Health Care Strategist

As of today, and assuming you haven’t already given enough of your life to the social networking juggernaut, you can double down with a share or two of Facebook’s common stock.  Now I’m not a licensed investment advisor so I can’t tell YOU what to do. But I will tell you what I’M going to do. One word: FLEE. Listening to CNBC while driving to an appointment yesterday, I heard a commentator rave about this “historic investment opportunity,” saying something like: “Even at this valuation level, Facebook’s stock is cheap.  With that huge behavioral database, they'll find a way to monetize their 900 million users...” Notice the choice of language.  It's not “They've FOUND a way..."  It's "They'll FIND a way..."  In the future.  Someday.  Hopefully. But the future's a tricky thing.  All along, I’ve assumed the right sequence of events is this: Find a way to make money (i.e. a business model.) Make money (i.e. prove that your business ...

The Social Media Imperative View more presentations from Mayo Clinic

A major teaching hospital (that shall remain nameless because I don't belive in giving the terminally clueless even more attention) has a Twitter account with 1,200 followers. So far so good. Yet this hospital follows NOBODY. That's right. Apparently in the vast Twittersphere, there's absolutely NOBODY from whom this organization cares to hear. Nobody whose thoughts and ideas matter nearly as much as the hospital's own. It's as if they're saying "We're not about listening. We talk, you sit up straight and pay attention.  We're about US and that's how we like it!" How smug. How institutionally narcissistic. How utterly last century-ish. I wonder what they find unclear about 'social media' - the 'media' or the 'social?'

Fox News: "Facebook users heap baggage on Spirit Airlines after dying vet refused refund." That we're living in the age of the Facebook mob assures Spirit Airlines that they'll lose far more in business and customer goodwill than the $197 refund would've cost. And somehow I doubt that many of Spirit's customers are, today, saying "Thanks for looking out for us and keeping fares low." More likely they're saying "What a bunch of clueless chumps." There's following policies and procedures to the letter, and then there's doing the right thing. Frequently the two converge. Not this time. UPDATE:  The chump caves .

"Clinic retailers like Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Safeway, Kroger, Target and Rite Aid are beginning to see major growth opportunities and new business models that actually make economic sense," according to Hammerle, the founder and chairman of Health Resources, Ltd., based in Tampa. "Many in the healthcare field talk about 'creating medical homes,' but fail to recognize that patient homes and well-established channels of service already exist," said Sanders, one of the founders of the ATA, chairman of a conference panel and an internationally-known pioneer in the field of telemedicine. "Healthcare providers have largely failed to knock on those doors or use established channels of distribution and low cost technologies to serve patients better at far lower costs to all," he noted. "The next round of growth will electronically link large numbers of clinics, pharmacies and independently-owned and operated primary care clinics to a small number o...