Soda-Free Sunday

Last Thursday, I received a message from a gentleman named Dorsol Plants about a public health campaign here in King County called Soda Free Sunday.  They're asking people to visit www.sodafreesundays.com and make a pledge to go soda-free for one day per week. 

Drinking sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), including soda, is one of the worst things you can do for your health.  SSB consumption is probably one of the major contributors to the modern epidemics of obesity and metabolic dysfunction.

I imagine that most WHS readers don't drink SSBs very often if at all, but I'm sure some do.  Whether you want to try drinking fewer SSBs, or just re-affirm an ongoing commitment to avoid them, I encourage you to visit www.sodafreesundays.com and make the pledge.  You can do so even if you're not a resident of King county.

True or Not? Death By Deletion, Adventist Health System IT Whistleblower Patricia Moleski Speaks Out

Not sure what to make of this yet:

Whistleblower Patricia Moleski speaks out about health IT abuses - play at http://workmancompensationlawyers.net/12/23/death-by-deletion-adventist-health-system-it-whistleblower-patricia-moleski-speaks-out/

A former hospital IT worker claims very deliberate mass spoliation (e.g., deletion) of electronic medical record evidence to limit her (ex)-employer's liability for EHR-related medical malpractice on patients and injured workers who were entitled to workers compensation, as well as EHR defects.

She alleges that IT personnel are used as naïve accomplices to perform the spoliation acts. She grew suspicious when she was asked to delete nursing information about a patient who committed suicide by jumping out a hospital window after an EHR-related drug overdose.

The video is over an hour long and is worth listening to.

She made these claims to the FBI and alleged to have suffered retaliation including firing, and possible terroristic activities directed against her.

A Feb. 2010 letter to Gov. Crist, Sen. Grassley and many other government officials, a 9th Judicial Circuit court document for Orange County, FL (PDF), and other details - some scary - can be found via a google search on this person's name: https://www.google.com/search?q=Patricia%20Moleski .

A Feb. 2010 letter to Sen. Grassley, former Fla. Governor Crist, various other senators, news media, etc. alleging serious, systematic, purposeful HIT evidence tampering and erasure. Click to bring up full letter.

This could be the "Libby Zion" (or Bernard Madoff?) case of the health IT world if these allegations are true.

-- SS

Local Food Policy Brief Available for Download!

The fourth and final policy brief pertaining to the Buffalo Food System is available for download.  This brief includes the current city, county and state regulations that impact the food system and opportunities for healthy eating.  Please review it above or download it here!

Health IT Culture: Severe Overconfidence (Arrogance?) Shows In The Industry's Very Terminology For Their Deliverables

Health IT commentator Neil Versel notes in his piece "HIMSS12 notes" at his site Meaningful Health IT News that:

I am in 100 percent agreement with something Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson, a.k.a. Seattle Mama Doc, said during an engaging presentation Monday at the HIMSS/CHIME CIO Forum. She made the astute observation that there needs to be better distinction between expertise and merely experience when it comes to celebrities being held up as “experts” in healthcare and medicine. Let’s just say that Swanson, as a pediatrician, is no fan of some of the things Jenny McCarthy and Dr. Mehmet Oz have told wide audiences.

He posted a link to his piece in a social networking site we both visit. I commented:

To that, I add "healthcare IT" where it seems anyone who's done anything with a computer in some medical setting can get away with calling themselves a "medical informatics expert" or "health IT expert." As in ham radio levels of just a few years ago, we need distinctions between novice class, technician class, general class, advanced class, and extra class.

In his piece Neil also linked to what he correctly termed "scathing critique" of the venue for HIMSS 2012 at my HC Renewal post "HIMSS Annual Meeting in Las Vegas - Fitting for People Who Gamble With People's Lives to Make a Buck?"

I replied to him via the social networking site that:

"I like to point out ironies that seem to escape others, although I have heard from other colleagues that I was not alone in finding Las Vegas a somewhat peculiar place for a medical meeting about improving health! However, others' mileage may vary."

Neil noted that he likes pointing out ironies, too, and gave as an example as the meetings held at the Loews Hotel near Vanderbilt University Medical Center, being that Loews Hotels is a corporate cousin of Lorrilard Tobacco.

Finally, Neil comments:

Popular topics this year were the expected meaningful use and ICD-10, plus the buzzwords of the moment, business analytics and big data. I’d be happy I never hear the word “solution” as a synonym for “product” or “service” again. To me, that represents lazy marketing. Get yourself a thesaurus.

I agreed, and replied that:

"Solution", the common term in IT for anything an IT department or company provides, is a one-word example of a language usage akin to 'begging the question.'

This term, in one mere word, reflects a stunning arrogance within the IT culture.

I also noted that:

... there needs to be terminological consistency. If the IT vendors can call their wares "solutions", then doctors should call their treatments and drugs "cures." Come to my office for your cure; I am a curer; I write cures, not prescriptions.

I also noted that the term "meaningful use" phrase selected by the U.S. government/HHS for EHR adoption according to printed guidelines is another example of terminology that, ante hoc, assumes its semantics are correct.

How do we know the use is "meaningful" until such use is studied rigorously and outcomes, costs. etc. assessed?

