This is my last speaking opportunity for 2011. If you told me at the beginning fo this year that I was going to be in 4-5 different states talking about social media, I would have told you that you're nuts. If you told me that I would be presenting at a national meeting about social media, I would have laughed out loud. It has been quite a ride this year. I hope to write a more comprehensive post later. This has such been a good time, and I hope that this experience continues in 2012!
A few weeks ago, I met Kari Ulrich at the Mayo Clinic Social Media Summit. She is also known as @FMDGirl on twitter. Her diagnosis is Fibromuscular Dysplasia (FMD), which I admit, I don't know much about. I encourage you to check out the video above in which she tells her story. She told the same story at the Summit.
Kari approached me for a unique opportunity to take part in an e-patient chat on the topic of FMD. This chat will take place on the FMDChat facebook page on Thursday, November 10th, 2011 from 8:00-8:30pm Eastern Standard Time. Also taking part will be Mike Ulrich, MD who is a Family Physician at the Mayo Clinic. Get more details on the chat here.
Some preliminary questions have been proposed for the participants, including the following:
What are the biggest challenges you face with your primary care physicians (PCP)?
Share with us what you appreciate most about your PCP.
How much time do you need with your physician for an average FMD follow-up appointment?
If you could give your PCP one piece of advice, what would that be?
What areas do you think need to be addressed most with PCP in dealing with patients with FMD?
There will probably be more of these good questions during the chat tonight. Thanks to Kari and her co-facilitator Sarah for conducting the chat tonight. If anything else, I invite you to listen. People just want to be heard. I'm looking forward to this unique experience tonight.
In my opinion, the #FMRevolution needs to learn from the Occupy Wall Street protestors. What do I mean by that? In the video above, you'll see a segment from Family Medicine Rocks Podcast #21 last week where I talk about this in detail. In brief...
My friend Kevin Bernstein, of the Future of Family Medicine Blog, released a creative little video (#FMRevoluton video) getting people fired up about Family Medicine. Ever since it's release, it has made the rounds in the Family Medicine community, with numerous postings on people's and organization's facebook pages. And, as of this blog post, there have been over 1600 views (which in the FamMed community, I think qualifies as a "viral" video).
Even after all that - So What? What does it really mean? People really like a video that says Family Medicine is cool? To me, it means people really like to feel good about Family Medicine. Does that really change anything in the world? Does that really change anything in the health care system? No.
Here is where Occupy comes into the picture. We can all agree that Occupy has a lot of frustrated feelings about their world situation. But, they are doing something about it. They are not staying home and whining about things. Now, you may not agree with what Occupy is doing, but most of #FMRevolution is sitting at home, in front of their computer, clicking "like" on facebook and hoping the world changes around them.
Now, another video was also recently released and making the rounds in the Family Medicine community. This video is with my friend Sarah Sams and was produced by the AAFP. In this video, Sarah is talking about the impending Medicare cuts at the end of this year for physicians. She gives clear and concise advise on what we can DO to address the problem. Unfortunately, as of this posting, there have been only 200 you tube views. No, it doesn't give a happy feeling at the end of it like the #FMRevolution does. But, it gives a more important message.
Sarah Sams is Turning Emotion Into Action. And, I really believe that if #FMRevolution wants to succeed in its goals, the Family Medicine community needs to stop whining and complaining about what is going on in this broken healthcare system - and they need to DO something about it. For some people, it's contacting legislators and advocating for a permanent fix in the Medicare payment system before December 31, 2011. For other people, it's educating about what Family Medicine is really about and how the Patient Centered Medical Home can help our country. For others, it's something different.
If Family Physicians cannot be advocates for our own specialty, then who will?
But more importantly, I would like to see if anyone in my circles (hehe) also signs up their organization or business for one - particularly, I'll be watching my own Family Medicine community (basically the FamMed membership organizations and #FMRevolution) and those in the healthcare social media (#hcsm) community.
I gotta be honest, I'm not going to be using my brand page that much - just like I don't use my personal G+ page that much. Unlike facebook, the critical mass has not been reached here yet. Then why sign up? Well, I'm basically hedging my bets. And, if for some reason G+ takes off, I'll have my stake planted in the ground - ready for action...
Thanks so much to the Pennsylvania Academy of Family Physicians for the opportunity to chat with them a few months ago about the topic of social media. They just published the fall issue of their membership magazine called "Keystone Physician."
