Patient Destiny

More People starting to spread the word

The Hill, a Washington newspaper (both in print and online) since 1994, has published an article stating that "Personal health records would empower patients, boost care quality, reduce costs!"

The article goes on to speak to how important it is for the future of our healthcare delivery systems that we move to electronic health records - primarily in the form of personal health records! Wow! And this article was written by two politicians - Double Wow!! ...And these two are from 2 different parties - one Democrat and one Republican - Triple Wow!!! That's 3 on the Wow Meter!!!

I am very happy just to get support any where I can get it but this is an important step when politicans are willing to go on the record and state their support to the moving of healthcare data and information to electronic means.

What about Privacy?

In this blog we have discussed many issues around Patient Empowerment but have really only touched on a very basic point - and that is Privacy!

How important is Privacy to patients? What do we mean by privacy? Is this different from security issues?  Is this the same as confidentiality? What controls do we have in place today to protect our privacy?

These are fundamental questions that are NOT being asked - let alone answered. There should be no doubt that your health information is your health information - period! Yet, you do not control this information!  We have spent weeks discussing the fact that for the most part you cannot even access it, forget about control it!

Step Three - speak to your physician

The path to empowerment requires work and commitment. Once you believe that patient empowerment is critical and requires a change in mindset and responsibility (Step One) and you have found a mentor that has your condition or illness (Step Two), the next step is to convince your physician that you want to be empowered and that you can be trusted - that's right - TRUSTED with managing your care!

Most of the physicians that I have met, and worked with, truly believe in the patient voice and have focused their careers on providing endless support for their patients. This is not true of all doctors, but is true of the majority. This means that finding a doctor to support your own personal healthcare empowerment should NOT be too difficult.

What is difficult, however, is doing the work to convince your doctors that you are serious about your care and that you are motivated to manage it effectively. I know that this sounds trite, but not everyone does what is best for them...if you do not believe me, then just look at all the smokers out there!

What is Step Two?

Previously, we outlined Step One on the Path to Patient Empowerment is to learn from others' experiences. Find out who else is out there and convince yourself that patient empowerment is not only important but rather that it is essential!

The second step is to find someone very specifically who has a like illness or condition that you can begin to work with. This person may be found through your doctor or through a hospital or clinic information session or just from hanging around the waiting room. I know for me, it is not hard to find other patients who have Crohn's disease. I sometimes just run into them at the pharmacy when they are ordering their prescripions or medications.

Now not every patient that you will come in contact with will be experienced in patient empowermet, or even espouse it for that matter, but at least this is a beginning of the very important social networking function...you have to reach out and find support from real-life patients.

Who Leads the Pack?

In the race (if that were only true) to get to full adoption of electronic health records, it appears that the state of Arizona is leading the pack! The state is expecting to have full EHRs for all of their Medicaid patients by 2009.

This is good news but still speaks to the need for more of these developments. It is quite sad to think that the "leader of the pack" is expecting to complete a partial milestone by 2009 - where are all of the other developments? Unfortunately, these developments are slow - and the best witness to that is the fact that these types of announcements are big news.

Canada's Federal Budget

I want to make a special mention today of Canada's federal budget that was presented to the House of Commons yesterday - March 19, 2007. In it, there are special monies ear-marked to healthcare and specifically $400 million to put towards the further advancements of electronic health records!

This can be seen as a major announcement as the industry has been slow to adopt such technologies. We need leadership and it appears that the minority Conservative government in Canada is anxious to provide such leadership!!!

It remains to be seen how these funds will be operationalized, but the announcement itself is a great start!

The Path to Empowerment

As mentioned in my previous post, I will outline a 5 step program to patient empowerment. These steps are described in my book, "A Prescription for Patience", in an indirect way through storytelling. In this blog, day by day, I will outline each step and then provide an overall summary.

Step One - Learn from Other's Experiences

While this was stated previously relating to the whole Patient Destiny initiative, it is also the very first step in our path. Learning can be done in a number of ways, but the best way is through experience.

Let's Begin with Step 1

Step 1 - Learning from other's experience!

As mentioned in previous posts, I will from time to time reflect back on some of my own personal experience to bring our discussion to a more people-friendly level.  It is fine to talk about strategies, government, websites and so on, but in the end it is still all about people.

Why am I doing this? Why create this blog? Why write the book?

Where entrepreneurs do the leading!

It is very interesting to me to see how much the business philosophy is finally creeping into healthcare. I say "creeping" because this process is slow however it is happening! My last post referred to the teachings in business school programs and how more and more they are either using the healthcare field as examples or case studies, or how they have created "study concentrations" or Majors/Minors" in this area of study.

While the entrepreneur spirit is alive (and hopefully, well), it is no where more prominent than in Alberta Canada. This is one of, is not the, wealthiest province(s) in Canada and regions in the world. And, this is not by accident, but rather by strategic management of their natural resources that has been the infrastructure upon which all else has been built.

Universities starting to teach IT in healthcare to their Business Schools

Last night, I was fortunate enough to be invited as a guest lecturer in a Health Informatics course at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario...about one hour west of Toronto. In fact, this course adopted my book "A Prescription for Patience" as the primary text or reading material for the course! Indeed I was delighted to attend the class for a discussion on the principles of the book and the perspectives of students in the course. This is a second year elective course in their MBA program.

The course instructor, Alex Drossos, arranged a debate in the classroom concerning the question: will the investment of information technology in healthcare lead the industry to better health outcomes. Of course, this is the question that is being asked in all hospitals, health regions and administrative offices around the globe - is investment in IT our best option? It is refreshing to see this debate in a new environment - within the context of business and a business school program!

The students participated in the debate with many good arguments both pro and con. On the pro side, the reference was made to other industries and the fact that if we extend this logic to healthcare, then the same type of findings should result. They explained in great detail the types of benefits - principally that you can refer to your own health information at any time with any one - a caregiver, healthcare provider and so on. They made some other strong points about system knowledge, but their focus was on individual clinical care for the most part.