My Weekend as an Emergency Patient and What I Learned
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 13, 2013 | Anne Polta
If you want to see what health care is really like, there’s no better way than by becoming a patient yourself. To paraphrase the wisdom of Dr. Seuss, “Oh, the things you’ll learn!”

How Easily We Can Misinterpret the Benefits of Patient-Centered Innovation!
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 8, 2013 | Jessie Gruman
Here's the bad news: We will not benefit from the health care services, drugs, tests and procedures available to us unless we pay attention, learn about our choices, interact with our clinicians and follow through on the plans we make together.

‘Healthy Privilege’ – When You Just Can’t Imagine Being Sick
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 6, 2013 | Carolyn Thomas
What I’ve learned since my heart attack is that, until you or somebody you care about are personally affected by a life-altering diagnosis, it’s almost impossible to really get what being sick every day actually means…

The Best Health Care Decision is Realizing That There Are Choices
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 2, 2013 | Wendy Lynch
Perhaps the most powerful influence we can have in health care is simply acknowledging that we have choices and wondering, out loud, what those might be. Whether or not you plan to do in-depth research about your treatment options, consider asking your doctor three simple questions.

The "True Grit"-tiness of Sharing Health Care Decisions with Our Doctors
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 1, 2013 | Jessie Gruman
In the Coen brothers remake of the 1969 movie True Grit, Mattie Ross, an intrepid 14-year-old, is determined to hunt down and kill the man who murdered her father. To accomplish this, she hires U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, (played by a mumbling Jeff Bridges) a rough, one-eyed veteran of many such quests then announces that she plans to come along. She figures she is prepared.

Is “Guaranteed Coverage for Life” in the Cards for Medicare Seniors?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 1, 2013 | Trudy Lieberman
A few days ago, Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield sent me one of those Medigap sales brochures that seniors usually expect during the fall open enrollment season.

Targeting Prescribers Can Reduce Excessive Use of Antibiotics in Hospitals
HBNS STORY | April 30, 2013
Giving prescribers access to education and advice or imposing restrictions on use can curb overuse or inappropriate use of antibiotics in hospitals, according to a new Cochrane systematic review.

Bad Language: Words One Patient Won't Use (and Hopes You Won't Either)
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 24, 2013 | Jessie Gruman
When I read Trudy Lieberman’s post yesterday, I was reminded that the highly charged political debates about reforming American health care have provided tempting opportunities to rename the people who receive health services. But because the impetus for this change has been prompted by cost and quality concerns of health care payers, researchers and policy experts rather than emanating from us out of our own needs, some odd words have been called into service.

Teaching Patients about New Medications? A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words
HBNS STORY | April 30, 2013
Improving people’s knowledge and skills about their medications may be best achieved with multimedia patient education materials, finds a new systematic review in The Cochrane Library.

Getting My Photo Taken at a Medical Appointment
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 15, 2013 | Elaine Schattner
A funny thing hap­pened at my doctor’s appointment on Friday. I checked in, then a med-tech asked if she could take my picture, “for the hos­pital record.” I couldn’t contain my won­dering self. “What is the purpose of the picture?” I asked.

The Truth about Those High Patient Satisfaction Scores for Doctor-Patient Communication
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 11, 2013 | Stephen Wilkins
The problem with satisfaction data related to doctor-patient communication is that, at face value, it simply doesn’t correlate with other published data on the subject. There is a disconnect between what patients say in satisfaction surveys and what happens in actual practice. Here’s what I mean…

Has Patient Engagement Stalled?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 10, 2013 | Jessie Gruman
A few discouraging reports on patient engagement have skittered across my desk in the past few weeks. What's going on? Why are so many of us so slow to engage in our care when it is increasingly clear that we will do better if we participate more fully? Here's what I suspect...

Is Health Insurance Sticker Shock for Real?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 9, 2013 | Trudy Lieberman
Wherever you turn, there are complaints about health insurance rates. A Pennsylvania woman tells me her monthly premium will soon be $100 more than it used to be. A New Yorker finds the premium for retiree coverage rising 24 percent...

Self-Tracking Tech Revolution? Not So Fast…
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 8, 2013 | Carolyn Thomas
When the report called "Tracking for Health" was released last month, media headlines announced: “Over Two-Thirds Track Health Indicators!” Surprisingly, very few headlines ran the real news from the report: “Only 21% Use Technology to Self-Track!” Yet as of last autumn, more than 500 tech companies are busy developing The Next Big Thing in self-tracking tools.

Health Care Consumers Are Compromised By Complex Information
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 4, 2013 | Jane Sarasohn Kahn
Americans have embraced their role as consumers in virtually every aspect of life: making travel plans, trading stock, developing photos, and purchasing goods like cars and washing machines. That is, in every aspect of life but health care.

What Do I Tweet – and Why?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 3, 2013 | Jessie Gruman
Who would have thought that Twitter, this tiny aperture – a mere 140 characters – could connect me with so many smart, feisty, tough people who share, amplify, and improve on my efforts to spread carefully chosen health and health care content through their responses, retweets, modified tweets and acknowledgements? Here’s why I tweet what I tweet...

Patient Activation Is Only Half the Solution – Physicians Need to Be Activated as Well
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 1, 2013 | Stephen Wilkins
Focusing just on what the patient brings to the party in terms of their “knowledge, skills and confidence” is only half the problem. What about physician activation?

False Alarms and Unrealistic Expectations in Preventive Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 28, 2013 | Kenny Lin
Shortly after we moved to Washington, DC, my wife and I purchased a basic home security system, the kind with a programmable keypad, multiple door alarms and a motion sensor. All things considered, it's hard to argue that the benefits of this preventive measure have outweighed its cumulative harms.

Comparative Effectiveness Research: Louise Vetter, CEO of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 27, 2013 | Louise Vetter
There are 30,000 Americans alive today with symptoms of HD, and an additional 200,000 are at risk...Generally, we see CER as an important priority to inform clinician decision making.

Reduce Use of Antipsychotic Drugs in Elderly with Dementia
HBNS STORY | March 28, 2013
Most older adults with dementia can successfully be taken off antipsychotic medications, which have negative side effects and increase the risk of death, finds a new evidence review from The Cochrane Library.

Six Awkward Concerns in My OpenNotes
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 25, 2013 | Leslie Kernisan
I find myself relieved that I don’t have to figure out how to document (or not document?) concerns [in patient records]...Wondering what they are? Ok, I will tell you, but shhh...don’t tell my elderly patients that I may be considering these topics as I care for them.

What Do We Need Doctors For?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 21, 2013 | Elaine Schattner
Should nurse prac­ti­tioners, RNs, physician assis­tants, phar­ma­cists, social workers and others including, yes, peer patients, take up much — or even most, of doctors’ tasks?

Caring For Loved Ones When Our Best Efforts Aren’t Enough
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 18, 2013 | Nora OBrien Suric
How many friends/family members/social workers does it take to change the mind of a frail person? Even if the frail person was/is one of the leading geriatric social workers in the country?

Comparative Effectiveness Research: Marty Tenenbaum, Founder & Chairman of Cancer Commons
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 13, 2013 | Marty Tenenbaum
There is a large disparity of information across the medical world. If you consult 6 doctors, you’ll likely get 6 opinions about how to treat your cancer. And 5-year survivals may vary as much as 50%. This is inexcusable.

Too Much Medical Care: Do We Know It When We See It?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 11, 2013 | Kenny Lin
If I didn't object to receiving what I recognized as too much medical care, it should not be a surprise that, according to one study, many inappropriate tests and treatments are being provided more often, not less.

Comparative Effectiveness Research: Ann Fonfa, President and Founder of the Annie Appleseed Project
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 6, 2013 | Ann Fonfa
To me it’s obvious that Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) is a good way to get to meaningful patient outcomes. It compares real things that will make a difference. Right now we have efficacy without effect. In my field we are worried about drug-herb interactions; what about drug-drug interactions? I’m looking forward to CER really drilling down to what works for patients in a meaningful way.

Screening Decisions Are Better Informed When Risk Information Is Personalized
HBNS STORY | February 28, 2013
Patients’ ability to make genuinely informed choices about undergoing disease screening increases when the risk information that they receive is related to their own personal risk, rather than average risks, according to the results of a Cochrane systematic review.

The Team Will See You Now...What Team?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 27, 2013 | Jessie Gruman
Have you heard that soon most primary care in the US will be delivered by teams? Yep. Team-based care is one of the characteristics of the patient-centered medical home, a way of organizing the care of patients that allows primary care clinicians to see more patients in a day while at the same time delivering better care.

Pharmacists Can Improve Patient Outcomes
HBNS STORY | February 28, 2013
In addition to dispensing, packaging or compounding medication, pharmacists can help improve patient outcomes in middle-income countries by offering targeted education, according to a new review in The Cochrane Library.

Comparative Effectiveness Research: Jennifer Dingman, Founder of PULSE
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 20, 2013 | Jennifer Dingman
I got involved in patient safety many years ago after I lost my mom in early 1995 due to medical errors. While my mom was in a coma for seven weeks, I met other families in ICU. Many of them – the majority – had unanswered questions.

Buying Health Care from a Boutique
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 20, 2013 | Trudy Lieberman
Somehow, I don’t think of money-back guarantees when I think about going to the doctor. Yet as textbook marketing principles creep into health care, a few medical providers are beginning to look like sellers of toothpaste and detergents.

An Open Letter to Mobile Health App Developers and Their Funders
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 13, 2013 | Jessie Gruman
Two recent experiences left me ornery and impatient about the current state of mobile health apps. Why haven’t they just taken off?

Medical Errors: Can Patients and Caregivers Spur Improvement?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 5, 2013 | Conversation Continues
A new report from Minnesota on medical errors shines a light on the fact that their frequency remains stubbornly high. Can patients and caregivers make a difference?

Palliative Care: Easier Said than Done
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 1, 2013 | Conversation Continues
If we want our end-of-life wishes to be properly carried out, we have to prepare in advance and our clinicians must also be prepared to help us realize them.

Measuring Meaning: Tough to Track Important Talks
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 30, 2013 | Jessie Gruman
We do better when we have meaningful conversations with our clinicians about our health care. Proposals to require and document that such conversations take place at strategic points are growing. Here’s a cautionary tale.

Comparative Effectiveness Research: Jeffrey Carroll, Host of HDBuzz
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 28, 2013 | Jeffrey Carroll
As a community, our focus is on the discovery of disease-modifying treatments. This is the burning desire of everyone in the [Huntington’s disease] community.

Do You Need a Yearly Medical Check-Up?
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
We've all heard about well-baby visits, but if you're a healthy adult, you probably have no plan to see a doctor. When there's nothing to complain about, many of us go years without a comprehensive medical check-up.

The Handoff: Your Roadmap to a New Doctor's Care
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Sooner or later, most patients run up against a diagnosis that sends them from their primary care doctor's care into the hands of a new physician. In medical circles, this transition is called the "handoff" — a casual name that conceals the complications and risks of this journey.

Coping With the High Costs of Prescriptions
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
As patients pay more for their prescription drugs, many people decide to cut their pills in half or opt out of taking the drugs altogether. But there are safer ways to cut costs than skimping on — or skipping — the medicines you need.

Chronic Conditions: When Do You Call the Doctor?
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
From high cholesterol to HIV, millions of Americans have a medical condition that they manage mostly on their own. How do you know when it’s time to call in the professionals?

Seeking a Second...or Third...Opinion
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Is it OK to seek a second (or a third, or a fourth) opinion on your diagnosis? Many people feel uncomfortable with the idea that they are questioning the authority or expertise of their physician.

Sorting Out Medical Opinion Overload
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Where do you turn when your health care team reaches an impasse, even as an urgent medical problem calls for decisions and choices that you simply don't feel qualified to make?

How to Make a Doctor Appointment: 10 Steps
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Organize Your Health Care
When calling a new doctor or medical practice, you should make sure you gather this key information.

Finding Treatment Information
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Make Good Treatment Decisions
Need to find more information on tests and treatments commonly used for your condition? These websites can help.

Understanding Medical Terms
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Make Good Treatment Decisions
It can be useful to have a general sense of what some common medical terms mean in order to understand your condition, medication or treatment plans.

Managing Your Medications
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Participate in Your Treatment
Part of participating in your treatment is remembering to take your medication as prescribed. This task can get difficult if you aren’t feeling well or are juggling multiple prescriptions

Getting Support for Healthy Living
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Promote Your Health
If you’re sick or simply want to make healthier choices, you’re not alone. These days you can get support from people like you, both in person and online.

Uncovering Your Health Risks
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Seek Knowledge About Your Health
Understanding your health risks can help you engage in healthier behaviors and allows you to focus on certain aspects of your health that you can change to help prevent diseases.

Online Health Resources: Trusted Sources
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Seek Knowledge About Your Health
Searching online for information about your or your loved one’s health is a good idea, but it can sometimes be difficult to know what sites to trust. Here are a few websites with reliable health information.

Finding Health Information You Can Trust
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Seek Knowledge About Your Health
The Internet can be a gold mine for health information seekers, but separating the helpful and accurate from the inaccurate and downright dangerous can be a daunting task.

When it Comes to Health Care, What is Watchful Waiting?
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Make Good Treatment Decisions
For certain medical conditions, delaying treatment while regularly monitoring the progress of disease — a strategy doctors refer to as “watchful waiting” — may benefit some people more than a rush to medications or surgery.

Asking Your Doctor Questions
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Communicate With Your Doctors
Though many people have trouble speaking up or are afraid of questioning their doctor’s authority, it’s important that conversations about your health be a two-way dialogue between you and your clinician.

Handling Treatment Side Effects
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Participate in Your Treatment

Sharing Medical Information with Multiple Doctors: Your Medical Records
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Organize Your Health Care
Getting your medical records to multiple doctors is often up to you, the patient.

Should I Get a Second Opinion?
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Make Good Treatment Decisions
Gathering multiple opinions on your medical condition can be one of the most challenging decisions that a patient has to make.

Cutting Through ICU Confusion
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Every year more than 5 million people in the United States spend time in intensive care units for acute injuries or life-threatening illnesses. For patients, family members and friends, the ICU experience is often emotional and confusing.

Giving Your Doctor the Pink Slip
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Feeling uneasy with or disrespected by your current doctor? Our experts — both physicians — talk frankly about rocky spots in doctor-patient relationships.

Retail Clinics: What's in Store for Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
You're sick, but your doctor's office says the next open appointment is in two weeks. Or you're traveling, don't have a primary care physician or don't have health insurance. For all these reasons and more, potential patients are turning increasingly to retail clinics to cure their minor ailments.

