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About 75% of workers at U.S. health care provider organizations use social media tools for professional purposes, according to a survey by Frost & Sullivan and the Institute for Health Technology Transformation, Healthcare IT News reports.
About the Survey
For the survey, which was conducted between April and May 2011, researchers interviewed 63 individuals working at different health care provider institutions. Of the survey respondents:
In addition:
Survey Findings
Of the respondents who reported using social media for professional purposes:
According to the survey, the most popular reasons for using social media tools were related to brand awareness, business development and marketing.
The survey also found that:
Source: iHealthBeat
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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has teamed up with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to launch a new project called “Care About Your Care” to help consumers better understand health care quality issues, Government Health IT reports (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 9/1).
New Website
As part of the campaign, the organizations debuted a new website that offers resources to help consumers:
Additional Campaign Details
The campaign also aims to draw attention to initiatives aimed at improving health care quality, such as:
On Sept. 15, TV host and physician Mehmet Oz and RWJF President and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey will host an event in Washington, D.C., to spotlight the care quality movement and offer examples of how quality-focused changes affect patients and physicians (Zigmond, Modern Healthcare, 9/1).
Source: iHealthBeat
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Health care organizations should consider possible privacy and security risks when storing electronic health record data on cloud-based systems, according to experts at a recent conference, InformationWeek reports (Versel, InformationWeek, 8/22).
Cloud-based EHRs store patient data on the Web in off-site servers rather than on local devices (iHealthBeat, 6/22).
Speaking last week at the American Health Information Management Association Legal EHR Summit in Chicago, Gerard Nussbaum — director of technology services at Kurt Salmon Associates, a management consultancy firm — said that HIPAA privacy and security rules do not specify whether a health care provider using a cloud-based EHR system owns the data or if the information belongs to the service provider.
Nussbaum said that health care providers should “iron out up front” what each party’s responsibility is in the event of a breach, including who must notify individuals whose information might have been compromised.
In addition, Nussbaum said health care providers should be aware of how they would retrieve medical data should they stop using a cloud-based EHR system.
Sandra Nunn, a health information management consultant, said health care providers should ask vendors whether an audit trail can be easily accessible in the event of a data breach. She added that health care providers should request an audit log from their vendors a few times every year.
According to InformationWeek, the need for clearer security procedures could become more urgent under the recent accounting of disclosures proposed rule from HHS’ Office for Civil Rights.
The proposed rule would change existing HIPAA privacy standards to require covered entities to produce disclosure reports within 30 days of a patient’s request, compared with the current 60 days (InformationWeek, 8/22).
Source: iHealthBeat
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Marketing strategies that feature online video could be the most effective for hospitals looking to engage patients and create brand awareness, according to a survey by the digital media marketing firm Acsys Interactive, American Medical News reports.
The survey of hospital marketing professionals examined how hospitals use digital media in their strategies and how they foresee those strategies changing in the next few years.
Key Findings
According to the survey, 12.9% of respondents said online videos are “extremely effective,” and 33.7% said they are “very effective.”
Meanwhile, more than half of respondents said they expected the amount of resources devoted to online videos to increase across the next few years.
Comments
Alex Fraser, a senior strategist for Acsys, said incorporating online video into a marketing plan requires a relatively low investment of time and money.
Mike Stutman — senior vice president of strategy and innovation for Acsys — said that for hospitals that already have an online presence, adding video can help make a website more interactive and increase the length of an average user’s visit.
Fraser pointed to a recent Google study that found 60% of individuals who viewed a video from a credible source made direct contact with the physician or hospital that was featured.
Stutman added that “a series of well-produced and syndicated videos living on a simple YouTube channel and integrated with website platforms can have a lot of legs, create viral activity and produce strong results” (Dolan, American Medical News, 8/22).
Source: iHealthBeat
Upgrading our nation’s health IT infrastructure and preparing practitioners to embrace electronic medical records (EMRs) makes national headlines daily. On TV, radio, and countless talk shows, the buzz about healthcare reform seems endless. Although changes have been considered for years and repeatedly delayed, EMRs now hold a top spot in our country’s strategic move to improve quality care while allaying ballooning costs. We have to tackle the bucking bull if we are to manage healthcare costs effectively and provide the quality of care our citizens need and deserve, because the bull will no longer wait.
