The Mayo Clinic Health Care Symposium

If you were unable to make it to the Mayo Clinic's Health Care Symposium earlier this week, fear not. Thanks to the efforts of Lee Aase, the Mayo Clinic's Social Media Manager, you can time shift the proceedings and listen to many of the good parts online.

Not only has Aase launched a blog that acts as a companion to the Symposium, but he has also made sure to record and podcast many of the juicier bits for our listening and researching pleasure.

The Keynote Address by Tom Brokaw is a perfect introduction to the proceedings and is an erudite and moving speech. In it, he reminds us that while our current problems may seem insurmountable, they are tiny compared to the ones faced by prior generations. He frames his comments in the dual context of our responsibility and our legacy as a society:

"It is said that medicine took a dramatic turn at the beginning of the 20th century when it began to do more good than harm to the patient. A hundred years from now what will be the judgment of historians about the delivery of health care at the beginning of the 21st century? Will we do more good than harm to the system and, by extension, to the patient? That is the charge and the battle now has been joined. "

In addition to the esteemed Brokaw, there are several other podcasts available. MP3s can be downloaded, included the following:

• Helen Darling, President of the National Business Group on Health brings us the business perspective


• Robert Smolt, Executive Director of the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center provides an overview of the Symposium's goals.


• Symposium Co-Chair Pat Mitchell's welcome message


• Denis Cortese, President and CEO of the Mayo Clinic's opening remarks
  

I am sure we will be seeing more (or hearing more) as they get the rest of the audio digitized. Thanks to podcasting, we may not have been there, but we did not miss out. If listening to any of these inspires you, please leave a comment here or on the Mayo Clinic's blog.

SOURCE: "The Mayo Clinic Health Policy Blog"
SOURCE: "PODCASTS: The Mayo Clinic Health Policy Blog"
photo courtesy of 2008 Mayo Clinic National Symposium on Health Care Reform

400 Thinkers: The Mayo Clinic Symposium on Health Care Reform

Next week, 400 of the leading thinkers in our ongoing health care debate will converge on Lansdowne, VA, to participate in the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center's Second National Symposium on Health Care Reform. Speakers and panelists at the event will include Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, former CNN Anchor Aaron Brown, Ceci Connolly of The Washington Post, Mayo Clinic President and CEO Denis Cortese, M.D., The Commonwealth Fund's Karen Davis, M.D., Joanne Silberner of NPR, and many, many more.

The symposium will run March 10-11 and will include a varied and interesting schedule. Once the welcome and overview portion of the proceedings is finished, they will be diving in with both feet as Brokaw leads discussions about how we, as a nation, can create the needed environment to enact change.

Brokaw will then lead a session examining the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center's reform principles and approach. Following this session, Silberner, NPR's national health correspondent, will moderate a "real world reality check" of those principles. In my opinion, Silberner's session will be a vital one, as public perception and acceptance of these reform principles is a vastly important metric when looking at their viability.

More panels include one examining and comparing the various reform plans touted by our presidential hopefuls, and one on the creation of action plans for viable reform. All in all, it looks like quite an information-packed two days.

I was quite pleased to see that Lee Aase, the new social media guy over at the Mayo Clinic, has been doing a wonderful job of making sure that this event hits the Internet in a big way. The mere fact that his position exists at the Mayo Clinic speaks well of their awareness of current technology and its impact on the debate.

Aase's Health Policy Symposium Blog is only the first step:

We’re using this blog and other web tools to extend the discussion to everyone who wants to participate. All of the symposium’s general sessions will be made available live via streaming webcast, and also will be archived for later viewing and listening. I will be live-blogging the symposium here, and we will have an open comment thread available during each discussion for anyone to share ideas and opinions.

If you want to engage in the discussion here on this blog, that’s great. If you’d prefer to write on your own blog and link to the relevant posts here, that’s even better. We accept and encourage trackbacks. To help bring the conversation together, please also tag your posts MayoHealthPolicy08, as this one is.

I will certainly be following up on this, despite my inability to make it to the actual event. Watch for follow up commentary early next week!

SOURCE: Mayo Clinic website 03/04/08
SOURCE: "Health Policy Symposium Blog"
photo courtesy of idogcow, used under this Creative Commons license