Hospital Report Cards: Grading Facilities Near You
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Consumers are awash in information they can use to find the best deals on everything from dishwashers to car insurance. But is it possible to comparison shop for a hospital?

When Getting to the Doctor Is Half the Battle
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
All patients have their stories of hassles: hustling against traffic to inconvenient doctor appointments, not to mention waiting on hold to schedule a follow-up visit. But what if you couldn't read the road signs on your way or hear the options on your physician's answering service?

Making a Pact With Your Doctors
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
A shared care plan can be a guide to treatment goals that you and your doctors agree on, and it can set the rules of engagement as you pursue your treatment.

Talking About Symptoms With Your Health Care Team
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
"What brings you here today?" It's a simple question that's at the heart of many patient-doctor conversations, but it's not a question to take lightly.

Effective Patienthood Begins with Good Communication
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Given all the obstacles that prevent us from getting to the doctor's office — scheduling an appointment, digging out the insurance card and plain old procrastination — it is good health sense to make the most of your time when you are finally face-to-face with your health care provider. Easier said than done, says health researcher Sherrie Kaplan.

Your Doctor's Office, Demystified
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Long gone are the days when all nurses sported identical uniforms and only physicians wore white coats and scrubs. Today, when visiting your doctor's office, it can be difficult to know with whom you're speaking and what role they play in your health care.

Take My Damn Data. Please.
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 23, 2013 | Jessie Gruman
Many people assume that their test results will be automatically sent to the right doctors and don’t bother to request that it be done.

Finding a New Doctor
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Find Good Health Care

How to Choose a Hospital
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Find Good Health Care
It's important to remember that not all hospitals are created equal--they vary in quality and have different strengths and weaknesses. So if you have an option of where to go for care, how do you make the best choice?

What Are Medicare and Medicaid?
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Pay For Your Health Care
A breakdown of several health insurance programs offered by the U.S. government.

Medical Errors: Will We Act Up, Fight Back?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 16, 2013 | Jessie Gruman
We've been warned about the impending patient revolution. We will not be ignored. And we'll force meaningful change. After all, as the recent documentary How to Survive a Plague reminds us, the gay community and others mobilized themselves during the AIDS crisis to great effect. The same thing is possible today, right?

Comparative Effectiveness Research: Helen Haskell, Founder of Mothers Against Medical Error
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 15, 2013 | Helen Haskell
Comparative effectiveness research will be transformational if done properly. The critical thing is that it be done without built-in bias.

How to Find and Use Health Insurance
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Whether you have a preexisting condition or not, are new to shopping for insurance or trying to figure out what coverage you do have, there are resources to help with this often complicated but important purchase.

Comparative Effectiveness Research: Marge Ginsburg, Executive Director of the Center for Healthcare Decisions
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 9, 2013 | Marge Ginsburg
In many ways, this country is a victim of its own successes. While medical research and technology has brought phenomenal benefit to many patients, we have grown indiscriminate in when and how we adopt new medical miracles.

Prepared Patient: Making a Pact With Your Doctors
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 28, 2012 | Health Behavior News Service
Being a prepared patient means taking on some of the jobs 'big and small' that are necessary for staying healthy and coping will illness. Just like with any other job, it helps to have the job description clearly laid out before you start work. Your doctor may be expecting you to do certain tasks from filling prescriptions to changing your sleep or diet that can help you make the most of your care.

Adults with Disabilities More Likely to Seek Care in the Emergency Department
HBNS STORY | December 21, 2012
People with disabilities, while making up just 17 percent of the working-age adult population, account for almost 40 percent of all emergency department (ED) visits, finds a new study in Health Services Research.

Health Care Providers Can Learn to Communicate Better with Patients
HBNS STORY | December 18, 2012
Medical students, doctors and nurses can be taught to use a more holistic, patient-centered approach during medical consultations, focusing on the person and not just their medical complaint, finds a new review in The Cochrane Library.

Education Can Reduce Use of Antipsychotic Drugs in Nursing Home Patients
HBNS STORY | December 13, 2012
A new review in The Cochrane Library finds that education and social support for staff and caregivers can reduce the use of antipsychotic drugs in nursing home patients with dementia.

Printed Reminders for Doctors Improve Health Care
HBNS STORY | December 12, 2012
Printed reminders about screening tests, vaccinations and other health topics can help doctors provide care that more closely reflects current medical guidelines and evidence-based medicine, finds a new review from The Cochrane Library.

When You Fear Being Labeled a “Difficult” Patient
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 10, 2012 | Carolyn Thomas
Most patients know what this feels like, so it’s reassuring to learn that academics are actually studying it: our fear of being labeled a “difficult patient”.

Most People with Hepatitis C Go Untreated, Despite Effective Drugs
HBNS STORY | December 10, 2012
Just 20 percent of people infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) begin the recommended treatment regimen and less than 5 percent go on to successfully overcome the virus, according to a new review in General Hospital Psychiatry. Untreated substance abuse and depression are among the barriers to care.

Patients with ICU Delirium More Likely to Die
HBNS STORY | December 6, 2012
Delirium, a condition developed by many patients in hospital intensive care units (ICU), is associated with higher mortality rates, more complications, longer stays in the ICU, and longer hospitalizations, finds a new meta-analysis in General Hospital Psychiatry.

Reducing Your Risk of Medical Errors
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Recovering from a knee replacement is difficult under the best of circumstances, but for Herminia Briones, the year following her surgery was filled with unexpected pain, complications and confusion. Her repeated attempts to draw attention to her problems went unheeded, beginning an unfortunate and not uncommon struggle with medical error. Why do medical errors happen and how can you help protect yourself from harm?

Understanding a New Prescription
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Communicate With Your Doctors

Comparative Effectiveness Research: Angela Ostrom of the Epilepsy Foundation of America®
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 29, 2012 | Angela Ostrom
Epilepsy is a complex disease. An optimal quality of life and seizure control for the person with epilepsy – so that they can be a fully productive member of society – is our goal. Our main concern about CER and our constituents is that one treatment may provide a high quality of life with seizure control and few side effects for many but not for all patients.

When I Rated My Doctor
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 29, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Recently, I spent some time answering the questions on one of those CAHPS surveys for doctors. CAHPS stands for Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, and these days hospitals ask patients to use them to review not only their hospital experience but their experience with their doctors as well.

Deciding When to Seek Care
PREPARED PATIENT RESOURCE | Find Good Health Care
A nagging pain here, a sore throat there…should you see a doctor or not? It can be hard to decide what symptoms are serious enough to justify making an appointment.

Getting a Prescription Refill: Hassles from My Health Plan
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 27, 2012 | Val Jones
In a recent post entitled “The Joys of Health Insurance Bureaucracy” I described how it took me (a physician) over three months to get one common prescription filled through my new health insurance plan. Of note, I have still been unable to enroll in the prescription refill mail order service that saves my insurer money and (ostensibly) enhances my convenience.

True Informed Consent Is Elusive
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 26, 2012 | Harriet Hall
Most of us would agree that doctors should not treat patients without their consent, except in special cases like emergency care for an unconscious patient. It’s not enough for doctors to ask “Is it OK with you if I do this?”

Retail Clinics Impact Continuous Primary Care
HBNS STORY | November 15, 2012
Using retail walk-in health clinics, often located inside pharmacies or big-box stores, for simple acute care problems can interfere with establishing and maintaining a relationship with a primary care provider, find a new study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

100 Million Without Dental Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 12, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Every year, over 100 million Americans don’t go to the dentist because they can’t afford it, leaving many in pain. How can people pay for dental care?

More Money, More Time: Will that Improve Physician-Patient Communications?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 8, 2012 | Stephen Wilkins
I don’t think so, and here’s why. I have yet to meet a physician who did not agree with the importance of effective physician-patient communication…in principle.

Comparative Effectiveness Research: Arthur Levin of the Center for Medical Consumers
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 7, 2012 | Arthur Levin
We're trying to figure out if CER is just more of the same. Health policy has a love affair with old wine in new bottles, that is, rebranding old solutions with new acronyms. Because patient-centered care and engagement are fashionable at the moment, is PCOR merely a way to dress up CER to be more exciting and attractive (or palatable)?

From Doctor-Centered to Patient-Centered Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 29, 2012 | Leana Wen
As a medical student, I held the medical world in great awe. All that changed the day my mother became a patient and I began to see firsthand not only how difficult it is to navigate the healthcare system, but also how scary and unwelcoming the hospital can be.

People Surprised by Costs of Out-of-Network Care
HBNS STORY | October 25, 2012
Forty percent of people who received health care outside of their insurance network did so out of necessity, finds a new study in Health Services Research. About half of those patients did not know how much they would have to pay for their out-of-network care.

Comparative Effectiveness Research: John Santa of Consumer Reports
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 3, 2012 | John Santa
When Consumer Reports (CR) first saw the rising national emphasis on Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) three years ago, we were pleased: CER is what CR does. However, when it comes to health, we realized how difficult it is to do CER: CR would need to rely on good research done by others.

States that Support Access to Health Information Can Decrease Colon Cancer Deaths
HBNS STORY | September 25, 2012
Despite medical advances in colon cancer screening and treatment, people with a lower socioeconomic status remain at a higher risk of dying from colon cancer. A new study in The Milbank Quarterly finds that states and communities that focus on increasing the adoption of innovative health care practices along with providing greater access to public health information can reduce these deaths.

Health News You Can Use?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 18, 2012 | Inside Health Care
The dynamic nature of health news makes it challenging for clinicians and patients to stay abreast of new developments, interpret data and follow shifting guidelines.

A Year of Living Sickishly: A Patient Reflects
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 13, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
The essays collected here reflect on what it felt like as a patient with a serious illness, to cobble together a plan with my clinicians that works and to slog through the treatments in the hope that my cancer will be contained or cured and that I will be able to resume the interesting life I love.

More Nurses for Hospital Patients: Impact on Quality Questionable
HBNS STORY | September 12, 2012
Passage of a bill in 1999 requiring minimum nurse-to-patient ratios in California hospitals increased the number of nurses but resulted in mixed quality of care, according to a new study in the journal Health Services Research.

Are Patient Ratings a Good Guide to a Good Hospital?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 11, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
After writing about trying to choose the best hospital for my upcoming cataract surgery, I wondered if a few quality measures might offer a clue or two about how to better honcho some of my care, like the one that asks hospital patients if a nurse explained medications given to them. Since many ratings schemes rely on patient satisfaction data collected by the government, I decided to explore further.

Online Health Information Finally Clicks
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 22, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
Kristen Gerencher of The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch, recently interviewed me about internet users and online health information.

Comparative Effectiveness Research: John Burke on CER and Cystic Fibrosis
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 15, 2012 | John Burke
John Burke is a respected patient advocate who has participated in more than 30 clinical trials and has been employed as a health care policy expert for over 20 years. This is the first in a series of interviews with patients and patient group advocates about their experiences with and attitudes toward comparative effectiveness research.

Nordstrom and Amazon, Where Are You in Health Care Service?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 14, 2012 | Jane Sarasohn Kahn
When it comes to customer service, retail stores, banks, airlines and hotels are tops. Health care? Not so good.

Getting Over My Fear of Doctors
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 31, 2012 | Heather Thiessen
Growing up, I was always in awe of my doctors. It was almost as if they lived on a cloud. You never ever questioned their expertise, and very rarely would you ask for a second opinion. Going to the doctor was a nerve-wracking experience, where you spoke only when they asked questions. I always wondered what would happen if I did question them. But I never did. I was too afraid.

My Doctor Gets 3 Stars? 2 Thumbs Up? B+?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 27, 2012 | Conversation Continues
Hospital and physician ratings and patient satisfaction scores are all inter-related. Do they provide useful, meaningful information-and will we use them?

Right-Sizing Health IT: Where’s My App?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 25, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
The online migration of health information services and technologies (IT) has been a popular focus for IT investors and developers recently. But we have not been as captivated by their efforts as we have been by those of, oh, Facebook, say. Or Lady Gaga's fan site. Or eBay. In fact, most of us are reluctant to make use of the thousands of helpful health IT tools launched to help us get healthier, take care of ourselves and make good use of our health care.

Using Press Releases for Preliminary Pilot Data
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 24, 2012 | Conversation Continues
Steven Novella of the Science Based Medicine blog asks, 'If this is a pilot study only and we should not base any firm conclusions on the results, then why the press release?''

Why I Write: A Doctor's Tribute to Her Mother
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 23, 2012 | Leana Wen
My mother, Sandy Ying Zhang, is my role model and my inspiration for what I do every day. She was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was in her forties, and fought it courageously for seven years until she passed away in 2010.

What Does It Matter to You: Patient Activation and Good Health Outcomes
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 20, 2012 | Janice Lynch Schuster
In our current health care environment, in which patients are sometimes discharged quicker and sicker, they are expected to be more in charge activated than ever. They need to make and keep follow-up doctor appointments, manage complex medication regimens, organize home health care and visiting nurse appointments, store powerful medications, and track, monitor, and report changes in their health status. It's a tough order, especially for people like my father, who do not know or understand the health care system, and find its workings difficult to navigate.

Guest Blog: Will Information Technology Squeeze Physicians Out Of Their Central Role In Health Care?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 19, 2012 | Stephen Wilkins
Turns out that while most of us (90%) would like be able to make a doctor's appointment and check lab results online'.85% of us also still want the option to talk to our physician face-to-face. These are the findings from a recent 2012 study conducted by Accenture.

Consumer Ambivalence About Health Engagement ' Will OOP Costs Nudge Us to Engage?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 19, 2012 | Jane Sarasohn Kahn
In some surveys, U.S. consumers seem primed for health engagement, liking the ability to schedule appointments with doctors online, emailing providers, and having technology at home that monitors their health status.

The Art of the Fail, Open Table Surveys, and Increasing Our Engagement in Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 18, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
In the past two days I have filled out two post-dining surveys from Open Table, and it occurred to me that it would be great if there were something similar that could provide the immediate guidance we need to participate in our care.

Research that Incorporates the Patient's Perspective
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 17, 2012 | Conversation Continues
Josh Freeman, M.D., argues for research that looks at the patient as a whole. CFAH President Jessie Gruman cautions that if researchers are not advised, supported, and required to include the patient's perspective, it will not occur.

After the ACA Ruling---What's next for Employer-Based Health Plans?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 16, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Buzz about the recent Supreme Court's health reform decision has hovered mostly over the individual mandate---the requirement that everyone carry health insurance---and over push back on Medicaid expansion....But what about the 160 million Americans who have coverage from their employers?

Fast Food Medicine: A Missed Opportunity for Shared Decision Making
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 13, 2012 | Sarah Jorgenson
Though I may want 'fast food health care' when I'm healthy, I don't want it if I'm sick or have the potential to be sick. People want to have the opportunity for a dining-in experience, not just fast food.

