5 Questions with Chris Patterson, IT Administrator, Florida Heart & Vascular Associates

Chris Patterson is IT administrator at Florida Heart & Vascular Associates, a medical group with two locations in the Tampa Bay area that offers a full range of heart and vascular services. The group, which typically sees 100 patients, employs five physicians, one physician’s assistant, two nurse practitioners and 20 ancillary staff including Patterson, who oversees management of the group’s IT infrastructure and future technology needs.

What healthcare IT is used at Florida Heart?
It has been a long and difficult process to find the right EHR for our practice. We initially tried GE Centricity and Allscripts before finally finding a winning product in Aprima PRM. We found an invaluable partner in Doctors Administrative Solutions, Aprima’s value-added reseller for this area of Florida. They guided us through the implementation process with classes and on-site assistance, making sure we were comfortable at each stage. They didn’t rush us through the implementation process and provided us with the necessary goals to accomplish our Meaningful Use requirements.

Where is the practice with Meaningful Use?
This year we will attest for one quarter of Stage 2. DAS helped us implement Aprima in 2012, and we have been very satisfied with the overall product and reporting. But software will only get you so far, and no matter how easy the charting is, the time and effort of researching MU requirements and the attestation process itself is a rather daunting task for any physician’s office. DAS provides us with a dedicated account representative who knows how our practice works, and walked us through our previous two years of attestation. They offer classes on the new features that need to be implemented with the new regulations, and one on-one-counseling to make sure that we stay on track with all the measures. We are happy to tell you that we have both met and exceeded the requirements set forth by CMS, and are well on our way to a successful attestation for 2014.

What sort of healthcare IT implementation challenges have you encountered in the last year?
As with most medical practices, our main focus right now is the transition to an EHR. Keeping up with the latest regulations from CMS, and HIPPA, have become a large burden on all of our management and physicians. Due to these added responsibilities, we have focused on ways to make our office more efficient and remove some of the burdens from these individuals. We found that payroll was one area of our business where we could really cut into the time spent. We have long been partners with Lathem for our time and attendance software, and we asked what they could do to make us more efficient. They helped us see that our biggest slowdown in the payroll process was the back and forth between employees and managers about overtime, paid time off, and the amount of hours they worked. We wanted to find a way to allow our employees to take more ownership of their time and attendance, without allowing them to make changes themselves. We also wanted to remove the possibility of “buddy punching” by our employees. They had two solutions for us. They moved our existing payroll to the cloud through their new Payclock online software, and they helped us to implement a facial-recognition time clock.

Is the group working on any other healthcare IT implementations? If so, what timelines have been established?
As we look at the timetables for MU requirements and see the necessary changes that we need to make, it gets difficult to establish timelines and adoption periods for technology outside of the “Meaningful Use” scope. For now, we are focusing on virtualizing our existing IT infrastructure, saving us money on servers and maintenance. We are looking towards transitioning more services to the cloud, such as our exchange server, and providing our patients with better access to their medical records and more communication with our office through the use of patient portals, kiosks, and e-mail.

We are currently trying to expand the use of home monitoring devices such as at-home Coumadin management and remote pacemaker checks. We feel that these services provide a more convenient way for our patients to manage these longer-term problems, while freeing our office staff to focus on other tasks.

What implementation advice can you share with other practices?
I think that the best advice to give any provider now is to find companies that you can rely upon to help with all the current and coming transitions. They become an invaluable resource. The trends are changing so fast that it is beyond the means of one or two individuals to keep up. If you look at other industries such as stocks and the security sector, you can see where healthcare is heading. It will not be long before machine learning and prediction will be able to assist doctors inside of the EHR, instead of merely giving them a different means with which to chart their findings. Simplifying as many tasks within the office as possible will afford the staff more time to customize and implement these changes.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan, Dr. Travis

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News 11/6/14

Top News

Meaningful Use numbers continue to underwhelm: The HIT Policy Committee reports that 2,282 EPs have attested for Stage 2 of Meaningful Use, versus 266,067 who attested for Stage 1. Just 93 hospitals have attested for S2MU versus nearly 4,000 that attested for Stage 1. The government has so far handed out over $25 billion in MU incentives.

