Christianna “CC” gets a nuzzle from one of SROH’s special horses that exhibits extraordinary powers at reading nonverbal communication cues from students and patients. “Horses have a natural gift to read and then react to or display the truth behind our nonverbal cues. They are masters at reading body language, which is what patients perceive from doctors” says CC.

Christianna Capra is the founder and CEO of Spring Reins of Hope (SROH), that offers Equine Assisted Learning (EAL) and training, with their farm base in Pittstown, NJ. SROH’s specialized workshop, The Horse Medicine Wheel, features the intuitive and incredibly accurate innate skills of horses to read the most subtle natures in body language and intent. Workshop attendees include medical and dental professionals, residents and students to improve their bedside manner and raise Press Ganey scores.

Equine Assisted Learning is also used with individuals in the corporate sector on team building and leadership; soldiers and the military, police, fire, and rescue, aviation and legal professionals, and with youth. Spring Reins of Hope is an Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association (EAGALA) model program which insists on always having a licensed mental health professional present during both EAL and EAP (Equine Assisted Psychotherapy) sessions on issues of conflict resolution, anger management, effective communication and self-confidence.

Recognizing the value of EAL, its techniques have resulted in stronger medical practices through patient satisfaction, reducing insurance malpractice claims, and helping hospitals retain federal funding. Christianna is exploring awarding CME, CNE, and CEU credit for her EAL training. The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) has offered EAL as a pilot elective course block for the spring semester of 2012. Due to the success of this workshop, the university is now pursuing funding to offer it as a regular course in the fall of 2012 under the guidance of Maria Katsamanis, PsyD, a SROH mental health professional and associate professor at UMDNJ, called Horses for Healers.

A follow up post will feature a video of The Horse Medicine Wheel / Horses for Healers workshop with UMDNJ medical students. Watch for an announcement when the video is posted.

More about Christianna Capra, her vision and life’s mission
Spring Reins of Life, Christianna’s not-for-profit corporation
Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association (EAGALA)

Podcast (25 Minutes) They Use Horses to Train Doctors

Jay Deady

Jay Deady, President and CEO of San Diego-based Awarepoint, Inc., leverages his 22-year career that spans senior leadership positions at Eclipsys, which now is part of Allscripts, McKesson, and Cerner. Awarepoint’s employees and the employees of its hospital clients work together to achieve accountability and return on investment for their efforts using a Real-Time Locating System.

Picture all the second-by-second movement of equipment, physicians, health professionals, attendants, and patients in a busy hospital’s routine. Savings in time does save lives, contributing towards patient confidence in the hospital and satisfaction with the services they receive there.

Awarepoint automatically tracks these movements using technology installed throughout a facility that doesn’t interrupt workflow in the hospital setting.

It’s done through proprietary hardware, software, and a compensation agreement that makes Awarepoint a partner rather than a vendor with its hospital clients. Awarepoint adds value by providing actionable data to its hospital clients. The data becomes available to the hospital’s leadership and administrators to continually improve quality and efficiency. In turn, Awarepoint uses the data to be accountable, to prove its contributions towards achieving better quality and efficiency.

Only 15% of hospitals use a Real-Time Locating System. It would seem that adopting a RTL System, such as that offered by Awarepoint is a “no-brainer,” since it does not require a hospital to lay out dollars from day one. Along with its business arrangement based on return on investment, that leaves plenty of room for Awarepoint to grow, from $8.5 million in revenue in 2010 to a projected $35-38 million in 2012.

Bio, Jay Deady

Press Release

More from Jay

Tracking Jay Deady, Viewpoint from the Corner Office
HISTalk Interviews Jay Deady, Awarepoint CEO
Monongahela Valley Hospital Merges Medical Records With RTLS
RFID Journal

RFID Tags Linked to EHRs Help Keep Track of ED Patients
FierceEMR

Emergency Room Patients Tracked With RFID Tags
Information Week

Top 6 Reasons Hospitals Should Deploy RTLS

Podcast (17 Min.) Partnering with Clients to Do More with Less

From the front lines, as well as behind-the-scenes, Robert Hitchcock, MD, FACEP, an Emergency Medicine physician at Manatee Memorial Hospital and Lakewood Ranch Medical Center, Bradenton, FL,  manages complex Emergency Department operations.

