Community Mobilization

Wall Street Journal and The American Cancer Society

Once again the WSJ Highlights the American Cancer Society's efforts in electronic community development and mobilization. Laura Landro writes up a fairly nice article discussing the CDC's efforts in Second Life as well as the Society's plans to build a virtual office and deliver health content and information directly to the residents. In addition she talks about the Relayforlife.org social network where the Society is encouraging its volunteers to share their ideas and experiences so that the community can benefit from the collective knowledge. I am very pleased with the coverage as well as the growth in both of the programs. I have pasted the article in the extended post.

President Pushes Healthcare IT Initiative

According to Healthcare IT News The President is pushing forward an IT health care initiative aimed at improving the quality of care, streamlining the information systems, and providing compensation for high quality care at competitive prices. There are hopes that this will also lead to greater transparency for the observation and evaluation of how we spend Federal Health Care dollars from programs such as VA benefits, and Medicare.

The four cornerstones of the president’s transparency plan include:
•    Adopting healthcare IT standards
•    Reporting quality of care
•    Providing costs of health services in advance to patients
•    Providing incentives for quality care at competitive prices

Mass. Governor Mitt Romney seems excited about participating and believes that "Ensuring that consumers have the information necessary to make informed decisions about their healthcare is critical to improving quality as well as lowering healthcare inflation".

Obesity May Brnkrupt UK Health Care System

In a recent article on obesity in the British Medical Journal is being sited as a possible bankrupting factor in United Kingdom. Over 1/2 of UK residents are overweight and a full 20% are obese. The article investigates some of the ways the country can fight the obesity epidemic and how medical and epidemiology communities can focus their efforts on combating the further spread of obesity. At one point the article makes a case for obesity intervention at every point that an individual gets in touch with a medical professional.

A strong case now exists for making obesity a core part of all medical curriculums and part of the training of all other health professions. Continuing emphasis should be placed on obesity in postgraduate teaching—both in the early generic professional training programmes for all specialties and then later in relevant specialty programmes. In other words, any contact between a medical professional and a patient is an opportunity to assess whether that patient has a weight problem—and to offer advice.

 

American Airlines has Bad, Horrible. Terrible, Horrific Customer Service

I experienced some of the most horrific, horrible, terrible, and plain old bad customer service on Christmas eve in the DFW airport courtesy of the American Airlines staff. This is a tale of doors being slammed in our faces, mean nasty gate agent named Lokesh, missed connections, lost bags, shift Managers who asked us to count our blessings that we are not sleeping in Denver, and the saving grace of Delta Airlines. I must disclose that I am a very frequent flyer on Delta. I'm including other links at the end to other folk's AA Horror stories.

Reporting Medicaid Fraud

According to an NYT article the Federal Government is initiating a program January 1, 2007 that requires employers who do more than $5 million dollars in Medicare business need to train and educate their employees on how to detect and report fraud. The measure is designed to save taxpayer money and eliminate waste in the Medicare system. It is a brilliant idea to mobilize the front line employee who has the most contact with the customers in the battle against wasteful spending.

top of the mountain

top of the mountain
Originally uploaded by randalcmoss.

Today we went to the top of Lift 14 to the highest point of the trails. 12,225 feet above sea level. That is over 2 miles up and I can attest that the views are amazing and the air is thin. Today was our first real sunny day and we met up with our friends the Elinoffs. We spent the afternoon skiing with them and if you are ever in Telluride you must stop in to his gallery and see the amazing artwork. They also rent a few condos if you need a place to stay.

Kodak CK6330 hates high altitudes

I m here in Telluride, CO and my Kodak CX6330 is refusing to work at altitude. I keeps telling me that the batteries are dead even after I put new ones in. I have tried keeping it warm (I hear batteries work better when not frozen) yet the camera still is fickle. I am quite upset that we did not bring our Sony that worked real well last time we were here. I have a few good shots but we have resorted to using a disposable at the top of the peaks. So silly.

Brand Fodder for Blogger

A.C. Nielsen is still pushing forward in the marketing arena. Although not new to bloggers, Nielsen Buzzmetrics provides brand fodder to bloggers and helps companies track their online buzz. The New York Times has a nice writeup of the company and the people who make it run.

The search engines retrieve phrases, opinions, keywords, sentences and images, and the company runs the data through processing programs powerful enough to sift millions of messages simultaneously. By analyzing vocabulary, language patterns and phrasing, the programs determine whether comments are positive or negative, and whether the authors are men or women, young or old.

Snow in Telluride

Snow in Telluride
Originally uploaded by randalcmoss.

It is Tuesday evening and we have had snow for two days straight and are looking at two + feet of fresh powder snow. Skiing in it has been a challenge for us but I have to say it has been an absolute blast.

IFTF Map of Education Impacts

Institute For The Future and Knowledgeworks Foundation have pieced together an amazing, mind-blowing scenario map 'Map of Future Forces Affecting Public Education 2006-2016'. They have created an extraordinary set of drivers and impacts as well as very through out hotspots, trends, and dilemmas. IFTF always seems to be putting out exceptional research that is written in straight forward language. From Knowledgeworks Foundation:

The map is intended to help you think about the future of education in the United States in an engaging and constructive way. The map presents a forecast of external forces that are important in shaping the context for the future of public education and learning in the next decade. It is an outside-in perspective that will help reframe current critical challenges related to education in a broader, longer-term context of change. Your task is to use the map to create compelling stories about how education may evolve in this future context.

This is a pertinent and timely post considering my current revelations courtesy of Richard Florida and company. The fact that some of the top minds in the world are working on the future of the US educational system gives me some comfort, but the fact that those minds are not running the educational system scares me to death.