Webinars

November 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. Three Ways to Improve Care Transitions Using an HIE Encounter Notification Service. Sponsored by Audacious Inquiry. Presenters: Steven Kravet, MD, MBA, FACP, president, Johns Hopkins Community Physicians; Jennifer Bailey, senior director of quality and transformation, Johns Hopkins Community Physicians; Robert Horst, principal, Audacious Inquiry. Johns Hopkins Community Physicians reduced readmissions and improved quality by implementing a real-time, ADT-based encounter notification service (ENS) to keep the member’s healthcare team informed during transitions in care. Johns Hopkins presenters will describe the clinical, operational, and financial value of the ENS for care coordination along with its technology underpinnings.

November 18 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. Cerner Takeover of Siemens, Are You Ready? Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenters: Frank L. Poggio, president and CEO, The Kelzon Group; Vince Ciotti, principal, HIS Professionals. The Cerner acquisition of Siemens impacts 1,000 hospitals that could be forced into a “take it or leave it” situation based on lessons learned from similar takeovers. This webinar will review the possible fate of each Siemens HIS product, the impact of the acquisition on ongoing R&D, available market alternatives, and steps Siemens clients should take to prepare.

November 19 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. Improving Trial Accrual by Engaging the Digital Healthcare Consumer: How to Increase Enrollment with Online Consents and Social Marketing. Sponsored by DocuSign. Presenters: B. J. Rimel, MD, gynecologic oncologist, Cedars-Sinai Medial Center; Jennifer Royer, product marketing, DocuSign. The Women’s Cancer Program increased trial accrual five-fold by implementing an online registry that links participants to research studies, digitizing and simplifying a cumbersome, paper-based process. This webinar will describe the use of e-consents and social marketing to engage a broader population and advance research while saving time and reducing costs.

Announcements and Implementations

The Eye Institute of Utah implements the NextMD Patient Portal from NextGen. Institute Medical Director Robert Cionni, MD made the local paper’s Open Payments coverage for being the only Utah physician to fall near the top of both general and research payment categories.

Digital health company MD Revolution launches the RevUp turnkey chronic-care management platform, which combines digital devices, personal coaching, lab test data, and machine learning to improve patient engagement and outcomes. The corresponding iPhone app is expected to launch later this fall.

DuPage Medical Group (IL) begins offering e-visits for adult, primary care conditions via its Epic MyChart patient portal and mobile app. DMG is the largest independent, multispecialty physician group in the Chicago area, with 425 physicians in 60 locations.

TriCore Reference Laboratories announces that it is using the Salesforce Analytics Cloud to uncover actionable laboratory data insights around what treatments matter to whom and where, effectively offering real-time case management assistance. Wave, the official name of Salesforce’s latest cloud platform, was introduced last month as “the first cloud analytics platform designed for every business user.” The news comes on the heels of reports that Salesforce is planning a big push into healthcare, with analytics being a notable part of that plan.

Nobility RCM launches three services as part of its new Nobility Pre-Funding Program – revenue pre-funding, medical billing, and EHR support. The concept of pre-funding, where the vendor pays the practice up front and then collects funds from the payer, is no doubt an attractive one to smaller practices looking for a way to keep their doors open.

Government and Politics

The local paper profiles Patrick Conway, MD deputy administrator for innovation & quality, and CMO at CMS. Appointed to lead the agency’s innovation center last fall, he describes his work there as “by far the most challenging job but also the most rewarding I’ve had in my life. Challenging because we are trying to catalyze positive change in a healthcare system that represents $2.7 trillion and cares for the entire U.S. population. And rewarding because we are moving national needles in the right direction.”