Slow Leaks: Missed Opportunities to Encourage Our Engagement in Our Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 12, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
The gap between the demands placed on us by U.S. health care delivery and the ability of individuals ' even the most informed and engaged among us ' to meet those demands undermines the quality of our care, escalates its cost and diminishes its positive impact on our health.

Six Things Patients Want from Social Media
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 27, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
A few weeks ago, I spoke at the Connecting Healthcare + Social Media conference in New York about what we patients want from health social media. Michelle McNickle, New Media Producer for Healthcare IT News wrote the following piece summarizing my talk and the '6 things patients want from social media.'

Guest Blog: The App Gap: Why Baby Boomers Won't Use Most Smart Phone Apps
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 25, 2012 | Val Jones
Along with the invention of smart phones, an entire medical mobile application (app) industry has cropped up, promising patients enhanced connectivity, health data collection, and overall care quality at lower costs...For all the hype about robo-grannies, aging in place technologies, and how high tech solutions will reduce healthcare costs, the reality is that these hopes are unlikely to be achieved with the baby boomer generation.

How to Find a (Good) Doctor
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 22, 2012 | Conversation Continues
While the benefits of having (and keeping) a good physician may be evident, how do you find this just-right-for-you clinician?

Supporting Front-Line Hospital Staff Leads to Safer and Happier Patients
HBNS STORY | June 21, 2012
Hospitals that use supportive management practices across diverse care providers and frontline staff are more likely to deliver quality patient care, according to a new study in Health Services Research.

Do Hospital Ratings Matter?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 18, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Another hospital report card showed up last week adding to the pile of ratings already available. A few years ago there were more than one hundred offered by various for-profit and not-for-profit businesses and government agencies. The newest one is the Hospital Safety Score report card from the Leapfrog Group.....

Guest Blog: A Recommendation to Minimize Costs Backfires
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 15, 2012 | Alexis Ball
My mom passed away last December to Stage V breast cancer metastasized to her liver. During this battle she developed ascites (an accumulation of fluid in the peritoneal cavity) as her liver failure progressed. This accumulation of fluid was not only extremely uncomfortable but painful as well.

More Confusion about Those Insurance EOBs'This Time from Medicare
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 6, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
People have a right to receive in plain language a summary of what doctors bill, what insurers pay and how much they themselves must pay.

The Insidious Power of (d-i-s)-R-E-S-P-E-C-T
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 6, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
It's difficult to imagine that professionals working in a practice or department or unit where they are constrained by their own colleagues misbehavior are going to have the energy to invite us to learn about and share in decisions about our treatment...

Use of Patient Centered Medical Home Features Not Related to Patients' Experience of Care
HBNS STORY | June 6, 2012
Providing patient care using key features of a Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH), a model of health care delivery promoted by major physician groups, may not influence what patients think about the care they receive, reports a new study in Health Services Research.

Guest Blog: Dangers of Uncoordinated Care: A Son Reflects on His Father's Passing
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 1, 2012 | Neil Versel
Neil Versel shares his personal experience of his dad's passing and the lack of quality of care that he received at one hospital contrasted with well-managed care at another facility. He wants to educate as many people about the disease his father had (multiple system atrophy), the dangers of uncoordinated care and poorly designed workflows.

Guest Blog: Why You'll Listen to Me ' but Not to Your Doctor
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 25, 2012 | Carolyn Thomas
As I like to remind my women's heart health presentation audiences, I am not a physician. I'm not a nurse. I am merely a dull-witted heart attack survivor. I also warn them that a lot of what I'm about to say to them is already available out there, likely printed on some wrinkled-up Heart and Stroke Foundation brochure stuffed into the magazine rack at their doctor's office.

Prepared Patient: Sick at Work (Updated Version)
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 25, 2012 | Health Behavior News Service
The typical week of sick time provided most employees may be enough if you get hit with the flu or a cold. But what happens when you have a chronic condition, such as Crohn's disease, multiple sclerosis or diabetes, and the time off you need exceeds your number of sick days? What protections do you have if you require major surgery?

'Death Panels': Beliefs and Disbeliefs in Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 23, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Virginia was particularly concerned that she would not get medical treatment after she turns 75. She had heard at that age, 'they send you a letter. They are going to start sending you literature on death.'

Operating Theater: Magnificent New Hospitals Do Not Equal Quality Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 23, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
The pianist was playing Chopin in the beautiful but deserted four-story lobby of the new hospital where my father was being cared for. The contrast between that lovely lobby and the minimal attention my dad received over the weekend, combined with a report about the architectural 'whimsy" of a new hospital at Johns Hopkins make me cranky.

Are You Afraid of Being Labeled a Difficult Patient?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 16, 2012 | Barbara Bronson Gray
Turns out we're a nation of doctor pleasers when it comes to health care. A recent study found that patients avoid challenging their physicians because they're afraid of getting the "difficult patient" label.

Guest Blog: What Fuels Patients Searching Online
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 10, 2012 | Andrew Schorr
From day one, Patient Power has been about giving a voice to patients and addressing the real concerns and issues of patients and caregivers. That's one reason we do regular visitor surveys, such as our current Spring 2012 survey. We constantly strive to better understand the people we serve; their needs and concerns; and the impact of what we provide. The initial results are fascinating and I wanted to share some here...

I'm Not Taking That Drug if it Makes Me Itch! More on Medication Adherence
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 2, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
Our unwillingness to take our medicine as directed is often mistakenly viewed by clinicians and researchers as a sign that we are not 'engaged' in our care. Baloney. Many of us would be perfectly happy to do so were it not for those pesky side effects.

Guest Blog: Waiting Too Long for the Doctor? What to Do
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 1, 2012 | Barbara Bronson Gray
Waiting to see a physician is much, much different from waiting for an airplane or a bus'A friend recently asked me: Why do we have to wait so long for doctors and not for other professionals, like lawyers, accountants or dentists? And is there anything we can we do about it?

Guest Blog: Minimally Disruptive Health Care: Treatment that Fits
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 26, 2012 | Marcus Escobedo
My mom has always worked hard'.Now on Medicare and about to retire after 30 years, she will have to continue working hard, as will my retired father. I'm not talking about the time they'll spend maintaining their home or raising grandchildren. I'm talking about the difficult work that they, like millions of others, grudgingly started as they began approaching 65 ' the work of managing their multiple chronic conditions.

Hospitals, Practice Administrators and Clinicians: You Gotta Learn to Love Patient Ratings
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 25, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
You are increasingly being held accountable for the outcomes of the health care you deliver. Pay for performance; shared savings in ACOs; public report cards'the list of strategies to monitor and measure the effects of your efforts is lengthening. Many of you seem dismayed by the increased weight accorded to the patient experience of care ratings embedded in most of these programs.

Guest Blog: When Families Clash During the Doctor Visit
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 24, 2012 | Anne Polta
Family togetherness is usually a good thing but sometimes it's a source of conflict, and new research suggests doctors can be slow to recognize when families disagree about the best course of care.

More on'Patient Navigators and Talking to Your Pharmacist
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 20, 2012 | Conversation Continues
Two recent online posts build on topics we've explored on the Prepared Patient Forum previously. One on finding and using patient navigators/advocates, the other on making the most of your health care by working with your pharmacist.

Guest Blog: The Trouble with Trust
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 19, 2012 | Barbara Bronson Gray
A good friend with a chronic healthcare condition has over the last few years had a series of invasive procedures that have still not solved her problems.

What to Do About Long-Term Care Insurance
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 17, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
The decision to buy long-term-care insurance and how long to keep it is among the toughest people make as health-care consumers. The product is difficult to buy'confusing, complicated, and costly.

Guest Blog: A Second Opinion from Dr. Google
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 16, 2012 | Carolyn Thomas
I've often suspected that if only the E.R. doctor who misdiagnosed me with indigestion had bothered to just Google my cardiac symptoms (chest pain, nausea, sweating and pain radiating down my left arm), he and Dr. Google would have almost immediately hit upon my correct diagnosis.

Are Smartphones Changing What It Means to be Human?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 11, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
'Nagging is still nagging, whether it comes from your phone or your mom,' says Jessie Gruman, a social psychologist who heads the Center for Advancing Health, a patient-advocacy group out of Washington, DC. in the recent Boston magazine article, Are Smartphones Changing What It Means to be Human?

Guest Blog: How to 'De-Frag' Your Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 6, 2012 | Barbara Bronson Gray
If your computer has ever slowed way down you may have been advised to "defrag," which puts all parts of a file together in the same place on the drive, enabling it to run faster and more efficiently. In much the same way, your health care might need to be de-fragged.

Prepared Patient: How to Find and Use Health Insurance
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 5, 2012 | Health Behavior News Service
Several years ago, DeAnn Friedholm had to shop for her own health insurance. The prospective insurance company discovered she had had a couple of benign tumors more than a decade before and so denied her coverage because of her preexisting condition. Just like that, Friedholm had no good option for insurance in case she needed to see a doctor. Whether you are like DeAnn with a preexisting condition, are new to shopping for insurance or trying to figure out what coverage you do have, there are resources to help with this often complicated but important purchase.

The Supreme Court's Health Care Decision and Your Pocketbook
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 5, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Last week's drama at the Supreme Court and most of the media coverage that followed omitted crucial information: how a decision either upholding or junking the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will affect ordinary Americans. Because the health reform law is not well understood by most people, it's worth recapping what might happen.

What's Engagement Now? Expert Janet Heinrich Discusses Emerging Challenges
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 4, 2012 | Janet Heinrich
Primary care is the entry point into health care for most people. It provides the continuity of care over the lifespan. From that standpoint, it is the most familiar, trusted experience people have with health care.

Guest Blog: Defining Patient Engagement
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 3, 2012 | Anne Polta
Everyone in health care is talking these days about patient engagement, but a funny thing happened on the way to the discussion: There doesn't seem to be a widely agreed-on definition of what this actually means.

Dear Dr. ___[my surgeon],
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 28, 2012 | Andrew Robinson
I understand you are leaving [this hospital]'..By way of wishing you well, here are some thoughts that might help you in your new position

Why Can I Only Get Health Care from 9 to 5, M thru F?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 28, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
Last week, the waiting room of the out-patient cancer clinic looked like an airport lounge without the rolling suitcases. There were about 20 of us cancer survivor-types talking on our smartphones, fiddling with our iPads, reading The New York Times...What's wrong with this picture?

Hospitals Vary Widely in ICU Admissions
HBNS STORY | March 28, 2012
Hospitals vary widely in their admissions to intensive care units, which some experts believe are overused, costly and potentially dangerous. A new study in Health Services Research finds that the actions of hospitals - not the kinds of patients they attract - appear to be responsible for part of the difference in ICU use.

Guest Blog: What Can the Health Care System Learn from a Car Dealer?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 27, 2012 | Neil Mehta
I personally dread the car buying experience for many reasons but one thing that bothers me is the discontinuity. You often see the sales person several times and to some extent the character of your relationship with him/her impacts the decision to purchase the vehicle.

How to Choose a Doctor
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 23, 2012 | Harriet Hall
I get a lot of inquiries about how to find a good doctor. I don't have a good answer. I thought it might be useful to throw out some ideas that have occurred to me and hope that readers will have better ideas and will share their experiences about what has or hasn't worked.

Guest Blog: Marcus Welby, House and the Wizard of Oz
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 22, 2012 | Elaine Waples
Things are different for me now. Today I belong to that group of people with serious illnesses who spend lots of time in doctors' offices, diagnostic labs, and imaging centers. I quickly discovered that I had some interesting choices about my care.

Participatory Medicine 2.0
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 20, 2012 | Chris Gibbons
In 'Participatory Medicine: Must You Be Rich to Participate?' in the Journal of Participatory Medicine, Graedon and Graedon pose a question: 'Is the participatory movement leaving [the non-affluent] behind?' Their article suggests that only the affluent members of our society can afford care that is participatory. Their premise appears to be built on two assumptions that should be regarded as faulty.

Guest Blog: Adherence: The difference between what is, and what ought to be
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 16, 2012 | Scott Gavura
One of the most interesting aspects of working as a community-based pharmacist is the insight you gain into the actual effectiveness of the different health interventions.

Guest Blog: What Should Go in a Social History?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 13, 2012 | Vineet Arora
As I am on service, I realized that one thing that can be easily lost in the race to take care of patients with limited duty hours ' the social history.

Guest Blog: Giving the Patient Bad News
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 13, 2012 | Anne Polta
The patient, a young rodeo rider from rural Ohio, lies in a hospital bed, sick and in pain. The doctor has the results of his bone marrow biopsy and the news isn't good.

Guest Blog: The Disconnect Between Hospital Marketing and What Patients Need
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 6, 2012 | Andrew Schorr
A hospital's claims of highly rated care or state-of-the-art, multimillion dollar equipment may be only part of the equation for where you seek care.

Hospital Games: Luring Patients to the ER
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 6, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
You may have seen the billboards or gotten a message on your smartphone: 'Come to our emergency room; our waits are short.'

Employee Wellness Programs Provide Significant Savings Over Time
HBNS STORY | March 6, 2012
Employees who participated in a health-improvement program had fewer medical costs than non-participants, according to a new report in the American Journal of Health Promotion. In addition, three year employer savings outpaced the program costs with a return on investment of almost $3 to $1.

Guest Blog: A New Breed of Doctor
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 5, 2012 | Anne Polta
Starting in 2015, students who aspire to become doctors will be tested on more than just their knowledge of the sciences. They'll also need to have a good understanding of psychology, sociology and biology and how these forces help shape individual health and behavior.

Less Than 10% of People Manage Health via Mobile: A Reality Check on Remote Health Monitoring
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 1, 2012 | Jane Sarasohn Kahn
With mobile health consumer market projections ranging from $7 billion to $43 billion,a casual reader might think that a plethora of health citizens are tracking their health, weight, food intake, exercise and other observations of daily living by smartphones and tablets.

What's Engagement Now? Expert Patricia Barrett Discusses Emerging Challenges
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 29, 2012 | Patricia Barrett
One way NCQA looks at patient engagement is in the choice arena, by helping people pick who they'll get their care from. We provide information for people and purchasers to use to make choices about individual clinicians, practices and health plans, for example, based on objective ratings.

Guest Blog: Costs of Care...and Coercion?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 28, 2012 | John Schumann
Nora, a third year medical student, came to me in moral distress. Ms. DiFazio, one of the hospitalized patients on her Internal Medicine rotation, was frightened to undergo an invasive (and expensive) medical procedure: cardiac catheterization.

The Clinician's Role in Patient Engagement
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 27, 2012 | Inside Health Care
This week, three health care insiders highlight the role physicians play in promoting patient engagement.

