Driving In Traffic

Ok– moving a blog is a pain!  I sincerely hope this is the last time I have to do it— EVER!  Of course, such change always comes when you don’t really have time to mess with it.  Oh– well… it is finally done.
Thanks for your patience.

Well— all good things must come to an end.  My current hosting company is going to wordpress consulting and getting out of the hosting business.

I am migrating Driving in Traffic to another hosting service.  The blog and my drivingintraffic.com e-mail will be down for a bit, but I will have it back up soon.

Thanks,

Carol

OMG! Linden Labs has been highlighted on the Today Show this morning. They created an avatar of Matt Lauer and toured 30 Rock.

I’ll include a link later, if I can find one. They usually put up a videocast on MSNBC after 11:00 AM eastern.

Tags: Second Life Today Show Matt Lauer

Yesterday I trundled on down to the mailroom at our office complex in an effort to help out. What I found was simply an excessive amount of high dollar direct mail items with the aim of detailing doctors on medications.

Now– I’m used to seeing a flyer and phamphlet here or there. But By-Mail detailing has gone to whole new levels. The most excessive ones are packaged in boxes and shipped to look like you are getting a book, schwag or something of value. I suppose all those focus groups conducted by Pharma have helped them learn that it is pretty easy to sniff out old time marketing material. Thus its fate is to go unopened directly to the trash bin. I suppose this new packaging is likely to get opened just to make sure that nothing of value is thrown away.

However, folks– the gig is up. Imagine my surprise when I got to the mail room to hear a disembodied voice coming out of our mail drawer. Apparently, the lastest parcel used the annoying talking greeting card technology (Guys– this is annoying for birthdays and other celebrations– why on Earth did you think it was a good idea for marketing?!?!). It had gotten squished by a larger parcel and had activated the push button mechanism which provides you with a voice to detail you on various aspects of the drug. Thankfully it shut up soon after I pulled it out of the drawer. I honestly do not think I could get on the elevator with that thing going off in my arms. Although now, working in psychiatry, I suppose a disembodied voice in an elevator could have been a good way of drumming up some business.

Let me just cut to the chase… pharmaceutical detailing by mail is a waste of money! Unless you employ some sort of intermittent reinforcement (i.e. periodically sending something that is actually helpful) the items never get opened and end up in the trash bin. Oh yea– if you are going to send something helpful– ask before you unilaterally decide cause you pharma marketing guys and gals just don’t get it.

Tags: pharmaceutical marketing pharmaceutical detailing disembodied voices medications pharmaceutical

As some of you may know, I sit on the board of an animal rescue group in Atlanta.

If you actually drop by my site in person, you will see a number of items in my sidebar. However, for my friends who read me via my Feed, I kindly ask that you consider donating $10 to the Six Degree’s badge I’ve created for them.

If you are not familiar, SixDegrees is a joint undertaking of the Network for Good and Kevin Bacon to raise money through social media for nonprofit organizations. The six organizations that have the most number of people donating will have their donations matched by Mr. Kevin Bacon, himself.

Boy— would I love for our organization to win. We are an all-volunteer organization that rescues dogs from death row and finds them homes (BTW– over 70,000 animals in Atlanta are put to death each year because they can’t find a home).

Thus I am asking you kind folk to please consider helping me and Our Pals Place out. Click here to donate. Because it is the number of people who donate that counts most, I’m just asking that you donate the Network for Good minimum of $10.
I’d love to put the badge in the post, but it keeps knocking off the formatting of my blog. However, if you would like to put it on your site, you can get the code by clicking here and

I’d be forever in your debt for any help you can provide.

Tags: Our Pal’s Place Network For Good Six Degrees Kevin Bacon Animal Rescue Dogs

I had a weekend reprieve from the insurance questions, but just after a long Monday, I find that there seems to be an endless number of faces and voices that need help or explanation.

All I have to say is— Gee… I wish employers had done a better job educating their employees about the changes afoot in the health plans they were offering.