HHS names Anjum Khursid, MBBS, MPAff, PhD (Louisiana Public Health Institute) as the public health representative to the HIT Policy Committee.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Reports surface that Samsung is exploring potential wearable technology partnerships with Microsoft and SAP. Sources say the company is eager to use SAP’s Care Circles remote-patient monitoring analytics tool for its own wearables. The company hopes to generate $9.2 billion in revenue from healthcare by 2020.

The local paper profiles the new Portland-based healthcare IT accelerator TranscendIT Healthcare Solutions – the second such enterprise in Oregon after Allegory Venture Partners. The company hopes to raise $4 million to provide seed capital to startups ranging from $150,000 to $250,000.

Digital wellness and telemedicine company Fruit Street Health opens its headquarters in San Francisco. The company, which announced a $500,000 seed round last month, has also named 25 members to its advisory board.

Cerner CEO Neal Patterson announces via tweet that the company will offer free CommonWell services until January 1, 2018. Not surprisingly, Patterson predicts that the program, which will require a nominal set-up fee, “will become a major interoperability-enhancing utility and network in the years ahead, but like most networks, it will take time to get a large enough mass of users signed up and content flowing to make a real difference.”

Physical therapy EHR vendor WebPT acquires WebOutcomes, which offers an online outcomes tracking tool for PT/OT.

Research and Innovation

This article points out that predictions from a 2004 Pew Internet Project survey have fallen far short of their mark. Forty percent of respondents agreed with the prediction that, “In 10 years, the increasing use of online medical resources will yield substantial improvement in many of the pervasive problems now facing healthcare – including rising healthcare costs, poor customer service, the high prevalence of medical mistakes, malpractice concerns, and lack of access to medical care for many Americans.” The authors now point to 2025 as the year that e-health will truly achieve all that it’s capable of.

A three-subject study finds that Google Glass creates blind spots in the eyes of users. 

Other

AMA President Robert Wah, MD lists a number of things the industry needs from vendors to better enable physicians to use EHRs in a “more satisfying and effective way.” They include data liquidity, cognitive workload, more modularity (“the ability to add features and functions without replacing an entire system”), and a more direct way to voice concerns and suggestions.

This article highlights four healthcare buzzwords that have lost all meaning – Accountable Care Organization, Interoperability, Consumer, and Disruptive Innovation. I certainly agree with the author in that “the almost-random use of Disruptive Innovation to describe just about anything any company wants to do at any given moment is beyond dispute.”

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks, Greenway Health, and PerfectServe are named to CIO Review’s “20 Most Promising Healthcare Tech Solutions Providers 2014.” The publication’s “20 Most Promising Healthcare Consulting Providers” includes Leidos Health and TrainingWheel. 
• ESD wins a CHIME CIO Fall Forum award for best video.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan, Dr. Travis

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News 11/4/2014

Top News

LabCorp acquires drug development and nutritional analysis company Covance for $5.6 billion, creating the world’s largest healthcare diagnostics business. The combined company will leverage technologies that improve patient recruitment for clinical trials; enhance efficiency in the conduct of clinical trials; and deliver data faster to drug sponsors, physicians, and patients. LabCorp CEO Dave King will lead the combined company in the same position, while Covance CEO Joe Herring will lead the new Covance Division.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Practice Gold Sponsor Clockwise.MD, which is also sponsoring HIStalk. The Atlanta-based company’s online reservation system lets patients skip the wait – they make an appointment (online or mobile), show up on time knowing their place is reserved, and then watch the wait times and queue order in real time on an iPad. Providers gain interesting benefits: They can fill in their less-busy schedule times, keep patients informed about wait times via automatic text messages, and target delayed patients via a real-time dashboard so that appropriate customer service actions can be taken. Thanks to Clockwise.MD for supporting HIStalk Practice and HIStalk.

Watching: Halloween has come and gone, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give these five “healthcare horror flicks” a chance to frighten the living daylights out of you. I’m particularly partial to 28 Days Later.