Answer: we don't.

And this administration criticized the previous one for politicizing science ... George Orwell could not have selected better terms than "meaningful use", "certified EHR", and "solution" as examples of "Newspeak" in 1984.

-- SS

Today was a a ____ day to be a professor

At the end of every day, I make a statement like, "Today was a good day to be a professor", or, "Today was a bad day to be a professor". (And some days are partly cloudy.)

It's interesting to reflect upon which activities bring me the most joy, and which are the most frustrating. So, let's see:

Favorite thing: Meeting with my RAs. They are just good kids. They are sweet, fun, and brilliant. I love sitting around and bouncing ideas around with them and solving problems together. They impress the heck out of me with all they've accomplished thus far.

Least favorite thing: Drama and politics. Every sphere of this job involves some of each. For drama, I process it on a case by case basis, and try to be as fair and understanding as I can.

For politics, I am usually completely clueless. Sometimes I'll talk to someone, and hours later realize there were hidden subtexts beyond my ability to comprehend and quickly respond to in the moment. I'm not sure if I'm poorly socialized, aloof, or both, but frankly a lot of the politics surrounding this job positively baffle me.

Unfortunately being successful as a professor seems to require political savviness, in a way very different than in industry. I felt like in industry the rules were clearer; perhaps because everyone was working toward the same goal (e.g., please the customer). Academia is more like a collection of small empires. We all have shared goals of Furthering Education and Advancing Knowledge, but go about them in very different ways. We have frequent encounters with other Dukes, where we must broadcast our land's contribution to the Kingdom at every turn.

Post the PhD level, anyone with motivation and drive can learn to prep and teach a class, acquire external funding, effectively manage a research group, and publish lots of papers in good places. Political savviness, however, is another beast entirely.

Live Blogging from the Paleo Summit III: Leptin Man!

Link:  Dr. Jack Kruse ... Neuuurosurgeon!
Title:  Leptin Circadian Cycles

Ratings:

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼  Entertainment Value

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼  Content

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼  Informational Accuracy

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼  Overall

Summary:

Everything you'd expect in thirty minutes with Dr. Jack Kruse, or Leptin Man as we call him in these parts.  Ah what the heck, it's my blog.  Can we put up that slide Jeeves?   Thanks.  OK.  What you won't get is what's billed.  Leptin circadian cycles account for a couple minutes at most of the talk, and although Croxton promises us that Jack "shares how he lost 133 pounds in a single year by correcting the 'biological mismatches' that were once prevalent in his life" there's nothing about the Leptin Reset that comes out of Jack's mouth in this talk.   Aside from using the words like evolutionary a few times, and exclaiming that paleo fixes all (no grains, limited dairy), this wasn't really a paleo "talk".  The only unifying theme was that there was no unifying theme.  Oh ... and leptin!

Read more »

World Class Welsh Sport: Laura McAllister's View

As we pin on the daffodils and celebrate all things Welsh this week, culminating in the St David's Day celebrations on Thursday (1 March), we spoke to some of Wales' most respected voices in Welsh sport and policy to find out why they think Wales is such a great sporting nation.

In this first installment we hear from Wales' top sporting administrator, Chair of Sport Wales, Professor Laura McAllister.

“Sport matters to us in Wales it’s a part of our national identity. When our elite athletes and national teams do well at the weekend we’re all talking about it the following week and the feel-good factor is noticeable.

“We have a world class rugby team who were the talk of the Rugby World Cup and now the current Six Nations campaign. We expect great things of our talented young national football side under the stewardship of new manager Chris Coleman. Cardiff City also did extremely well to reach the final of the Carling Cup to fly the flag for Welsh football. And Swansea City have looked every bit a Premiership team in their debut season in the top flight.

“We should also of course celebrate our world champions in Dai Greene, Nathan Stephens, Chaz Davies, Helen Jenkins and Nathan Cleverly. Other world class athletes who are owning the podium at major events include Jade Jones, Mark Colbourne, Hannah Mills and Steven Thomas. With London 2012 racing ever nearer Wales can proudly lay claim to several Olympic champions in Nicole Cooke, Tom James and Geraint Thomas. We also claimed 25% of GB’s Paralympic medal success in Beijing thanks to the likes of David Roberts, Simon Richardson and Liz Johnson.

“In all, Welsh athletes have brought home in excess of 1,000 medals at significant Games since the turn of the new millennium. We should be immensely proud of those successes and of the people behind our athletes’ success; our sports science and medicine teams, coaches, governing body and administrative staff. We have great people in Wales, with a winning mentality, that are driving us towards being a nation of champions. That’s true across the board; from the elite to the grassroots levels of sport.

“Our communities are full of motivators, often unpaid volunteers, whose sheer passion for sport is helping children to get hooked on sport for life and giving them positive first experiences that should give them a lifetime of enjoyment in sport. Our ambition is to double our current number of volunteers, to galvanise 10% of the population to pitch in to help their local club.

“The future for sport in Wales looks very bright indeed and we will continue to work hard to make sure that we have even more reasons to celebrate Welsh sport next St David’s Day and beyond.”

Find out more about our great sporting nation and test your Welsh sporting knowledge with wales.com's interactive quiz.