US Military Pursues Patient Engagement

I had an amazing experience last Thursday. I encountered some of the smartest, fastest-thinking, most motivated healthcare transformation thinkers I've ever seen. The ideas were flying so fast it was like transformation popcorn. And this was in an organization I'd never heard discussed as health leaders: a U.S. Army "Physician Champions" meeting in Boston.

The people I met with have a particularly passionate commitment to effective care: having chosen the military themselves (not the world's best working conditions), they're distinctively committed to their patients. They have a long-running EMR system (electronic medical record), so that any "doc" who encounters a patient can see what previous providers have entered. And because of frontline military circumstances (at the front, a medic is the one you call "doc"), the records are used by all tiers of providers. In these conditions the value of accurate information is acutely apparent - as are the challenges of system usability and workflow.

The event leaders who invited me to speak were as passionate about patient engagement as anyone I've met anywhere. I spoke about participatory medicine, and heard discussions of real-world workflow issues and best practices for working with the system to get the job done. It was concrete and practical.

I had a strong sense that U.S. hospitals will have lots of meetings like this in the next few years as they implement EMRs.

I wondered why in all our civilian discussions of EMR I haven't heard of this group of change leaders. Sure, I've heard about the DOD's long-standing use of their medical record, and I know about the VA's system (which is not the same as DOD's). But I had no idea there was a group aggressively advocating for patient engagement in the military.

And to me that makes a ton of sense, because for the most part, when soldiers leave the service their medical record will no longer be visible to their new providers. They'll need to be engaged in their care.

My gratitude to Dr Bob Walker from the Europe Army Medical Command in Heidelberg and his team for introducing me to this special operation. Great people with an inspiring passion.

Vigil for Tyler Clementi and gay teen suicides

Last month Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi was secretly observed, via webcam, in a sexual encounter with another man. The encounter was streamed over the internet and tweeted by his college roommate. On September 22 Tyler killed himself. (Wikipedia)

Readers of my book know that a powerful force in my cancer story was my sister Suede (website), a jazz and blues singer based in the Provincetown, Massachusetts area with a profound respect for human. Last Friday she participated in an impromptu vigil for Tyler and the four other gay teens in the U.S. who reportedly killed themselves in September.

Here's an informal video of the vigil. Suede is briefly seen in the beginning, as she sings John Calvi's "The Ones Who Aren't Here," from her first album. The song was written about and recorded during the worst of the AIDS epidemic. The quality's not great - Suede was standing on a park bench, playing through a battery powered amp - but the message is authentic. The speaker is Suede's friend Bradley, who organized the gathering.



(Email subscribers, if you can't see the video, click here.)

I ask that we honor humanity in all its diversity and variation, and that we teach our youngsters, even rambunctious teens, to do the same. This is no joke.