On October 31st we will be hosting our final HCLDR tweetchat at 8:30pm ET.

Although I am sad that the chat is ending, this is not goodbye. The HCLDR community will continue beyond the tweetchat – and at some point in the future may reconstitute on a different platform.

The #hcldr tweetchat has lasted far longer than I ever hoped. When the chat started back in August 2012, I thought we would last a year or maybe two. It is a testament to this community that we have been continued for just over 11 years!

Wow. Think about that. 11 years ago, interoperability was just a word spoken in hushed voices. “Patient advocate” was a term used to describe employees at hospitals that worked in the patient reletions department. Artificial Intelligence was a quaint area of computer research. And the platform we started on was a fantastic town hall where you could discover new voices and new people…and it was called Twitter.

Over the 11 years I have met so many wonderful people because of the #hcldr chat. To this day it is one of the reasons I remain excited about going to healthcare conferences – to meet people I have only interacted with online. I have read hundreds of articles that I would never have known existed if it wasn’t for the HCLDR community sharing them during the weekly chats. Most significantly, I would never have known how badly the system is stacked against patients had it not been for the voices on HCLDR.

Through the HCLDR tweetchats I learned that empathy and healthcare are not mutually exclusive, that doctors can engage on social media without being asked for medical advice, that one individual CAN make a difference, and that I have so much more to learn.

As I look back over the topics we have covered, I am floored by the diversity. We have talked about music, food, nursing, physician practices, technology, advocacy, pet therapy, healthcare-as-a-right, and we even had one on healthare related TV shows. It has been incredible.

As we head into this final HCLDR tweetchat, there are a few people that need to be acknowledged:

• Joe Babaian. Joe was a frequent and regular HCLDR chat participant. He was always friendly and always supportive. When we needed to expand the number of hosts, Joe was the obvious choice. Without Joe HCLDR would not have lasted as long as it did. He has been intrumental in helping to grow and guide the community. He is simply amazing and I am grateful+humbled that he has dedicated so much of his time to the HCLDR community.
• Rasu Shrestha, MD. From the very first HCLDR chat, Rasu has been a supporting member of the community. He helped to shape the topics in those early days and there is no doubt in my mind that his presence was the reason why the community grew so quickly back then. Over the years Rasu has been steadfast in his support and I count myself very lucky to have gotten to know him through HCLDR.
• Don S Dizon, MD. Another of our early advisors who helped to bring in others into the HCLDR community. I loved interacting with Don on Twitter. He was always so honest and open about how healthcare needed to be improved. A lot of his ‘boldness’ in those early days helped me find my own online voice.
• Dan Dunlop. Dan is another incredible friend who has been with the HCLDR community since the beginning. For a long time I didn’t realize that Dan worked in marketing. I just assumed he was a patient advocate because he was so passionate about including the patient voice. I have come to cherish Dan’s guidance and advice. He has made many topic suggestions over the years.
• Regina Holliday. I owe a lot to Regina. She showed me that it was okay to be loud and bold on Twitter. Like Rasu, in the early years of HCLDR her presence on Tuesday nights helped to bring in more people to the community.
• Kate Donovan. Not many people know this story, but it is because of Kate that we have the HCLDR.ORG URL. She nabbed it so that no squatter could sit on it and then she transferred it to us.
• Bernadette Peters. Bernadette was a great host on HCLDR. She helped out at a time when I was struggling with a lot of work and travel. Bernadette was very passionate about the topics she chose and that was reflected in the in-depth blogs she posted.
• Lisa Fields. Lisa and I co-founded HCLDR back in 2012. She and I would host the chats together, find guest speakers, write the blogs. It was a lot of fun. Needless to say, without Lisa there would be no HCLDR.

There are sooooooo many other people to thank and acknowledge. In fact, I’m working on compiling a list of people who have been and are forever part of the HCLDR community. I’ll post that to the site when it is complete.

Your Tuesday Evenings Back.

This is not goodbye. Joe and I will still be online and engaging on social media – though not exclusively on Twitter (or X). WE plan to use this time to reflect and breathe…then at some point we will think about ways to rengage the community on a different platform or in a different way.

In the meantime, we hope you will enjoy having your Tuesday evening’s back. I know that Tuesdays at 8:30pm will always hold a special place in my heart. Please keep using the #hcldr hashtag whereever you go.

…and stay tuned to this website for more updates as we continue to evolve the community…