Author: Lee Aase

Husband of one, father of six, grandfather of 15. Chancellor Emeritus, SMUG. Emeritus staff of Mayo Clinic. Founder of HELPcare and Administrator for HELPcare Clinic.

Economics of Health 101

I’m live blogging this session of Health Journalism 2008, with panelists including:

I’ll possibly have some video of Dr. Fronstin later; he gave a good overview of the basics of private health insurance.

Dr. Wilensky says the basic problem is that health spending is growing by an average of 2.5 percent more than the rest of the economy. Over the long term, she says, Medicare growth approximates growth for all health care. If overall spending continues to increase at the rate it has, and if Medicare essentially mirrors that growth rate, we will see Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security consume all of the federal government’s current revenues before 2030. She recommended what she calls some sensible next steps for Medicare:

Continue reading “Economics of Health 101”

Dennis Quaid Video on Medical Errors

Here are some video highlights of Dennis Quaid’s speech about medical errors and his family’s experience at Health Journalism 2008, the 10th annual conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7vcYN-K0Dk]

I was in the back row, and there are a couple of jerky moments as my arm got tired, so I apologize if you have any fleeting moments of vertigo. Still, for SMUG students and journalists, it’s an example of what you can do fairly easily to share interesting and important information with the world. It’s not a live uStream (maybe I’ll work on that next). I’m not a trained journalist (and as you can see not a trained videographer, either), but this is a step between streaming everything and a deeper context piece. And maybe it can be a resource for real journalists to use in their reporting.

Dennis Quaid on Medical Errors

Dennis Quaid

I’m at the opening session of Health Journalism 2008, which is being kicked off by Dennis Quaid telling the story about his twins daughters receiving 1,000 times the recommended dose of Heparin.

Quaid and his wife have started a foundation to help combat medical errors. One of the measures they advocate is bedside bar-coding.

The breach of patient privacy in their case was another concern. The overdose incident happened (twice) on a Sunday, and was discovered late Monday night. When the Quaids came to the hospital early Monday they were met by risk management, and during the process of the Heparin working its way out of the system (a 41-hour process), he said blood was squirting on the walls. On Tuesday they got a call that the news was all over the gossip site TMZ, even though the Quaids hadn’t told even their close family members.

While they were in the hospital they worked for about a week and a half to get their children’s medical records, and the pages related to the time when they were being overdosed were missing from the 600 pages (300 pages for each of the twins.)

Quaid says that if he had been met with an apology instead of a risk management team, he likely would have responded much differently. One of the overdoses had happened on Sunday while the Quaids were with their twins. When he had called Sunday night to check on them, the nurse told Dennis they were “fine.”

A few months before this incident, three children in Indianapolis died of an overdose when adult Heparin was given in place of the pediatric dose. The Quaids are suing Baxter, not Cedars Sinai, though, because the product wasn’t recalled when the Indianapolis incident happened. He said he’s not interested in any settlement that involves non-disclosure; he wants to raise awareness about the problem of patient safety.

I will have some video highlights from Quaid’s presentation a bit later. It’s good that he is giving public attention to this issue. As he says, patient safety doesn’t typically make headlines because incidents happen one at a time, and not to celebrities. He is making a lot of the same points I’ve heard patient safety leaders make at Mayo Clinic. He has a megaphone that enables him to get the issue noticed, and today he spoke to a bunch of journalists who I’m sure will help with the effort.

I wonder whether bloggers will take up this patient safety issue in a big way.

Mayo Clinic Podcasts Featured on Ragan.com

A few weeks ago I had an opportunity to discuss our Mayo Clinic podcasts with Michael Sebastian from Ragan Communications for a newsletter article. My friend Chris Martin just passed along the article, which was posted on Ragan.com today. I think Michael does a nice job of summarizing our podcasting history and some of the current activity. Most importantly, I think he quite accurately reflects what we discussed in the interview; that’s a real treat. Check out the story.

If you’re interested in a bit more of what Mayo Clinic has been doing in social media, check out our Facebook fan page and the blog (and podcast) we’ve established for the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center. My colleagues at MayoClinic.com also have some blogs and podcasts they’ve been producing, too, and we’ve got some more good things in the works.

I’m blessed to work for an organization that not only makes traditional media relations a priority, but also is enabling and encouraging us to engage in social media. I think a big part of the reason for this support is our leaders’ healthy appreciation of the role word-of-mouth from satisfied patients has played in Mayo Clinic achieving the reputation it has.

The on-line social networks like Facebook are just newer and more powerful versions of the water cooler or the backyard fence, where people talk about what’s going on in their lives and what’s important to them.

Their health care experiences are among those meaningful topics.

It’s an exciting time to be working in news media and social media, and particularly where they intersect. I’m looking forward to the next few days here at Health Journalism 2008, and particularly to the session on “Multimedia tools for telling stories,” which will include Scott Hensley from the Wall Street Journal‘s Health Blog. He’s right at the intersection of mainstream and social media, and it will be interesting to hear his perspective.

Headed to Health Journalism 2008

I’m heading to Washington, DC this morning for Health Journalism 2008, the annual conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists.

This is an organization that is comprised predominantly of print reporters. It will be interesting to hear what they’re making of the new media/social media landscape and the changes happening in journalism. I’ll be blogging about the conference as I’m able and as it is relevant to SMUG readers.

I’m attending the conference and exhibiting on behalf of our Mayo Clinic media relations team.