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MPT Podcast 37 - Getting a Handle on Your Staff Expenses, from 101 Ideas to Increase Revenue & Decrease Costs – Part 3, with guest Mary Pat Whaley of ManageMyPractice.com. Ms. Whaley shares more of her many suggestions for increasing profit for your medical practice.
This Issue (6:55):
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Guest Post, Sara Witt
In 2011 the New England Journal of Medicine published data indicating that most of U.S. physicians will be named in a medical malpractice lawsuit during their careers; the data also indicated that most U.S. surgeons will be sued before they reach 65. It’s a dangerous game that those in the medical community play. Their job is to save people’s lives, and the vast majority of the time they do; however, as everyone knows, one small human error can mean the loss of a life. And as if the threat of losing a patient isn’t pressure enough, the threat of lawsuits constantly looms over the head of doctors, medical practices, and hospitals. Given the rate of malpractice lawsuits, what are ways those in the medical field can limit their risk of being sued for medical malpractice? Below you’ll find 3 tips every physician should take seriously.
This guest post brought to us by Sara Witt. Horrified by the way some attorneys hoodwink citizens in need of council, Sara set out to provide laypersons with a resource to help them with the legal process. As such, Sara writes articles to help citizens make informed decisions when hiring a personal injury attorney.
Robert Schwab, M.D., chief quality officer at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Denton and Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Allen, sings “The Ballad of Go-Live,” a wry chronicle of exasperation and ultimate success in implementing the CareConnect electronic health record at Texas Health Denton.
CareConnect is now fully integrated into operations at all 13 wholly-owned facilities in the Texas Health Resources family of hospitals.
Yes, your practice is a business. And your patients are like customers. Some colleagues don’t like to use terms like ‘customers’ when they are talking about patients, but that is exactly how you need to treat them if you want to have a growing, thriving business.
This is particularly true if you are just starting in your own solo practice or have joined a group and need to build your own practice within it.
I have always said that one of the best ways to learn about running a business is to take the best ideas from other industries outside of your own, in this case medicine. Read business magazines, management books, consulting blogs; study retail advertising, newspaper layouts, tabloid headlines; talk to business owners who have been successful.
One resource I have used over the past several years is Dan Kennedy’s GKIC world of marketing and business books, newsletters, and conferences. Every imaginable type of business is represented there. He says he has a plaque on his office wall that mocks everyone that doesn’t think his principles apply to them: “But My Business Is Different!”
If you want to get a taste of what his followers get from his words of wisdom, CLICK HERE for a video where he explains why it is important to be spending a significant portion of your time developing new customers or leads (this means patients to you).
Obviously if you are in a group practice, you would have an administrator or even a marketing director dedicated to this activity. But if you are new to the practice of medicine, then the onus is on you. Yes, some of this content is a little over-the-top and is aimed primarily at people in a variety of businesses outside of medicine, but there are always some great pointers that you can adapt specifically to your situation.
CLICK HERE for the Dan Kennedy video on building a business even in a tough economy.
Guest Post, Katie Matlack
You want irony? Try this: the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that we women are the ones make the health care choices for the kids in 8 out of 10 families. Yet women are far and away the minority gender in the world of health IT leaders. Health IT is one of the most important segments of health care, during a time of great change. If women are the ones who’ll be where the rubber hits the road when it comes to the future of health, why aren’t more of us, more involved, in determining what that future of health looks like? [to download the report CLICK HERE]
While this is by no means the definitive list, I’ve done some research on the women who ARE making their mark in HIT. I list five to know below. They’ve been included both for their individual accomplishments and for the attention I think that’s due in the areas of health IT where they’re active.
Regina Holliday – The Patient Advocate
Regina uses art to lobby for attention to be paid to patients; she became a patient advocate after witnessing her late husband’s struggle to receive appropriate care for kidney cancer. She paints at big-time medical conventions, reminding attendees that Meaningful Use (MU) requirements of new electronic medical records programs–oft discussed today in the context of government payouts–were created with the intent to improve patient care and save lives. And she reminds us that electronic health records (EHRs) should be clear and transparent. Why does an artist get top billing in a piece on information technology? Because her point–the that the goal of the technology is to make it easier for people to be and stay well–is, well, pretty important.
Judith Faulkner – The Veteran
More than three decades ago Judith Faulkner started a small company, Epic, that has today grown into the provider of the EHR software for most of the largest hospitals in the US. Epic is also the system used by Kaiser Permanente, the biggest care provider in the country that’s not an arm of the government. And it’s in the running to be the solution used by the Veteran’s Administration (VA). Given that Faulkner is staunchly against an effort to have all EHRs move towards becoming interoperable with one another, this last fact has some folks mighty alarmed. Faulkner is still involved in any major company decision and drives the company’s unique corporate culture, and she’s got a seat on President Obama’s Health IT Policy Committee that’ll be making recommendations on “development and adoption of a nationwide health information infrastructure, including standards for the exchange of patient medical information.”
