Cautious Patient Organization

 

Founded by Cari Oliver, M.D., J.D.

 

Dedicated to:  

• educating people about the serious risks they face when involved with 

    the healthcare system;

• educating them on how to minimize those risks (mostly by increased

   participation in their care);

• supporting patient advocacy, patient rights, quality healthcare, and

   good doctors;

• and grieving with those who have lost loved ones or been harmed

   through medical errors or mismanaged healthcare.

 

Cautious Patient Projects

 

1 - Oliver Center for Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas. The center was dedicated in 2008, and its first project is to encourage patients to use tape recorders to record their doctors' advice at office visits, so that they'll remember it, and can share it with their loved ones. It has been warmly received at the Oncology Clinic there.

2 - YourDoctorsAdvice.com - Our tech specialist, Fred Trotter, is developing this website where you will be able to use your cell phone to dial a number, and then repeat your doctor's advice into the phone during your office visit. You can then retrieve the recording from the website (with your password), give it an appropriate name (e.g., Diet advice; need eye exam), and keep it to refer back to, and share with your family.

3 - Cautious Care: A Guide for Patients, written by Dr. Oliver, describes all of the hazards in medicine that she has seen in over 30 years of medical practice, and then gives practical ways to avoid many of those risks. And none start with "ask your doctor" (which Dr. Oliver thinks, in the real world, is a well-meaning, but usually futile, approach to getting better care).

4 - Misdiagnosed is a set of 4 TV pilots that Dr. Oliver has produced, that tell the true stories of patients who have been seriously harmed by medical errors, and then gives some advice on how those tragedies might have been prevented. These families shared their stories to help prevent those same tragedies from happening to others.

5 - PatientFirst Health Record, available for free at www.pfhr.org, is an electronic personal health record that allows you to organize your health information, so that your doctors have an organized and complete record (when you give them a copy). With the state of medical care today---where doctors don't have enough time with patients, and less time to keep organized charts---a personal health record kept by the patient is becoming more and more lauded as one of the answers to better care.

6 - Patient Participation Conference, to be held in Houston on Nov. 30-Dec. 1, 2010. See at www.patientcon.com.

 

7 - www.DocOliver.com is the central location where Dr. Oliver has links to all of these projects, and provides additional advice on getting quality healthcare. It's best to start with that website to find the instructions on the best ways to use the "documents" on this Cautious Patient website.

 

Advisory Committee:  Jennifer Dingman and Bill Thiel

 

Bill Thatcher is Executive Director:  Thatcher@CautiousPatient.org.  Cell is 206-898-4473.

Cari Oliver, M.D., J.D., is Medical Director:  Oliver@CautiousPatient.org.

Betsy Kusin is Administrative Director.

Fred Trotter is Technology Director.

 

"Cautious Patient" is a division of Patient Always First, a 501(c)(3) corp.

1458 Campbell Rd., #150, Houston, TX  77055

713-461-2822