Webinars

November 5 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. Keeping it Clean: How Data Profiling Leads to Trusted Data. Sponsored by Encore, A Quintiles Company. Presenters: Lori Yackanicz, administrator of clinical informatics, Lehigh Valley Health Network; Randy L. Thomas, associate partner of performance analytics, Encore, A Quintiles Company; Joy Ales, MHA, BSN, RN, senior consultant, Encore, A Quintiles Company. Data dictionaries, organizational standards, and pick lists for data entry fields may describe the intent of a particular data field, but don’t guarantee that the data captured in the source system actually reflects that intent. Data profiling is the statistical analysis and assessment of the data values in source systems for consistency, uniqueness, and logic to ensure that the data landing in a data warehouse or analytic application is as expected. Attendees will learn which projects benefit from data profiling and the resources needed to accomplish it.

November 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. Three Ways to Improve Care Transitions Using an HIE Encounter Notification Service. Sponsored by Audacious Inquiry. Presenters: Steven Kravet, MD, MBA, FACP, president, Johns Hopkins Community Physicians; Jennifer Bailey, senior director of quality and transformation, Johns Hopkins Community Physicians; Robert Horst, principal, Audacious Inquiry. Johns Hopkins Community Physicians reduced readmissions and improved quality by implementing a real-time, ADT-based encounter notification service (ENS) to keep the member’s healthcare team informed during transitions in care. Johns Hopkins presenters will describe the clinical, operational, and financial value of the ENS for care coordination along with its technology underpinnings.

November 18 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. Cerner Takeover of Siemens, Are You Ready? Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenters: Frank L. Poggio, president and CEO, The Kelzon Group; Vince Ciotti, principal, HIS Professionals. The Cerner acquisition of Siemens impacts 1,000 hospitals that could be forced into a “take it or leave it” situation based on lessons learned from similar takeovers. This webinar will review the possible fate of each Siemens HIS product, the impact of the acquisition on ongoing R&D, available market alternatives, and steps Siemens clients should take to prepare.

November 19 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. Improving Trial Accrual by Engaging the Digital Healthcare Consumer: How to Increase Enrollment with Online Consents and Social Marketing. Sponsored by DocuSign. Presenters: B. J. Rimel, MD, gynecologic oncologist, Cedars-Sinai Medial Center; Jennifer Royer, product marketing, DocuSign. The Women’s Cancer Program increased trial accrual five-fold by implementing an online registry that links participants to research studies, digitizing and simplifying a cumbersome, paper-based process. This webinar will describe the use of e-consents and social marketing to engage a broader population and advance research while saving time and reducing costs.

Recordings of recent webinars are available on YouTube:

Electronic Prescribing of Controlled Substances Is Here. What Should You Do?
Data Governance – Why You Can’t Put It Off
Using BI Maturity Models to Tap the Power of Analytics
Electronic Health Record Divorce Rates on the Rise- The Four Factors that Predict Long-term Success
Meaningful Use Stage 2 Veterans Speak Out: Implementing Direct Secure Messaging for Success

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Drug safety information distributor PDR Network merges with LDM Group, a distributor of consumer and patient health information. LDM CEO Mark Heinold will take over the CEO role at PDR, while former PDR CEO Richard Altus will join Lee Equity Partners, the majority shareholder of PDR, as an operating advisor.

Orion Health targets $915 million in its IPO, set for a dual-listing on the New Zealand national stock exchange and Australian securities exchange on November 26. The company hopes to raise up to $155 million by selling between 21.9 million and 29.1 million shares at $4.30 and $5.70 apiece.

Kareo announces that it has raised a $15 million debt financing round provided by Escalate Capital Partners.

Announcements and Implementations

Physician-owned NEPA ACO Company selects the eClinicalWorks Care Coordination Medical Record for its 80 physicians across several practices. The ACO anticipates the savings realized from the CCMR will help it expand via additional payer contracts and practice participation in Northern New Jersey.

