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Wrap-Up: AAFP Summer Cmte Mtgs 2014

Yes, it's that time again. It seems like the only times I get to write a blog post is sitting in an airport somewhere on my way home. Alas, that is what is happening this time. Woke up at 3:30am in Kansas City to start my trek, and to contemplate. The AAFP completed its most recent advocacy meetings discussing topics in areas like governmental advocacy, education, and membership.

Here are a few of my highlights from the meeting:

Family Medicine for America's Health: This is a bold initiative that will be unveiled later this year by the American Academy of Family Physicians. According to their website, "Family Medicine for America's Health is to examine the challenges and opportunities facing Family Medicine today, and define a path forward in the context of a rapidly changing healthcare landscape."

About a year ago, the "Family of Family Medicine" organizations came together came together to start these discussions. Since then, there has been extensive national research, multiple feedback sessions with stakeholders, regular updates on the initial stages of the initiative, and more.

I wish I could share more, if I knew more. I think it's very exciting that the specialty is taking this step of outlining the problems of our broken healthcare system (which we already know), but also seeking out feedback for solutions from AAFP members, Family Physicians, and key stakeholders. I'm curious what the final report will reveal.

Family Physician Networking and association update: It's very difficult for an association to try to address all needs of its members, because of limitations of financial and staff resources. But, recently, the AAFP created an new opportunity for Family Physicians with similar interests to network and "find a home" in the Academy. These groups are called "Member Interest Groups," and the AAFP committee I serve on has its task to review applications of these potential groups. I think this is a great opportunity for the Academy to reach an entirely new group of Family Physicians for networking and communication.

Family Physician Friends and Fellowship: As I have said in previous blog posts, meetings like this energize me and recharge me. Catching up with old friends is always fun, as well as meeting new people. Last night, there was even fireworks to conclude the evening!

I have always said this in the past, but I really hope to write more about my experiences this weekend. From a social media front, more and more people are approaching me at these Family Medicine meetings about their excitement for utilizing social media. It's been a slow growth process, but I'm happy with the results up to this point! Time to go home!

2014 #AAFPNCSC: Initial Thoughts

ReidNCSC2014Edit.jpg

Welcome to those of you who I met at the meeting this week and are checking out the website for the first time. My long time readers will know that I like to write an "initial reactions" blog post when I'm sitting at the airport (sometimes with an adult beverage), and ponder about what just happened in the past few days...

Reid Blackwelder, MD, AAFP President, announces the 2015 Leadership Conference for Current and Aspiring Leaders, National Conference of Constituency Leaders #NCCL2015 and Annual Chapter Leaders Forum. More information at http://aafp.org - Also check out http://DrMikeSevilla.com

AAFP Leadership Conference of Current and Aspiring Leaders: This past week, the American Academy of Family Physicians announced a "reimagination" of their annual leadership meeting currently named the "Annual Leadership Forum" and the "National Conference of Special Constituencies." You can see the video announcement above. But next year, in 2015, will be the 25th anniversary of this meeting, and the Academy stated that a natural evolution of this leadership meeting needed to take place. The new name is above and the two leadership tracks will be "National Conference of Constituency Leaders" and "Annual Chapter Leader Forum." I'll write more about this soon....

Family Medicine Social Media Impact: It's no secret that I've been encouraging the #FMRevolution community to share our story on social media. This was a tremendous week in getting more people signed up for platforms like twitter, and encouraging more people to use twitter. The final stats are above including 2186 tweets, 196 participants, and 4.2 Million impressions. The next big event will be in the fall at the AAFP Congress of Delegates and Annual Scientific Assembly....

New Friends & Catching Up With Long Time Friends: One of the things I love about these meetings is the opportunity to meet new people can catch up with long time pals. As you all know, social media only goes so far as keeping up with people's lives. There is nothing like those in person interactions, telling stories, and laughing a lot. As always happens at gatherings like this, there have been some life long friendships started here, and it will be exciting to see their professional leadership careers develop.

Finally, thanks to all those who make this week's leadership meeting possible. Shout out to the AAFP staff, the physician leadership teams, the conference presenters, and the enthusiastic participants who continually make this meeting fun for me. What will happen for the 25th Anniversary of this conference? We'll see...

Physicians & Social Media: #MedX April 29, 2014

Doctors who skip Social Media risk alienating patients: myth or reality?

Ever since I started utilizing social media 7-8 years ago, there have always been questions about physicians using social media. Tonight, our friends at Stanford Medicine X had a google hangout talking about this specific topic. The entire 60 minute video can be seen above.

