Matthew's Blog
Creativity Isn’t The Problem
I will paraphrase A Seth Godin YouTube Video: Quieting the Lizard Brain (which— if you are a physician considering a career pivot—is well worth 18 minutes of your time to watch): Creativity is not your problem. Everyone is creative. The problem is creating something...
How I Use New Years’ Resolutions
Most people think New Year’s resolutions aren’t effective. Perhaps they are right, especially if they're just something someone thinks up on December 31st, and then forgets by January 7th. But that’s not how I use them. What I do is twice a year—usually during the...
Telemedicine and Telehealth: Let’s Not Get Too Excited
In the summary paper The Effectiveness of Outpatient Telehealth Consultations, here’s what some of the consultation evidence suggests: For outcome, there is strong evidence it may be helpful in psychiatry and wound care. There is moderate evidence it’s beneficial for...
The Significance of Calling Patients “Customers”
I am not a big fan of calling patients "customers". The word customer is defined as a person who purchases goods or services from another, which means this connection is limited to a pure final transition. It's a transactional term used to define a financial...
AI and The EHR as a Hammer: Physicians as Carpenters?
When you build a new house, who gets to decide which hammer type (claw hammer, framing hammer, dead blow hammer, common hammer, sledge hammer, blocking hammer, brick hammer ...) will be used during construction? Is it the home developer? No. Is it the home buyer? No....
Dynamic Digital Platforms: the CDC and The Coronavirus
Take a look at the image above, the Center for Disease Control’s homepage (preferably on your smartphone, since that’s the way we should initially assess at most websites today), as it was on 1/27/2020. Note how the information about the Coronavirus is so dominant?...
The Real Problem with the EPIC – HHS Standoff
Recently, in the Health IT Social Media Galaxy ( granted, a rather small galaxy), there has been much attention paid to EPIC CEO Judy Faulkner’s response to the proposed Health and Human Services (HHS) regulations—regulations which may make it easier for patients to...
The Wuhan Coronavirus—A Test in Science and Diplomacy
The Spanish Flu of 1918-1919 killed between 20-50 million people and the attached image shows what it looked like for various cities. We have known for some time that pandemics can hit at any time. We have known for some time that with air travel (also known as...
Physicians, Creativity, and NaNoWriMo
In November 2019, I completed NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month. It’s an online non-profit, in which thousands of people from all over the world endeavor to complete a +50,000 word rough draft of a novel in one month—the month of November. My...