NextGen launches four new products at its user group meeting in Las Vegas, including a national HISP developed with Mirth; population health management solution; EHR iOS7 app; and mobile patient portal. The company also announced its plans to debut a cloud-based EHR/PM solution in early 2015. I wonder how many folks are doing Vegas for the second time in as many weeks following MGMA.

5 O’Clock Records rebrands as ChartRequest in an effort to better align its name with a renewed focus on its cloud-based, release-of-information solution. The company has received 30,000 record requests since opening in 2012.

Amazing Charts announces the GA of its new PM system as a separate add-on module to its EHR.

Government and Politics

ONC launches the Market R&D Pilot Challenge to test new health IT products through pilot funding awards and facilitated matchmaking between entrepreneurs, medical and public health personnel, patients, and the research community. Pilot proposals will be awarded in three domains: clinical environments; public health and community environments; and consumer health. Up to six winning proposals will each receive a $50,000 award. The challenge runs through early 2016.

CMS adds a scope of service element to the final version of the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for Calendar Year 2015 that would require providers who bill for Chronic Care Management services (a new reimbursement item) to use certified EHRs and patient-centered electronic care plans for demographics, problem list, meds, allergies, and a structured clinical summary record, using that technology to manage care transitions. The schedule also provides payment for several types of telehealth visits, including annual wellness and psychotherapy.

People

Alastair Fitzpayne (U.S. Dept. of the Treasury) will join HHS next month as chief of staff.

The Utah Health Information Network promotes Teresa River to CEO, effective Jan. 1, 2015. Current CEO Jan Root will retire next month.

Nightingale Informatix Corp. announces that CFO Peter Cauley is leaving the company. A replacement has been found, though the company has not yet released further details.

Research and Innovation

Next IT launches the Alme Health Coach app to help chronic-disease sufferers better manage their health. The app alerts patients to take their medications, and provides data and feedback to the physician. I’m especially intrigued by the user’s ability to log and share side effects and other data with their physician and insurance company if they so choose. How many times have you taken medication on an empty stomach as directed, only to suffer the nauseating consequences afterward? I’d appreciate the opportunity to communicate that side effect with my doctor immediately, rather than phone it in to a triage nurse, or attempt to remember it at a follow-up appointment days later.

The first study of its kind finds that patients suffering from eczema who receive follow up care online improved to the same extent as those who saw their dermatologists in person. Jack Resneck, MD explains that “this study provided highly coordinated telemedicine care with a physician who had an existing relationship with the patient – it is critical that as we expand telemedicine, it’s done in a way that provides this type of transparent, coordinated care rather than creating fragmented care completely outside of the patient’s existing healthcare team.”

Researchers find that vocal patterns change as feelings of depression worsen, and they suggest that Siri-like apps may soon be able to analyze a person’s speech to assess the state of their mental health. The researchers used recordings from six patients and compared the scores of those patients on the Hamilton Depression Scale, finding that the worst feelings of depression correspond with slower and breathier speech.

Other

Kent Brantly, MD one of the first U.S. healthcare workers to contract Ebola while working in West Africa, expresses his frustration with the lack of progress the United States is making in stemming the outbreak in that region: “Four thousand U.S. troops were committed, but there are currently around 600 on the ground. The government also committed to build a 25-bed critical-care hospital in Monrovia to treat infected healthcare workers and 17 100-bed isolation units. They haven’t built a single isolation unit yet, and that 25-bed hospital still is not functional, and it has been more than a month. Part of my plea to Congress was the immediacy of these needs. The experts are saying that the cases are doubling every two to four weeks. We haven’t acted quickly enough. Another need is for health care workers to go to West Africa and treat Ebola patients on two levels. One, as these new isolation units get set up, if you don’t have staff to care for the patients there, it’s just a place to go and die. Every 100-bed isolation unit requires at least 200 staff to run it 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” I’d be interested to hear his thoughts on the U.S. quarantine policies that, if the media is to be believed, are hindering healthcare workers from signing up to help patients in West Africa.