Here are a few of my own observations about the video and the topic of Physicians and Social Media:

  • Physicians and Social Media does NOT mean extending your work day: Using social media does not mean making yourself available 24/7 to patient questions. Social media can be used for patient education, health policy change, and more than clinical work. 
  • Curating Information is just as important as creating content: I used to think that physicians need to create content on the internet to make a difference. That's not necessarily true. The shear volume of information out there is overwhelming. Sorting through information is certainly a skill that I do not have, and finding physicians who can wade through that info on twitter - that's important to me.
  • Physicians and Providers need to find Value in Social Media for them to use it: One of the most common questions that I get is this: "How can we get more physicians to use social media?" Using social media just to use it - this is not reason enough. The challenge will be to find the value for each physician/provider.
  • The Holy Grail is proving Social Media positively affects patient and healthcare outcomes: This question has been around since I started being involved in social media. We have yet to have large scale and reproducible data. Whomever does this holds to they to why healthcare providers started doing social media in the first place
  • My final observation is that it was great to see my long time social media colleague, Dr. Bryan Varabedian (aka @Doctor_V and creator of the 33 Charts website) speaking on this topic again. His opening remarks stated that when we all started on this in 2006, there was a small & intimate network on physicians out there. It was great to get to know @Doctor_V as we were physician panels together at that time. Just for fun, I found the podcast below when I interviewed @Doctor_V in June 2010 before we were on a panel together in San Francisco. I was still "Doctor Anonymous" back then, and seems like it was just yesterday...

Thanks to our friends at Stanford Medicine X for these programs on youtube to, not only share topics, but also to have a community come together to have a live chat on twitter. I've found many new people to follow on twitter and for me to start new conversations with them. I'm looking forward to attending the MedX meeting in the fall...

Twitter For Healthcare Professionals

It's always fun to be included in "Top 10" lists, or in this case, a "Top 100" list. eMedCert looks like a startup who is going to be launching some kind of service and/or app in the near future. To help get them some attention, they have done "a great deal of research" to and, last night, named the "Top 100 Twitter Accounts for Healthcare Professionals to Follow."

On their site they state: "A great deal of research went into this, and many outstanding and deserving twitter feeds were left off the list. There will undoubtedly be several accounts not featured on this list that may be more useful to you personally. However, in our opinion, these 100 twitter accounts ultimately proved to offer the most valuable to healthcare professionals in general."

Thanks so much to the site for including me on their list! Here are some other lists that I have been included on:

NCSC Throwback Thursday

As I talked about in yesterday's post, one of the fun things that #FMRevolution can do is to share photos and memories from past NCSC meetings. What you'll see below are pics from the meetings I attended including 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2007. You'll have to figure out which year goes with which picture.

In addition, I'll be live podcasting on Thursday, April 24, 2014 at 3pm Eastern Time at this link. The Mike Sevilla Radio Program will be previewing next week's AAFP NCSC 2014 meeting including my predictions, my hopes, and my expectations from the meeting. Don't worry if you cannot join live. I'll make the podcast available here, so that you can download and listen to on the flight to Kansas City :)

Why #FMRevolution Will Explode Next Week

One of the many cool things about twitter is that once in a while, you find a really cool link. Our pal Dave Tran, who is in the last few weeks of Medical School (aka @rollkicksoul), posted some interesting data about the #FMRevolution hashtag.

In the above graph, you see that the first posts of #FMRevolution were just about 3 years ago in 2011. And then, in that time, there have been as much as 4,000 tweets with the hashtag. I gotta tell ya, it looks really cool when the data points are graphed out like this.

Those high points in the graph area associated with conferences with many #FMRevolution people including the AAFP Congress of Delegates (every fall; hashtag #aafpCOD) and the AAFP National Conference of Special Constituencies (every spring; hashtag #aafpNCSC and #aafpALF). I would presume that for other advocacy groups, peak times on twitter are conferences were many advocates attend.

So "Why Will #FMRevolution Explode Next Week?" Well, the reason is that the 2014 AAFP National Conference of Special Constituencies start next week. If I had to guess, this will be the biggest gathering of the #FMRevolution so far in 2014. My bold prediction will be a record number above 5000 #FMRevolution tweets during the course of the meeting next week.

The other interesting #FMRevolution graphic from Symplur is above which shows those who are leaders in "Mentions," "Tweets," and "Impressions." Now, don't get me wrong, we're all on the same team, so the leaders - to me - are not too concerning.

What I'm really impressed with is the statistic of 106 million impressions on twitter in the past 3 years. There have also been 42,790 tweets during that time from 3,834 participants. Those statistics are amazing to me.

It has been very gratifying to watch the community grow in the past couple of years. As I meet Family Physicians at meeting, as I give social media talks around the country, I tell people the #FMRevolution story. The community grows one person at a time by telling our story of why we love Family Medicine and why we love social media to tell that story. Look out Kansas City, the #FMRevolution returns next week!