| |
|
|
Improving healthcare through entrepreneurship |
Follow | Share | Learn
|
|
    |
||
|
|
||
| |
Archives : communication
Blogging in healthcare: The power of instant communication
Blogging can (and should) be considered a powerful strategy used for marketing, publicity, and even damage control for an organization who’s stakeholders exist online. For small private practices and large healthcare organizations alike, the power of blogging to reach an audience is often underestimated. The article below from Health Leaders Media does a great job of outlining the benefits of a blogging strategy for healthcare providers, as well as some tips on who and how blogging should be performed.
A blog can be a powerful way to get a hospital’s message out to the public, says Mark Whitman, vice president of digital marketing at Ohio-based brand consulting firm Northlich. “A big advantage of blogs is that information can be shared quickly among all stakeholders,” he says. “Quick response and sharing of information can help stop misinformation and rumors that can be very damaging during times of crisis.”
via Hospital Blogs Can Help During Times of Controversy | www.healthleadersmedia.com
Email in medical care: Starting to catch on?
On April 23rd I wrote about the benefits of using email in physician-patient communication, and how trends in this area are inevitably going to change the standards of communication in years to come. I’ve also written about Dr. Jay Parkinson and the company, Myca, who are pushing the use of technology to improve the efficiency and cost effectiveness of the physician-patient relationship through the use of instant messaging, video-conferencing and email.
Email and other efficient modes of communication are undoubtedly in our near future as healthcare providers. Now if we could just get the payers to notice…
Well, it looks like they are starting to notice. As part of the medical home model, Capital District Physicians’ Health Plan is entering a 2 year pilot program which will, among other things, pay physicians for using communications such as email to improve the efficiency of interaction with patients. This article from Times Union explains.
Currently, doctors are paid only for face-to-face visits. There’s little incentive for busy doctors to explore other types of interactions, said Bruce Nash, chief medical officer and senior vice president of medical affairs at CDPHP.
“The rest of the world’s used e-mail for a decade,” he said. “It’s been limited to a physician, because it hasn’t been paid for.”
Change Management Key to EMR Implementation
I have assisted with Electronic Medical Records (EMR) roll-out into a number of small to medium sized healthcare clinics. Careful planning and management of these projects is important for successful EMR implementation and seems to become even more critical as the number of employees in a practice rises. I came face-to-face with this recently as I assisted with the implementation of an IT infrastructure and a software package into a 7 physician practice with 33 employees. Planning, management, and communication at all levels of an organization is a lot simpler when you are dealing with a handful of employees – you can actually get them all in the same room for at least a short period of time. But, increasing this number to a clinic the size of 33 employees is quite another thing to plan for and manage. Communication has to be more formally planned out so that it reaches all levels of the practice. Furthermore, the skill sets and culture of the entire organization needs to be carefully analyzed (i.e. you can’t assume that everyone knows basic computer skills or that they even want to know).
Peter Polack, in his recent post on Medical Practice Trends, offers that applying the principle of “change management” will make EMR implementation much more successful. He includes ten principles that should be considered for anyone that will be managing the implementation of a new EMR system. These principles include such things as “addressing the human side”, “involving every layer”, “creating ownership” and “communicating the message”. Glancing through these principles one might think that they are simple common sense considerations. They are. However, omiting any or not creating a plan to effectively use these principles could be the difference between success and failure.
Many “failures” of EMR systems have as much to do with poor planning and implementation as with deficiencies in the software itself. This is especially true when it comes to the changes that occur on the human side. Planning how a new EMR system will integrate within a specific practice before actually installing the software will be time well spent and, ultimately, will benefit the bottom line.
“Virtualization” of physician communications
I’ve had the pleasure to speak with Jay Parkinson, MD about his innovative business model which takes a revolutionary approach to medical communications between physicians and patients through Myca, a company for which he is the Chief Medical Officer. I’m excited about the concept of “virtualizing” physician communication, and think the 5 minute video below does a great job of speaking to the benefits of such a world.
Email: The new frontier in physician-patient communication?
For many of us, email has become a primary means of building relationships, conducting business, and keeping in touch. It is very effective in doing so, and while it isn’t a full replacement for phone and face-to-face interaction, it does provide a very efficient means by which to communicate.
In business, email has another important benefit; it provides a document trail that can be used to record activity and conversation, creating a transcript of all that is said (and not said) via electronic format. Along with other benefits, the efficiency of use and ability to document in real time provides some obvious appeal to those who communicate with clients on a regular basis.
Enter physicians, dentists, physical therapists, and other healthcare providers that interact with clients (i.e., patients) on a daily basis. While drawbacks exist in the use of email as a means of communicating with patients, we are finding that patients like it and doctors are on the verge of getting reimbursed for it; both important drivers for the regular use of email in the near term. There will be many pitfalls to avoid for the physician and patient alike, but we will soon be seeing more and more use of email between provider and patients in the years to come.
This article in Modern Medicine explains in detail the key benefits associated with the use of email between physicians and patients, and speaks to the trends that are currently underway in this important area of medical practice.
If you haven’t yet begun using e-mail to communicate with patients, there are plenty of reasons to start. First is the increasingly loud patient clamor for e-mail, as indicated in one survey after another. The latest is a Harris Interactive/Wall Street Journal poll in which three out of four respondents said they should be able to schedule medical appointments via e-mail or the Internet, and e-mail their doctors as part of their overall medical care—at no extra charge.
Ironically, that proviso is precisely what has discouraged many time-pressed doctors from giving their patients e-mail access. But as patient demand rises, the “no extra charge” barrier is slowly but surely coming down.
Late last year, Aetna and Cigna HealthCare announced that they would dramatically expand programs that reimburse physicians for “virtual visits.” Until recently, only a handful of health plans paid doctors for this service, and the news has sparked speculation that other insurers will soon follow. Not surprisingly, the number of physicians who communicate with patients electronically is also on the rise—going from 19 percent in 2003 to 31 percent in 2007, according to a Manhattan Research survey of more than 1,300 doctors. Among physicians who did not yet use a secure online messaging service, one in four said they intended to start in the next 12 months.
Video communication between patient and physician
I’ve been reading more in the press about the use of remote technologies used by physicians to communicate and monitor patients. The technology exists, so using it for this purpose makes perfect sense. I’ve even learned of some companies building this type of technology into their core business models which I believe to be a very exciting development in medical care (more on that in a future post).
In this post from Peter Lucash at the Medical Practice Business Blog, Peter reports on the use of wireless networks and video communication for just this purpose, and draws a very good parallel to the introduction of a now standard piece of office technology to the development of improved communications between physicians and patients in the 1990’s: the fax machine.
Wireless networks have the ability to carry voice, data and video. The latter becomes particularly interesting when we realize that a camera can be brought to the patient, regardless of where they are. This very portability is what makes this technology so powerful. In rural parts of Japan, nurse practitioners are using cell phones to transmit fetal monitor tracings to Ob’s at the nearest hospital (in one case, 200 miles away) for review and guidance before moving a patient several hours. AT&T offers a service dubbed “AT&T Video Share” where users can take and send live video from their mobile device – allowing another mobile phone user to see exactly what they are seeing.
Recent Comments