The first step in revamping the healthcare system is getting rid of paper files and manual processes and moving toward full-blown EMRs. Digital accessibility to information is critical to providing continuity of care and top-quality patient services. Federal mandates for adoption are approaching, and significant financial incentives for timely adoption will help to ease the transition. Comprehensive information must be securely accessible in one place to those who need it, whenever they need it, and wherever they are.
Everywhere you turn you read about EMR, EHR, President Obama’s healthcare plans, and more. It’s a problem that’s clearly on everyone’s mind, and everyone has an opinion. It’s easy for everyone on the outside to tell the medical community they have to turn their business processes upside down (oh yeah, and pay for it themselves, too, because we all know how much money the doctors make).
But let’s step back for a moment. When most of us look for a doctor, we’re not really looking for the most technologically capable physician. We’re looking for the person who is the most medically competent. Why should we expect doctors to make technology choices and implement changes any better than the rest of us?
Currently, IT for many doctors is wrapped exclusively around practice management software (PMS) systems. They serve as the core technology (and often the only one) for many practitioners, and are a vital source of information. Some practices have gone a step beyond, bolting on basic scanning capabilities, but their access to information is still limited.
From a ten-thousand foot view, this picture is no different than a university and its student information systems, or an insurance company and its policy administration system. All three scenarios give you a solution with all the data about a “client” (patient, student, or an insured), but none of them include all of the other data that is locked up in paper documents, emails, faxes, voice files, and so on. This is where ECM enters the picture.
As doctors and medical practitioners, you carry out one of the oldest and most important professions of all—caring for people (rather than being expected to be an IT or EMR expert). What you need is a system to get you the information you need—efficiently, easily, on time, and affordably—so you can continue to use your time and expertise to heal people. You don’t have time for software that involves risk, is challenging and time consuming to learn, or is still being refined.
There are some amazing EMRs on the market, but many cater too little to documents and focus entirely on data. In contrast, ECM is a technology that has been around for more than 30 years, is proven and mature, and understands how to securely deliver patient records. It can be purchased with confidence, and trusted to deliver what it promises. ECM may just seem like another fancy acronym and concept. Yet it delivers exactly what you need for a much more affordable price than EMR solutions, many of which are relatively new and are still being perfected. Best of all, it gives you the tools you need to access documents and work more efficiently at a price even small practices can afford.
Why risk implementing a solution before it’s fully proven and market ready? Is it worth paying big bucks for something before you’re confident it will deliver, and risking failure? Doesn’t it make sense to walk steadily with confidence before we try to run?
With browser-based enterprise content management (ECM) software, you can have confidence that you’ll be connected to all of your information, wherever it resides. Once everything is stored digitally, you are steps away from process automation; rules-based processing ensures your standards for consistent, timely, high-quality service are met. Processes such as informing your patients of medical test results are never overlooked again: once your rules are established, data drives standard processes forward to completion, 100 percent of the time.
With the automation and integration powers inherent in ECM, one-stop records are a reality. All of your information is gathered and presented centrally, whether it happens via integration with your PMS or straight through the ECM interface. You can experience the power of digital patient records, with seamless and efficient delivery of information.
Digital patient records solve a serious challenge for doctors and their staff by placing all available information into their hands at their desktops or at the patient’s bedside. By leveraging an ECM solution to access information, you can help your staff adjust to working with records digitally. When true EMRs become reality for your office, you will not only have the right tools and complete access to all of your patient data; you will have already transitioned your staff into the world of virtual care. The challenges of change will lie behind you.
ECM is a cost-effective stepping stone to seamless information access. A proven and advanced technology, the marketplace today offers solutions that have a low total cost of ownership (TCO) and are easy to manage. Scalable solutions create an environment that adapts to your needs and grows with you. The benefits are many. ECM:
You also have the assurance of knowing it will integrate with your EMR system whenever you are ready for it.
There are many proven benefits of transitioning to an ECM solution:
ECM readies your staff for the eventuality of EMRs by enabling:
With everything you need at your fingertips via a click or two of a mouse—and an investment that won’t break the bank—the benefits of data-driven healthcare can be yours.
While making the move to a paperless office is not a new concept, it’s still a major change. It means getting used to a different way of working, and there are costs involved. Yet as you move toward the world of virtual care, ECM technology offers an affordable starting point. In addition to helping you be productive and proactive, it saves money on paper, printing, postage, shipping, file management, and more, supporting business practices that are ecologically sustainable.