Susannah Fox – The Researcher
She’s responsible for studying what goes on at the crossroads of technology, health and the interwebs, as the Researcher on Health and Health Care for the Pew Internet Project. So Susannah Fox brings us some mighty interesting data about the habits of Americans when it comes to how many of us look online for health information (59 percent), what specific kinds of health information we seek (specific diseases or conditions, treatments or procedures, and doctors or other health professionals), and who we seek it from (increasingly, from other people who might have conditions similar to ours). Fox blogs regularly on e-Patients.net [http://e-patients.net/] and is helping researchers understand the habits of patients so that health IT can better meet those needs.
Halle Tecco – The Connecter
The company she co-founded has yet to celebrate its second birthday. Yet Tecco’s Rock Health –an accelerator “powering the future of the digital health ecosystem” by providing capital and mentorship to health startups–has funding from giants like Microsoft and Quest Diagnostics, and two of its “graduates” have secured additional funding from other investors. Tecco was chosen because of the power of her idea: that innovators could put tools and systems out there that could rejuvenate healthcare, make it not “just okay” but make it really rock. She was also chosen because she shows you don’t need to have gone to medical school to make a big impact in medicine: Tecco’s background is in tech and business.
Amy Sheng – The Inventor
Sheng also co-created CellScope, Inc., with Erik Douglas, less than two years ago. CellScope uses optical attachments to transform smartphones into diagnostic-quality imaging systems. In the right hands, this technology has the potential to transform lives: in the developing world it can be used in village clinics, while here in the US consumers can use the CellScope to access expert diagnosis and advice. Sheng’s work demonstrates the great potential for telehealth solutions to break down the barriers separating developing countries from high quality health care.
Katie Matlack is the Medical Analyst for Software Advice, a company where she blogs regularly about health IT.
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the number of patients seeing nurse practitioners or physician assistants has increased by 50% in the last decade, according to a post on the Human Capital Blog. At the same time, there has been over a 70% decline in the number of outpatient visits to physicians during this same period.
The American Medical News reports that this trend may be due to cost-conscious patients who are more informed about their options, as well as efforts to reduce overall utilization by insurance companies and health care systems. This may also be exacerbated by the the recent recession and prolonged joblessness.
Have you seen a decline in the number of patients you see? Do you use physician extenders? Are they seeing more patients?
Guest Post, William McClain, MBA
If you are a practicing physician today, your world is being buffeted and reshaped by a dizzying confluence of disparate external forces. The federal push for EMR adoption, HIPAA security rules, practice needs for greater operating efficiency and productivity, “retail consumerism”, increasing market competition and the steady advance of medical and information technology are just a few of the influences changing the profession as you know it. Practicing the noble calling of medicine has never been more complex or challenging.
These forces of change touch virtually every aspect of how your practice operates, including how patient information is captured, entered, stored and exchanged. The combination of federally mandated security rules, Meaningful Use requirements, the need for greater productivity, efficiency and patient convenience, plus innovative new software technologies is now making the age-old clipboard and paper registration process a dinosaur. Add to that list the fact that 90 million e-consumers in our country are projected to be tablet users in the next two years, as reported by eMarketer.com.
So what does all of this “background noise” mean for you and your practice? Clearly, there are compelling, manifold reasons for migrating your practice from the risk-laden and inefficient pen and paper registration process to a secure, integrated electronic solution.
Paperless registration can provide substantial benefits, including: secure and exchangeable patient information; elimination of costly, redundant and error prone data re-entry; HIPAA-compliance; and enhanced patient convenience for initial registration and periodic updates.
Virtually all paperless registration software programs offer benefits for your practice. However, it is important to understand that not all paperless systems are created equal. Your evaluation of the software options available today should be as evidence based as your clinical decision making.
When you consider a paperless registration system for your practice, be sure to look for key “differentiators” that will optimize functionality and value to you, your staff and your patients.
Below are some important attributes you should look for:
The clipboard and paper registration process is outdated, and will inevitably be replaced by more streamlined and cost-effective and secure paperless systems. Therefore, it is essential to conduct appropriate due diligence to make the best decisions for your practice and your patients going forward. Hopefully, the ideas offered here will help you to frame your evaluation process most effectively.
(William McClain, MBA, is in Marketing & Corporate Relations for DigitalPatient™, Inc. , a Dallas-Ft Worth practice-centered medical software company dedicated to providing effective, cost-saving solutions for today’s medical providers. For more information go to Digital-Patient.com)
MPT Podcast 36 - Mobile Device Management:Choosing the Right Solution in a Crowded Market, with guest Mike Meikle of Hawkthorne Group Consulting. Mr. Meikle discusses Medical Device Management systems (MDM) and their increasing importance in the medical practice setting.
This Issue (7:43):
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From Capterra comes this great infographic showing the Top 20 Most Popular Electronic Medical Records Software Solutions.
For more on how they compiled the data go to Topping the Charts: The 20 Most Popular EMR Solutions
© 2011 Capterra, Inc.
MPT Podcast 35 - 101 Ideas to Increase Revenue & Decrease Costs Part 2, with guest Mary Pat Whaley of ManageMyPractice.com. Ms. Whaley shares more of her many suggestions for increasing profit for your medical practice.
This Issue (7:30):
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