Emory University students raise over $14,000 in an Indiegogo campaign (exceeding their goal) to develop Rapid Ebola Detection Strips. Spurred by a challenge from their freshman biology professor, the students will use the funds to further develop and bring to market user-friendly kits designed to test for Ebola in a portable and inexpensive way.

Centene Corp.’s Start Smart for Your Baby texting program receives the Children’s Health Award from Medicaid Health Plans of America. The goals of the program, part of the larger Start Smart for Your Baby care management initiative, are to encourage breastfeeding and increase prenatal, postpartum, and infant well-child visits for Medicaid members. Compared to those not in the program, members who received the Start Smart For Your Baby text messages had improved timeliness of prenatal care, higher rates of ongoing prenatal care, and higher rates of breastfeeding. The texting program, founded in 2012, seems to be following in the same steps as the Text 4 Baby program, which got started in 2010.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks signs an additional 37 CHCs and FQHCs.
• Arcadia Healthcare Solutions will present at the HIMSS Northwest Technology and Education Conference, November 3-4 in Bellevue, WA.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan, Dr. Travis

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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PM Software: Making a Physician’s Many Hats Fit

Starting a new practice can seem like an overwhelming undertaking. Instead of simply focusing on their clinical practice, independent physicians must also become experts in marketing, finance, human resources, and coding/billing.

Suffice it to say, it’s not easy, and with limited resources, where to invest first can become a difficult choice. Advertising, nicer furniture, and experienced staff members are all important, but when looking for both short- and long-term return on investment, practice management software is the wisest purchase.

While there is (still) considerable unrest around the adoption of EHRs, PM systems have never met such resentment. Why? Because PM software fulfills a more immediate need for independent practices.

One of the greatest complaints about EHRs is the software’s inability to integrate with clinical workflow. PM software handles this smoothly. It’s customary for these products to manage patient scheduling, which frees up front office staff to actually engage with patients once they walk in the door.

Certain PM platforms even offer room assignment functions, further reducing confusion around exam room availability and actually cutting wait time for patients – a key metric that’s tied to patient satisfaction.

Speaking of staff, PM software helps increase employee efficiency by automating a number of tasks including scheduling, intake, and other administrative responsibilities. If you’re opening your own solo practice, it’s likely you won’t have an army of nurses backing you up (at least not at first). Therefore, it’s important to provide the staff you do have with tools that let them accomplish more in less time.

Once your first staff members are trained, you now have an IT infrastructure that can scale with the growth of your practice.

But PM software isn’t just about administrative tasks. Remember all those different hats that independent physicians have to wear? This software helps make them fit.

Take finance. Instead of using different accounting software to track all of your expenses, PM programs often have billing features that measure the financial performance of your practice. Top products will produce finance reports that visualize the fiscal health of your practice, which saves you from endless spreadsheet analysis.

And to help make sure those financial reports aren’t a series of pending accounts, some PM solutions feature advanced billing functions, including claims scrubbing. The most common reason claims are rejected is human error in the coding process – some pertinent piece of information was left out or a procedure was entered incorrectly, perhaps due to a typo.

Claims scrubbing software reviews each of your submissions and “cleans” them, meaning it checks coding against industry standards and autocorrects any inaccurate or incorrectly entered information. This greatly reduces the chance that your claims will be denied based on an erroneous keyboard click.

PM software also talks to a number of diagnostic devices, such as MRIs or X-rays. This quick transfer of information makes it simple to access relevant patient documents, even if you’re not using an EHR.

In short, PM software simply makes sense for independent physicians – especially solo docs. It streamlines a number of processes through one central platform, and it makes running a small practice, for lack of a better word, manageable.

Zach Watson is a senior research analyst at TechnologyAdvice.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan, Dr. Travis

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DOCtalk with Dr. Gregg 10/30/14

Portals and Virtual Visits and Engagement … Oh My!

