Driving In Traffic

Ben prides himself in his instigating abilities. Obviously he’s pretty good at it as I’m participating in his ‘writing assignment’ of the week. Hopefully I will get in under the wire and my post will be worth $5 toward a charity.
Life Lessons I’ve Learned in 2006

1. Adults and children alike should take part in the folly of dreaming big. Suspend disbelief and allow your imagination to run wild.
2. My friend Lynn taught me that it is important to do one thing each day toward making your dream a reality. She’s done that and soon she will be opening her gallery storefront.

Now for more mundane things…

1. Ipods are cool. I’m hoping Santa will bring me one tonight.
2. MySpace is over-rated. Too much noise and not enough focus.
3. The newer Ren and Stimpy cartoons are not as funny as the older ones.
4. Symantec customer service stinks.

Tags: Lessons+Learned, 2006,

The blogosphere is all a-buzz about an end of the year major magazine publishing tradition. Apparently, I have won the award this year. Read about it from my fellow bloggers: here, here, here, here, here, here .

My response:

Thank you for the thought, but I must respectfully decline.

OK– social media is giving us all new tools to connect with one another and is having an impact business and media. I don’t argue that. However, in the whole scheme of things, I think the selection is a little rediculous. (However, I must respect the magazine’s savvy use of the social media to to generate a buzz and hopefully newsstand purchases). In the magazine’s defense, at least they did not pick some celebrity disgrace— imagine the sales if they had used that picture of Britney Spears on the day she obviously should have been at home doing the laundry.

Since I’m turning down the award, I’d like to propose someone to stand in my stead. I think these types of things should be given to people who make a difference for the better and give me hope that humankind isn’t going to Hell in a handbasket.

I think I’d like to give my award to:

Matt and Jessica Flannery, founders of Kiva. Kiva is an online microfinance portal. The philosophy behind microfinancing is that you loan small amounts of money to people in third world countries or to people with little or no ability to borrow money to start a self-sustaining business. These types of loans are ones that can eventually lift people out of poverty and allow them to feed and clothe their family.

More on the nominees can be found here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

The Kiva Blog can be found here.

I’ve always loved the idea of microfinance and now Kiva makes it easy to have a trusted way to help people whose stories tug at your heart.

OK– now it is your turn. Please chime in with a comment or a trackback. Let this be a meaningful meme that outgrows the buzz of the clearly empty, attention-seeking actions taken by this publication (which I refuse to name or link to –afterall, they do not need any more buzz). Also please tell your friends about this as I have chosen not to tag this post in any way that would garner more attention for ‘you know who.’

In the days of live blogging, I know I am extremely behind in reporting my thoughts about the Healthcare Blogging survey that was presented at the Healthcare Blogging Summit last week in Washington.

The Healthcare Blogging Survey was conducted by Fard Johnmar at Envision Solutions, LLC and Dmitriy Kruglyak at The Medical Blog Network (soon to be Trusted.MD). There were 214 participants in the survey, and while it wasn’t a random sample, the size of the sample pool likely means that the findings represent a good cross section of those who blog regularly on healthcare issues.  Things I found interesting about the survey include:

• The most common motivation for healthcare blogging is for helping or educating others. Editorial: This was not all that surprising for me.  Blogging is inherently personal activity/hobby or in my case, preoccupation. Additionally, comments are hard to come by and only the rare few bloggers make it to the fame level equivalent to Scoble or Rubel.  So blog authors put in a lot of time and effort crafting posts comparatively little objective rewards  Those who stick with it definitely are blogging because of some other subjective reward.  This finding really resonates with me. I am a helper by nature with a background in continuing education for patients and professionals. I blog for both of these reasons.
• Most bloggers begin posting for modest audiences (<100 people per day).  However, as they continue they see their audiences growing.  Thus their influence and audience reach tends to increase over time.  Editorial:  This was good news for me and reflects my experience.  This information is very important for new bloggers.  It is very easy to give up on blogging because the impact is hard to measure.  It is hard to know how many people subscribe to your feed or regularly drop by your blog. It is also good to have some data that suggests that if you keep at it, the audience will come.
  