Much has been written about President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act HITECH economic stimulus funds, which are anticipated as early as 2011. Practices that are positioned to make the leap early in the funding cycle will benefit the most, seeing improved care as well as significant reductions in administrative costs. The time to move forward? Now. It makes sense—economically, ecologically, and medically.
Change tends to be accompanied by fear. Transitioning to ECM from paper- and mixed-media record storage is no exception. Common misconceptions that lead to delayed adoption include concerns about:
Tip: Make sure your vendor offers flexible pricing or payment options and the ability to start small and add functionality as your practice grows and changes. ECM is a cost-effective way to move toward EMRs, for a fraction of the cost. A vendor that is committed to your success will work with you to create an affordable solution.
Tip: Talk with your peers. Find out what they are using, and whether they’re satisfied. A high sales volume might be an indicator of success, but it may just be a result of clever marketing. Make sure the vendors you are considering consistently deliver results. If you do careful research, you can strike the fear of failure from your list.
Tip: Make sure your ECM solution lets you lock down access to information (and the ability to act on it) by department, job role, document type, etc., so access can be controlled.
Tip: Don’t procrastinate. With federal funding an arm’s length away, now is the time to get your ducks in order so you can take full advantage of federal funding. Although it takes time to achieve a return on investment, it’s typically less than a year, and sometimes a matter of months.
Tip: Make sure you choose a vendor with a web-based solution built on a cross-platform framework that will enable seamless communication with other systems, now and in the future.
Tip: Start with your current and recent patient records. Archived records can be added later. Moving forward, scan every piece of paper as it’s received, and capture as much as possible electronically. If you gain control over the flow of information, the savings are immense.
Ready to bring your practice to a whole new level? Eager to experience more “Aha!” moments in preventive and curative medicine as you view patient records and challenges in ways that were previously impossible? Anxious to experience greater efficiency in patient care and to benefit from better cost control, using proven technologies that you can trust?
If so, it’s time to embrace ECM and travel the path to the world of digital care. By doing so now, you will be ready to soar when our nation embraces a new system of healthcare that promises to revolutionize quality care. Leap forward with confidence…now!
Source: ArticleBase
They take up space, put a crimp in the work process and they don’t generate revenue — and at the Bone & Joint Clinic in Franklin, file cabinets are a thing of the past.
The clinic has gone paperless, moving everything from patient insurance card information to records and charts into digital information stored on servers.
“As of now, we’re completely paperless. We scan everything and then throw it away,” says Duane Murray, Bone & Joint CEO.
Under the new setup, doctors dictate the specifics of their visits with patients and then transcriptionists type up the notes and put them into the patient’s digital file.
Insurance cards that were once copied and re-copied for each new patient are scanned into the clinic’s database and placed in the patient’s electronic file. The clinic put flat-screen monitors in each examination room.
It’s a solution to a problem that is inherent in any medical practice of an appreciable size.
Keeping and tracking patient records is a cumbersome process filled with plenty of wasted time, he says.
“Most practices have been struggling with the same problem. The question of `where’s the chart?'” Murray says. “Based on any individual patient’s scenario, his or her chart could be in 20 different places at any time. Multiply that by a few hundred patients.”
The bottom line is finding a cost-effective solution to the problems of the daily grind in a medical facility, Murray says.
“You don’t want to be equipment-based as much as solution-based,” he says. “In our case it was space and inaccessibility of records. You have to have those motivations there.”
Financial rewards
All contracts signed by the company are handled digitally and Bone & Joint is moving its human resources functions into the system — maintaining an employee director, orientation manuals and handbooks in digital form made accessible to employees.
“I now have the capacity to grow efficiently. I didn’t look at this as means to reduce staff,” he says.
Faced with an expanding business, the clinic needed to increase the size of its facilities. The problem: how best to handle the expense of a buildout while growing efficiently. The answer was to turn existing space tied to filing and paper-laden back office functions into patient space.
The clinic spent $70,000 in upgrades to the building’s systems and network and another $80,000 doing chart conversions.
“This approach is more cost-effective for us. We would’ve spent $70,000 on upgrades anyway and then we would still have the question of `Do I build another building?'” Murray says. “I know $80,000 wouldn’t build an additional building.”