This is a special time of year for our little practice. We opened our then-brand-spanking new office on Halloween 2006. And on that day, apropos to the occasion, our office was filled with ghouls and goblins, warlocks and witches, jack-o’-lanterns and Sponge Bobs. We had, as Dorothy would say, an office filled with "lions and tigers and bears…oh my!"

Eight years on, as we prepare for our anniversary celebrations, it occurs to me that our lions and tigers and bears have been replaced.

Owing in large part to the techno-geek who runs the joint, we’ve always been inclined toward gadgets and gizmos of the electronic sort. From digital scales and stadiometers to electronic vision screeners and audiometry tools to touchless everything and antibacterial fabrics (for contagion control) to implementation of Universal Design concepts and workflow planning from pre-Day One – we’ve employed all kinds of jazzy tech.

Obviously, the use of HIT/EHR/EMR/computers was part and parcel of this digital development, again from pre-Day One. For a while, those tools were pretty "wow, cool," but they’ve pretty much moved into the passé phase of their impressiveness. The New HIT Kids On The Block are now fully patient-facing … and the early results, at least anecdotally, are very much a resurgence of the "wow, cool."

To be honest, patient engagement tools seemed a little scary, not because engaging patients was boo-ful, but because of the whole "OMG, another workflow processes change" thing. But, our experience with patient engagement has been nothing but positive, from both sides of the patient-provider coin. Sure, it takes some effort, as does any change to workflow and "thoughtflow." And it takes some willingness to experiment and adapt to successes and not-so-successes.

For instance, we found that all the marketing and signage and balloons and streamers in the world don’t hold a candle to the power of office staff talking to and encouraging each and every patient/parent to interact with the portal, to sign up and to actually use it. And, the more we think to communicate via our "online care center," the more our families think to use it, both in response to us and in initiation of conversations.

Personally, I was concerned that using a patient portal would demand more from us and be less efficient than our tried and true communication workflows – i.e., telephones, letters, and faxes, basically. Nothing could have been less true. I love using the portal, when appropriate, and find that I’m actually interacting more with my families and feeling less stressed about keeping up with provider-patient communications than ever before! It probably helps that we found an absolutely beautiful patient portal tool that’s as easy on the eyes as it is to use. It’s so nice that almost every day I get some parent commenting on how much they love it. It’s definitely as, if not more, efficient than other communication methods. Plus, I think it’s made me more responsive and more communicative. I honestly think it’s made me a better healthcare provider.

Building on the success of this newfound satisfaction with better communication, we’ve also decided to start offering virtual visits to our families. We’re just rolling this out, but from the results of preliminary informal surveys of many of our families it appears that many, if not most, would be interested in having the online visit option, when appropriate. "Save time, save gas, save money." I can’t say yet how well the rollout will actually work, but again we found a really great, and affordable, HIPAA-compliant tool and our test runs have been superb. (And it helps that the development folks behind the virtual visit tool, just like the teams behind our patient portal and our wonderfully usable EMR, are just fantastic!)

And, remember, this is all in a small practice in rural, little Nowhere, Ohio, with a Medicaid population of over 40 percent. We’re not talking big-city, techno-savvy, Starbucks-drinking, cutting edge-concerned, modern-day Yuppies. We’re talking salt of the earth, small town types, many of them farm folks. It appears that folks all over are open to better healthcare communication options. (Duh.)

It’s funny: Our patient engagement efforts appear to have the power to engage us providers right along with our patients/families. Thus, this Halloween, it’s far less spooky in our office with portals and virtual visits and engagement … oh my!

From the trenches…

“Once I had brains, and a heart also; so, having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart.” – The Tin Man (L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz)

Dr. Gregg Alexander, a grunt in the trenches pediatrician at Madison Pediatrics, is Chief Medical Officer for Health Nuts Media, an HIT and marketing consultant, and sits on the board of directors of the Ohio Health Information Partnership (OHIP).

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan, Dr. Travis

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