The Current State of Patient Portal Adoption
By DAVID CLAIN, MANAGER of ATHENARESEARCH
In an effort to improve health outcomes and patient quality of life at lower costs, provider groups around the country are increasingly focused on developing a deeper connection with patients. Expanding digital engagement is central to this effort, with online patient portals at the center of virtual physician-provider relationships. Portals offer patients immediate access to their health records, allow them to schedule appointments and pay bills, and enable secure conversations with providers.
But, as many providers have discovered, simply offering patients an online portal does n...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 10, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: suchandan roy Tags: THCB David Clain Source Type: blogs
What Does ONC Roadmap Mean for Small Practices?
By SCOTT E. RUPP
Earlier this year, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released a paper, “Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap Version 1.0” designed to deliver “better” care through safe and secure exchange and use of electronic health information.
ONC’s current roadmap builds on this ONC paper, with a heart of interoperability of electronic health records (EHRs). Healthcare IT News says the roadmap moves health IT away from meaningful use and creates a potential for data to f...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 7, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: suchandan roy Tags: THCB Source Type: blogs
Are You Going to Have to Outsource to Get It Done?
By MICHELLE CAVANAUGH, RN, CPC Sponsored Content
It’s mid-July, just two and half months out from the ICD-10 transition deadline. It’s clear now that there will not be another delay. It had also appeared that there wouldn’t be any concessions on the part of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). So it was a bit of surprise when they announced that they would offer some limited flexibility on claims.
Largely, those changes lighten the burden a bit on specificity and give practices a bit more time to get used to the much more detailed and specific coding that comes with ICD-10. Essentia...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 4, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: suchandan roy Tags: Small Practice THCB Kareo Michelle Cavanaugh Outsourcing Source Type: blogs
Surviving an EHR launch: The trauma of Go Live
An excerpt from The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age (McGraw-Hill, 2015).
The YouTube video opens to show a balding middle-aged man sitting on a stool, strumming a guitar. In a gentle, twangy croon, the man, Robert Schwab, chief quality officer for Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Denton, Texas, sings “The Ballad of Go-Live,” a week-by-week chronicle of what happened when his hospital turned on its electronic health record system in 2012. He set his lyrics to the melody of the Simon and Garfunkel folk ballad “Homeward Bound.”
I’m sitting at the nurses’ station, ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 25, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Bob Wachter, MD Tags: Tech Health IT Source Type: blogs
The ROI of Patient Engagement: How Patients and Providers Benefit from Technological Innovation
By MOLLY MALOOF, MD SPONSORED CONTENT
When thinking about the phrase return on investment (ROI) what immediately comes to mind is money saved or earned (ROI = net gain/cost). But, when it comes to HIT, calculating investments and returns is not this simple. According to HIMSS, providers should assess ROI based on:
• Efficiency savings
• Improved outcomes of care
• Additional revenue generated
• Non-financial gains (e.g., increased patient satisfaction, decreased provider time at work, increased employee satisfaction)
• Increased knowledge of the patient population.1
Furthermore,...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 23, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: suchandan roy Tags: Small Practice THCB EHR HIT Molly Maloof Source Type: blogs
"Quality" Measures Update
According to CMS, more than 460,000 of the 1.25 million eligible Medicare providers did not meet deadlines to submit data for the Physician Quality Reporting System in 2013. The agency noted that about 70% of those who did not meet the deadlines see fewer than 100 Medicare patients annually. Nearly 40 percent of healthcare providers treating Medicare patients will have their payments docked 1.5% this year because they did not submit data on patients’ health to the government. However, nearly 642,000 providers did comply in 2013 and will earn a 0.5% boost in payments this year. For many small practices, the administrative...
Source: Policy and Medicine - July 9, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
The ABIM Controversy: A Brief History of Board Certification and MOC
By ROBERT WACHTER, MD
What’s up with the ABIM?” “I just got a note about an alternative board. Should I join it?” “Aren’t you glad to be off the Board?”
