Veronica Combs

Veronica is an independent journalist and communications strategist. For more than 10 years, she has covered health and healthcare with a focus on innovation and patient engagement. Most recently she managed strategic partnerships and communications for AIR Louisville, a digital health project focused on asthma. The team recruited 7 employer partners, enrolled 1,100 participants and collected more than 250,000 data points about rescue inhaler use. Veronica has worked for startups for almost 20 years doing everything from launching blogs, newsletters and patient communities to recruiting speakers, moderating panel conversations and developing new products. You can reach her on Twitter @vmcombs.

Posts by Veronica Combs

For patient engagement to work, we must have doctor engagement too

At ENGAGE on Wednesday, Dr. Sachin Jain started his talk with three patient stories. In each instance, the information doctors and other caregivers needed to figure out a patient’s problem existed – somewhere. It was either not in the EHR or not in the right file or existed only in a doctor’s head. Jain put […]

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Twitter debate: Which is better – patient portals or calling the nurse?

During the Reaching the Unreachables panel Tuesday at ENGAGE, Dr. Steve North described the challenges of working in a rural setting – specifically Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Spruce Pine is in western tip of the state squeezed between the Pisgah National Forest and the Cherokee National Forest in the Great Smoky Mountains. “I have an […]

New research project designed to help people living with IBD manage their meds

Curant Health is launching a study with the  Meyerhoff Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to test how well counseling from pharmacists can improve the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease. The study will compare medication therapy management to standard care in a large university hospital setting. Project “A.L.I.V.E” (Adherence […]

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Code Black movie has plenty of villians and frustrated heroes in the ER

There was blood. There was guts. There were handsome doctors, suffering patients, and villainous bureaucrats. There was inspiration, frustration, and innovation. Code Black, the independent film screened Monday by the attendees of MedCity ENGAGE in Washington D.C., managed to tell a true, exciting and emotional story about what it’s like to work in the emergency […]

Catavolt helps healthcare companies translate legacy data into mobile solutions

Catavolt did not start small with its health IT modernization push. The software company has been hunting for whales in the healthcare world since the beginning. “Our system works best for organizations that have enough breadth: multiple back ends, many users, a regulatory environment,” said George Mashini, the CEO and co-founder of Catavolt. The company’s […]

Simple drawings that explain why doctors don’t understand patients

Doctor as Designer Joyce Lee, MD, MPH, has a fantastic chart series on her blog. #Healthdesignviz is up to #5 in a collection of simple and striking illustrations that show the disconnect in healthcare between the system and the patient. The latest graphic is at the top of this post. Here are the rest: #Healthdesignviz […]

Awesome or awful? Backpack makes IVs more portable

I have only been in the hospital twice (knock on wood) when I had my two sons. I’ve never had to drag an IV pole around with me (crossing all my fingers and toes that my luck continues) so I can’t tell if this new design is good or goofy. I am all about ergonomics […]

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5 states to watch: Keep your eye on these payment and care reform experiments

Sarah Kliff spoke at a payment innovation summit in Portland today. She identified five states that we should watch to track experiments with new models of care and reimbursement. You can see her list and the reasons she chose each one in the slides above. Here is the list: Arkansas Maryland Massachusetts Oregon Utah Kliff […]

Analysis: Payer’s pricing gamble is to blame, not Minnesota insurance exchange

http://www.startribune.com/business/275827561.html?page=all&prepage=1&c=y#continue Lee Schafer of the Minneapolis Star Tribune puts some context around a big payer’s decision to leave the state’s health insurance exchange, MNSure. Schafer said the decision was the result of the free market and strategic decisions PreferredOne made. PreferredOne is a small health plan that’s insuring employer groups. Schafer said that PreferredOne decided […]

How to use video to get people to care about boring, complex topics

The video starts with an image that everyone understands – a game board. It focuses on the viewer’s stake in the game: what the government has to do to get copies of an individual’s email or web browsing history. The narrator uses movement around the board to illustrate a bureaucratic process. He uses humor. “Nice […]

What’s the end goal for all this health IT? Making high-touch care easier

VC Marc Andreessen wrote back in 2011 that software is eating the world. At this moment, it feels like healthcare is the main course. Our August 2014 Startup Index is all the proof you need of that. Here are the numbers for HIT startups, device startups and pharma/biotech startups: 22, 2, 2. Download the full […]