They talked with numerous Family Physicians and social media enthusiasts (ie - those from #FMRevolution) about their take on social media now and in the future. Here is my quote published in the magazine (on page 41)...
I really believe that the AAFP has reached a tipping point at the 2011 Congress of Delegates and Scientific Assembly meetings with things like live streaming COD sessions, getting real-time feedback with twitter, and featuring social media sessions at the Scientific Assembly
On a personal note, I was interviewed by Family Practice News and PrimaryCareClinician.com about the impact of social media and Family Medicine. Finally, the AAFP Board of Directors has made social media a priority with the AAFP President's twitter account and leadership blog.
The Academy is well positioned in 2012 for Family Medicine Advocacy through social media platforms!
While I was in Rochester, at the Mayo Clinic Social Media week, I was contacted through my website by American Medical News about social media and public health. There have been numerous examples of social media use in public health.
One such doctor is Mike Sevilla, MD, a family physician in Salem, Ohio, who blogs, tweets and has hundreds of Facebook friends. Dr. Sevilla encourages primary care physicians to spread public health messages to patients and community members by posting on a professional Facebook page a picture of themselves getting vaccinated against influenza or eating a healthy meal.
"Putting these pictures on Facebook lets people in the community know that we are doing what we tell them to do," he said.
I also invite you to check out my other quotes from American Medical News articles:
Reed Smith is a social media consultant and someone I met during the Mayo Clinic Social Media Summit and Social Media Residency. We had a great chat during the week and he's trying to get me to come down next spring to SXSW. I was honored to be asked to be Expert Interview #6 on his site. Here was the most intriguing question of the bunch...
Q: In your field what has been the biggest win for social media and new technologies?
I have been doing a lot of speaking engagements to Family Physician organizations on the topic of social media this year. In the Family Medicine community, 2011 has really been the tipping point for use of social media.
My professional association, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), really embraced social media this year even to the point where the AAFP President has a twitter account (@AAFPPrez), a Facebook fan page, and a leadership blog on the AAFP website. “The Prez” even dubbed me ”The King Of Family Medicine Social Media” at the annual meeting this year. He’s joking, of course. But, it’s always fun for me to tell my friends this. HA!
Thanks Reed for the interview. And, hey, maybe I will show up next year for the 2012 SXSW extravangaza!
The group has definitely been lucky in the last few weeks. First of all I've been impressed with their marketing and their "creating buzz" factor that they have done. In their name, they want to frame themselves as activists - like those of the occupy wall street fame - who just don't want to take it anymore in healthcare. Secondly, last night, they took advantage ot the most popular twitter chat for healthcare, the #hcsm chat (or health care social media chat) - taking a night off.
I wasn't able to join the full #occupyhealthcare chat last night, but you know twitter was excited when there were multiple people posting transcripts of the chat - the most impressive of which was from foxepractice. In addition, using twitter metric resources out there, there were some estimates that there was impressive reach - maybe as much at 70,000 impressions. But, was this due to the content, or their lucky twitter chat time slot?
The final question this post will ask is this - Now what? Attention cycles and news cycles in the world of social media last nanoseconds. While last night, you may be golden, this morning, people may ask, "occupy what?" Now, don't get me wrong, I definitely support these people, and I think what their doing is a good thing.
However, I seen lots of stuff come and go out here in the wild west we call the internet. Just like the music industry, the movie industry, the television indusrty, and whatever other industry you can think of - The first success is easy. But, what's the follow-up? How can the group scale last night's success to get to the next level? Plus, getting people upset and fired up is one thing, what do you do with all that emotion to actually make healthcare change happen?
#OccupyHeathcare - Have they just been lucky or are they going the be around for a while? We'll see....
In this episode, I talk about a bunch of topics. You can see the list of topics here. In the video above, you'll see a segment of the show where I talk about the article "One Million In Ohio Lack Family Doctor" from the Columbus Dispatch from November 1, 2011.
You can download the entire audio podcast in the link below or right here. If you enjoyed this episode, then I encourage you to check out other Family Medicine Rocks podcast episodes here. I also encourage you to check out other videos at my YouTube page. Enjoy!
If you're like me, and cannot go to BlogWorld Expo Los Angeles 2011, why not get in the way back machine and go back years ago to Las Vegas. For me, this was the first time ever that I got to meet these people in real life (or as the cool kids say - IRL).
It was kind of funny because for most of the meeting, we were calling each other our twitter name (mine was "Dr A" back then. You'll see in the videos below just how much fun we had. How many Social Health celebrities can you name?
