Dave deBronkart

The baby boomer surge is forcing society to face decisions about costs - and particularly what is valuable. It's senseless for clinicians and governments to bear these choices alone; a sad effect of needless paternalism is that it places a false burden on responsible people. ”

Ever tried to get sleep in a hospital? Ever wonder if anyone even taught them what care is? Some hospitals are great, but some sure aren't. ”

I want to be clear: not all patient communities are great, any more than online communities of any sort. But when a good one gets going, boy is it sweet. ”

I advocate for a totally new view of the role of the patient: patient as engaged partner, not passive recipient. ”

Me being me, I put the numbers from my hospital's website from my tumor sizes into a spreadsheet. ”

I'm an e-patient: equipped, enabled, empowered, engaged. I'm no clinician, but I do everything in my power to help them, to play an active role in my own care, and even in the design of care. ”

Too often, hospital staff are incented by management to get work done without worrying about care, and clinicians are too often not even trained to think about care. ”

In other industries, value is defined by the ultimate stakeholder - the one who benefits, or not, from the service. We should do the same in medicine. ”

Please, let patients help improve healthcare. Let patients help steer our decisions, strategic and practical. Let patients help define what value in medicine is. ”

Value in medicine depends on information - as I said in 'Let Patients Help,' 'People perform better when they're informed better.' It follows that to make patients and families more effective in care, they need to know more. ”