The Government Meets the Jolly Green Giant
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 21, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Labels describing key features of health insurance policies will become a reality this fall fulfilling a provision of the health reform law that called for more disclosure and transparency. The idea was to copy the labeling for food products'

Primary Care Doctors Fail to Recognize Anxiety Disorders
HBNS STORY | February 21, 2012
Primary care providers fail to recognize anxiety disorders in two-thirds of patients with symptoms, reports a new study in General Hospital Psychiatry.

'Patient Engagement!' Our Skin is in the Game
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 8, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
The idea that we should actively participate in our health care now attracts attention akin to the discovery of a cure for the common cold.

What Consumers Don't Know About Their Health Insurance
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 7, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
On a chilly New York day, a sales agent for UnitedHealthcare stood on a noisy street corner in Spanish Harlem pushing Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. He was engaging in table marketing a way to snag new customers, converts from other MA plans, he hoped.

We Are All Health Illiterates: Navigating the Health System in a Sea of Paper and Financial Haze
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 2, 2012 | Jane Sarasohn Kahn
Health literacy isn't just about understanding clinical directions for self-care, such as how to take medications prescribed by a doctor, or how to change a bandage and clean an infected area. It's also about how to effectively navigate one's health system'and that skill is in short-supply'

Tweetchat with Jessie Gruman Today at 2PM on Overtesting and Overtreating in Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 1, 2012 | CFAH Staff
Join @jessiegruman, Otis Brawley MD, Executive VP of ACS and other experts on Twitter today at 2PM with ABC's @DrRichardBesser for a Tweetchat about overtesting and overtreating in health care. Use hash tag #abcdrbchat.

Young Adults Taking the Health Care Reins
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Your parents still might be willing to do your laundry, but if you’re over 18, they can’t make your medical decisions. Are you ready to navigate the adult health care system?

Cash Rewards from Your Health Plan
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 30, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has moved deeper into the business of transforming health care into a commodity governed by the rules of the marketplace. Plan members can get cash rewards'.if they use facilities for outpatient medical procedures and diagnostic testing recommended by the health plan, not their doctors.

What Are the Chances We Need to Understand Probability?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 25, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
We are all going to have to become tougher and smarter, even when we are sick if we are going to benefit from the health care available to us. What is it that we really need to know to do this successfully?

Guest Blog: 10 Sex Tips for Better Looking Health Insurance
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 23, 2012 | Michael Millenson
It's always interesting to watch health reform concepts move from policy shops and peer-reviewed papers into the mainstream. Provider report cards have surfaced in venues as diverse as Martha Stewart Living and The Examiner, a supermarket tabloid that promised to reveal 'America's 50 Best Hospitals.'

Revisiting Those Explanations of Benefits
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 19, 2012 | Trudy Lieberman
Katie Ryan-Anderson, a health reporter at the Jamestown Sun in Jamestown, North Dakota, had a question. What did all that gobbledygook on the Explanation of Benefits (EOBs) from Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota mean?

The Persistence of Medical Error
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 17, 2012 | Conversation Continues
The hospital can be a frightening place without having to worry about common medical errors that can complicate your treatment and recovery. Why do so many hospitals still struggle to prevent medical errors, how do they happen, and what's the solution?

Recommended Services Not Always Given During Patients’ Annual Exams
HBNS STORY | January 17, 2012
New research finds that patients may not always receive all of the screening tests and counseling services that are due during their medical checkups, according to a study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Guest Blog: Opening Up the Doctor's Notebook
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 13, 2012 | Anne Polta
If you could see what your doctor wrote about you in your medical record, would this hurt or enhance your relationship? A new survey found that the majority of patients ' more than 90 percent ' are supportive and even enthusiastic about being able to read the doctor's notes. But among physicians, the reaction was mixed.

Lessons from the Year of Living Sick-ishly
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 11, 2012 | Jessie Gruman
The new year set me reflecting about what I've learned about being sick over the past 12 months that only the experience itself could teach me. You know that old Supremes song, 'You Can't Hurry Love'? I learned that you can't necessarily hurry healing either, even if you work hard at it.

Prepared Patient: Using Physician Rating Websites
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 2, 2012 | Health Behavior News Service
User reviews and ratings on websites can help you locate a reputable handyman, the perfect restaurant for your anniversary dinner or the right TV for your den. So why wouldn't you turn to the Internet to find your next doctor? New health review sites promise to help you make this important decision for yourself or your loved ones. However, patients and physicians alike are finding that these doctor reviews aren't as transparent or useful as they might seem.

Prepared Patient: In Case of Emergency: Who's Who in the ER
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 22, 2011 | Health Behavior News Service
While commuting to work in September 2009, Ashley Finley stopped her bike short to avoid a pedestrian ' and flew over the handlebars, hitting her head on the pavement. Her chin gushing blood and with concerns about head injury, Ashley and her partner, Goldie Pyka*, immediately headed to an ER. Though their wait time in the Washington, D.C., emergency room was minimal, Pyka says she felt surprised by the number of people who participated in Ashley's care. 'I was expecting to see one person, tell them what happened and have that person help. I wasn't expecting to interact with that many people and to not really be told who they were and what they were there for. I felt we were very passive in the whole experience,' Pyka says.

Book Review: Dissecting American Health Care: Commentaries on Health Policy and Politics
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 21, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
My friend and former Chair of the CFAH Board of Trustees, Doug Kamerow, has written a book that I think you will like. His compilation of essays is wonderful if you have a mild interest in health policy and is important for public health students. It's also a fun read for those of us who spend our days working on the issues Doug highlights.

Who Accesses Health Care, and How?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 19, 2011 | Inside Health Care
All kinds of people seek out health care, but studies show that not everyone accesses and receives care in the same way. Here, health care insiders look at how access varies among women, children and those with disabilities.

1st Person: My Post-Op Problems Were Brushed Aside
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 15, 2011 | First Person
Instead of enjoying a full recovery, Herminia Briones experienced distressing new symptoms the year following her knee-replacement surgery.

Prepared Patient: Reducing Your Risk of Medical Errors
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 15, 2011 | Health Behavior News Service
Recovering from a knee replacement is difficult under the best of circumstances, but for Herminia Briones, the year following her surgery was filled with unexpected pain, complications and confusion. Her repeated attempts to draw attention to her problems went unheeded, beginning an unfortunate and not uncommon struggle with medical error. Why do medical errors happen and how can you help protect yourself from harm?

A Patient-Doctor Relationship Make-Over
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 13, 2011 | Conversation Continues
There is a growing recognition that the doctor-patient relationship needs to evolve from the traditional model of dominant doctor/passive patient to one that is more collaborative. Here are examples of how this relationship affects people's involvement in their care.

Guest Blog: Terms of Engagement: Co-Creating Our Future with Patients
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 12, 2011 | Gary Oftedahl
Today, physicians are confronted with an explosion of new technology, increasingly complex interventions, and an evolving focus on the need for longitudinal support of health issues, requiring increased involvement of our patients. While we may use different terms'engagement, involvement, empowerment, activation'in our discussions, all of them speak to the need to have active participation from patients and, in many cases, their family and other caregivers.

Using Physician Rating Websites
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
New health review sites promise to help you make this important decision for yourself or your loved ones. However, patients and physicians alike are finding that these doctor reviews aren’t as transparent or useful as they might seem.

Don't Miss the Chance to Engage Us in Our Care When Introducing Patient-Centered Innovations
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 30, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
I believe that it is unrealistic to expect that we will easily understand and ably engage in team care, shared decision making, care coordination and make use of patient portals of EHRs. Each of these carries the risk of being misunderstood by us in ways that further disenfranchise our efforts and good will unless it is discussed ' and recognized ' as the valuable tool it is.

What is the Scope of Primary Care?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 29, 2011 | Inside Health Care
Even when you know you should see a doctor, it can be hard to know whether to visit your primary care provider or consult a specialist. In this roundup, physician bloggers consider the range of services covered by PCPs.

Doctor-Patient Relationship Influences Patient Engagement
HBNS STORY | November 29, 2011
Patients who feel their physicians treat them with respect and fairness, communicate well and engage with them outside of the office setting are more active in their own health care, according to new study in Health Services Research.

What's the Price on That MRI? Patients and the Price of Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 23, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to speak as a patient about 'consumers and cost information' while being videotaped for use in the annual meeting of the Aligning Forces for Quality initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Here's what I had to say.

Conflicts of Interest and the FDA
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 17, 2011 | Inside Health Care
Patients rely on panels of experts to review and approve new treatments and products. The hope is that these experts are unbiased in their evaluations. Here, health care insiders debate whether there are enough conflict-free panelists to go around.

Who Will Help Cancer Survivors Stay Healthy When Treatment is Over?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 16, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
It is completely understandable if you associate the term 'cancer survivor' with an image of glamorous, defiant Gloria Gaynor claiming that She. Will. Survive. Or maybe with a courageous Lance Armstrong in his quest to reclaim the Tour de France. Or perhaps it is linked for you with heroic rhetoric and pink-related racing, walking and shopping.

1st Person: Are Doctor Ratings Sites Useful?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 15, 2011 | First Person
When it came time for Jennifer Stevens, an Omaha, Nebraska resident and mother of two, to find an obstetrician for her first baby, she was faced with a dilemma.

Prepared Patient: Using Physician Rating Websites
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 15, 2011 | Health Behavior News Service
User reviews and ratings on websites can help you locate a reputable handyman, the perfect restaurant for your anniversary dinner or the right TV for your den. So why wouldn't you turn to the Internet to find your next doctor? New health review sites promise to help you make this important decision for yourself or your loved ones. However, patients and physicians alike are finding that these doctor reviews aren't as transparent or useful as they might seem.

Guest Blog: Hard Cold Facts, or Hard Cold Doctors?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 10, 2011 | Andrew Robinson
I was first diagnosed while on vacation in 1994. A doctor entered the room and, without warning, said that I had 'a terminal and incurable form of leukemia' and 'less than five years to live.' Just like that. Turns out he was wrong'

The Rocky Adolescence of Public Reporting on Health Care Quality: It's Not Useful Yet, and We're Not Ready
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 9, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
The American people, long protected from the price of health care by insurance, are now forced to act as consumers. This situation is a free marketer's dream.

Take a Number
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 8, 2011 | Inside Health Care
Nobody likes to wait. And patients and doctors alike are frustrated by the general waiting that seems to be an inevitable part of delivering and receiving care. Here, Art Markman, Lisa Gualtieri, and anonymous patient blogger WarmSocks share their views.

Guest Blog: When Patients Demand Treatments That Won't Work
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 4, 2011 | Carolyn Thomas
When my son Ben came down with a sore throat this past summer, he went to his doctor for antibiotics. Both agreed it sure sounded like strep, so without having to wait for the throat swab test results, Ben left the office with a prescription for antibiotics. But were they the appropriate treatment? Do all bugs need drugs?

Getting the Patient's Perspective in Research: Will PCORI Deliver on its Promise?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 2, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
One major challenge for the new Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is to make good on its stated mission to improve health care by producing evidence 'that comes from research guided by patients, caregivers and the broader health care community.'

Guest Blog: Think Silver'Not Pink'for Breast Cancer Awareness Month
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 1, 2011 | Amy Berman
Because cancer is primarily a disease of aging, we shouldn't be thinking pink for Breast Cancer Awareness month'we should be thinking silver.

Guest Blog: A Patient's Perspective on Improving Care Transitions
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 28, 2011 | Donna Cryer
Two recent speaking engagements provided me the opportunity to think deeply about the discharge process, an area of healthcare delivery rampant with errors and missed opportunities to support sustained healing and health for patients.

Health Reform's First Casualty
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 27, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
The Obama administration has dealt a mighty blow to one part of the health reform law by effectively killing off the CLASS Act, which was to be a baby step in the development of a national program to pay for long-term care.

"That's Not What I Wanted to Hear!": Evidence-Based Medicine and Our Hard Choices
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 19, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
American health care treads a fine line between trying to serve the good of the many and the interests of the individual. But no one has yet figured out a cost-effective, yet humane, way to do both.

Why Patient Care Needs To Get Personal
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 19, 2011 | David L. Katz
Evidence-based medicine, in other words, is population-based medicine. The care of any individual patient is based on the experiences of patients who have come before. And while to some extent that is unavoidable, it is also a great peril.

Guest Blog: What's All That Other Stuff In My Medicine?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 14, 2011 | Scott Gavura
The perception from many consumers (based on my personal experience) seems to be that products are inferior if they contain non-drug ingredients. By this measure, drug products are problematic'

The Whole Package: Improving Medication Adherence
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 23, 2011 | Conversation Continues
Over-the-counter and prescription drugs are sold with instructions either on the package itself or in accompanying materials. Alas, research has shown that many people find this medication information confusing and thus do not take their medications correctly ' or at all. Can interventions like drug fact panels, reminder packaging and "integrated" health systems help solve the problem?

Will Oz Connect Washington with the People in the Heartland on Health Care Quality?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 21, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
When I think back over the past 35 years and my treatment for now four different cancer-related diagnoses, I am amazed by how much has changed. The diagnostic and treatment technologies are light years more sophisticated and effective.

Health News: Proceed With Caution
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 15, 2011 | Conversation Continues
Recent posts at Health News Review highlight how the over-simplification of medical journalism leads to misinformed, over-treated patients.

Our Experience Trumps Policy in Changing Our Health Care Beliefs
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 14, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
Our discomfort with the array of private and public sector proposals to improve health care quality while holding down costs should not be surprising. Most of us hold long-standing, well-documented beliefs about health care that powerfully influence our responses to such plans. For example, many of us believe that' if the doctor ordered it or wants to do it, we must need it.

Guest Blog: Who's to Blame for Drug Shortages?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 6, 2011 | Scott Gavura
All the best efforts to practice science-based medicine are for naught when the optimal treatment is unavailable. And that's increasingly the case ' even for life-threatening illnesses. Shortages of prescription drugs, including cancer drugs, seem more frequent and more significant than at any time in the past.

For Some Surgeries, More Is Better When Choosing Hospitals
HBNS STORY | September 1, 2011
Hospitals with higher surgical volumes for certain procedures are less likely to cause unintentional serious injuries to hospitalized patients when compared to those hospitals that perform the procedures less often.

'Ask Me if I Washed My Hands and Drank Gatorade in the Last Hour'
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 23, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
Do you suffer from decision fatigue when you are sick or anxious or overwhelmed by bad health news? Does your doctor make less well-reasoned decisions about the 10th patient she sees before lunch? How about the surgeon during his second operation of the day? How about the radiologist reading the last mammogram in a daily batch of 60? A provocative article by John Tierney in Sunday's NYTimes Magazine adds a new layer of complexity to the body of knowledge collecting around decision-making processes.