These days, I get these questions from friends and colleagues regularly. When I first joined the board of directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) in 2004, the organization was a well-respected pillar of American medicine. Today the organization finds itself in a fight for its life, being painted as everything from out of touch to money-hungry to, more recently, corrupt.
I just completed my decade-long service to the ABIM and, more recentl...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 2, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: THCB ABIM Source Type: blogs
Disruptive Regulation
By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE
The latest salvo in the interoperability and information-blocking debate comes from two academic experts in the field of informatics, and was recently published in JAMIA. In the brief article, Sittig and Wright are endeavoring to describe the prerequisites for classifying an EHR as “open” or interoperable. I believe the term “open” is a much better fit here, and if the EHR software happens to come from a business dependent on revenues, as opposed to grant funding from the government, bankrupt may be a more accurate description. Since innovation in the EHR market seems to lack any disruptive eff...
Source: The Health Care Blog - June 29, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
A Powerful Tool For ICD9-ICD10 Conversion
By PAT SALBER SPONSORED CONTENT
Prior to attending medical school, Parth Desai took a gap year to help his mom manage his dad’s small internal medicine practice. She was worried about how she was going to handle the looming transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10. Parth said he would help her out.
He looked at different consultants and programs, but they were all too complicated, too expensive, or both. He also looked at a number of different ICD-10 training programs, but didn’t really find anything that he thought was that good. He wanted help with code conversions...
Source: The Health Care Blog - June 19, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Small Practice THCB Source Type: blogs
Complete independence for a small practice today is unwise
Momentum remains in favor the flow of physicians to employed positions. Is this wisest path for physicians? That is unknown and likely depends upon the particular circumstance. Either way, independent physicians are an increasingly shrinking, yet curiously heterogeneous group. Independent practices vary in size, composition and philosophy. The impact of size (from solo to very large) and composition (primary or specialty care, single or multispecialty and physician demographics) is relatively straightforward, but the consequence of the practice philosophy may be a less obvious and more critical. Practices that wish to rema...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - June 13, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Simon Prince, DO, MBA Tags: Physician Primary care Source Type: blogs
Bridging the Gap between MUS2 and Patient Engagement Through Appointment Reminders
By MOLLY MALOOF, MD
Medical technology has undergone dramatic changes in the last 10 years. Right now, I make and cancel appointments, get prescriptions filled, look at test results, pay bills and email my doctor—all from my computer. I track multiple health markers on my cellphone, and am proactive about my preventive screenings. I am the definition of an engaged patient.
But, I know how the system works from the inside out. The question for most doctors is how to teach patients to be more engaged with the convoluted, fragmented, and confusing healthcare system. They are asking this because they are struggling to meet ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - June 11, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Small Practice THCB Source Type: blogs
Can the EHR Save the Private Practice?
(Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - June 9, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Small Practice THCB Source Type: blogs
Independent Practice Equals Higher Satisfaction
By TOM GUILLANI, MD, MS Thinking of starting a new practice? Is the lure of independence calling to you? There are more reasons than every why independent practice is a great option. Being your own boss is not only easier than it once was, it can actually make you happier. Independent physicians have many more […] (Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - April 22, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Small Practice Kareo Source Type: blogs
Medicare Payment Data and "When Transparency Isn't Transparent"
Last year saw the release of two large physician databases—Open Payments and the “Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment Data” files, which contain Medicare Part B fee-for-service payments, listed by physician. While the Sunshine Act was many years coming, the Medicare billing data caught many by surprise. Now, neither show any sign of slowing down. The Medicare data release took place in early April last year, but not without a fair share of controversy and misleading news reports. A recent article entitled “When Transparency Isn’t Transparent” written by associate clinical professor of surgery at Mount Sin...
Source: Policy and Medicine - March 16, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan Source Type: blogs
