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FamMedRocks Ep286: Dr Davis Liu

Thanks again to my guest on Family Medicine Rocks Episode 286 who was Dr. Davis Liu author of the book "The Thrifty Patient: Vital Insider Tips for Saving Money And Staying Healthy." We had a great conversation about the book which I think is a great read. It's only about 100 pages in paperback and really directed toward the patient/health consumer.

The titles of the chapters include "What To Do To Stay Healthy," "Prescriptions: Not Just For Sick People," and "Using Dr. Google: When To Seek Care And How To Get The Best Care." And, at the end of each chapter, there is something called "Take Home Points" which are the essential things to remember from that chapter.

In addition to the book, we talked about why we think Family Medicine is important and why it's important that Primary Care and Family Medicine need to be empowered to show the nation our value as physicians. You'll see in the video above, Dr. Liu's closing thoughts talking about Leadership.

In addition to this book, he is the author of "Stay Healthy, Live Longer, Spend Wisely." You'll see from his website that he has also written op-ed pieces and done a lot of media work when it comes to television and radio. We need more Primary Care and Family Physicians like Dr. Davis Liu getting out there in media.

I encourage you to check out the entire audio podcast for Family Medicine Rocks Episode 286. I also encourage you to check out the podcast page for the show, and subscribe to the iTunes feed. In addition follow me on twitter, "Like" the facebook page for this show, check out my youtube page, and take a look at my linked-in page. Enjoy!

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Open Letter to AAFP Board of Directors

 

Dear AAFP Board of Directors,

Through my inside sources, I have learned that your first Board meeting of the year starts today. Actually, it wasn't through secret sources, it was through social media. First of all, I just wanted to thank all of you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to serve the Academy - what an exciting time for all of you!

A lot of people out here will give you policy recommendations on where the Academy should stand on certain issues. This letter is not that. This letter is to encourage the Board to continue its great use of Social Media to effectively communicate with membership and to communicate with the public.

As a Family Physician and Social Media Enthusiast, I have really enjoyed things like the Leader Voices blog, the increased activity of twitter/facebook, and the beginnings of the use of video announcements/commentary by Board members. There was probably an "orientation to media" session given at some point, and I hope that social media was a part of that.

I wish you all the best in your work this week at your first Board meeting. It's easy to get caught up in the work of the Board, but don't ever forget us our here in the grassroots. Even more important than what you're doing behind closed doors, what's more important, in my humble opinion, is communicating "what" and "why" you're doing something to the AAFP membership. Have a great Board meeting.

Mike Sevilla, MD

#CPI12: Attendee Interviews

This is the next post in a multipart essay on last week's 2012 Conference on Practice Improvement organized by the Society of Teachers in Family Medicine and American Academy of Family Physicians. This conference took place in Greenville, South Carolina and previous posts were ones on the pre-conference and a video interview with Dr. Bruce Bagley.

I also recorded a couple of video interviews with attendees from the meeting, and you'll see them below from Dr. Jay Lee and Dr. Bryan Hodge. It's always great getting the attendee perspective at the meeting. Enjoy!

#CPI12: Risk Stratified Care Management

This is a second in a multi-part series talking about last week's Conference on Practice Improvement organized by the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine and American Academy of Family Physicians. The previous post talked about the pre-conference sessions.

In the video above, I talked with Dr. Bruce Bagley from TransforMED.com and AAFP specifically talking about the idea of Risk Stratified Care Management and why that is important in a Patient Centered Medical Home system. In addition, the AAFP just released a new RSCM Assessment tool last week to help assist clinicians in this process, and you can access that at www.AAFP.org/rscm

Dr. Bagley is even on twitter, tweeted during the meeting, and even attended our social media session. How cool is that? In the next few days, I'll be writing more blog posts and sharing more videos that I recorded at last week's #CPI12 meeting. Enjoy!

#CPI12 Pre-Conference

 

This is my first Conference on Practice Improvement meeting and it was a great Pre-conference day. For those who are not familiar, this is organized by the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine and the American Academy of Family Physicians and the location of this year's meeting is in Greenville, South Carolina.

The highlight for me was a Pre-conference session talking about practice transformation and clinical innovation. Of course, there were concepts on the Patient Centered Medical Home talked about, but there was so much more. Being at the grassroots, it's difficult to see the big picture, because I'm just trying to keep up with day-to-day office duties, like keeping up with my electronic medical record.

But, it was great to see a presentation kind of put everything together from "Who is in your medical neighborhood" to "This is how you use data driven care to improve the quality of your patient care." I have never really had the time to dive into my own EMR and explore its full functionality and do things like find trends in clinical numbers or use the EMR as a patient registry to remind myself of preventative maintenance issues.

Dr. Bruce Bagley from TransforMED.com introduced an entirely new webpage on the AAFP website having to do with Risk Stratified Care Management. This asks you, "How can you formally figure out which patients are going to require more of your time & attention and your staff's time & attention?" We kind of do this already informally, but what is very exciting is this chart which puts this concept in an organized format.

Day Two of the conference is today and is highlighted by main stage speaker Christine Bechtel whose talk is entitled "Patient Centered Care: What is it and how do we get there?" You can follow along on twitter with the #CPI12 hashtag. I'm also going to try to record video interviews during the conference. Stay tuned for more updates!