In his role as chief medical informatics officer for T-System, Inc. he guides strategies for addressing the critical issues that arise in hospital Emergency Departments. T-System, based in Dallas, TX, develops Emergency Department solutions by turning data into actionable information. T-System has 40% of the nationwide market for its specialized services.

Robert Hitchcock, MD, FACEP, was a Top 3 Reader’s Choice pick for the Department of Health and Human Services Office of National Coordinator in a poll conducted by Modern Healthcare magazine.
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Bio, Robert Hitchcock, MD, FACEP
Website, T-System, Inc.

EDInfographic

Podcast (33 Minutes), in 2 Chapters
Emergency Departments in Crisis (0-12 Minutes)
The EMR/EHR in the ED (12-33 Minutes)

In the first chapter of the podcast, Dr. Hitchcock discusses the survival of hospital Emergency departments, a place that we, as patients and consumers, take for granted that will be there and efficiently functioning should any of us have to pay an unexpected visit.

The second chapter of the podcast discusses the Electronic Medical/Health Record from the perspective of its use in hospital Emergency departments and envisions its potential to provide seamless information exchange.

Dr. Hitchcock’s perspective complements the importance of the EMR/EHR to transform and improve healthcare quality. Listen to podcasts from the Archives on the right column with Dr. Glenn Laffel (March 2010) and Frances Loshin-Turso (August 2011). Both podcasts have been among the most downloaded.

Kel Smith provides thought leadership on accessibilities to the Havas Worldwide Health network.

Kel Smith on Team Building: I align myself with people who share my moral compass.

A fact that gives pause—Americans with disabilities number around 54 million. It’s estimated they have $175 million in discretionary income to spend on services, devices, software and other products that will make their lives easier. These are technologies and tools that help people with disabilities access the same level of information and services that non-disabled individuals enjoy.

Kel’s projects apply digital and other technologies to assist those with disabilities and rehabilitation challenges achieve a greater measure of independence in their lives. His practice addresses a broad spectrum of disabilities: low vision, blindness, autism, degenerative illnesses, behavioral disorders, cognitive difficulty and hearing impairments. Assisting individuals with disabilities may take the form, or a combination of tablet devices, gaming consoles, interfaces that are sensitive to touch, virtual prosthetics, adaptive therapies, text-to-speech functionality and virtual reality.

Havas Worldwide Health recognizes commercial opportunities for businesses developing products to serve this market, as well as fulfilling a humanitarian mission through the work of Kel and his team.

Bio, Kel Smith
Digital Outcasts Blog

Podcast (11 Minutes) Working Towards Independence for People with Disabilities

Dr. Cindy Haines gives consumers and patients practical advice on navigating the precarious waters of the U.S. healthcare system.

Cindy Haines, MD, is a family physician who serves on the faculty of St. Louis University School of Medicine, medical journalist, and chief medical officer of HealthDay, an award-winning consumer and professional news service.

This podcast takes its title, How to Get the Best Health Care in a Broken System, from the recently published book authored by Dr. Cindy Haines. Eric Metcalf, MPH, and medical journalist co-authored the book.

Their book is written in lay language to help consumers and patients realize the power they have in taking control of their health through prevention and early intervention; forming a relationship with their primary care physicians, and making smart and realistic treatment choices. What Dr. Haines advocates as The New Prescription, in the long run will help save our health system billions of dollars in the aggregate.

Podcast (15 Minutes) How to Get the Best Health Care in a Broken System

Wayne Sensor, formerly CEO of Alegent Health

Wayne presided over a health system cited by The Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement as the #1 health system in the United States for its clinical quality and patient satisfaction by, just ahead of the Mayo Clinic. Alegent Health is a not-for-profit health system with over 9,000 employees, 1300 physicians, with five metropolitan medical centers, four rural hospitals, and 42 primary care clinics with 200 physicians in Nebraska and Iowa.

Wayne’s Messaging To-Do List includes five elements—applicable to all size organizations:

1) Connecting the dots
2) Making the change relevant to individuals
3) Demonstrating urgency, “The Burning Platform”
4) Flooding the channels
5) Communicating at a micro-level with physicians

Links
Bio, Wayne Sensor

Podcast
Relentless Communication in Organizational Change (19:34 Minutes)

Bonus Feature
Health and Life Sciences Industry Compass 2.0 Map
Institute for the Future’s Health Horizons program and Deloitte LLP’s Health Sciences & Government practice have collaborated to produce Industry Compass 2.0. Wayne references the map in the podcast, a navigation tool designed to help organizations make better decisions today while strategically preparing for the life sciences and health care world of tomorrow.