Doctors, Nurses Often Use Holistic Medicine for Themselves
HBNS STORY | August 19, 2011
U.S. health care workers, especially doctors and nurses, use complementary and alternative medicine far more than do workers in other fields, according to a new study.

Name Calling in Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 17, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
Here is access to my interview-Name Calling in Health Care-hosted by Taunya English on NPR station WHYY.

Check out this week's Grand Rounds at DrPullen.com
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 16, 2011 | CFAH Staff
Better Health's Grand Rounds is hosted this week by Dr. Ed Pullen, a board certified family physician practicing in Puyallup, WA. His medical blog provides an experienced family physician's viewpoint on medical news as well as giving interesting and helpful information to help patients be informed.

Rhetoric Ahead of Reality: Doctor Ratings Not Useful Yet
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 10, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
Given the current lack of useful objective information, we should be wary of imprecations for us to thoroughly check out any doctor before we consult him. For many of us, the idea that we can pre-judge the competence of a physician is presumptuous.

Better Health's Grand Rounds Volume 7, Number 44
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 26, 2011 | CFAH Staff
This week's Grand Rounds collection of posts wrestles with conflicts of interest in reporting on evidence, obstacles to the delivery of evidence-based care, using evidence in practice and care decisions, and providing patient-centered care.

We're Hosting Grand Rounds for Better Health on Tuesday, July 26th
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 20, 2011 | CFAH Staff
We're hosting Grand Rounds for Better Health on Tuesday, July 26th. Grand Rounds is a collection of top recent health care blog posts. For this week's theme and submission instructions...

The Hidden Secrets of Evidence
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 15, 2011 | Connie Davis
I have a fear. My fear is that the public has an unrealistic view of medicine and the science behind it.

Engagement Does Not Mean Compliance
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 13, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
Engagement and compliance are not synonyms. I am compliant if I do what my doctor tells me to do. I am engaged, on the other hand, when I actively participate in the process of solving my health problems.

Guest Blog: "Creepy" Invasion of Pharma Into Patient-Targeted Social Media Space
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 12, 2011 | Gary Schwitzer
Marilyn Mann is a securities lawyer and a breast cancer survivor. Here, she exposes the recent message she received from a woman who joined her Facebook page.

Understanding Your Medical Risk: Nice or Necessary?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 12, 2011 | Conversation Continues
Sam Wainwright from New America's Health Policy Program offers his opinion on the controversy surrounding whether or not doctors should present or withhold data about patients' medical risks.

Guest Blog: A Letter to a Patient
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 11, 2011 | Country Doctor
With humility and understanding of the ever evolving field of medicine, 'A Country Doctor' thanks a patient for 'staying with me.'

Inside Health Care: The Uneven Terrain of Behavior Change
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 7, 2011 | CFAH Staff
Three physicians navigate the perplexing world of health behavior in this week's Inside Health Care round-up.

Can New Tools Improve Medication Adherence?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 6, 2011 | Conversation Continues
Medication non-compliance is a pervasive problem resulting from a complex set of factors. Now, using publicly identifiable information, the credit-rating company FICO has developed a Medication Adherence Score that may help health plans identify those most at risk, and Geisinger Health Systems and CVS Caremark are conducting a study to assess whether enhanced doctor-pharmacist communication can help.

Shared Decision Making in the News
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 29, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
Media coverage of the challenges we face in making good treatment decisions often focuses on and sensationalizes medical errors, catastrophes and risks. So it was great to see this impressive TV news clip circulated by Gary Schwitzer of HealthNewsReview.org in his blog last week.

The Conversation Continues: Patient Portals and the Digital Divide
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 27, 2011 | CFAH Staff
New research on use of Kaiser Permanente's patient portal points to a widening digital divide for populations with limited education, health literacy or for certain ethnic/minority groups.

Don Berwick and Patient Centered Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 23, 2011 | Elaine Schattner
Berwick now heads the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. When he spoke in April, on transparency and how we might simultaneously cut costs and improve care, I thought his talk was pretty good. This morning, through Twitter, I came upon a short clip from a Berlin conference in 2009. Here, he tackles the meaning of patient-centered care. It's near-perfect.

The Conversation Continues: Vitamins and Supplements
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 23, 2011 | CFAH Staff
The WSJ Health Journal looks at the pros and cons of taking a multivitamin.

Should Doctors Protect Us from Data about Medical Risks?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 22, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
Sara had a pain in her side that she attributed to using a new ab machine at the gym. But over the next couple days, the pain increased and made her short of breath. On the third day, she consulted her primary care doctor, who examined her and found nothing untoward. But he recommended that she go to the Emergency Department to get the pain checked out. At the ED, she had a blood test and a chest x-ray, which were both normal. 'Do you want a CT scan?' she was asked by an ED physician. She replied, 'Well I've already been here almost three hours. I might as well.'

Conversation Continues: Young Adults and The Affordable Care Act
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 17, 2011 | CFAH Staff
Sara Collins of the Commonwealth Fund and veteran health care journalist Trudy Lieberman look at how the Affordable Care Act is and is not helping young adults stay covered.

Can EHR's Make Disparities Disappear?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 16, 2011 | Chris Gibbons
The answer is a definite "maybe", but making it happen will require a whole new way of thinking about Electronic Health Records.

Inside Health Care: Watchful Waiting
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 16, 2011 | CFAH Staff
Watchful waiting is more than 'doing nothing.' We've collected recent blogs on prostate cancer & watchful waiting from Laura Newman at Patient POV, the NYTimes New Old Age blog, and Gary Schwitzer of HealthNewsReview.

Check-In-The-Box Medicine: Can the Blunt Instrument of Policy Shape Our Communication with Clinicians?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 15, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
I sat in a dingy pharmacy near the Seattle airport over the holidays, waiting for an emergency prescription. For over two hours I watched a slow-moving line of people sign a book, pay and receive their prescription(s). The cashier told each customer picking up more than one prescription or a child's prescription to wait on the side.

What's Expected of You at Your Doctor's Office?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 14, 2011 | Stephen Wilkins
When you or I visit an accountant, a lawyer or car mechanic, we know what our role is and have a pretty clear understanding of what the ' expert' is supposed to do. But when it comes to a trip to the doctor these days the roles and responsibilities of patients and physicians have become blurred and unpredictable'and the patient seems to generally be on the losing end.

Patient Perspectives: Life with Chronic Illness
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 13, 2011 | CFAH Staff
This week's roundup includes patients discussing their experiences with diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, scoliosis, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Guest Blog: A Day in the Life of a Super Hero
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 10, 2011 | Lindsey Hoggle
Greg Mortenson, author of the New York Times #1 bestseller, Three Cups of Tea'One Man's Mission to Promote Peace'One School at a Time, is one of the latest fallen, or at the very least, stumbling heroes. Recent controversies have threatened his life's work to build schools in war torn communities like Iraq and Afghanistan. Mortenson has been commended by the likes of Tom Brokaw and Bill Clinton.

Guest Blog: Confused about Post-Operative Confusion
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 9, 2011 | Nora OBrien Suric
Several months ago my 80-year-old father had triple bypass surgery. As any family member would be, my father's wife, my siblings, and I were both worried and hopeful. We were told that the surgeon was the best and my father was in good hands. Afterwards, we were told that the surgery went well. However, one of the night nurses in the coronary care unit reported that my father took a swing at one of the doctors.

Guest Blog: Care That Helps People Make Plans 'In Their Own Way'
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 9, 2011 | Emily Gibson
Sixty-five years ago, Dr. Emily Gibson's grandmother never asked and was never told what was wrong with her when she was terminally ill. Gibson recognizes the change from 'the patient doesn't need to know and the doctor knows better' philosophy to one of a partnership between a clinician and patient, which is how she practices medicine in Northwest Washington state.

Appointment in Samarra*: Our Lives of Watchful Waiting
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 8, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
Watchful waiting has become a way of life for many of us. Last week Sam had his first six-month scan following treatment for esophageal cancer. It showed that that the original cancer had not recurred and that the tumors behind his eyes and the hot spots on his kidneys and liver hadn't grown. Sam and his wife, Sonia, are celebrating for a few days before they return to worrying, checking for symptoms and counting the days until the next scan.

Conversation Continues: Hospital Discharge Without a Net
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 7, 2011 | CFAH Staff
In The Wall Street Journal's Informed Patient column, Laura Landro notes various efforts hospitals are taking to prevent re-admissions, including Boston University Medical Center's use of a virtual nurse named Louise.

1st Person: After Years of Treatment, a Time to Wait
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 6, 2011 | First Person
For many freshmen, the first year of college is devoted to classes, work and socializing, with little thought given to health or longevity. But for Nikkie Hartmann, a Chicago-based public relations professional, the start of her college career also marked the start of 14 years of dealing with cancer.

Prepared Patient: Watchful Waiting: When Treatment Can Wait
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 6, 2011 | Health Behavior News Service
In today's fast-paced world, waiting ' whether it's at the doctor's office, in line at the grocery store or for an Internet connection ' is rarely considered a good thing. But when it comes to certain medical conditions, delaying treatment while regularly monitoring the progress of disease ' a strategy doctors refer to as 'watchful waiting,' active surveillance or expectant management ' may benefit some patients more than a rush to pharmaceutical or surgical options.

Inside Health Care: Show Me the Evidence
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 2, 2011 | CFAH Staff
Being actively engaged in your health care means understanding how the care you are receiving will benefit you. We expect the care we receive and the health advice we are offered to be evidence based, using the best research available. Journalists, a researcher, and a doctor call attention to common practices where evidence is lacking.

Why Angry Birds Gets More Play Than Health Apps
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 1, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
I have been musing about why, despite our fascination with gadgets and timesaving devices, so few of us use the apps and tools that have been developed to help us take care of ourselves.

The Cognitive Traps We All Fall Into
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 26, 2011 | Harriet Hall
In my recent review of Peter Palmieri's book Suffer the Children I said I would later try to cover some of the many other important issues he brings up. One of the themes in the book is the process of critical thinking and the various cognitive traps doctors fall into. I will address some of them here. This is not meant to be systematic or comprehensive, but rather a miscellany of things to think about. Some of these overlap.

What Must We Know About What Our Doctors Know?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 25, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
'The most important thing I learned was that different doctors know different things: I need to ask my internist different questions than I do my oncologist.' This was not some sweet ingénue recounting the early lessons she learned from a recent encounter with health care. Nope. It was a 62-year-old woman whose husband has been struggling with multiple myeloma for the last eight years and who herself has chronic back pain, high blood pressure and high cholesterol and was at the time well into treatment for breast cancer.

The Conversation Continues: Vitamins and Supplements
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 24, 2011 | CFAH Staff
Consumer Reports warns us to be aware of unregulated dietary supplements and provides some valuable resources for people considering taking supplements or who currently do.

Turning 65: Finding a Prescription Drug Plan
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 23, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
If I were to choose a Medigap policy to supplement my basic Medicare coverage, I would still have to buy a separate plan for prescription drugs, since Medigap sellers can't include drug benefits in those policies.

Guest Blog: How To Find Reliable Medical Content On The Internet
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 20, 2011 | Margaret Polaneczky
Site Jabber, a website funded by the National Science Foundation to help internet users separate the scams and frauds from real content, called and asked me for advice on how to find good medical content on the web. The interview reads like a huge promotion for my blog, something I was not expecting and for which I thank them profusely.

Why Do People Stop Taking Their Cancer Meds?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 19, 2011 | David Harlow
David Harlow highlights recent research that finds that people stopped taking their cancer medications due to high costs and a burden from taking a number of prescription drugs broadening the picture of poor medication adherence.

No Magic Pill to Cure Poor Medication Adherence
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 18, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
You are sick with something-or-other and your doctor writes you a prescription for a medication. She briefly tells you what it's for and how to take it. You go to the pharmacy, pick up the medication, go home and follow the instructions, right? I mean, how hard could it be? Pretty hard, it appears. Between 20 percent to 80 percent of us ' differing by disease and drug ' don't seem to be able to do it.

Better Health's Grand Rounds Volume 7 #34
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 17, 2011 | CFAH Staff
We received more than 40 contributions for this week's collection of health care blogs and columns. Patients, clinicians, policy wonks and interesting folks with opinions submitted original posts that are sure to expand your thinking and perspectives.

Patient-Centered Care: From Exam Room to Dinner Table
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 11, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
Only one in 10 respondents to a national survey could estimate how many calories they should consume in a day. Seventy-nine percent make few or no attempts to pay attention to the balance between the calories they consume and expend in a day.These and other piquant findings from the online 2011 Food and Health Survey fielded by the International Food Information Council Foundation (IFIC) struck home last week as I smacked up against my own ignorance about a healthy diet and the difficulty of changing lifelong eating habits.

We're Hosting Grand Rounds for Better Health on Tuesday, May 17th
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 10, 2011 | CFAH Staff
We're hosting Grand Rounds for Better Health on Tuesday, May 17th. Grand Rounds is a curated collection of top recent health care blog posts. Please submit any blog contributions for the May 17th Grand Rounds to grandrounds@cfah.org by Sunday, May 15th. We look forward to hearing from you, and be sure to check out our collection for Grand Rounds here on the Prepared Patient Forum, What It Takes, blog on May 17th.

Inside Health Care: Good Care Involves Good Communication
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 5, 2011 | CFAH Staff
Many consider medicine just as much of an art as a science. How you communicate with your clinician and how your clinician communicates with you can affect your care.

Patient Navigators: Are They Necessary or Just Nice?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 4, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
Each of the four times I have received a cancer-related diagnosis, I felt like I had been drop-kicked into a foreign country: I didn't know the language, I didn't understand the culture, I didn't have a map and I desperately wanted to find my way home.Over the years I have listened to hundreds of people describe the same experience following the diagnosis of a serious illness. As the number of physicians, diagnostic test sites and treatment options have grown and the lack of seamless, coordinated care persists, the majority of patients and their loved ones struggle to find the right care and make good use of it.

The Conversation Continues: Vitamins & Supplements
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 2, 2011 | CFAH Staff
Following our most recent Prepared Patient feature article, Dr. Steve Novella of the Science Based Medicine blog and Dr. Oz on The Dr. Oz Show explore a similar issue.

Watchful Waiting: When Treatment Can Wait
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
For some patients, delaying treatment while regularly monitoring the progress of disease may benefit them more than a rush to pharmaceutical or surgical options.

Guest Blog: Health Information Technology Has Come to My Town
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 28, 2011 | Linda Bergthold
All the talk about information technology in health care was just an abstraction to me until it actually came to my town. I read about all the money the federal government was spending to spur the development of electronic medical records, but most of my records were still stored in those vast walls of color coded folders. Then my medical group introduced a new IT system that allows patients to do a lot of fantastic things online ' for FREE!