Moving into a paperless environment gives the clinic a leg-up on meeting federal Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act (HIPPA) requirements.
Part of the federal legislation requires health care facilities to guard patient records closely and increase availability to the records.
A byproduct of the technology upgrade should also cut costs on the development of the Bone & Joint’s new surgery center. Construction on the $3.8 million surgery center is expected to begin this summer on a vacant lot adjacent to the clinic, will be linked into the clinic’s files and network.
Rather than go full-bore into new technology, the clinic started small, Murray says.
After visiting a paperless clinic in Lexington, Ky., Family Practice Associates, Bone & Joint officials began the planning process of making a similar move in baby-step fashion, focusing only on the processing of insurance cards, then expanding gradually to include all records.
Digital Vandy
Vanderbilt Medical Center’s division of general internal medicine has also taken up the paperless methods to keeping track of patient records with software systems developed in-house.
The StarChart and StarPanel programs are home runs in managing records associated with the 700,000 outpatient visits at the Medical Center and its clinics, says Nancy Lorenzi, professor and vice-chancellor in medical center’s office of informatics
“If you visit to our clinics twice a year, that counts as two visits. We count each time a patient comes in,” she says. “StarChart is our electronic repository of data (related to those visits).”
Going to digital records allows the Vanderbilt clinics to pull out the bulk of its paper records and speed the efficiency of access, she says.
“(An) adult primary care physician is able to take all of the StarChart ocean (of information) and pull information about only his patients. What he now has is the ability to look at just those records, so if he orders a
test, the new results come onto the screen,” she explains.
“If a major drug has a recall, he could sort out the five or 10 patients on that particular drug in less than a minute. The way it was, when a major drug is withdrawn, we would have nurses, secretaries and others going through charts.”
The design of the system was based on a survey of physicians on how they would like to practice medicine in 2004.
“We wanted to take them out far enough to say, `If you had your vision, what would you do?'” she says. “In Informatics, we have been trying to create the products to make that a reality.”
The result was the E3 project (electronic in three years) and StarChart and StarPanel are steps in that direction.
White patient care has been at the forefront of technological advancement, medical facilities have lagged behind the corporate world in the adoption of record keeping and back-office systems, says Abe Niedzwiecki, president of CabinetNG.
Located in Athens, Ala., near Huntsville, CabinetNG developed the systems used by the Bone & Joint Clinic.
It’s not so much the lack of desire to move toward paperless technology that has held up the medical industry. It was the cost and the cost is dropping, Niedzweicki says.
“This software has been around since 1992,” he says. “The other side (facility network infrastructure) didn’t catch up to make it viable cost-wise. The hardware, the PCs, the storage space and those kind of things have come down in cost.”
HIPPA is also a driving force in the increase of demand.
Source: NBJ
Increasing use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers has prompted the health care industry to invest more in its Wi-Fi infrastructure, according to a new report from ABI Research, Fierce Broadband Wireless reports (Luna, Fierce Broadband Wireless, 8/16).
Current Wi-Fi Use in Health Care
Wi-Fi is being used in the industry to:
Major vendors developing Wi-Fi infrastructure for the health industry include:
Expected Growth
According to the report, the health care Wi-Fi market will grow into a $1.3 billion industry in the next five years as more consumer devices connect to Wi-Fi networks.
Jonathan Collins, an ABI analyst, said, “Wi-Fi has established itself as a key infrastructure technology within health care operations in North America and is continuing to expand uptake elsewhere.”
He noted that the number of smartphones and other devices connected to Wi-Fi networks in the health care sector will increase by nearly 20% this year (Fierce Broadband Wireless, 8/16).
Source: iHealthBeat
Experts say electronic health record data present new challenges for health care organizations because such information can be used as legal representation of patients’ health conditions and treatment, InformationWeek reports.
Health IT stakeholders discussed concerns associated with the use of EHR data in legal settings this week at an American Health Information Management Association summit in Chicago.
EHRs in Court
Stacey Cischke — an attorney who teaches at Loyola University Chicago — said that an increasing number of courts are saying that metadata and “access to the inner workings of the EHR system” can be relevant and discoverable in judicial proceedings.
Adam Greene — a partner in the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine — said there are “all sorts of liability fears” that come with EHR use, including the concern that EHR access logs could be used in malpractice suits. HIPAA rules require those who handle EHR data to log access to information that is personally identifiable.
