Marc Pierson’s Community Weblog

For about three years the State of WA has been exploring, with local and national healthcare IT leaders, the feasibility of helping Washingtonians  use their own health information securely online. One can review some of the details of the journy at http://www.hca.wa.gov/hit/.
Also one can see the current thinking at http://www.accessmyhealth.org/.

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We in Whatcom County, Washington have been collaborating for years to improve the health of this community. Now we are setting a new course to join together in action research collaboratives We will create innovative socio-technical programs to focus on life style, prevention and chronic medical conditions.
The programs will focus on ”Six Aims” proposed by the Institute of [...]

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We, in Whatcom County, WA, are poised to create the functionality envisioned here.

This can be viewed as a patients’ manifesto (a la the Clue Train Manifesto), a request for an ideal experience of care:

I ask you, at each step, in each phase of the acute healthcare process, while attending to my body, to please:

Personalize, [...]

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Patient Experience of Care
By Marc Pierson
Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Personal Health Management Systems–Conumer-centric, Consumer-controlled & Community-situated.
Well that is a mouth full. This rather nuanced concept has emerged and clarified itself over the last 7 to 14 years in Whatcom County, WA.

We believed that we were patient centric–thinking of (and for) the patients way back in 1993 [...]

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As we connect community partners to their health information and to one another we could create a dashoard like the one connected communities has in Whatcom.

It woud display items like communitymembers connected, physicians connected, ED patients connected, radiology clients connected, diabetics connected, chruch members connected, Over 65 connected, etc. They woud show numeric targets and percentage of [...]

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My “Idea Summary” for remarks and discussion at the California HealthCare Foundation's Chronic Disease Care Conference.
 
 
Our future will be determined by how our communities manage chronic medical conditions.
 
Systems supporting chronic care ideally will work throughout a community.
This is the scale at which patients experience care through multiple resources, multiple organizations, multiple providers, friends and family.
 
Patients [...]

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Patient Involvement on Teams: Learning from a Community Collaboration in Whatcom County
 
Considerations: 
 
Some healthcare professionals have been tentative or fearful about patient involvement on their teams.  They are concerned that patients will be critical of healthcare providers, and expose the soft underbelly of our tenuous healthcare system.
 
But patients are true stakeholders and have proven [...]

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