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Category : Internet
Vantage Clinical Solutions launches new website for SOL Santa Cruz
Vantage Clinical Solutions is proud to announce the launch of www.solsantacruz.com, a dynamic and interactive online presence created for SOL Santa Cruz of Santa Cruz, CA. The website and comprehensive online presence was created to meet the dynamic needs of this exciting healthcare practice which provides a unique blend of chiropractic and physical therapy care to athletes and active persons in Santa Cruz county.
The goal of the SOL Santa Cruz website was to expand the SOL Santa Cruz online footprint by appealing to a diverse market consisting of the active, athletic, and injured within Santa Cruz county. Attention was placed on emphasizing the strength of the SOL Santa Cruz brand, while allowing visitors to the site to have an interactive and intuitive online experience.
The SOL Santa Cruz online presence was not limited to the SOL Santa Cruz website however, and was carefully crafted elsewhere in the online world. This was achieved by creating a branded presence within relevant social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, a themed Wordpress blog, and through the integration with online directories such as Google, Yahoo, Yelp, and more. “The intent of the project was to focus on creating an online community for SOL Santa Cruz, rather than simply a website,” said Tannus Quatre PT, MBA, and lead of the project. “We were very pleased with the extent to which we were able to help SOL Santa Cruz achieve their goals of conveying the diversity of services that makes their practice so successful in the Santa Cruz market.”
Tammara Moore, DPT, and co-owner of SOL Santa Cruz, stated, “Vantage has produced for SOL Santa Cruz a comprehensive and current website for our practice which has exceeded our expectations in every way. Vantage knows private practice healthcare, worked hard to understand our specific needs, and ultimately helped us navigate this technical yet extremely important part of our business in a way that made sense both intuitively and financially.”
Located in Bend, Oregon and Denver, Colorado, Vantage Clinical Solutions has partnered with Smart Solutions (web development and search engine optimization) and Pixelsilk (content management system) to provide a powerful product specific to the needs of healthcare practices such as those within the physical therapy, medical, chiropractic, dentistry, and optometry domains. “The [healthcare] industry knowledge of Vantage Clinical Solutions combined with technical expertise and strategy of our developers and SEO team helped create the product that is truly great, and truly unique to the healthcare market,” said Wendy Roe, sales and marketing executive at Smart Solutions.
Vantage Clinical Solutions is going on it’s 4th year of healthcare management and marketing consulting within the healthcare industry, and is proud to provide solutions to companies such as SOL Santa Cruz through their entire suite of online services known as Vantage eSolutions. If you’d like to learn more about Vantage Clinical Solutions, Vantage eSolutions, SOL Santa Cruz, Smart Solutions, or Pixelsilk, please visit the links below.
SOL Santa Cruz website
SOL Santa Cruz on Twitter
SOL Santa Cruz on Facebook
Vantage Clinical Solutions home
Vantage eSolutions (website management, social media, online listings, search advertising, and email marketing)
Smart Solutions (web development partner)
Pixelsilk (content management partner)
Medical practice management 101: Scalability
In this new series on The Healthcare Entrepreneur Blog, we’ll be taking a look at a number of medical practice management concepts that medical practice managers, administrators, and clinic owners should consider as part of their planning and day-to-day management. The principles we’ll be outlining as part of the Medical Practice 101 series are applicable to all types of medical practices including general medicine, the surgical specialties, and rehabilitation services such as physical and occupational therapy.
Here, we’ll discuss the concept of scalability as relevant to medical practice management. Scalability is the ability for a medical practice to expand its current systems, infrastructure, operations, and staff alongside the growth of the practice over a number of months or years. Scalability is an area of medical practice management that is not always fully considered when planning for the implementation of electronic medical records and business systems used to run and administer the medical practice, and can end up costing a medical practice severely in terms of time and money in order to meet the changing demands of a practice over time.
When planning for the use of electronic medical records (EMR) and practice management software (PMS), one of the scalable solutions that we like around here is the the use of web-based software or software-as-a-service (SAAS). The use of web-based or SAAS solutions allows a practice to operate one medical facility just as easily as operating two or more sites because the infrastructure used to link each user with the medical practice database exists via the internet. The need for a robust hardware infrastructure, including servers and virtual private networks (VPN’s) is minimized, and with it – the upfront cost of implementation.
Web-based software is typically provided on a per-user license basis, meaning that as additional providers or staff join the practice, additional licenses (or ’seats’) are purchased which allow the medical practice to easily grow, or ’scale’ their investment alongside the growth of the medical practice. Web-based software is a very scalable solution when it comes to medical practice management, which is why our medical practice consultants often recommend web-based solutions to our clients when determining solutions that will allow them to continue with their medical practice management infrastructure over the long haul.