Pothole Forming Ahead: Aging and the Migration of Health Services and Information Online
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 27, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
It was only a small hole in the pavement in front of my building last fall. But the seasonal snow, ice and salt, a dramatic increase in traffic and the neglect of a cash-strapped local bureaucracy has produced a honking big pothole that slows a lot of people down. We face a similar figurative pothole as vital health-related activities such as appointment scheduling, interaction with providers and comparative cost and quality information migrate to the Web.

Guest Blog: The Role of Experience in Science-Based Medicine
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 21, 2011 | Harriet Hall
Before we had EBM (evidence-based medicine) we had another kind of EBM: experience-based medicine. Mark Crislip has said that the three most dangerous words in medicine are 'In my experience.' I agree wholeheartedly.

Inside Health Care: Is Your Doctor a Social Butterfly?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 19, 2011 | CFAH Staff
There appears to be no area that social media cannot soak through to: farming, politics, dating, death and even taxes. It comes as no surprise then that social media has diffused into the world of health care. Clinicians, researchers, patients and hospital CEOs are blogging, tweeting and sending Facebook messages. This post reveals some of the recent dialogue on the web surrounding social media and its use by health care professionals.

1st Person: My Epidemic
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 18, 2011 | First Person
Journalist Meg Heckman becomes the source when she shares her experience of living with hepatitis C. She says, 'The worst thing about having hep C isn't the disease or symptoms, it's the way others perceive you when they find out you have it. Watch this video, which was also featured on the Association of Health Care Journalists' Covering Health blog and Stanford's Scope medical blog. Meg's six part 'My Epidemic' series was originally featured in the Concord Monitor.

The Conversation Continues: Vitamins & Supplements
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 15, 2011 | CFAH Staff
A new report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reveals that half of U.S. adults take vitamins and other dietary supplements.

Guest Blog: Death Panels and Decision Making: A Radio Interview
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 15, 2011 | Amy Berman
Diana Mason, former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Nursing, interviews Program Officer at The John A. Hartford Foundation, Amy Berman, and The New York Times blogger and nurse, Theresa Brown. Amy Berman was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer earlier this year, and in this interview, she says, 'Nothing was off limits.'

The Lemon of Illness and the Demand for Lemonade
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 13, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
'Life gives you lemons and you make lemonade'your response to all those cancer diagnoses is so positive, such a contribution!' 'Your work demonstrates that illness is a great teacher.' 'Your illness has been a blessing in disguise.' Well-meaning, thoughtful people have said things like this to me since I started writing about the experience of being seriously ill and describing what I had to do to make my health care work for me. I generally hear in such comments polite appreciation of my efforts, which is nice because I know that people often struggle to know just what to say when confronted by others' hardships.

For a Less Biased Study, Try Randomization
HBNS STORY | April 12, 2011
If you’re interested in the finer points of medical research, this story’s for you.

Inside Health Care: Overtested
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 12, 2011 | CFAH Staff
Doctors and an executive vice president share experiences of over-testing and over-treatment in medicine and propose solutions to alleviate the problem by using you.

Are We All Ready for Do-It-Yourself Health Care?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 6, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
The outsourcing of work by businesses to the cheapest available workers has received a lot of attention in recent years. It has largely escaped notice, however, that the new labor force isn't necessarily located in Southeast Asia, but is often found here at home and is virtually free. It is us, using our laptops and smart phones to perform more and more functions once carried out by knowledgeable salespeople and service reps.

Prepared Patient: Vitamins & Supplements: Before You Dive In
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 5, 2011 | Health Behavior News Service
At 98 years old, Bob Stewart swears by his dietary supplements as a secret to successful aging. He takes flaxseed and apple cider vinegar pills, along with a Japanese supplement called nattokinase. He has never had a 'bad experience' or side effects, he says. But Betsy McMillan, an Ohio writer, describes her overdose from a vitamin B complex supplement. After a few weeks of taking it'in which she never exceeded the dose recommended on the bottle'her liver began to swell and she was overwhelmed by fatigue. It turned out that the pills contained potentially fatal levels of niacin.

Guest Blog: One More Reason Patients Ask Doctors So Few Questions
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 31, 2011 | Stephen Wilkins
The most popular post on my blog is entitled Five Reasons Why People Do Not Ask Their Doctor Questions. Well it seems there is a sixth reason. The Reason? Patients were never supposed to ask doctors questions.

Does My Doctor Trust Me (and Does It Matter)?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 30, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
Members of the American public are frequently surveyed about their trust in various professionals. Doctors and nurses usually wind up near the top of the list, especially when compared to lawyers, hairdressers and politicians. Trust in professionals is important to us: they possess expertise we lack but need, to solve problems ranging from the serious (illness) to the relatively trivial (appearance).

Guest Blog: Quality or Value? A Measure for the 21st Century
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 24, 2011 | Marya Zilberberg
Fascinating, how in the same week two giants of evidence-based medicine have given such divergent views on the future of quality improvement. Donald Berwick, the CMS administrator and founder and former head of the Institute for Health Care Improvement, emphasizes the need for quality as the strategy for success in our healthcare system. But one of the fathers of EBM, Muir Gray, states that quality is so 20th century, and we need instead to shine the light on value. So, who is right?

The "True Grit"-tiness of Sharing Health Care Decisions with Our Doctors
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 23, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
In the recent Coen brothers' remake of the 1969 movie True Grit, Mattie Ross, an intrepid 14-year-old, is determined to hunt down and kill the man who murdered her father. To accomplish this, she hires U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, (played by a mumbling Jeff Bridges) a rough, one-eyed veteran of many such quests ' then announces that she plans to come along. She figures she is prepared.

How Code Creep Boosts the Price of Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 22, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
About 30 years ago I had my first run-in with code creep. A urologist I had visited for a garden-variety urinary tract infection billed $400 to determine that this was what I had. The price seemed excessive, and then I looked at the bill. The good doctor has 'unbundled' his services. He charged for every single thing he did'inserting a catheter, taking a urine sample, writing a prescription and finally adding a fee for a general office visit. I had thought all those things were part of the office visit. I protested. He reduced his charges, and I never went back.

Patient Perspectives: It's the Little Things
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 21, 2011 | CFAH Staff
It's all the little things that make caring for yourself or the one's you love with an illness that much more challenging. People with diabetes, MS and Rheumatoid Arthritis share their experiences in this patient blog roundup.

Patient Perspectives: Unspoken Rules
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 18, 2011 | CFAH Staff
When you've been to one clinic or hospital, you have been to one clinic or hospital. Each operates differently and expects patients to take on different roles and responsibilities, which are rarely explained.

Inside Health Care: Building Relationships with Patients
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 8, 2011 | CFAH Staff
A blog round-up on the importance of building relationships with patients---starting early with medical students. Hospital administrators and specialists also weigh in with solutions.

Guest Blog: Say What? Do Patients Really Hear What Doctors Tell Them?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 3, 2011 | Carolyn Thomas
I had a heart attack two years ago and was taken immediately to the O.R. for a stent implantation. Overwhelmed and terrified, I knew nothing of what was about to happen to me. What I learned later was that my stent may help a newly-opened artery to stay open. But a new study now suggests heart patients believe that stents have far greater benefits than they actually do. Should it be up to patients to ensure that doctor-patient communication is accurate or effective during an emotionally overwhelming medical event?

It's Time to Tango: Impatient With Progress on Patient-Physician Partnerships
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 2, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
The other day I came across this photo of a couple clasping each other in a dramatic tango on the cover of an old medical journal'a special issue from 1999 that was focused entirely on doctor-patient partnerships. The tone and subjects of the articles, letters and editorials were identical to those written today on the topic: 'it's time for the paternalism of the relationship between doctors and patients to be transformed into a partnership;' 'there are benefits to this change and dangers to maintaining the status quo;' 'some doctors and patients resist the change and some embrace it: why?'

How the Cost of Health Care Creeps Up and Up
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 1, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
In a previous post, I talked about what happens when a radiology practice goes digital for mammography, even though there's scant evidence that more-expensive digital is better than cheaper film for detecting cancer in older women. Yet the higher-priced costly procedure is winning out. That's pretty much the norm for U.S. health care, for instance, when ThinPrep replaced the conventional method for doing Pap smears. I used to pay $9 for the test; the one I had last summer cost $250.

Meaningful Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | March 1, 2011 | Chris Gibbons
iHealthbeat is reporting that, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute report, health care providers might not meet Stage 2 meaningful use rules unless they more actively engage patients about their role in the use of health IT. Although the National Coordinator for Health IT, David Blumenthal, has dubbed 2011 the beginning of the "era of Meaningful Use", it is clear that it is not clear what Meaningful Uses actually means.

A Young Father and His Information
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 25, 2011 | Bryan Vartabedian
It was sometime in the mid-nineties that parents started showing up in my office with reams of paper. Inkjet printouts of independently unearthed information pulled from AltaVista and Excite. Google didn't exist. In the earliest days of the web, information was occasionally leveraged by families as a type of newfound control.

Guest Blog: A Disconnect in Consumer Reports Survey of Doctors and Patients
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 23, 2011 | Gary Schwitzer
The thing that jumped out at me most from the Consumer Reports survey of almost 700 primary care physicians and thousands of CR subscribers - described by CR as "What doctors wish their patients knew" - was something about what patients wish their doctors knew.

Guest Blog: Defining Patient Engagement
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 18, 2011 | Donna Cryer
The mad scramble to figure out how to 'engage' patients in their healthcare has begun! Everyone from PR firms to hospital board members are trying to figure out how to engage patients in their health care. My question to hospitals and others is this: Why would you reject the help of thousands of individuals positioned in various ways to help you be more successful?

Vanishing Health Care Choices
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 16, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
Ask someone what he or she remembers Obama promising during the great health reform debates, and the response might be: 'We can keep the insurance we have.' The president did offer assurances that there would be no socialized medicine with the government dictating where you could go for care. He did not mention, though, that many insured people already have little say in what kind of coverage they get and who can treat them.

A Valentine to Shared Decision Making
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 14, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
Shared decision making is hot right now. Research. Surveys. Tools. Training. Conferences. Policies. The current model of shared decision making consists of providing patients with evidence that allows them to compare the risks and side effects of different treatments or preventive services when more than one option is available. After studying the evidence, the theory goes, patients discuss it with their physician, weigh their personal preferences and together the two agree upon a course of action.

The Conversation Continues: Rx Side Effects
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 10, 2011 | CFAH Staff

Inside Health Care: Evidence Patient Safety Improves With a Checklist
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 8, 2011 | CFAH Staff
Checklists are not just for rocket launches. Family doctor, Dr. Davis Liu, Rep. Giffords' trauma surgeon, Dr. Randall Friese, former hospital CEO, Dr. Paul Levy, and a fifth year medical student, Ishani Ganguli, post on the importance of using checklists to promote patient safety. A new British Medical Journal study agrees.

Guest Blog: The Emergency Room and the Wait
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 7, 2011 | Carrie Nelson
This is a HUGE problem. We have a lot of unnecessary hospital emergency department (ED) use in this country. Stories like this one in which a very ill child was kept waiting dangerously long to see the doctor are a natural consequence of ED overcrowding. You can blame the healthcare workers for not recognizing the severity of her illness. You can blame your doctor for those interminable waits on the phone that cause you to not even want to pick up the phone to request a same day appointment.

Prepared Patient: Side Effects: When Silence Isn't Golden
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 3, 2011 | Health Behavior News Service
'I had a wonderful gentleman patient who had resistant blood pressure,' recalls Vicki Koenig, M.D., a retired family doctor in Exmore, VA. 'When he came for a blood pressure check on the latest new med and it was great, I was ecstatic. Then he said, 'But I notice my urine's a little dark.' His was one of the first cases of fatal liver complications from this medication.' Medication side effects are common'but when should you speak up?

Guest Blog: The Beautiful Uncertainty of Science
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 2, 2011 | Marya Zilberberg
I am so tired of this all-or-nothing discussion about science! On the one hand there is a chorus singing praises to science and calling people who are skeptical of certain ideas unscientific idiots. On the other, with equal penchant for eminence-based thinking, are the masses convinced of conspiracies and nefarious motives of science and its perpetrators. And neither will stop and listen to the other side's objections, and neither will stop the name-calling. So, is it any wonder we are not getting any closer to the common ground?

One Small Step for Patient-Centered Care, One Less Barrier to Engagement
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | February 1, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
As far as my chemo nurse Olga* is concerned, I can do nothing right. She scolded me for sending an e-mail when she thought I should have called and vice versa. She scolded me for going home before my next appointment was scheduled. She scolded me for asking to speak to her personally instead of whichever nurse was available. She scolded me for calling my oncologist directly. She scolded me for asking whether my clinical information and questions are shared between my oncologist and the staff of the chemo suite. I could go on'

Side Effects: When Silence Isn't Golden
PREPARED PATIENT ARTICLE
Most treatments have some sort of side effect associated with them, and many of us may wonder if side effects are simply the price we must pay for a necessary treatment. But side effects shouldn't be taken lightly, for a number of reasons.

1st Person: Talking about Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 31, 2011 | First Person
Through poetry, art and music, people describe and reflect on their experiences with health care. In this Def Poetry Jam video, Thea Monyee and GaKnew Rowel tell about the birth of their daughter.

Inside Health Care: Who ARE you anyway, Doctor?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 28, 2011 | CFAH Staff
Pediatric specialist, Dr. Bryan Vartabedian MD, writes about a time when he forgot to introduce himself to a new patient and on the Patient Empowerment Blog, Trisha Torrey recognizes the problem with the lack of identification in the clinical setting, and reflects deeper on the issue of patient safety.

The Conversation Continues: In the ER
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 27, 2011 | CFAH Staff

Those Clever Drug Companies, Again
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 27, 2011 | Trudy Lieberman
If prizes were given for ingenious marketing, drug companies would win top honors. Like most businesses, they want to expand markets'that means getting you to buy more drugs whether you need them or not. Their appetite for finding new ways of doing that is insatiable.

Prevention Magazine Pushes High-tech, Non-Evidence-based Heart Screenings More Than Basic Prevention
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 26, 2011 | Gary Schwitzer
The February issue of Prevention magazine has an article, "Surprising Faces of Heart Attack" profiling "three women (who) didn't think they were at high risk. Their stories are proof that you could be in danger without even knowing it." No, their stories are not proof of that.

A Fighting Spirit Won't Save Your Life
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 26, 2011 | Richard Sloan
Dr. Sloan's piece 'A Fighting Spirit Won't Save Your Life', that recently ran in The Opinion Pages of the New York Times, calls into question our belief that we can affect our health through optimism and positive thinking.

