw privacy overboard like a dead cat by planting this on my chest (PW protected, tho) pic.twitter.com/kH1BZLzzhY #hcsmca

— Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey) August 6, 2014

Lown Institute RightCare conference

Speaking of right care/right time/right patient, two days after the HIMSS Privacy + Security Forum wrapped, the Lown Institute’s RightCare 2015 conference kicked off just down the street.

Dr. Bernard Lown is the cardiologist who invented the cardiac defibrillator in the 1960s, and who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for his part in creating the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. The Lown Institute, founded to continue the work on healthcare and human rights that Dr. Lown has devoted his life to, states as its mission “We seek to catalyze a grassroots movement for transforming healthcare systems and improving the health of communities.”

In short, this event made me feel like I’d taken a trip in the Wayback Machine to my college days 1970-1973 in the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco … without the LSD, but with all the fire of my youth, mixed with the wealth of mature knowledge I’ve managed to velcro on to myself in the decades since. The real beauty part? There were lots of young people in the room, who are the age today that I was 40 years ago (in my early twenties), speaking up for the human rights of the people served by the healthcare system. The ones commonly called “patients.”

I got a chance at a scholarship to #Lown2015 after meeting Shannon Brownlee during our work on the Patient & Family Engagement Roadmap, and our attendance at Dartmouth’s SIIPC14 “informed patient choice” conference last year. She tipped me off that scholarships were available, I applied, and got lucky by snagging one. Doubly lucky, because it put me in the room while some of the leading voices on the clinical side of medicine called out the industry they work in for being slow to fully enfranchise the people they serve – patients – by being too driven by money, and not driven enough by their own humanity. A sampling:

Excited to see a bunch of #AF4Q faces at #Lown2015! A multi-faceted, multi-stakeholder movement toward the #rightcare — Deborah Roseman (@roseperson) March 9, 2015

“If a little chemo is good, more must be better” tragic tale of unproven, ineffective BrCa Rx related by @ShannonBrownlee at #Lown2015 — Kenny Lin, MD, MPH (@kennylinafp) March 9, 2015

Shannon Brownlee: “The medical system today helps many, but harms too many “#LOWN2015 — Pink Ribbon Blues (@PinkRibbonBlues) March 9, 2015

Medical industrial complex designed perfectly as revenue generator. Designed HORRIBLY for delivery of effective right-care. #lown2015 — Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey) March 9, 2015

On the other side is the recognition of the mission and purpose of medicine, which is, at its root, to serve. #Lown2015 — Lown Institute (@lowninstitute) March 9, 2015

“American people hire lobbyists to represent their interests in Washington.” Said no one, ever. (Except @TheOnion) #lown2015 — Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey) March 9, 2015

Jeff Kane: “Cancer is like a bomb going off in the living room.” #lown2015 cc: @BC_Consortium — Pink Ribbon Blues (@PinkRibbonBlues) March 9, 2015

“I can cure homelessness. You just house them and it’s cured. Completely curable problem.” Mitch Katz from LA County #Lown2015 — Chris Moriates (@ChrisMoriates) March 9, 2015

“I am still trapped in a system whose main interest is diagnosis and treatment. But my interest is health.” -Mitch Katz #Lown2015 — Lown Institute (@lowninstitute) March 9, 2015

“Ethical erosion” = med students having their altruism surgically removed via medical school. #lown2015 — Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey) March 9, 2015

Don’t just describe the problem. Don’t get stuck on the negative. Ask what to do to make things better? ~Harlan Krumholz @hmkyale #lown2015 — Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey) March 10, 2015

Harlan Krumholz demolishes the informed consent sham. Resonates: this was the crux of my dad’s MRSA demise. Fresh tears. #Lown2015 — BartWindrum (@BartWindrum) March 10, 2015

Peter Drier’s remarkable engagement in his care/cost negotiation underscores that vulnerable patients don’t have that wherewithal #Lown2015 — Deborah Roseman (@roseperson) March 10, 2015

Patty Gabow: in addition to #rightcare, we need #rightprice. #amen #hcpt #Lown2015 — Deborah Roseman (@roseperson) March 10, 2015

Public needs to express collective voice for new #patient bill of rights. Right to info about cost & quality. #lown2015 #Time4Change — Harlan Krumholz (@hmkyale) March 10, 2015

Only 7% of those with terminal illness in CA talked to their doctor about end of life. Over 70% wanted to. #Lown2015 — Emma Sandoe (@emma_sandoe) March 10, 2015

imagine if the trillion excess in health care spending went to social determinants of health. #Lown2015 — Janice LynchSchuster (@jlschuster827) March 11, 2015

“We will never have a healthy society if we don’t address the poverty and racial disparities that drive our system.” -Steve Nissen #Lown2015 — Lown Institute (@lowninstitute) March 11, 2015

Nissen challenges value of CME– miseducation, paid for by those who stand to profit. ROI for companies, not for care. #Lown2015 — Deborah Roseman (@roseperson) March 11, 2015

Nissen: Millions of dollars flow to physicians from pharma/device companies. “In any other world, this would be called bribes.” #Lown2015 — John Mandrola, MD (@drjohnm) March 11, 2015

“Counteract the hopelessness that sustains the status quo.” –@SEIU_Eliseo #Lown2015 — Lown Institute (@lowninstitute) March 11, 2015

This is key!! ‘Know when to quit’. Will be a BIG challenge to #RIghtcare movement. How measured? #lown2015 — Gregg Masters (@2healthguru) March 11, 2015

And, because it just ain’t a movement unless this gets thrown down:

Power to the M*****F****** people, yo! Seriously, did I really *have* to say it? Make healthcare work FROM. THE. GROUND. UP. #lown2015 — Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey) March 11, 2015

The bedrock message here? The democratization of knowledge that’s been delivered thanks to the Information Age has lifted the scales from the eyes of the early-adopter people/patients who are on to what healthcare is now, and what it must become to remain sustainable, or even relevant. Patients are coming up off their knees. The occupants of the ivory towers of medicine must descend from their aeries, or risk being flung from the parapets. Like winter …

ned stark Game of Thrones patients are coming
image credit: HBO

Filed Under: Business, Find the funny, Healthcare, Politics, Social media, Storytelling, Technology Tagged With: data access, data security, e-patients, Game of Thrones, health care, health care reform, health insurance, Healthcare, healthcare costs, HIMSS, humor, IT security, Lown Institute, mighty casey media, money medicine, participatory medicine, patient engagement, politics, RightCare, Storytelling, technology

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