PLEASE READ--IMPORTANT: Call to action

[Mark Ryan]

Hi, all;

I apologize: I've been sitting on this e-mail for some time.

Based on a discussion earlier this year, it seems that OccupyHealthcare has reached a moment of transition.

In the past, there was much discussion on how to incorporate patients' stories into OHC.  We have now developed two different ways of doing this.  The first was by partnering with Inspire to share their patient stories (http://occupyhealthcare.net/2012/05/introducing-our-stories/).  The second was by partnering with the Health and Justice Project (http://occupyhealthcare.net/2012/07/the-everything-to-your-nothing/).

In my opinion, the first step of OHC was to define the problems facing our healthcare system, to show how often and in what ways the system fails us.  I think that he have accomplished this goal.

The next step, then, is to start thinking about solutions.  We need to do more than continue to point out these failings: we need to start providing answers.

To that end, here is the call to action:

• Please think about what you feel would be the most important, critical change/reform that you feel would make our system better, that would help fix the problems we have identified.  This would be YOUR biggest priority, from whatever experiences and knowledge you have brought with you to OCH. 
• Write a short description of your proposed reform, why it matters, and what this change would mean.
• E-mail that post to me, at mark_heh...@Yahoo.com.
• I will draft your idea into a post on the OHC blog.  I am happy to help with any editing and such, in order to keep Ben from getting swamped.  Ben would still determine when to send the post live in order to make sure we keep an active flow on the blog.

As our ideas are posted, we can both push our ideas but also look for general themes among the post.  Once we see these themes, we can determine OHC's active role in addressing them and promoting more direct action.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

thanks

mark

 

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Mark Ryan, MD
Richmond, VA

RichmondDoc.blogspot.com
smhcop.wordpress.com
twitter.com/RichmondDoc

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