Cischke added that physicians and nurses sometimes can be “overwhelmed” by time or economic constraints, which could lead to incomplete information in an EHR. However, unlike paper-based records, EHRs generally do not allow alterations after a physician signs off on the record of a patient visit.
Cischke recommended that health care providers work to identify potential lawsuits and promote consistency in how they produce reports and react to legal action. She said internal and external counsel and staff should learn about how EHR systems work (Versel, InformationWeek, 8/17).
Source: iHealthBeat
Federal Communications Commission Chair Julius Genachowski recently announced that his agency plans to develop technical standards for programs that allow the public to send text messages, photos and videos to emergency responders, the National Journal‘s “Tech Daily Dose” reports (Jerome, “Tech Daily Dose,” National Journal, 8/11).
Genachowski unveiled details of FCC’s “Next-Generation 911” plan during the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International Conference on Wednesday (Government Technology, 8/10).
Plan Details
The Next-Gen 911 plan aims to help the public to communicate with emergency responders using their mobile phones.
Some communities already have implemented projects to facilitate wireless communications with emergency responders. FCC wants to accelerate such efforts nationwide and make the process safer by proposing technical standards for wireless communications providers and emergency agencies that launch such projects (“Tech Daily Dose,” National Journal, 8/11).
On Wednesday, FCC released a five-step action plan to implement the Next-Gen 911 plan. The five steps call for FCC to:
Next Up
Next month, FCC plans to launch a rulemaking process on the Next-Gen 911 plan and solicit public comment on making the program feasible on a large scale.
The agency said Next-Gen 911 services could be available nationwide within five to 10 years (“Tech Daily Dose,” National Journal, 8/11).
Source: iHealthBeat
As baby boomers age and choose to retire from the workforce and health care reform law both changes compensation trends and bolsters previously uninsured Americans into insurance eligibility, the demand for medical services will continue to increase as the pool of physicians struggles to keep up. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services projections, as put forth in the 2006 report “Physician Supply and Demand: Projections to 2020,” estimate that as the population grows and ages, physician demand will stabilize. Small practices, however, must be proactive in hiring and retaining talented, adept physicians to stay competitive.
According to the “2009 Physician Retention Survey,” conducted by the American Medical Group Association and Cejka Search, most employment-seeking physicians are drawn to monetary incentives, chief among them being market-based compensation, signing bonuses and income guarantees. If a practice has little financial latitude, it can quickly become difficult to prioritize money spent on recruiting versus everyday operational expenses. Therefore, in addition to practicing selective spending on recruitment, practices should implement the following, nonfinancial practices to increase the caliber of physician searches.
Medical groups surveyed in the 2009 Physician Retention Survey indicated that physicians in different stages of their careers value different, nonmonetary incentives from employers. For physicians early in their careers, advanced technology was an important characteristic of future employers. Diverting limited monies toward the acquisition of new technology not only is attractive to potential new hires, but it also shows patients that the practice is committed to providing the highest level of care.
Physicians nearing the middle of their careers value leadership or shareholder opportunities, while late-career physicians trend toward medical practices that offer flexible hours.
Whether through social media sites or at local medical association functions, networking is one of the age-old practices utilized by successful businesses. By associating yourself with other medical professionals in the community (and beyond), physicians position themselves in the chain of knowledge. If an outside physician decides to cut back on his or her hours to spend more time with family, for example, a small, well-connected practice can step in to meet the need.
Just as branding is important to any small business, it should also be important for medical practices. A 2011 Journal of the Association of Staff Physician Recruiters article recommends that physicians reflect on the aspects of their medical practice that makes it unique and tailor that into a succinct message that meets the professional needs of potential new hires. Does your practice have a rare, new, state-of-the-art piece of instrumentation or high visibility within the local community? Characteristics such as these are assets to a practice and could potentially sway a physician candidate toward accepting your offer over another.
Although not a direct offering from practice to physician, medical practices located in rural or urban areas can entice potential physicians with the incentive of the National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment program. With payouts ranging from $60,000 (for two years of service) to total loan payment (for six or more years of service), the program places primary care physicians in underserved communities called Health Professional Shortage Areas (HPSA). Visit www.nhsc.hrsa.gov/loanrepayment/ to see if your practice qualifies as an HPSA.
MD News August 2011
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