Healthy Holiday Eating Tips

It's holiday time again and there's nothing better to do than gathering with friends and family for a meal. Are there ways to have healthy holiday eating? You bet there are. In the video above, I talk about some tips to still enjoy your meal, but still make some healthy choices.

The TV interview above is a short 2 minute chat set up by Salem Community Hospital and recorded at WKBN-TV in Youngstown, Ohio on Monday, November 19, 2012. If you found this interview helpful, I also encourage you to check out previous interviews at MikeSevilla.TV. Also check out my other social media areas like the facebook page for this website, audio podcast site, my twitter feed, and my linked-in page. Enjoy!

Here's To The Crazy Ones

"Here's To The Crazy Ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes..." The video above is from the Apple "Think Different" campaign. What's unique about the video above is the voice over is by Steve Jobs, and not by the orignial actor who did the spots...

I read a post today from my friend Dr. Bryan Vartabedian, otherwise known as @Doctor_V on twitter. He talked about a band of tweeting pediatricians called "Tweetiatricians" whose name was born at the American Academy of Pediatrics meeting last week. In the post, he says that some liked the moniker, and some didn't. Some said that the name diminished from what pediatricians should be doing on social media. He writes...

I may be the wrong person to be chiming in here.  I’m sometimes accused of taking all of this too seriously.  I do struggle with the balance of levity and leadership.  And I’ve noticed that the more people who watch me, the more challenging it is to be myself in the most transparent sense.

Of course, this made me reflect on our little Family Medicine social media group that was coined #FMRevolution on twitter by my good friend Dr. Jay Lee. If I have been accused of anything, I've been told that I'm not taking all of this serious enough. "Mike, you joke around too much on social media with all of your Doctor Anonymous shenagigans," I've been told in the past.

Maybe it's a generational thing, but doctors are not "joiners" these days. When it started, it was really fun to join a group of Family Docs who used twitter a lot. And, no one thought that #FMRevolution would go from a small little group to being mentioned at the podium by more than one AAFP Board member at our annual meeting.

So, what ever you call it #FMRevolution, #Tweetiatrician, or whatever - the easy part is catching their attention. The hard part is keeping their attention, and even more difficult that that is figuring out a way to turn that feeling, emotion, and camaraderie into action. Whether you're a Family Doc, or Pediatrician, or anyone else. The real power of social media is bringing about change: "...because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Being An EMR Physician Champion

Like other hospitals around the nation, our small little community hospital in NE Ohio is on the road towards electronic medical records. Yesterday and today, the hospital team asked me to accompany them on a site visit to see how an Indiana hospital implemented the system. The picture above was seen in our commute to this out of state destination. Who knew that northwest Ohio had a huge wind farm?

Of course, one advantage is that they have went through this process already, and we can ask very detailed and technical questions about what they did. And, this dialogue has been very helpful. The disadvantage is that each hospital and each hospital situation is different. For example, variables include the size of the hospital, size of the community, size of the medical staff, are the physicians employed by the hospital, how many IT (information technology) staff are available at the hospital at any given time, and many other factors.

When it comes down to it, I have learned when it comes to physicians and provider staff, they don't like change whatsoever, and it comes down to change management. I mean, I totally understand. No one likes change, and to learn new and different processes takes time and effort.

In reading a lot about how other hospitals manage change, it's about setting expectations and framing the argument correctly. For example, when it comes to EMR implementation in the hospital or clinic setting, it does come back to patients. Implementation of an EMR has the factors of patient safety, quality patient care, and work flow efficiency. The next step is about scripting those talking points and spreading that message across the organization.

I'm probably a freak in that I'm enjoying this challenge of being an EMR Physician Champion for my hospital. I may be biased, but I think physicians are the most resistant to change. Yet, if you're able to gain their trust and their buy-in, physicians can be your biggest ally in bringing about change in the organization. Our go-live date for computerized order entry is in 4 months and maybe I'll write about this topic in the future.....

Social Media and #aafpcod

 

Last week was another big step in the progression of social media and the Family Medicine community. The Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) took place last week in Philadelphia with the first part of the week being the policy making part of the meeting called the Congress of Delegates. The 2nd half of the week was the educational sessions called the Annual Scientific Assembly.

I reviewed the advocacy part of the week (the Congress of Delegates) in Family Medicine Rocks Episode 281. (also check out the video above) I reviewed the brief history of social media and the AAFP which started for me at the 2010 leadership meeting called the Annual Leadership Forum and National Conference of Special Constituencies (ALF/NCSC) meetings.

Just a year later, which has been documented on this blog in the past, at the 2011 ALF/NCSC meetings, this was a significant moment for social media and the AAFP in which the AAFP Board of Directors signed up and explored twitter. Just a few months later, the AAFP made social media a priority with the launching of a Leadership Blog on the website, and the starting of the AAFP President facebook page and twitter account.

Through the 3 days of the Congress of Delegates meeting in Philadelphia last week, those on twitter were able to get over 2 million impressions on the internet. Now, I know that other meetings do a lot better. But, given that social media was not even on the AAFP radar just 2 years ago, this is a huge accomplishment. (including video streaming of Congress of Delegates events)

In addition, I invite you to check out the AAFP Storify account to review the tweets from the meeting. Check out my full analysis on Family Medicine Rocks Episode 281. Welcome to those of you who are new to this website. I also encourage you to check out my twitter account, facebook page, you tube page, linked-in account, and podcast page. Enjoy!

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