(1) I don't have to worry as much about what's covered/what isn't covered. I don't have to be familiar with 18 different formularies. I don't have to deal with 18 different provider networks
- Victor Ganata
(2) The chances are much higher that my patients will actually be able to afford their medication and that they'll actually end up getting better, instead of futilely coming every few months for lab tests so I can tell them their blood sugar isn't getting any better, because they're not taking their medication, because they can't afford them, even though they have insurance and work.
- Victor Ganata
(3) I don't have to hire two full time employees just to deal with the bullshit paperwork spewing forth from the 18 different insurance companies, HMOs, and provider networks we regularly deal with.
- Victor Ganata
(4) My employees don't have to deal with corporate bureaucrats who are completely stripped of all empathy, because their bonuses depend entirely on denying my patients care, which therefore encourages them to be completely unhelpful and to force us to run around their futile telephone trees.
- Victor Ganata
(5) The chances are better that I'll actually be able to send my patient to a specialist, or order lab tests or imaging, because the chances are higher that the specialist, laboratory, or radiologist will also actually get paid for thier services, instead of realizing the day of the appointment that, you know what, we don't actually accept this insurance.
- Victor Ganata
(6) I don't have to fill out redundant paperwork for 18 different insurance companies, HMOs, and provider networks to renew my contract with them every year.
- Victor Ganata
Hoping the pre authorization for those imaging tests goes away too. Even if we accept the insurance they still deny tests :(
- Janet-The Bottley Crue
from FFHound!
From a private provider: profit rules, it's a business. From a govt option: the individual's & thereby collectively the nation's health is the main concern. Single payer provider? Is that a single private entity or govt as well? Update! Nvmd I reread it, gotcha
- The Real sofarsoShawn
from FFHound!
(7) The chances of having a unified or at least exportable EMR system is more likely, so I don't have to hire someone simply for the task of obtaining and scanning records, and/or sending out copies of medical records via fax, and maybe I won't have to wait days and days and days from unresponsive medical records departments, because all they have to do is hit a button and send it over the Internet.
- Victor Ganata
@Victor, our legal team over interprets privacy laws. We joke that not even the ordering physician will be able to get a report when they finish our policy guidelines.
- Janet-The Bottley Crue
from FFHound!
Victor, but the EMR system is being built on a government contract, which leads to all sorts of problems.
- DJF
They should really just use CPRS/VistA. But the way I understand it works under PPACA is that you can implement whatever private EMR system you want, but the government has to decide that it meets the requirements before it pays you the subsidy for it. So the idea of platform independence is probably a pipe dream, but at least it should cut down on having to schlep paper copies of everything from office-to-office.
- Victor Ganata
I guess everyone's privacy policy is different. As arduous as it sometimes is to get a hold of people's records, I don't think I can really blame the privacy restrictions for the delays.
- Victor Ganata
I don't think pre-authorization will go away. It will actually probably become routine. But patients seem to be more understanding when a pre-auth gets straight-up denied than when the pre-auth is approved, they show up at the lab or the radiology center, and then there's some kind of snafu with their insurance at the time of visit.
- Victor Ganata
I'm going to start raising chickens for barter and hope for the best.
- Mark J
from Android
Yeah, sorry I couldn't respond to that one before. :-)
- Kevin Fox
well i be darned .... we now can rejoice, since fast paced additions to already good product are surely fastly coming about off the feedpipe ... it'l be a hectic season of finest upgrades ... I'm sure they'l start with keyboard shortcutze. ... I mean Google Reader rules on that. Intelligent to the extreme. ..Google.com, on the other hand - are we sleeping? .. not even "/" ??.. and that...
more...
- pb:
Congrats Ben! Totally agree with Jason. Our latest project wouldn't have become feasible without Ben -- I'm just so glad we managed to get a fraction of his time before he left! :)
- Simon
Congratulations, Ben! You're joining an awesome team.
- Anne Bouey
Congrats, you are now a "big company"! ;))))
- K.D.
That's not my picture! They got the picture wrong! In fact, I didn't get the letter of hire either. :( Oh, Hi there, Ben...if that's your real name. ;)
- Josh Haley
Good luck Ben! With you our preferred service will go more interesting
- Roberto
from fftogo
I think there were a bunch of spam comments made to some 2009-era posts by FF employees. For some reason even after the spam is nuked, the post stays bumped.