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Tannus Quatre is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website.
Healthcare in the future…a scenario worth striving for?
What would the future of healthcare look like if we could connect provider and patient using technology on an even greater level than we currently do? What if patients were more engaged in their own care through increased access to their personal records? What if providers allowed for greater collaboration between themselves and their patients when making decisions? What if patient ‘consumerism’ was the norm? What if patients actually started taking care of themselves? These are all ideas posed in the recent issue of HealthLeaders under the title The Patient of the Future.
A patient enters the waiting room and is greeted warmly by her personal navigator, who hands her a tablet-sized computer preloaded with her personal demographic information and health records. She answers a series of questions and the computer compiles a list of possible diagnoses for her physician.
In his office, the physician is reading an e-mail from a patient who has forwarded an interesting study about his particular medical condition. The physician forwards the study to the rest of the patient’s care team, including the patient’s acupuncturist.
In the exam room, a specialist and patient sit together in front of a computer—the physician is showing the patient which sites have the most reliable medical information that she can use to learn more about her recent diagnosis. Next door, a physician is talking to a patient who has unusual symptoms; the doctor consults her PDA, which is loaded with a decision-support application.
Down the hall, an employee e-mails to a prospective patient a detailed, itemized list comparing the costs of hip replacement surgery at a number of area hospitals.
And, by the way, everyone in the waiting room is fit and trim. Nobody smokes anymore. People with diabetes check their blood sugar regularly. Everyone shows up for their colonoscopy appointments. People are knowledgeable about their health, empowered to participate as partners in their care, and engaged enough to comply with their physicians’ directives.
SEO – Your practice needs it!
As this article from KevinMD.com states, “it’s not good enough simply to have a web presence” anymore. Search engine optimization (SEO) is just as important nowadays. If your not familiar with SEO, it includes all kinds of techniques to earn your web site top spots for those searching you out.
Patients are searching for doctors, medical practices and hospitals via search engines, like Google, so whether or not you’re found on the first page can make a significant impact on the number of patients you see.
Furthermore, it’s in your best interest to have some control on how your name or practice comes up on search queries. Because if you don’t, it’s likely that negative news items or other unsavory information will be associated with your name instead.
There are many good sources to learn SEO to apply to your practice’s web site, however, we believe that it is worth the money and time to have an SEO specialist work their magic for you. SEO has gotten more complex and more competitive over the last several years. Let someone else handle this complexity so that you can focus on patient care and running your business!
Twitter: Keeping in touch with patients…and keeping them in touch with you
Twitter is a great social media tool that allows us to connect with celebrities, news medial outlets, and our friends. For health care professionals, there’s utility in the tool for us as well.
Think of it this way: If I told you that there was a way to know what your patients were doing, thinking, and planning on a daily basis, would you be interested? What if you wanted to know if, when, and what your patients were saying about you and your practice when they talk to their friends…would you be curious?
I bet the answer would be yes…and yes.
Twitter is a tool that does just this. And while there are challenges and barriers that exist to the use of Twitter for health care professionals, don’t let yourself be caught off guard by a competitor that starts using the platform before you do to improve, retain, build, and expand their patient base…just because they’ve found an innovative way to connect.
In a recent article within ACP Internist, the use of Twitter as a tool within the health care professions is discussed. It’s a great article and a recommended read.
Imagine a future where you can with a click of the mouse see what your patients and colleagues read on the Internet this morning, what they ate for lunch, and what they’re working on right now.
Whether that sounds to you like a potential practice innovation or a disaster of oversharing probably indicates whether you’ll have any use for Twitter, the most hyped Internet innovation of the year. Twitter is a Web site that allows users to instantly communicate messages of up to 140 characters to their online audiences.
Lessons learned about social media from Domino’s Pizza
Try this out…go to Google and type in “Domino’s Pizza.” Do it now, this might not work forever.
Your first result will be Dominos.com – as it should be. Result two might be another legitimate Domino’s page (or sub-page from within their main company domain). Result three (on my computer) is the following: “YouTube – Disgusting Dominos People.” Hmmm…not great press, wonder what happened – let’s click to see.
Looks like some Domino’s execs acted quickly to get the video removed, but not soon enough to prevent more than one million YouTube viewers witnessing a couple of Domino’s employees from N.C. doing the unthinkable to soon-to-be-delivered food items. Yes, mucus was involved.
Come to find out, the food was never delivered – or so they say. But guess what, the damage is done. No matter what Domino’s does to unwind this mess created by a couple of immature, disgruntled, or malicious employees (whatever their reason), they can’t undo this. Want to put a price tag on the incident? I bet we’re talking millions. Easily.
