Hey, it’s been forever since I’ve posted. Here’s a privacy rights violation:
Fifteen employees were fired for improperly accessing medical records of Nadya Suleman, the mother of octuplets, a Kaiser Permanente spokesman said Monday.
Nadya Suleman has been the subject of much curiosity since she gave birth to octuplets.
“We always provide training on the importance of patient privacy and confidentiality,” said Jim Anderson, the hospital spokesman. “We knew from the time she (Nadya Suleman) was admitted to the hospital in December, this case would attract attention. Numerous training sessions were held to remind people of the need to keep the information confidential.”
Eight other employees of the Bellflower, California hospital were disciplined for accessing Suleman’s files, Anderson said.
Anderson said there’s no indication that any of the information was distributed outside the hospital to the media.
The moral of the story: don’t assume that people aren’t looking at your medical records, even though HIPPA is supposed to protect you.
Oh, and don’t take fertility treatments when you’re single and can’t take care of 14 children. That’s probably another one.
He has said he wants people to know what Christians are for as much as what they are against, and has rejected the idea that politics is the most important way to change the country.
When the Lord was with us, did He overthrow the Roman government and put Himself in His place of rightful authority over all of Creation? No, He was a humble servant who went directly to the people and didn’t have any direct contact with the Roman government until He was on the path to crucifixion.
And while the apostles preached against the government after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, they weren’t really involved in the affairs of politics either. They followed Christ’s example and preached to the people. In fact, they were really in charge of the first recorded welfare program, as they chose overseers to administer food to the hungry, so they could continue preaching the Gospel (Acts 6).
If only we had faith so great… we would stop relying on the government for our personal safety and financial security, we would give so much that we could reach out to the community and take people off the welfare roles and put them in the arms of the church. I’m not saying that we should all go out and start a commune or something, but God is so great that if we truly believed what He tells us, we could go out into our world and make a significant impact that no government could achieve.
I found a lot of great info today about public speaking. I’m hoping to either get it up on here over the weekend or use it for discussion points this week.
Email campaign case studies – “A spam campaign feels like a smart idea, but over time, the more you use it, the less your brand is worth. A permission campaign, on the other hand, only grows in value, until it gets big enough that you can build an entire business around it.”
Which comes first, the product or the marketing? – “Marketing is not the same as advertising. Advertising is a tiny slice of what marketing is today, and in fact, it’s pretty clear that the marketing has to come before the product, not after.”
The difference between a show and a story – “The Super Bowl hype is blissfully long gone… The lesson of these ads is simple. Putting on a show is expensive, time-consuming and quite fun. And it rarely works. The Gatorade commercial, or the guy clipping his toenails or someone throwing a rock through a vending machine… it’s all show biz, it’s not marketing.”
Learning all the time – “The #1 habit successful people share with me is this: They read books to learn. They do it often and with joy. It’s cheap (or free, at the library or online) and portable and specific.”
Authenticity – “Authenticity, for me, is doing what you promise, not ‘being who you are’. That’s because ‘being’ is too amorphous and we are notoriously bad at judging that. Internal vision is always blurry. Doing, on the other hand, is an act that can be seen by all.”
Cops’ personal data plundered. This may not seem like a big deal, until you get to the middle of the article and learn that Google and Yahoo house backup servers at this site.
Why Are Employees Wasting Time? It’s interesting to see that some people still seem to have an entitlement attitude towards their job, even in this economy.
These last several links are from Seth’s Blog. I would highly recommend reading Seth Godin’s work. He mostly writes about marketing and has published several books on just that subject, but many of his topics apply to more than marketing. I think he would be a must-read for any entrepreneur or manager. Most of what he says is common sense, but maybe we just need a reminder these days.
Personal branding in the age of Google – “Everything you do now [on the internet] ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.”
Looking for yes – Is it more productive in business to be obstructive or cooperative?
Direct from consumer marketing – “Drug companies have coined an acronym for the marketing they do that bypasses doctors: DTC. Direct to consumer… What they are totally unprepared for, and what your organization may be unprepared for is Direct from consumer. If someone takes your medicine and gets sick, do you want to hear from them, or would you rather have them blog about it or make a video?”
Some of you guys were asking about Dave Ramsey last night. There are some good references in this video to his Financial Peace program, as well as some other authors and speakers.
I’ve never heard him speak outside of his show, but you can tell he is an effective speaker from this clip.
Our president popularized this term lately as a way to convey that everyone will have to sacrifice to get this economy turned around. One might say that the little guy has already sacrificed enough… jobs, homes, savings accounts, retirement money… so, here is a banker that isn’t following the lead of others accepting bailout money.
Then again, one wonders if we shouldn’t sacrifice whole companies up to the economy, especially since bailout after bailout seems to be doing no good. It might be doing some harm in the short term, but someone would have bought these bank assets eventually, even without TARP money to do so.
Here’s a question on an off tangent: why is it that those who are in favor of teaching evolution in schools so afraid of an laissez-faire economy that is truly “survival of the fittest”? We are truly living in a mixed economy, folks (I just gave away an exam answer right there).
I live in a CP Morgan neighborhood, so I will reserve my highly subjective and negative comments about my family’s experience with this builder. However, I am somewhat surprised that the treatment I received seems to have been fairly commonplace.
Here’s an interesting question: how would Jesus lend money? If you had to go to Jesus to ask Him to buy a $150,000 or $200,000 house, what His reaction be? Would He simply relax the requirements so you could end up in a ruined neighborhood 5 years later and surrounded by foreclosures? Wouldn’t He tell you to lean on Him and trust God’s timing instead?
I am very disturbed by the current and popular notion that the way to get the economy going again is for all of us to spend more of our personal incomes and various stimulus checks when it is exactly that behavior that has gotten us into this mess. Couldn’t private citizens fund our own bank bailout by simply depositing that money ourselves in interest-bearing accounts, which in turn the banks could loan?