Honestly, I can’t really blame patients for their frustration. For years, they have mindlessly sought care, paid their copay and not even wondered about contracted rates, discounted rates, co-insurance, deductibles and etc. I even had one lady bring in her EOMB to me and ask me to explain it. She was SHOCKED that eventhough the doctor billed $125 for her med check, that he only got $60 plus her $6.00 (10% of the contracted rate) copay.

Yep… there’s a lot people don’t know.

In the hope of compiling a list of resources to hand out, I took a few moments last night to travel around to various sites that have come up in the last few months who are seeking to help patients navigate this maze in which they have been unceremoniously dropped.

1. Vimo: Probably the most mature of the products I toured. This is really focused on helping people shop their insurance and physicians. However, their “Learn” section did provide a good primer on essentials of these new health plans.

2. RevolutionHealth (in Preview) will be available soon. They seem to be focusing on helping people become more engaged in their health. They have a fair number of wellness promotion tools and they support SimoHealth’s medical bill tracking tool and and help you estabilish personal health record ‘portfolio’.

I haven’t opened up a SimoHealth account (despite the 30 days free offer, $39 after that), so I don’t know if SimoHealth offeres some good explanation of the basics of the CDHC Insurance game.

3. MedBillManager. I’ve been through several tours of this product, thanks to an invite from Christopher a few months ago. I’ve offered some (sometimes stern) feedback on their product and they have always taken it and turned the comments into thoughtful functionality. It is still a pretty green product, as their alpha status indicates, but it is a pretty good start. The cool thing is that it is free for up to two people.

Here again, this is a tracking tool to help people understand where their healthcare dollars are going. MedBillManager does not really explain CDHCs or insurance basics in layman’s terms, but it does provide a cost effective tool to become more educated about your own personal healthcare expenditures.

Since it is free — drop by and try it out. Also give Christopher and the guys copious amounts of feedback. They don’t have enough to do…

Update:  Unity Stokes over at Organized Wisdom has conducted a podcast with Christopher at MedBillManager.

While I’m updating— please check out Organized Wisdom as a community to help people to get information on the various treatment options for certain diseases.  It also helps individuals to gain support and ‘been there– done that” knowledge and education on specific diseases.
Feel free to add to this list through commenting. I’d like to learn more because I will definitely pass it on to the patients (of course after trying it out myself).

Tags:CDHC, Health Insurance, VIMO, RevolutionHealth, SimoHealth, Healthcare Tools

What is the world coming to?

FDA Approves First Medicine for Canine Obesity

What are people going to do when they can’t love their dog with food? Go for a walk?

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

I’ve just finished setting up a Squidoo lens to support my Dollar Philanthropy Blog. Drop by, give it a spin and let me know what you think. Did I forget something? Any ideas for improvement?

Once the decision has been made to start a blog, the next question that comes to mind is how will I get people to read it. If seeking to garner a national or a global audience, one can find a plethora of advice on where to register a blog and how to promote it to a internet savvy audience.

However, if the blog is a healthcare business blog or a blog to educate your patients, the more appropriate goal is to seek a local readership. Here are a few tips that can help you to focus in on this specific group of people.

1. Include the blog URL on appointment cards, stationery, email signatures and printed materials.
2. Have staff and providers recommend content and give patients the URL (of course this means that you need to consider the content needs for staff, providers and patients)
3. Place brochures, posters, and flyers in waiting rooms
4. Consider a direct mail campaign to known customers that positions the blog as a value added service.
5. Contact local bloggers (including reporters who have blogs) and ask them to announce the blog or review the content.
6. If you have e-mail addresses for customers, consider an email marketing campaign to announce the blog.
7. Craft a press release and distribute to local media outlets.
8. Be sure your blogroll links to prominent local blogs.
9. If you have a website, be sure you announce/link your blog on the front page.
10. Attend local health/wellness events (healthfairs, tennis tournaments, 5K Run/Walks, community education workshops & etc.) to distribute information on your facility/practice along with cards with a brief description of the blog and the URL.

Please feel free to add to this list by leaving a comment or linking to this post when you craft your own list. Also consider coming to the Healthcare Blogging Summit in Washington DC to find out more.
tags: increasing traffic, Blogging, healthcare blog, healthcare marketing, Healthcare Blogging Summit