- Stephen Mack
Yes, I blocked a spammer that was bumping old posts about FF themes and what not.
- Zulema ⋅ spicy cocoa tart
Well, let's see this as an opportunity to raise a virtual glass to Ben and FriendFeed-that-was!
- Kevin Fox
It probably had something to do with the Tornado 2.2 release. I noticed Ben was the one who posted about the release on HN earlier. Edit: Or it could have just been a spammer. *shrugs*
- Jimminy, CoG of FF
I don't think it had anything to do with the tornado release - a spammer bumped a bunch of Bret's old posts today.
- Ben Darnell
"WASHINGTON—Flushed with anticipation and ready to emerge from another long, cold winter, millions of Americans participated this week in the annual tradition of trimming their pubic regions in time for Valentine's Day. A ritual as old as time itself, this year's pubis-shearing is expected to be among the largest in decades, with more than 20,000 tons of curly clippings predicted to fall by Feb. 14. "My boyfriend and I are going to see As You Like It and then enjoy a nice candlelit three-course dinner," said Brooklyn resident Lydia Simonson, who along with many other hopeful lovers will soon excuse herself from her daily duties, retreat to a nearby bathroom, and carefully tend to the area around her genitalia. "It's going to be so romantic!""
- AJ Batac :)
from Bookmarklet
"If I trim the shrubs, the tree looks bigger," said Jeremy Wertz of Boise, ID, standing in front of his hall mirror with a pair of scissors taken from his employer's supply closet.
- Brian Johns
For the second song, the judges would also accept, "What yo name is, baby? What yo name is?"
- ha3rvey (Hugs 50% off!)
For the first example, though, the judges would have also accepted "doobie doobie doo", which might have hurt their case a little. :P
- Curdy G
Good message, bad photoshop. Line up your image sizes, people!
- Andy
It's like what happens when you run text through Google Translate again and again and again.
- Kevin Fox
You can do it in reverse as well. Take an Adele song and compare to Beach boys.
- Dario Gomez
Can I nominate "What's New Pussycat" for the reverse old song?
- <3Heather<3
Bing Crosby > Frank Sinatra. By the time Sinatra sang it, it was 1964 and the Beatles just started their US tour.... There is your answer :)
- Johnny
from iPhone
Okay this is weird. First a WoW friend buys SWTOR for Heather, and now I find out today that Gamestop has it for $50 instead of the normal $60......a roadtrip might be in order.... #theuniverseistellingustoplay
We will have to split time b/w that and our friend's server as empire :P
- Chris Topher
Tentatively on Zaalbar I have Kytty the Jedi. I'm playing the mirror class on our friend's server so I might reroll, but it will be the same name. If anyone's interested, the other server we're on is Naddist Rebels and my name is Medini (Sith Inquisitor).
- <3Heather<3
"Before Henry was born, I remembered Scott Hanselman writing this odd blurb about being a parent: You think you love you wife when you marry her. Then you have a baby and you realize you'd throw your wife yourself under a bus to save your baby. You can't love something more. Nuts to that, I thought. Hanselman's crazy. Well, obviously he doesn't love his wife as much as I love mine. Sniff. Babies, whatever, sure, they're super cute on calendars, just like puppies and kittens. Then I had a baby. And by God, he was right. I wouldn't just throw myself under a bus for my baby, I'd happily throw my wife under that bus too – without the slightest hesitation. What the hell just happened to me?"
- edythe
from Bookmarklet
not the first time i've heard this sentiment expressed. it has disturbed me, always. I wouldn't know, of course.
- edythe
i guess in this case it's the use of the adverb "happily." And the phrase "without the slightest hesitation."
- edythe
I think it's disturbing even thinking about that kind of thing.
- Rochelle
That's hilarious. We're talking about this on Facebook. I'm going to share this link. So many of us are fed up right now and most them have teens, too!
- Anika
Fuck yeah, I'd throw someone under a bus to save my kids. I'm sure I'd be completely torn about it afterwards though.
- Zulema ⋅ spicy cocoa tart
i've no doubt i'd throw any old person under the bus to protect my kids, if i had them, but if it were my spouse, their co-creator, who i was in a loving relationship with, i'd like to think i'd at least pause before letting them die. And certainly not be "happy" about it.