Industry Compass 2.0 goes beyond traditional stakeholders and boundaries in the health care industry to examine dynamic zones of impact including people, networks, markets, practices, and tools. The map does not make predictions about what the future will hold. Rather, it is intended to help make sense of the complex transformations we see on the horizon across six forces driving change. While these drivers signal signifi cant changes, there will be challenges to overcome. Industry Compass 2.0 presents these potential constraints as hurdles that need to be considered. Taken together, the elements of this map provide a visual guide to an uncertain future.

Rob logs on to view his invention on a laptop, but he can also use a Smartphone or other handheld device with Internet access.

He bridges the divide with his patent pending mobile solution that integrates the input of several alliance partners. The result: a sleek, video on-demand patient and physician education engagement tool on the small screen that leverages precious medical and clinical talent and resources when there’s a growing demand for more personalized provider-patient communication and guidance.

View two PDF slides (courtesy of DAS/Omnicom Group) before listening to the podcast that list the problems that Rob’s invention is designed to solve.

Links
Bio, Rob Dhoble

Podcast (15:47 Minutes)
Mobile Health Communications Unleashed

iPad® screen displays health topics that can be explored in depth using video to engage viewers.

The controversy brings to a head many legal, ethical, and policy issues, from a variety of constituencies. Those in the academic and institute research community, many of whom are plaintiffs in the case, argue for free and transparent access to many discoveries that are, in fact, intended for commercial purposes.

The decision calls into question the validity of thousands of life science patents that have been issued by the U.S. Patent Office.

Alan J. Morrison, JD, has authored an article about the Myriad case.

Alan J. Morrison, JD., a partner at the intellectual property law firm Cohen Pontani Lieberman & Pavane LLP, New York, NY, provides an introduction to the Myriad case and issues surrounding the patenting of isolated genes. He’s the author of the article Rethinking the Gene Patent, from which the title of this post and podcast is borrowed. The article will appear in the Biotechology Law Report. This blog will post the link to the full article when it becomes available in December 2010.

Links
Bio, Alan J. Morrison, JD
Link to the Myriad Case Association of Molecular Pathology, et al. v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, et al., No. 09 Civ. 4515, 2010 WL 1233416, *1 (S.D.N.Y. March 29, 2010)
Someone (Other Than You) May Own Your Genes
Overview of Gene Patents
Summary of the Myriad Case

Podcast (12:26 Minutes)
Rethinking the Gene Patent

Dr. Brandon Colby has transitioned to CEO of Existence Genetics, based in Los Angeles, CA.

Brandon Colby, MD, is a world leader in the field of Predictive Medicine, a new and groundbreaking medical specialty that combines genetic testing with personalized prevention based upon your genetic makeup.

In 2010, he published his book, Outsmart Your Genes, as one way to popularize Predictive Medicine among physicians, patients, and consumers. The book grows out of Dr. Colby’s passion for advancing Predictive Medicine, since he knows firsthand the effects of a genetic disorder and how to manage it.

Links
Bio, Brandon Colby, MD
Outsmart Your Genes
Existence Genetics

Podcast (15:25 Min.)
Predictive Medicine: Coming Soon to a Doctor Near You

Becky Chidester explains the importance of health businesses becoming more customer-centric.

As a thought leader in Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM), Becky Chidester, president of Wunderman World Health is uniquely qualified to speak about the practice, not just the theory behind Customer Centricity.

Wunderman is in the business of practicing what it preaches to its clients through its Listening Platform that Becky has championed in her leadership roles at Wunderman. In fact, Becky has returned from a listening tour with corporate health leaders throughout North America, Europe, and Asia to exchange ideas with her on how their businesses can become more customer centric.

In the podcast, Becky defines Customer Centricity; describes how the Listening Platform uncovers customer insights; the role that collaboration, partnerships, and alliances across disciplines will play; how established businesses can adapt, and the value that Customer Centricity adds to the bottom line.

Links
Bio, Becky Chidester

Podcast
Practicing Customer Centricity (13:14 Min.)