Your doctor's latest sidekick: A scribe

Dr. Marian Bednar, an emergency room physician in Dallas, left, with Amanda Nieto, 27, her scribe and constant shadow.

Image Source: NY Times. 

Holmes had Watson. Batman had Robin. SpongeBob SquarePants had Patrick Starfish.

These are famous sidekicks. Now doctors have warmed to the idea.

At Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, ER physician Marian Bednar, MD, has a scribe assigned to her so she can pay attention — full attention — to her patients.

Dr. Bednar told the New York Times ("A Busy Doctor’s Right Hand, Ever Ready to Type," January 12, 2014):

"With a scribe, I can think medically instead of clerically."

In fact, there may be as many as 10,000 scribes working in hospitals and medical practices in the U.S., the Times reported.

In our age of technology, it's not the tech that is making a difference in health care — it's the human interaction. And the proliferation of scribes, albeit slowly, is bringing about the return of uninterrupted attention between doctor and patient.  

It shows that good ideas can be as old as, well, ancient Egypt!

3 ways #healthcare should embrace Matthew McConaughey's #Oscars speech

Matthew McConaughey, in accepting the Best Actor Oscar last night for his role in Dallas Buyers Club, had some advice that can apply directly to health care:

"There are three things I need each day. One, I need something to look up to, another to look forward to, and another is someone to chase."

Something to look up to.

For McConaughey it is his faith. For health care, it is our patients.

Patient-centered care is all the rage, but it only succeeds when patients are truly placed at an exalted level within the health care team. It is their care and it should be their voice that is loudest. When we place patient needs above all others, we keep focus on why we decided to be caregivers in the first place.

Something to look forward to.

McConaughey is all about family. His wife and three sons are the center of his world:

"You are the four people in my life that I want to make the most proud of me. Thank you."

Our patients are the center of our world. And our goal must be helping them achieve their best health in the most supportive manner possible. When they are proud of us for the care we delivered — and the way we delivered it — we can claim success.

Something to chase.

McConaughey is all about personal drive to always improve. He talked about chasing his "hero" — the person he wants to be 10 years from now. It's a goal he says he will never achieve: 

"You see, every day, and every week, and every month, and every year of my life my hero is always ten years away. I'm never going to be my hero. I'm not going to attain that — I know I'm not — and that's fine with me because it keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing."

We need to embrace that ethos in health care as well and chase the ideals of the Triple Aim — better quality and better experiences for patients, delivered more affordably and more accessibly.

Congratulations to McConaughey for his Oscar win — and for an energizing speech that can inspire all of us to reach deeper and do better.

Read McConaughey's entire acceptance speech here.

Photo Friday: Back alley all ablaze

Even back alleys can play host to a a striking sky.

This was shot in the alley behind my son's apartment in Philadelphia.

Sunset over back alley, shot February 21, 2014, in Philadelphia.

Need your health records? Click the blue button

There's an effort underway to make all of your online health records easier to find.

Blue Button Connector is a new beta site launched this week from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (yes, that's a mouthful). Suffice it to say, it's the federal government's attempt to make health records more accessible.

The site is teaming with insurers, hospitals, physicians, pharmacies, labs and others to create a central clearinghouse for your health records — a one-stop download destination.

It's voluntary, and so far some of the biggies have signed up — from Aetna, Blue Cross, Humana and United Healthcare on the insurance side to CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens on the pharmacy side. 

There are fewer hospitals and physicians involved. In Massachusetts, four providers are connected — Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Children's Hospital Boston, Harbor Health Services and Partners Healthcare — while there are none in neighboring Rhode Island.

The immunization registry is even scarcer — it is only available for residents of Indiana, Louisiana and Washington state.

But Blue Button Connector is a step in the right direction!

Deep thoughts (in deep snow)

Photo Credit: Rush University Medical Center Facebook page.

What could be nicer than telling a loved one you are thinking of them — especially when that person is in the hospital?

Here's one: Sending a message that would be seen by every patient at Chicago's Rush University Medical Center — and many more around the world.

That's what happened two weeks ago in Chicago with a photo that has gone viral.

The message started as "HI MOM" (with a smiley face inside the O) stomped out in the deep snow atop a rooftop garage facing the hospital. It was done by 14-year-old William Hart, who wanted to cheer up his mother, Sharon, who was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for acute myeloid leukemia.

William later went back to the rooftop with his father and uncle to add "GOD BLESS U!"

Sharon was thrilled — and so were all of the other patients and families who were drawn to their windows to read the message of hope and love. This is what she told The Chicago Tribune:

“My son has never done anything like this before. He is a very caring child and very loving. ... He acted on instinct and from what was in his heart. I’m glad so many people got to see the message and that it touched so many. It shows how big God is.”

The simplest things often make the biggest impact.