Getting Through the Shock of a Devastating Diagnosis
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 25, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
It could happen tomorrow. The doctor says, "I'm sorry, I have bad news," and suddenly your life is turned upside-down, leaving you reeling from the shock of a potentially life-threatening diagnosis. Here is some advice on getting through that initial period.

When You Have an Insurance Dispute
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 24, 2011 | Jennifer Jaff
While access to health insurance is a critical component of finding good care and making the most of it, being insured is often just the starting point for frequent users of health care services.

Goodbye Acute Care, Hello, Rehab
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 21, 2011 | Health Behavior News Service
Given the interest in Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' transfer to a Houston rehabilitation facility, here is our Prepared Patient feature article: 'Goodbye, Acute Care, Hello, Rehab' . Understanding some of the myths and realities of rehab care can help patients and caregivers during this critical transition and recovery time.

Dicker With Your Doc? Not So Fast'
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 20, 2011 | Jessie Gruman
'How to Haggle With Your Doctor' was the title of a recent Business section column in The New York Times. This is one of many similar directives to the public in magazines, TV and Websites urging us to lower the high price of our health care by going mano a mano with our physicians about the price of tests they recommend and the drugs they prescribe. Such articles provide simple, commonsense recommendations about how to respond to the urgency many of us feel ' insured or uninsured ' to reduce our health care expenses.

Perseverance
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 19, 2011 | Patient Perspectives
This week's roundup features a collection of patient voices from around the web including: Winner of the reality TV show the Amazing Race, Nat Strand, RA Warrior Kelly Young, and alias blogger WarmSocks.

More on ERs
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 14, 2011 | Conversation Continues
CNN's Empowered Patient also focused on emergency rooms in their January 13th article Don't Die Waiting in the ER .More articles and features in Elizabeth Cohen's Empowered Patient series can be found here.

Prepared Patient: In Case of Emergency: Who's Who in the ER
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 13, 2011 | Health Behavior News Service
While commuting to work in September 2009, Ashley Finley stopped her bike short to avoid a pedestrian ' and flew over the handlebars, hitting her head on the pavement. Her chin gushing blood and with concerns about head injury, Ashley and her partner, Goldie Pyka*, immediately headed to an ER. Though their wait time in the Washington, D.C., emergency room was minimal, Pyka says she felt surprised by the number of people who participated in Ashley's care. 'I was expecting to see one person, tell them what happened and have that person help. I wasn't expecting to interact with that many people and to not really be told who they were and what they were there for. I felt we were very passive in the whole experience,' Pyka says.

Electronic Medical Record vs. Electronic Health Record: Clarifying the EHR/EMR Difference
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 13, 2011 | Joshua Seidman
What's in a word? Or, even one letter of an acronym? Some people use the terms electronic medical record and electronic health record interchangeably. But here at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), you'll notice we use electronic health record or EHR almost exclusively.

HIT-Resistant Strains
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | January 6, 2011 | Chris Gibbons
A recent report from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology calls upon the Federal government to facilitate the widespread adoption of a universal exchange language that allows for the transfer of relevant pieces of health data while maximizing patient privacy. Despite providing some very useful and important perspectives, the report also drops the ball in a few key areas.

Prepared Patient: Coping With the High Costs of Prescriptions
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 31, 2010 | Health Behavior News Service
Cost-cutting measures are creeping into the medicine cabinet. We split pills in half or take the drugs every other day to stretch our doses. We stop filling the prescriptions for our most expensive drugs. We buy prescriptions from online pharmacies with questionable credentials. As patients pay more for their prescription drugs ' whether it's through higher insurance co-pays or shouldering the full costs ' many people decide to opt out of taking the drugs altogether. But there are safer ways to cut costs than skimping on ' or skipping 'the medicines you need.

Prepared Patient: The Handoff: Your Roadmap to a New Doctors Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 29, 2010 | Health Behavior News Service
It could be a broken wrist, or a life-altering battle with cancer, but sooner or later most patients run up against the diagnosis that sends them from their primary care doctor's care into the hands of a new physician. In medical circles, this transition is called the "handoff" a casual name that conceals the complications and risks of this journey.

Prepared Patient: Sorting Out Medical Opinion Overload
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 28, 2010 | Health Behavior News Service
When her grandmother experienced a sudden onset of dizziness, slurred speech and facial drooping, Kafi Grigsby found herself in an emergency department waiting room, surrounded by five doctors with four different opinions on what had occurred and how to treat it.

Prepared Patient: Taking Charge of Your Health Records
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 27, 2010 | Health Behavior News Service
File folders, marching across the shelves in an orderly line behind the receptionist's desk, may be the first thing you see when you sign in for a doctor's appointment. While it's tempting to believe that your personal health history is neatly contained within one of those folders, the truth is far more troubling.

Prepared Patient: Effective Patienthood Begins With Good Communication
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 24, 2010 | Health Behavior News Service
Given all the obstacles that prevent us from getting to the doctor's office scheduling an appointment, digging out the insurance card and plain old procrastination it is good health sense to make the most of your time when you are finally face-to-face with your health care provider.

Assessing Risk: Medicare Advantage vs. Medigap vs. Drug Coverage Only
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 22, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
As Medicare's open enrollment season draws to a close, it's a good bet that seniors are still sifting through all those brochures and flyers that have come in the mail the last several weeks. My husband received 22. Here's a simple rule to make the sifting go a little faster.

Patient Perspectives: Spoon Theory, Gift Ideas, and Stockpiling Meds
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 21, 2010 | CFAH Staff
A collection of patient voices from around the web. This week's roundup includes: Christine Miserandino & e-Patient Dave on The Spoon Theory, Amy Tenderich with gift advice, and WarmSocks on keeping an emergency supply of meds.

Mini-Med Policies: Is the Government Telling Us Something We Don't Already Know?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 17, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
The new health reform bureaucracy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has announced that it will now require employers, health insurers and union welfare benefit funds to disclose to policy holders that the health insurance they have may not be real health insurance at all. They now have to tell us if their coverage does not meet minimum benefit standards required by law and by how much they fall short. So those who have mini-med policies will now get a notice telling them that their policies cover very little. As if people don't already know.

What a Year for the Center for Advancing Health!
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 16, 2010 | Douglas Kamerow
As many of you know, this fall, Jessie Gruman, CFAH Founder and President, was diagnosed with stomach cancer, her fourth cancer-related diagnosis.' We have all been touched and gratified by good wishes for her and CFAH from around the world.

Health Reform: Elections, Politics and Patients
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 14, 2010 | Lisa Esposito
Health care reform is a hot topic with yesterday's court ruling that a portion of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.

Clueless In Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 8, 2010 | Chris Gibbons
Some patients don't tell their doctors the full story about their health. Sometimes physicians aren't aware of the omission; others know the patient is withholding information. Either way, physicians are responsible for the decisions they make regarding what they know and do for these patients. Electronic health records will not change this reality.

Assessing Your Risk: Buying a Policy That Doesn't Cover Much
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 2, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
My friend Ariane Canas, a New York City hairdresser, was eager to tell me about a new health insurance policy she had come across. It was cheap very cheap as such coverage goes. I knew that she and her husband, who is also self-employed, had gotten a notice this fall from their current carrier advising of a 33 percent rate increase.

More Can Also Be Less: We Need a More Complete Public Discussion about Comparative Effectiveness
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 1, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
Media coverage of the government's new investment in comparative effectiveness research leans heavily toward the effects of such research on new drugs and technologies: Will such evaluations lead to restricted access to the latest innovations? Will insurance no longer cover a drug that might give my aunt another year to live? Will such research hinder the development of a drug that could cure my nephew of type 1 diabetes?

Conversation Continues: Physicians and Their Relationships with Pharmas
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | December 1, 2010 | CFAH Staff
Gary Switzer's post on the Health News Review blog reminds us once again of potential conflicts between physician/pharma and consumer interests.

Inside Health Care: Exploring Accountable Care Organizations
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 30, 2010 | CFAH Staff
Doctors, lawyers, researchers, and hospital CEOs all have something to say these days about Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). A collection of web posts includes: Frank Pasquale with Concurring Opinions, Anna D. Sinaiko and Meredith B. Rosenthal in The New England Journal of Medicine's November Perspectives, Vince Kuratis on The Health Care Blog, Jim Sabin on KevinMD, and Paul Levy on Running a Hospital.

Patient-Experts at Medical Conventions
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 30, 2010 | Andrew Schorr
Increasingly, you are finding real patients who have the conditions discussed at conventions, in scientific sessions, and around exhibit halls. Patients like me want to be where that news breaks; we want to ask questions and thanks to the Internet we have a direct line to thousands of other patients waiting to know what new developments mean for them. PR types and social networking media analysts take note: we are a new force to contend with.

Book Review: Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 29, 2010 | Connie Davis
I've been following evidence-based medicine for many years and I've been appalled by the way it is playing out. We have pay-for-performance that does not understand that the reliability we are after is not in reliably (read blindly) applying a guideline to a patient population, but rather reliably considering how the evidence applies to the individual in a health care interaction. We have guidelines that are based on expert opinion, often influenced by drug company funding, or based on bad science. And we have a news media that seems unable to present medical findings in a balanced and understandable way.

Inside Health Care: A Doctor, a Nurse, and an Intern Weigh-In on EMRs on KevinMD
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 24, 2010 | Inside Health Care
KevinMD hosts a range of clinicians who comment on the electronic medical record. Guests include: Dr. Christopher Johnson, pediatric intensive care doc, who blogs on ChristopherJohnsonMD; Jared Sinclair R.N., an ICU nurse and pre-medical student, who blogs at jaredsinclair + com; and Angienadia M.D., a Yale intern, who blogs at Primary DX. Read what they have to say about EMRs.

Does Long-Term Care Insurance Have a Future?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 23, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
The decision by Metropolitan Life to stop selling long-term care (LTC) insurance once again calls into question the viability of that product as a way to pay for nursing home, assisted living and home care needed by the growing number of elders. MetLife was a solid company'big and reputable, with a knack for selling policies to workers whose employers offered the coverage as an extra benefit. It was a name that people trusted in an industry characterized by many small sellers, some of whom became insolvent.

After Visit Summary - Little Things Mean a Lot
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 19, 2010 | Jim Sabin
When I was in high school, the singer Kitty Kallen had a #1 hit - "Little Things Mean a Lot." The ballad is decidedly uncool by current standards, but as a teen-ager I liked its romantic dreaminess. The song popped into my mind as I was musing about the after visit summary I was given at the end of an appointment with my primary care physician yesterday.

Social Media Approach To Healthcare Disparities
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 17, 2010 | Chris Gibbons
Chris Gibbons, MD, CFAH Board Member, interviewed by CNN on using social media and web coupons for health care.

Prepared Patient: Your Doctor's Office, Demystified
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 17, 2010 | Health Behavior News Service
Long gone are the days when all nurses sported identical uniforms and only physicians wore white coats and scrubs. Today, when visiting your doctor's office, it can be difficult to know with whom you're speaking and what role they play in your health care.

GoodBehavior!: Evidence That Engagement Does Make a Difference
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 15, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
There is tremendous intuitive appeal in the idea that people must be engaged in their health care to benefit from it. To date, however, there has been little direct evidence to support the claim that our engagement affects health outcomes.

Integrating Patient Experience into Research and Clinical Medicine: Towards True Personalized Medicine
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 12, 2010 | David Gorski
We advocate science-based medicine (SBM) on the Science-Based Medicine blog. However, from time to time, I feel it necessary to point out that science-based medicine is not the same thing as turning medicine into a science. Rather, we argue that what we do as clinicians should be based in science. This is not a distinction without a difference. If we were practicing pure science, we would be theoretically able to create algorithms and flowcharts telling us how to care for patients with any given condition, and we would never deviate from them.

Inside Health Care: Physicians Put on a Gown and the Power of Touch
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 12, 2010 | Inside Health Care
A collection of professional voices from around the web including Dr. Herbert Mathewson in The Health Care Blog, Dr. Kevin Pho of KevinMD.com, and Dr. Rob Lamberts on his blog, Musings of a Distractible Mind. These highlight the patient experience from a professional perspective and the power of touch.

Doctors and Their Speaking Fees
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 11, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
Would you keep using a doctor who collected $300,000 or even $300 in speaking fees from drug companies for saying a good word about their products? That's the question the non-profit, investigative journalism outfit ProPublica is inviting thousands of patients to ponder.

Patient Perspectives: Dogs, Seeing a New GP, D-Blog Day and Mechanics v. Docs
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 11, 2010 | CFAH Staff
A collection of patient voices from around the web. This week's roundup includes: Dana Jennings of the New York Times, RA Warrior Kelly Young, Leighann Calentine from D-Mom Blog: the Sweet Life with a Diabetic Child, and the Patient Empowerment Blog's Trisha Torrey.

Consumers v Patients
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 9, 2010 | Donna Cryer
Much is made of what to call those of us actively engaged in pursuing and receiving medical care from health professionals, and this post does not intend to settle that issue. But I've discerned a shift towards using "consumers" as the catch-all term to describe people who actually have different experiences, needs, views, and behaviors within the health care system. Although often used interchangeably, I believe there are distinctive differences between consumers, patients, and patient warriors in the context of health care.

Inside Health Care: Dichotomies: Quality or Familiarity? Empower or Manage?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 8, 2010 | Inside Health Care

Gale Fisher's Missed Diagnosis (Almost)
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 8, 2010 | Andrew Schorr
As Gale Fisher approached her late 60's, she remained active - playing golf and walking, but pain in her right calf made walking difficult, and it was getting worse. Gale eventually saw her doctor who suggested fusion surgery. Gale sought a second opinion from a vascular surgeon. He proposed a major surgery that would require 10 days in the hospital to open the blood flow. Gale sought out third opinion. The information she received changed her life.

Hospital Discharge Without a Net
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 3, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
By the time I reached the sixth day of my hospitalization for stomach cancer surgery, I was antsy to go home and I quizzed each nurse and physician who came into my room about what must happen for me to be liberated the following day. Their responses were consistent: my surgeon would visit in the morning and write orders for my release. Then I would have a comprehensive discussion with my nurse about my discharge plan, after which I could leave.

Patient Engagement on the Med-Surg Floor
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 2, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
Three times a day, as though responding to some signal audible only to the generously medicated, we rise from our beds to join the slow procession around the perimeter of the unit. Like slumped, disheveled royalty, each of us blearily leads our retinue of anxious loved ones who push our IV poles, bear sweaters to ward off the harsh air conditioning and hover to prevent stumbles. Some make eye contact. Few talk. Each of us is absorbed in our suffering and our longing to return to our bed.