Though there are many lessons to be learned by this unfortunate incident – the main one is very simple, and very evident: While social media can instantaneously build fame and fortune – it can destroy decades of reputation and loyalty in the same instant. Understand it, train your staff, and put policies in place that clearly outline ground rules for use of social media for your company.
Oh, and Domino’s response to the incident…you can follow that on Twitter.
Social networking is for real. In healthcare too.
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Tannus Quatre PT, MBA is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website.
Online reputations: An important consideration for healthcare providers
I’ve written about the impact that online physician ratings are having on healthcare providers. The ability for patients to comment on their interactions with physicians through a channel that the whole world can see is a significant shift in power toward the consumer in today’s healthcare economy.
It is wise for healthcare providers, including physicians, to check up on their online reputations to ensure that even if they can’t control what is said about them on the web, at least they’ll know about it. This post on Boston.com’s White Coat Notes speaks to the importance of self-keyworded Google searches by physicians in order to play active defense in the protection of their online reputations.
“There may be slanderous information about a physician on the Web, published in a blog or on a Web page, by a vengeful patient, colleague, or ex-lover,” Dr. Tristan Gorrindo and Dr. James E. Groves write in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “Equally vexing, there may be slanderous information published about someone with the same name as an unlucky physician.”
Standards: The answer to widespread adoption of personal health records
As much as electronic medical records (EMR’s) have been the topic of conversation in the healthcare profession over the last 10 years, most of the buzz has been around the “potential” rather than “impact” of the technology.
One of the main reasons for this is that there exists a lack of standards that allow for the transfer of information between EMR systems. There are some great EMR systems out there, but for EMR’s to really catch on, they need to be both cost effective and efficient for providers. For all users of EMR’s to achieve this, one of two things needs to happen: (1) Everyone needs to get on board with the same system, or (2) we agree to, and abide by development “standards” that will allow systems to communicate with each other. Since getting all providers on board with one EMR platform is unrealistic, the answer to widespread adoption likely lies with the development of standards that will allow systems to integrate together, and that will lower the switching costs associated with moving from one system to the next.
With regard to personal health records (PHR’s), the same is true, and the battle between Microsoft and Google to become the preferred PHR system by consumers and providers has recently brought the issue of “standards” to the forefront. This article from WashingtonPost.com discusses how Microsoft, Google, and some other PHR developers have agreed to move forward with privacy standards in the development of electronic personal health records – an important step toward widespread adoption by healthcare consumers.
In a move designed to prompt more people to store their medical records online, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and several others have agreed on privacy standards to protect patients’ information. The list includes WebMD (NSDQ: WBMD), MedicAlert, AARP,Consumer Reports publisher Consumers Union, BlueCross BlueShield, and other insurers.
Google Alerts: What they are and how they can help your practice
We all know Google, many of us using their search algorithms daily when we “Google” products, services or people online. For business owners, Google has become a research tool, allowing for “quick and dirty” searches of information about themselves and competitors.
As more people are moving to the web to find information about healthcare providers (read my posts about online physician ratings here and here), it pays for private practice owners to know what is being said about their practice in online news publications and throughout the blogosphere. With more and more print publications simultaneously funneling their news stories online, web searches now provide a means by which to search local print media who may be publishing information about a practice from recent press releases, sponsorships or other local news stories.
Practice owners and managers don’t have the time to search the Internet daily for news stories or commentary about their practice, but they do have the time to take advantage of Google Alerts in order to have Google scour the web for them. With Google Alerts, you simply enter the keywords you’d like searched, enter in a frequency of which you’d like the results sent to you by email, and you’re done. You’ll soon be getting email in your inbox telling you exactly what is being said about your practice online – a great way to keep tabs on your practice’s brand in a way that is efficient, easy and effective.
This article from BizGrowthNews provides some more information about the benefits of this great tool.
I recommend putting in place a once-a-day Google Alert which you can then review at the start of each day.
Items that feature in the news, in blogs or on the web can be included in the alert.
More on online physician ratings
On May 20th I posted about online physician rating sites and the threats they pose to doctors. In this article from American Medical News, it looks like while the use of such sites is significant by adults in the U.S., they do not necessarily translate to a change in consumer behavior when it comes to provider selection.
A Harris Interactive poll commissioned by the California HealthCare Foundation found that although more than 80% of the state’s adults turn to the Internet for health-related information, less than one-quarter have looked at physician ratings sites. Only 2% of those surveyed made a change in physicians based on information posted on a rating site.
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