• Many of the survey participants believe that most bloggers facilitate open and unbiased conversations about issues.  56% of respondents say that 61% to 100% of bloggers want to make sure that readers understand the complexities of issues they discuss.  Editorial: Fixing healthcare is a Herculean task because of the nuances and complexities of our system.  People are sharing their perspective and views. However, I find the elephant in the room is rationing healthcare.  Many, including me, discuss issues in hopes of finding ways to patch the system together enough without having to resort to rationing care.

There is much, much more in the report.  I would encourage to read the report and also read the summaries of others who have blogged about it including:  John Mack, Fard Johnmar, Unity Stoakes, Colleen Egan, and Craig LeFebvre

Tags: Healthcare blogging, Fard Johnmar, Dmitriy Kruglyak,

I’ve been watching all of my feeds with interest as people I read have been “tagged” with this fun new meme of posting “5 Things You Don’t Know About Me”. I especially loved when Nedra admitted that she was a Rush Fan in her youth. I also liked learning Beth’s Barbie Website story.

I’ve never been tagged before so I was really surprised that Toby at Diva Marketing tagged me. So here goes…

1. I love reading strange, absurd and utterly rediculous fiction.
2. I love the Foo Fighters.
3. I played flute in middle and high school and no matter how hard I practiced I never made it higher than last chair in “first band”. In other words… I suck!
4. I have way too many close friends who are preacher’s kids.
5. My husband and I have an organic vegetable garden every spring and summer.

OK– now to spread the fun. I tag….

Brad or Kevin, because they say what I’m sometimes afraid to say.
Dr. Petty because I’m sure there are still some stories I haven’t heard.

Will Clarke because I want to know more about what makes this author tick– or dare I ask.
Dale because I read his blogs regularly but just realized that I know very little about him.

Tisa because she’s my blog momma and needs a reason to post.

According to an article published today by Reuters the General Accountability Office published a report that the FDA needs to improve their monitoring of direct-to-consumer drug advertising. Specifically, the FDA should issue warning letters more quickly when misleading advertisements appear.

The GAO findings are based on an examination of 19 letters issued in 2004 and 2005 which took, on average, 8 months to send out. The GAO asserts that by the time the companies received the letters, most had already discontinued the ads. Additionally, the GAO found that even after the letters were received, some companies continued to break the rules on the same medications.

The GAO report found that the pharmaceutical industry spent 4.2 Billion dollars on DTC ads in 2005. This is almost double the amount spent in 1997. Breakdown of other spending includes 7.2 Billion dollars promoting directly to doctors and 31.4 Billion dollars spent on R&D.

Logic would seem to suggest that if spending on DTC advertising continues to grow exponentially, monitoring will become even more difficult. There will simply be too much volume to keep up with given the current resources of the FDA. In fact, the FDA has tried to proffer this as an explanation for the lapses. According to the article, the GAO is standing firm that the FDA could do more.

What does this mean for the patient? It means that the patient is going to have to be more diligent in researching various treatments that are advertised to them. They may not be the panacea that they are made out to be on TV or in print ad. Additionally, physicians, nurses and healthcare providers are going to have to take time to explain why a certain treatment is preferred. Additionally, providers are also going to have to spend time managing expectations, especially if efficacy information is prettied up and side-effect facts are under emphasized.

Tags: DTC, FDA drug advertising, direct to consumer, General Accounting Office

To quote a well-known advertiser here in Atlanta — “An educated consumer is our best customer.” As things begin to change in healthcare, this may also be an appropriate motto as well.

Case and point: Some interesting news from the Boston Globe discusses that soon patients in Massachusetts will be given a resource for finding out the success/failure rates of the heart surgeons in their community. Joining patients in three other states, patients in Massachusetts soon will be able to log on to easily access the death rates for 50+ surgeons who perform heart bypass procedures in their state.