Contemplating Safety While Lying Down
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | November 1, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
You have to get out of this hospital it's a dangerous place, each of my physician friends exclaimed when they came to visit me during my recent stay after surgery for stomach cancer.

What You Need to Know About Your Health Insurance Policy
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 29, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
Federal and state government officials and their opponents in the insurance industry have been busy as beavers these days chewing on that perennially vexing problem: how to disclose insurance information so consumers will be wise shoppers. Since we have a market-based model of health insurance, that's not a frivolous question. What works best, what doesn't, and what do consumers acting as shoppers really care about?

Inside Health Care: Trusted Sources?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 29, 2010 | Inside Health Care
The increasing presence (sometime hidden) of advertisers in health care websites - including the new Sharecare - was discussed this week by healthcare journalists Gary Schwitzer and Pia Christensen, Dr. Elaine Schattner, M.D. and marketer and advertiser Dan Dunlop

Patient Perspectives
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 28, 2010 | CFAH Staff
This week's collection of patient perspectives includes Patient Power's Andrew Schorr, Leighann Calentine of D-Mom Blog, e-Patient Dave, and RA Warrior Kelly Young.

Inside Health Care: Combating Mis-Communication
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 27, 2010 | Inside Health Care

Now or Later
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 26, 2010 | Chris Gibbons
The October 19 edition of iHealthBeat is reporting that National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal and HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health Garth Graham have asked health IT vendors for their help in preventing a "digital divide" involving health care providers who serve minority communities. Blumenthal and Graham called on these vendors to make sure they target such health care providers in their marketing and sales campaigns.

How Useful Is the Government's Hospital Compare Web Site?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 22, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
Well, what do you know? Another study surfaced this week raising more questions about the usefulness of the information on the federal government's Hospital Compare web site, just at a time when most of us are thinking about choosing new health plans for next year. For some time now, the standard advice has been to look at all available data for the doctors and hospitals in the plans you are considering. That has meant heading to the Medicare Web site and its Hospital Compare data set.

Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Blues And Why
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 21, 2010 | Jim Jaffe
Some broad questions about how bad it is to be big are raised by the government's new antitrust suit against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, which allegedly used its market dominance to force hospitals to charge other insurers a third more than the insurance giant paid. One can see how this could help the nonprofit Blues control the market, but it is difficult to determine how this was in the public interest ' or even advantageous to those it was covering.

What Can Health Care Professionals Do About Poverty?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 20, 2010 | Connie Davis
A colleague of mine, Cheryl, has been trying to help a solo physician address a thorny issue. Through the use of 'How's Your Health', an amazing Web-based suite of health and practice tools, the physician realized that many of her patients struggled with maintaining an adequate income. Cheryl went looking for some ideas for the physician, and she came across this: Health Providers Against Poverty, an Ontario-based group that has a toolkit to help primary care professionals address poverty issues.

Direct-to-Consumer Health Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 19, 2010 | Chris Gibbons
On October 11, 2010, Baltimore Sun reporter Meredith Cohn reported that some U.S. health care providers are experimenting with trying to reach patients through social media and reaping big rewards. Providers are not just using Twitter and Facebook but trying new social media tools like Groupon, Foursquare, Scoutmob and LivingSocial that all blend social media with market forces to bring customers value and create new revenue for entrepreneurs, business owners and now health care providers.

Atlantic: Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 18, 2010 | Society for Participatory Medicine
There's an extraordinary new article in The Atlantic, 'Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science.' It echoes the excellent article in our Journal of Participatory Medicine (JoPM) one year ago this week, by Richard W. Smith, 25 year editor of the British Medical Journal: In Search Of an Optimal Peer Review System.

Revisiting Those Puzzling EOBs: New York Penalizes Aetna
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 14, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Selecting Health Insurance? Help from Around the Web:
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 13, 2010 | CFAH Staff
In his most recent blog, "How to Pick Good Health Insurance - Your Life Depends on It," Dr. Davis Liu emphasizes how important is it for us to evaluate carefully our health insurance plans. Liu points out that, unlike other companies or products whose efficacy may impact our lives modestly ' your car wash, dry cleaners and choice of movie theater ' the ranking of your health insurance plan relative to others impacts your life greatly. And not all health plans are created equal.

Is Health Care Killing Us?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 8, 2010 | Chris Gibbons
Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor at Reuters, is reporting that a recent study suggests that Americans die sooner than citizens of a dozen other developed nations and the usual suspects ' obesity, traffic accidents and a high murder rate ' are not to blame. Instead, poor health care may be the cause.

Could Less Health Care Be Better for Our Health?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | October 4, 2010 | Jim Jaffe

Adding an Adult Son or Daughter to Your Insurance
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 30, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Learning About Public Participation
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 29, 2010 | Connie Davis
I've been spending time lately becoming more familiar with methods of public participation and the evidence behind participation. When I first moved to British Columbia, the government was sponsoring 'Conversations on Health' which I initially found exciting and innovative. That effort was designed to give the public a voice about health care in the province. I sent in my comments via the website and read about the public meetings being held throughout the province. I became a skeptic when I compared the data and original reports from the conversations and the conclusions. They didn't seem to match.

Matt Seeks Health Insurance, Part 2: The Runaround Continues
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 24, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Guest Blog: How Personal Pain Leads to Medical Dedication
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 24, 2010 | Andrew Schorr
The old joke about psychological therapists is they are among the biggest consumers of therapy themselves. Lately, I have been noticing more and more how a significant portion of the people we meet wearing white lab coats have a very personal connection to the medical work they do. For them it is not a job, a meal ticket, or just putting their years of training into practice, it is a mission connected to something in their past, something in their own body, or the health of a loved one.

Do Scientists Understand the Public? And Does It Matter?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 16, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
Exploring these questions is relevant to all who are working to support people's engagement in their health and health care. They are also relevant to the debate about the value of comparative effectiveness research. Science journalist Chris Mooney reports a couple of provocative points in this account of four meetings on the topic sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences over the past year.

A New Way for Hospitals to Make a Little Extra'Tax the Sick
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 8, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
Dianne Cooper Bridges, a feisty health reform activist in Massachusetts, recently found herself in the hospital for a routine consultation with no tests or procedures. Because Bridges, a self-employed designer, refuses to buy the required health insurance in her state, she has no insurance and occasionally pays a fine. That means she shops carefully for medical care, which she pays for in cash. When she called the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center and asked how much her consultation would be, the hospital quoted her a price between $100 and $200.

The People and Evidence-Based Medicine: We are All Above Average
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | September 1, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
Problems with evidence-based guidelines and comparative effectiveness research all have at their core the conflict between averages and individuals.

Matt Seeks Health Insurance: A Young Adult Falls Through the Cracks of Health Reform
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 26, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Antibiotic Resistance, Evidence-Based Medicine and the End of the World as We Know It
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 24, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
Delivering evidence-based medicine is a deceptively elegant and simple goal.' But new findings about the increase in antibiotic resistance challenge us to consider just how complicated and challenging it is to actually define and deliver evidence-based care.'

New Solid Evidence Showing the Impact of Physician Communication on Our Engagement in Care
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 19, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
Ask us if we are more likely to use a medication as directed if our doctors explain why a specific drug might be helpful, how to take it so that it is most effective and what its possible side effects are and then discuss whether we think we are willing and able to take it.

Patient-Centered Care Should Minimize Post-Surgical Surprises
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 17, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
Rick Hamlin, in an op-ed essay last week, recounted how his surgeon assured him that he would be able to go on a family vacation to Spain three weeks after his open-heart surgery. In the New York Times piece, Rick described his disappointment and despair at the unexpected six months of fatigue, pain and depression that constituted his recovery.

Sorting Through the Indecipherable 'Explanation of Benefits' Is Becoming a Required Skill
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 16, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Making Sure Minnie Doesn't Bounceback
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 10, 2010 | James Cooper, MD

More People Choosing Consumer-Directed Health Plans---Pitfalls and All
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 9, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Hurry Up Tomorrow
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 5, 2010 | Molly Mettler

You Want Me to Discover WHAT on My Personal Health Record?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 3, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
The Robert Wood Johnson-funded Project HealthDesign primer on Personal Health Records (PHRs) describes the new PHR both as a repository for information related to one's health care and a way to record observations about daily living (ODLs). We're meant to track these observations the amount and quality of our sleep; what we ate; our blood pressure; our symptoms in the belief that such information will shape daily decisions and allow for a more productive discussion with (our) clinician.

More Than Pie in the Sky: Meaningful Use and the Engaged Consumer
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | August 2, 2010 | Molly Mettler

Are You a DIY Traveler/Patient?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 30, 2010 | Dorothy Jeffress
Once upon a time, most people traveling outside the US depended on a travel agent and some were only comfortable when they were part of an organized tour. Finding top hotels or out of the way adventures was best left to experts. Travel guides available at bookstores, though often outdated, were gripped in sweaty hands, consulted like Bibles.

Keeping an Eye on Insurance Rate Hikes
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 29, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Why Ask if You Won't Help Me
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 28, 2010 | Dorothy Jeffress
In a recent iHealthBeat post, Steve Findlay talks about a provision in the new meaningful use rules for health information technology issued by DHSS. Findlay noted that nothing seems to have moved the needle on people completing advance directives. He expressed hope that this can now be rectified if hospitals embrace the optional (menu set) meaningful use objective that promotes recording the existence of an advance directive in a person's EHR. It's a start.

Paying to Participate
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 14, 2010 | Goldie Pyka

What Happens When an Insurance Company Misbehaves
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 12, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Obama and My Uncle Johnny
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | July 2, 2010 | Kafi Grigsby

Hospital Ratings'What Do They Really Mean?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 29, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Is Choosing a Health Plan Like Buying a Car or Canned Goods?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 21, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
Do consumers buy health insurance like they buy canned peas? Or should they? That's the big question market place advocates have been trying to answer now for more than a decade. The government and others have thrown gobs of money at this vexing problem trying to figure out the best combination of stars, bars and other symbols that will catch the shopper's eye.

Watching the UK Careen Toward National Online Medical Records
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 9, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
The National Health Service in the UK has rolled out its campaign to inform the public that an individual's online summary care record will soon be readily available to any health care worker. At that point, people will be able to view their summary, schedule hospital appointments and make use of health information and links to help them manage their health and lifestyle by keeping track of information like your weight, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and medications.

What Happens When COBRA Disappears?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 4, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Getting to the Right Doctor at the Right Time
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 3, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
One of the behaviors necessary to be a prepared patient is to seek and use the appropriate health care setting when professional attention is required.

The Perils of Consenting Adults
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | June 1, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
Most of us like it when our health care decisions are simple and straightforward -- when the potential benefit of one option far outweighs the benefits and risks of the other. Should I smoke? No. Should I get a mammogram? Yes. However, advances in screening, preventive measures, diagnostic technologies and treatments have rendered our preference for the certainty of the simple choice obsolete.

Will You Be Helped by the New High-Risk Health Pools?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 26, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Participate in My Care? Room for Improvement
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 20, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
The Center for Advancing Health, just released A Snapshot of People's Engagement in Their Health Care, a study that found that most of us do relatively little to participate in our health care.

Our Shopping Problem
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 17, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
Apparently, borrowers who obtained a home loan in the last five years spent five hours researching a mortgage, half the amount of time they spent researching a car and the same amount of time they spent researching a vacation, according to a study reported in The New York Times on Saturday.

Access to Health Insurance Is Just a Start'
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 7, 2010 | Kalahn Taylor Clark

In a Hospital and Concerned About Quality?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | May 3, 2010 | Carol Cronin
Your mother is in the hospital.' The nurse comes in to give her a drug.' You ask what drug it is and it's something to which she's allergic ' a fact noted on the long list of things you had to provide at admission.' The nurse apologizes profusely and gets a substitute drug for her.' The next day about the same time, a different nurse comes in to give your mother a drug.' Again, you ask and again it is the wrong drug.

Can You Really Choose the Best?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 29, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman

Getting Test Results
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 27, 2010 | Dorothy Jeffress
Over the years, I've filled out plenty of forms at doctors' offices, but this was a new one for me.

Risky Treatment Decisions: The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 22, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
Tuesday's New York Times ran a story about the unreliability of the tests and the variation among laboratory standards that determine the potential effectiveness of new targeted cancer treatments. Linda Griffin, a physician with breast cancer, described the series of treatment decisions she made with her doctors about whether or not to take the very expensive, fairly disruptive and potentially very effective drug, Herceptin, based on a genetic test that was inconclusive and further, which produced different findings when the same material was retested.

Evidence and Trustworthy Intermediaries
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 20, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
2009 was not a good year for the public's understanding of evidence.

How Safe Is Your Insurance, Really?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 19, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
Throughout the long debate over health reform, the president told us if we liked the insurance we had, we could keep it.' No government would come between us and our health coverage!'

What is a Symptom, Anyway?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 14, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
I recently asked my dad if he ever reads the health section of the newspaper. He said "Nope, never. That's for people who are sick."

The Squeeze of Mail-Order Drugs for People with Chronic Illness
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 12, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
Do you have your prescriptions filled through a mail-order pharmacy? You are not alone.

Doctor, Please Pull Up a Chair or a Keyboard?
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 9, 2010 | Dorothy Jeffress
Yesterday, our Health Headlines included a study mentioned in the Washington Post that revealed that we are more comfortable and satisfied with our communications with our clinicians when they sit down to talk with us. This study surveyed patients while in a hospital but surely this is true in office visit settings too.

Not just about Mom and Dad's Health Insurance...
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 6, 2010 | Trudy Lieberman
In the past two weeks I have visited two college campuses---one in Brooklyn and one in Wisconsin.' Large numbers of students turned out to hear about the new reform law and wanted to know what it meant for them.'

Emergency Back-up Plan for Slow EHR Implementation: Us
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 5, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
We can be excused for thinking that our doctors have a computer program that allows them to track our health history and forward relevant record to a specialist to whom they are referring us. After all, when I walk in to my provider's office, the receptionist is sitting in front of a computer; plus my doctor makes use of other computerized devices for measuring my temperature, blood pressure, weight and heart rhythms.

Surprised I was So Unprepared
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 2, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
As the first blogger on this site, I write first as a person who has been diagnosed with three different types of cancer and a serious heart condition -- and as one who manages the long-term effects of that many diagnoses and that much treatment on a daily basis.

Welcome to the "What it Takes'' Blog!
PREPARED PATIENT BLOG | April 1, 2010 | Jessie Gruman
This posting marks the initial gathering of a virtual community of individuals who recognize that each of us must participate knowledgeably and actively in finding and using health care if we are to benefit from it.

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