- edythe
and, yes, to rochelle's comment, it's not pleasant to conjure the scenario.
- edythe
I am kind of paranoid about fire, which became double after the birth of my daughter. Every night I would lie awake in bed and plan the escape route and how-to for getting out of the bedroom of a 3rd floor apartment without a fire escape, that had a long flight of stairs beneath the window, in the middle of the night. It was a nightly ritual for me. All thoughts were on the survival of...
more...
- April
The other Komen shoe drops: "Three sources…told me that the rule was adopted in order to…cut-off Planned Parenthood." http://www.theatlantic.com/health...
You can now get a daily or weekly email digest for anybody's feed on FriendFeed. You'll get a daily or weekly email with the most popular posts from that person's feed. To get the email, click the "Email/IM" link at the top of anyone's feed, and select the "Best of day" or "Best of week" email option.
Thanks to Kevin for doing a great design for what turned out to be a more complex set of UI options than we had originally anticipated, and thanks to Tudor for implementing the email backend.
- Bret Taylor
I now get the FriendFeed Feedback posts as a Best of Day email so it doesn't fill up my feed, but I don't miss feedback. I also set up a "Best of Day" email for my "Technology people" friend list so I get a pretty good overview of tech news every day via email.
- Bret Taylor
This is a really cool idea Bret, I wish you can make that an RSS feed option as well. I'd be much more likely to read summaries in RSS than in email.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Casey: Thanks for the tip. What's the 7 before the "?" mean in the URL? The number of likes or replies needed to be included?
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
this is killer, the random influx of email during the day was kinda getting fail-ish. I love the daily digest.
- Drew Lucas
Very cool! Any way to get archives of previous months? (especially helpful for those of us who leave the internet for weeks at a time...)
- Mitchell Tsai
Just curious - at what time of the day will we get these emails ? Midnight US-Time, or will it respect our timezones ?
- Ahsan Ali
Ahsan: it is somewhat random right now when the emails are sent, but we built in the backend capability to control what time they are sent, and we plan on exposing that control to users in the future. Right now, it is kind of random - sorry!
- Bret Taylor
But what exactly is "Best"? Is it anything that has a certain number of likes/comments?
- Laura Norvig
@Bret LOL THAT WAS MY PROJECT! I will release it tomorrow. But you've also did it and killed my friendfeed application **sigh** But mine has multi-reporting weekly-daily-monthly at the same time and adjustable entry count!
- Alp
@Bret please consolidate me or I won't code new apps with you api! :-)
- Alp
Alp: we were not trying to withhold data. Later today the documentation will be updated to reflect the ability to obtain "Best of" for users. The feed id will be USERNAME/summary/N (similar to "Best of" for lists)
- Benjamin Golub
Hi Ben, that is pretty funny, I tried that URL earlier today to see if it has been secretly released :)
- Paul Kinlan
Bret: While Twitter struggle to keep their fail whale under control, you guys are developing stuff like this. Amazing - Thanks!
- Jim Connolly
awesome feature, this will be highly useful for my corporate group ideas / content sharing; projects, etc.... THANK YOU :)
- Susan Beebe
Great work. I especially like that it works on lists too.
- Meryn Stol
my inbox might say different, but I like that :-)
- Dobromir Hadzhiev
Wow, this is really neat! And it links into the idea I expressed earlier, re: reducing signup friction / enabling limited guest privileges. Imagine if I could embed one of my FF rooms on my personal web site, and enable people to subscribe to that feed by e-mail with just a couple of clicks... rather than saying "you can get e-mail notifications but you have to sign up for Friendfeed first." "sign up" -- though admirably lightweight on FF -- is still a huge barrier.
- Adam Lasnik
is there a love button cause I dont like this option I LOVE this option..great work guys
- (jeff)isageek
Three options I would like (1) Can I select "top 100" instead of "top 30"? (2) Could I select both "best of day" and "best of week"? (3) How about older timeperiods? I'd love to get an e-mail with stuff from last week or Mar 2009? Start & end dates? Anything to help me read FriendFeed off-line would be great since I spend long periods off-line at festivals (especially during summer time) or overseas. - Awesome job guys!
