Non Technically Speaking / Sometimes it is all just a bit confusing

Non Technically Speaking is my professional blog appearing on NEXT WAVE CONNECT a collaborative social network for Healthcare professionals. 

I mean I sit down at my desk and I start to think about Meaningful Use, ICD-10, Patient Engagement, Accountable Care Organizations, just to name a few and I scratch my head, and perhaps mutter an expletive and then I think where do I begin. Ever try to talk healthcare to your friends? 

MUS2, HIX, CAH, EHR, ACO, EPs… I stepped away from Healthcare for ten years and all that has changed are the acronyms. It can be one big alphabet mind boggle, or at least sound like a conversation in your head before you make your next “Words With Friends” move on your mobile device.

Sometimes there is a great sense of being lost.

Welcome back to Healthcare. About eight weeks ago, I joined Next Wave Connect, and returned to the Healthcare industry. Next Wave Connect made sense! Start-up, relationship driven, collaborative tools.

I spent 14 years in Healthcare Administration and then my professional pendulum swung back to my own retail startup ten years ago. Seemed like helping men dress better, more stylishly, was easier then healthcare. You could assist a customer and hear about their problems while helping them buy a new pair of jeans and feel better about themselves. But it was never about the clothes, it was always about the relationship, the connection and helping someone spruce up for that date, interview or trip to Vegas with the guys. 

But here I am, now back and energetic about developing CONNECT. Building “smarter communities” online, right on your desktop, and the desktop down the hall, and the desktop across town and the desktop in the neighboring state as well on the opposite coast. CONNECT, a collaborative tool to help Healthcare professionals and clinicians work together through the alphabet mind boggle. The possibilities of finding the answers together, sharing successes and helping others learn how you did it, assisting someone with the answers you figured out last week, or month or season, and building virtual relationships that will help us solve the challenges of Healthcare 2014 and beyond are endless.

But why?

For me it was quite simple. Somewhere in every issue we are challenged by, for every dialogue we pursue, for every organizational implementation and goal we strive to achieve… we are helping someone. And for me it was not the kid dressing for a weekend in Vegas, but for the mother fighting breast cancer, or the neighbor who suffered a back injury when he fell off the ladder, or the baby born prematurely. When you walk back into Healthcare, no matter where you land, everything you do should be for one reason… and that’s the patient.

The only person who should ever feel lost in Healthcare is the patient and that should only be on the very first day of their diagnosis. After that day, after their first encounter with their provider, with their diagnostic exams, with their treatment protocol, our patients and their families should never feel lost again. That’s what we are here for. Think about it, Healthcare is really about building one big large interconnected safety web of relationships and collaborative processes, best practices and shared data to assure no patient ever feels lost. Working together and sharing, creating a smarter community gets us the answers to solving that alphabet mind boggle. A “smarter community” working together.

That’s why I jumped to work on CONNECT. I don’t get to see the patient, and there a good chance maybe you don’t either, but in the end, the patient remains foremost in our minds, and is truly at the core of all we do. It is why we believe here at CONNECT that the synergies that social networking can create, the experiences that we share, that methodology that emerges, the processes that are enhanced, the system integrations that are achieved; it is for the patient. And that patient is often, our daughter, or father, or neighbor, or best friend. That’s why we are so eager to get you, your colleagues, your business associates, near and far: CONNECTed. We can accomplish great things working together; it’s for the patient.

Thanks for reading!

John McDowell 

Senior Community Manager / Next Wave Connect

January 4, 2014