In New York, similar information is available to patients and many credit this system with improving the quality of care that patients receive. Others who are more skeptical, worry that this availablity of this information will result in physicians turning down complex medical cases with high risk of mortality– just to keep their stats high. If this does indeed happen, this this information and service will become inadequate for helping patients determine the best surgeon for them.

I think the key information here for patients is to understand that quality care is a complex thing to measure. Death rates are only one part of the picture. Severity of disease, number of co-existing medical diseases, age, length of illness and other patient related factors can quickly muddy the waters when evaluating quality care.

One must remember, that good physicians treat the patient and not the disease. The disease is just the obstacle that prevents the patient from being well. Good treatment means that patient and provider collaborate on a plan to overcome the obstacle. Usually this plan incorporates a series of targeted solutions for individual manifestations of the disease. Thus, simple death rates can guide you when you are selecting a physician, but be warned, they will not provide the entire picture.

tags: Healthcare, healthcare quality, heart bypass, open heart surgery

After the Healthcare Blogging Summit on December 11, 2006, Toby Bloomberg has organized a blogger meetup. If you are a DC blogger or you are going to the Healthcare Blogging Summit or WOMMA, please drop by for some good will and cup of cheer. It is a buy your own… but share the fun

Place: Open City

Time: 7p to whenever

This event is open not only to bloggers but to people who want to learn more about blogging. So…Please feel free to pass this along or blog about this. It would be great if we could get a sizable crowd.

tags: WOMMA, Healthcare Blogging Summit, Blogger meet-up, Washington, DC,

Thanks to Josh over at hyku for this interesting note.

It seems as though the Florida Times Union in Jacksonville, FL has run an article about a disgruntled consumer who has started a website to discuss and promote his displeasure with the treatment he got at a Florida healthsystem.

Bad press is one thing. Getting picked up by a local newspaper is a coup. However, the more sneaky and rather ironic thing about all of this is that now that Josh has inspired me to blog about this, Google now has a couple of more links to consider. For those of you who do not know, many search engines give higher credit to blog links when they consider position rankings within their systems.

And now that I have used a trackback to Josh - the impact of my single post has potentially been doubled.

So now this disgruntled customer has a a chance of being number one whenever Shands Healthcare is searched for using a internet search engine. That’s bad. But what is worse is that Shands has no avenue for even responding (even detailing reasons why they are not responding). Subsequently, this gentleman’s displeasure goes unanswered and will likely go on to have a lot of impact when a new patient is seeking treatment at the facility.

Tags: healthcare blogs, customer blogs, search engine optimization

Thanks to Marianne Richmond for drawing my attention to this wiki on developing a disclosure statement or adhereing to a “Code of Ethics” when blogging. The wiki by Charlene Li does give some excellent suggestions.

However, for healthcare bloggers, I think her item number 6, “I will not delete comments unless they are spam or off-topic.” needs a bit of addition. I think healthcare bloggers could and should edit comments or delete comments in some cases to preserve an individual’s confidentiality. Some would argue that if a person leaves a comment to be published understands that his or her comment may jeopardize his or her confidentiality. However, I tend to be more conservative and often carefully consider how to handle very personal health information.

In consulting with physicians, I have seen comments that have been left by people who are really desparate to get advice or feedback. While physicians are hesitant to offer medical advice via blog comments, people still ask. Sometimes these items are better handled via e-mail or by crafting an additional blog post to address the informational needs of the individual.

Of course, much of this is a judgement call and there are no hard and fast rules. However, as healthcare professionals begin to blog more, confidentiality issues and guidelines for maintaining proper confidentiality will need to be addressed specifically.

If you are a healthcare blogger or physician blogger, please feel free to share your experiences and how you handle comments.

tags: Business Blogging, Healthcare blogging, Healthcare Blogging Summit