About

Hi, and welcome … thank you so much for visiting, I am honored.
This is my blog … focused on “healthcare content connecting.”

“What is that,” you ask? The marketing world calls it “content marketing.” But in healthcare, we’re not really marketing … we’re not selling anything, not even healthcare. What we’re “selling” is a relationship. We’re connecting. That’s what I do now: I help health systems, hospitals, and practitioners to better connect with their patients, and their prospective patient community.

Why?

Because it is proven to improve health!

• Connected patients are more compliant with their treatment regimens.
• Connected patients have lower readmission rates.
• Connected patients are educated patients, providing for streamlined clinic flow.
• Connected patients add to your financial bottom line – regardless of the size of your practice.

My mission is to help you develop a better connected, more responsive, and trusted “content brand,” to live with passion as patient advocates.

I am the former Chairman of Otolaryngology at Children’s Hospital of Michigan (Carls Foundation Endowed Chair Emeritus), former Director of Pediatric Ear, Nose & Throat at the University of Virginia Health System, and former Chief of Pediatric Otolaryngology at the St. John-Providence Health System, Ascension Health Michigan.

With nearly 50 authored articles in peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals, published textbooks, and articles on technology applied to optimize patient care, I have been a “thoughtleader” at the crossroads of technology and medicine. As such, I am a keynote speaker, teacher, consultant, and coach. Oh … and a perpetual student. I consider myself to be in permanent beta.

After nearly three decades in academic medicine, running clinical centers, departments and laboratories, and teaching colleagues and patients, I have gained some insights into connecting with patients; I share those with others through publishing, teaching workshops and seminars, and direct coaching and consulting. It is my great honor and joy to serve on the boards of directors and advisory boards of multiple national and international non-profit organizations, bio-techs, and start-ups.

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These are a few of the groups that I am active with:

More Juice … Less Squeeze™

That’s our motto at the windrivengroup: meaning greater results with less effort. It’s all about the ROI. Maximal Return on Your Investment.

We help hospital marketing teams to develop their “content marketing” programs. Specifically, our specialty is leveraging microscopic bits of physician time to optimize engagement with the patient community. Don’t have a blogging doc? No problem: we can show you how to turn 15 minutes of a physician’s time into multimedia content for inbound marketing.

Our philosophy is simple:

It’s not content marketing; it’s content connecting.

Provide the information that your patients are seeking, and you don’t need to market to them: they will come to you. We will help you to better connect with your patient community; to better engage them; to build optimal relationships with them, so they come to you for their care.

Our clients include healthcare organizations, from hospitals down to solo practices.

As CEO and Managing Partner (and Chief Troublemaker) of the windrivengroup, I oversee digital media projects:

• consulting:
  • connecting hospitals and medical practices with their patients
  • teaching them how to optimize the patient experience
  • showing them that connected patients make for healthier patients (improved compliance, reduced readmissions)
  • showing them that connected patients make for better reimbursement – it’s all about the ROI and bottom line. After all, you can’t provide great care if you’re not in business!
• empowering ePatients for optimal healthcare
• providing website development, including SEO and social media optimization
• speaking on these and other topics: we provide workshops for any size organization

Here is the value that Windriven Group provides:

 

Email me (rf AT russellfaust.com) any time with inquiries, or find me on Google-Plus if you want to chat – I’d love to hear from you!

(windrivengroup put up this website, as well as many others that I am affiliated with)

 

It is my profound honor and privilege to serve on the Board of Directors for the Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine – AIHM. We are transforming healthcare to Health. Care. On a global scale.

AIHM is the world’s only member organization that educates and certifies healthcare professionals in integrative health and medicine to assure exemplary holistic care. We use high quality evidence based research, treatment science, and healing practices.

Members will have exclusive access to ongoing leadership development programs, educational media, office resources, and research in integrative care.

By combining science and compassion, we are transforming health and medical care.

Here is Dr. Mimi Guarneri, Founder of the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine, describing the need for this Academy:

For anyone following an Integrative, Holistic path as they provide healthcare – physicians (MD, DO, ND), nurses, acupuncturists, chiropractors, anyone – the AIHM.org is your go-to resource for continuing education, love, support for evidence-based remedies that are not supported by “corporate medicine,” and for various certificates to confirm your expertise. Be sure to visit the site, and sign up for updates!

For your further inspiration, here is Dr. Guarneri’s TED Talk:

 

 

eHealth Equity is a brand new information and news-sharing website whose goal is to improve HIT (Health IT) literacy among minorities and medically under-served communities in the U.S. I am privileged to serve on their Technical Advisory Board.

The site is designed to:
a) ensure that under-served communities are aware of, actively adopting and using HIT.
b) share growth opportunities with the HIT developer community.

Here is CEO, Silas Buchanan, describing the healthcare imbalance, and how we are “leveling the playing field”:

 

 

I’m trained as a Pediatric Ear, Nose & Throat surgeon. After spending a decade heading toward becoming a “Head & Neck” cancer surgeon, I spent some time treating only children with Dr. Frank Rimell, Pediatric ENT Extraordinaire.

My clinics at that time – days filled with babies, toddlers, and children – were pure magic. Like alchemy, they took me from bitter and angry back to the joy of being a doctor. It was my time with Frank (and those kids!) that convinced me to spend my life in the pediatric specialty of ENT. Thanks, Frank.

My clinics have been a sustaining joy in my life. My patients call me their “booger doctor,” and then laugh hysterically.

So, when I developed a medical education website for families of children with respiratory ailments, it became boogordoctor.com, naturally. It could have been booger, or boogar, but “boogordoctor” was just easier to explain – “spell it with all-O’s” I tell people.

If you have a child who struggles with ear infections, or sinusitis, allergies, asthma, or other respiratory ailments, be sure to check it out: boogordoctor.com

 

 

Being a baby-boomer “of a certain age,” I was beginning to feel the effects of what I wistfully describe as my “more active, younger years.”

To put it more bluntly, as I am aging, I am paying a physical price for all my years as an immortal fool when I abused my body in sports, climbing, skiing, jumping, running (and falling).

Funny thing about “modern” American medicine – corporate medicine – is that there are people with (maybe) a high-school education who are second-guessing the recommendations of our physicians (who have all spent a minimum of 11 years beyond high-school getting their medical education).

In other words, the only medications that worked for some of my injuries were denied by my insurance company. That forced me to buy my meds on the “gray market.” Pretty ironic: an MD/PhD, working in a great hospital system, chief of my division, forced to buy my meds on the international gray market.

So, I began looking around. Ever since my introduction to Integrative, evidence-based remedies by mothers of my patients, I have continued to research the medical literature for alternatives to pharmaceuticals and surgery; alternative remedies with strong supporting evidence from clinical trials.

Those studies led me to various “nutraceutical” alternatives to the medications I was buying on the gray market. And guess what … I found a regimen that works great! And – get this – with NONE of the adverse side effects that were associated with my meds.

During my search, I encountered the wonders of green tea, and also some surprising facts about the phytochemicals in both tea and coffee.

My regimen now includes a collection:

• nutraceuticals
• serious daily workout, followed by
• yoga, followed by
• meditation

The site, SacredHerbals.com, started with my old friend (don’t tell him I said he’s old), Al Collins, is a collection of tips that I have discovered in my search. I think that you will enjoy the articles there, even if you’re not an aging boomer like me. And if the site’s not “live” when you visit, please sign up to be notified when we officially launch!

And please, contact me any time: faust AT sacredherbals.com