- Mitchell Tsai
So this works on groups too, cool! But we still cannot see Best of for groups on the site on friends lists. :-( I have several friends lists that include just groups and when I select to view the best of the page it's empty (even though if I got to the individual best of for those groups there are entries there).
- Kol Tregaskes
does anyone know of a web service that can do this? (I'm thinking weekly email updates of my favorite feeds/people) I don't think there's anything like friendfeed ..
- Friendfeed's Francisco
Ross and Dan made this video to illustrate the advanced technology we use behind the scenes at FriendFeed. (Ross and Dan, you are amazing - I can't believe how awesome this thing turned out)
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
How very creative. This is very fluid and cool.
- Louis Gray
OK, not exactly what I was expecting, but very cool.
- Kevin Arth
Anyone have the video somewhere other than Youtube? it's banned here in Turkey and I can't wait until we get home (next month) to watch it!!
- Chris Myles
Bret, this video should be titled: A Love Song for FriendFeed ! Great vid (and music) !
- Ahsan Ali
This is superb. I just showed it to my 5 year old son who enjoys Lego and has already taken some great photos, including one or two of his toys. So now he has the seed of the idea that, in time, he could take multiple stills and put them together to make moving pictures. Thank you very much for posting it and giving me and him that opportunity. Maybe, he might use FriendFeed one day too!
- John W Lewis
I think they need to make a full stop-motion version of the Matrix in legos. Now THAT would be awesome. I wonder what bullet-time looks like in LEGO?
- Bret Taylor
i'd pay to see the stop animation lego matrix, but not the sequels
- patrick
"Equipment Generously Provided By Casey Muller" - hahaha!! THIS IS AWESOMESAUCE!!! I love the creative energy and vibe in this video... LOTS of work went into that one! Thanks guys!! :)
- Susan Beebe
Genius, how much time did that all take?
- Wayne Hornsey
Chris Myles: if you want ot - DM me an address and I'll mail you a copy.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
"Two weeks ago, we launched version 2 of the FriendFeed API in beta. Since then, we've watched how developers have been using the API and collected a lot of their feedback. We've implemented some changes, and now, we're ready to remove the beta label!"
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
A two weeks beta in the 2.0 era sounds almost blasphem! Congrats!
- Simone Ruffilli
Congrats to Ben and Gary for all their hard work getting this out the door. And thanks to all the developers who have been sending us great feedback the past couple weeks.
- Bret Taylor
We had some networking issues that were causing packet loss over the past couple days that (we think) have been resolved. If you noticed the site being a bit sluggish, it should be improved now.
"A worker checks in a special room where the Parma hams are hung to dry in Langhirano near Parma. Prosciutto di Parma can only be produced in a very restricted area of 29 sq km (11.2 sq mile) around the town of Parma in the region of Emilia Romagna, just north of Tuscany. Around 10 million hams are sold every year, of which about 2 million are exported, mainly to France, the United States and Germany, which each consume about 400,000 a year. (REUTERS, file photo from 2009)"
- CW✔
from Bookmarklet
I have to say I'm getting a lot more value out of it than FF at the moment. Except with the connection with librarians who are still mostly here.
- Cameron Neylon
I have to start following more of the people you are following, apparently.
- Heather Piwowar
The trick for me has been to find a person with gravitational pull who is willing to share a circle with you.
- Your Neighbor Steve
G+ is getting more useful for me. I've been trimming and pruning circles -- it helps to have one called "YTTFM" (you talk too much) for noisemakers, you can just slide the "volume" bar to the left for that one. I still much prefer the FF interface though.
- Bill Hooker
G+ now more useful for me. The FF function I miss is that I see things people I follow have "liked". On G+ you have to actively share things to spread the word like that. I'd like a function to see all the things people I follow have +1'd, including comments.
- Matthew Todd
Apparently, we still have a Fourth Amendment; the Supreme Court ruled UNANIMOUSLY today that attaching a GPS device to a car requires a search warrant — http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinion...
There's actually three opinions (the Chief Justice's and two concurring). One of the concurring opinions says that the opinion should have been extended to cover things like GPS in cellphones; government shouldn't be able to tap the cellphone records (to track the phone) without a warrant, either.
- I like big Botts
I really agree with the concurring opinion. I wish they hadn't left the GPS enabled devices as a gray area.
- Jennifer Dittrich