Electronic Health Records

February 11, 2009

Ted Eytan, MD, "Twitterviewed" by Diario Médico

Ted Eytan, MD, shared views about Health Information Technology, patient involvement in care, and other key topics in a “Twitterview” with leading Spanish health care journal Diario Médico.

Dr. Eytan is medical director for delivery system operations improvements for The Permanente Federation. Diario Médico and its Web site, diariomedico.com, periodically conduct interviews on Twitter with leading health and health IT leaders worldwide — all, of course, in the 140-character bursts that are the hallmarks of the microblogging platform.

Asked how he would advise physicians or other health care professionals who were reluctant to embrace Health IT or Web 2.0 tools, Dr. Eytan Tweeted: “Ask your patients what they use, what they want to use, and how you can be there for them.” Asked about whether the health care industry was ready for ‘patient empowerment,’ Dr. Eytan replied: “I have failed to find a care provider who hoped to deliver bad care in their career. Good tools liberate their calling.”

Dr. Eytan also noted that 2.5 million Kaiser Permanente members, and 14,000 Kaiser Permanente physicians, are using the organization’s online health care tools. The 2.5 million members (and growing each day) are using My Health Manager to fill prescriptions, make appointments, communicate securely with their physicians, access lab test results and benefits data, and other key information. Kaiser Permanente’s physicians and other care providers are using Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect™, the world’s largest civilian electronic health record, to improve patient care and service, coordinate care and decision-making, enhance documentation, and improve provider and operational efficiencies.

You can read the entire Twitterview through this thread in Twitter; you need not have a Twitter account to view it. Or, you can view the Twitterview at a Google Translations version of the diariomedico.com transcript. The original, in Spanish, can be found here.
(Note: URLS were valid at time of publication, but may have expired since that time.)

You also may want to view Dr. Eytan’s Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/tedeytan, or his blog at www.tedeytan.com.