Still in beta, Google’s latest foray into social networking, Google+, is already generating better buzz than its previous attempt, Google Buzz, and although there are some skeptics, many early adopters are simply gushing about it.
I count myself amongst the skeptics—but then again I always count myself amongst the skeptics. Some years ago, I didn’t believe smartphones would be that big a deal, either. And in the early days of Facebook and Twitter, I was guilty of being somewhat dismissive of social media.
The platform does, in fact, hold promise for healthcare organizations. Just keep in mind that Google+ is still in a limited trial phase and isn’t open to commercial accounts yet—although Google promises it will offer additional functionalities for business users eventually.
Here are six reasons I like Google+ for businesses, including healthcare organizations:
1. Social Media Networking
It has more features than other social media sites
Google+ does have a lot of functions that its main competitor does not, although there’s no doubt that Facebook will adapt to compete with the new service. Multi-person video chats are just one example—healthcare organizations could use them to conduct small group meetings among remote employees or even as focus groups among patient advisors.
2. Business Opportunities
There are more business features to come
Christian Oestlien, a Google+ product manager, explains why businesses should hold off on creating Google+ accounts and teases some of what’s to come later this year, including rich analytics.
“We will be doing some testing,” Oestlien says in a video on his Google+ page. “We’re going to take a small group of brands, businesses, and other entities and create profiles for them and see how users interact with them via circles, through the stream, and even how they communicate with them through hangouts.”
Click here to fill out a Google+ entity profile application to be considered for the business test group.
3. Narrow Settings
It allows for fine-tuning
You know that one person on Facebook who really does list what he ate for lunch every single day? Or posts endless pictures of her cats? You have a few choices: Suffer through all of their posts, block all of their posts, or un-friend them. One of the biggest advantages Google+ promises is the ability to fine-tune your settings. You can “mute” just one post, for example, so you don’t have to see all the follow-up comments about the deliciousness of bologna.
4. Narrower Settings
It allows for really fine tuning
The keystone feature Google+ is the ability to sort your contacts into groups. Large systems with multiple hospitals could send out one message to every contact in the system or just a handful of volunteers at one small hospital. To all patients or only to those who are interested in one particular topic.
The ability to customize these “circles” is endless. Internal circles could include employees, referring physicians, or major donors, for example. You could have circles customized by service line—one for cardiac patients, another for ortho, for example. Or for patients who are interested in health and wellness circles.
5. User-Friendly Interface
It’s easier to manage than it sounds
If all of this sounds a bit overwhelming, you’ll appreciate that all of the circles can be managed from one page with a fairly simple interface. You don’t have to log into one account to post diet tips and then another to send neighbors a construction update.
6. Aesthetics
It just looks nice
When a patient checks in with your Facebook page, there’s no doubt that they’re looking at a Facebook page. Although at this time there is no way to brand Google+ pages, they do have a lot of white space and a clean, streamlined look and feel. And you control what your posts look like—you can format text and post photos in a variety of sizes—both things you can’t do on Facebook and Twitter.
There is one big unanswered question that will be paramount for hospitals. At this time, the members of specific circles can’t be seen by the public. You can put a contact into a circle for patients with diabetes, for example, and no one can see that you’ve done that. The public can see who your contacts and followers are—but that is true of Twitter and Facebook. Still, if there is ever a change and the membership of those circles becomes public, hospitals simply will not be able to use that feature and still comply with patient privacy laws. That’s something to watch as the beta trial progresses.
If you’ve had a chance to try Google+, drop me an email—I’d love to hear your experiences and your take on its plusses and minuses in general—and it’s potential for healthcare in particular.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a practical tool--often used to keep track of supplies and equipment, for example, or to keep track of surgical instruments such as sponges in the operating room. But a new use for this time-tested technology is emerging: improving the patient experience.
The Roy and Patricia Disney Family Cancer Center in Burbank, CA, uses RFID tags to track the location of its patients as they move through the system. At their first visit, the patient gets a small card with an RFID chip in it that's loaded with his or her preferences for lighting, temperature, color, and music. The patient keeps the badge over the course of their treatment.
Readers are installed throughout 55,000 square-foot outpatient facility, which is part of the Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center. Each time a patient walks through the front doors, the reader loads the customized setting. It also sends a message with the patient's name and the time and room number of his first appointment via phone line to the concierge, who greets patients by name and directs them to their appointments.
When a patient walks into an exam or treatment room, the passive RFID tag sends a signal to nurses that the patient is waiting and sets environmental controls such as lighting and temperature just the way the patient likes it.
The goal was to create a soothing environment that helps cancer patients feel as though they have some control of their cancer therapy and care plan, Ray Lowe, Providence's regional director of IS operations, said in a phone interview. "We believe in healing the whole person—the body, mind, and spirit.”
The center also uses the technology to customize the patient experience in CT and linear accelerator treatment rooms, which come equipped with projection equipment so that patients can watch the scene of their choice--a swaying palm tree on a tropical island or an eagle soaring above a mountain vista, for example--during the procedure.
Such high-tech soothers not only improve patient satisfaction, they also offer a clinical benefit. When patients are relaxed their bodies are more relaxed. Blood pressure, respiration, and heart rate are slower and steadier. And technicians can obtain clearer images.
"So the patients are happier and the outcomes are better,” Lowe says.
The tags can store other information about patients, as well, including their appointments and the names of their physicians. Doctors are alerted via their VoIP phones when patients arrive at the center.
The system also contains prescription, billing, admission, discharge, and transfer information.
Active RFID can also help lost patients find their way through a building or allow staff to find them when it's time for their appointment. This enables them to take a walk or sit in the cafeteria rather than being tied to the waiting room.
The center, in part with the help of its foundation, made a hefty investment in the high-tech/high-touch strategy. The organization's leaders, from board members to clinical leaders to the c-suite--agreed that if they were to make patient experience a top priority, the investment was mission-critical, Lowe says.
"The building itself was a $65 million building. And the hardware—basic plumbing stuff—was easy. The experience part was really expensive … It’s on order of $150,000 to $200,000 per room. So it’s not trivial money,” Lowe says. "When you have a name like Disney with your own brand on top of it … people just expect it’s going to be premier … The expectations of delivery of quality of care and of the experience is set. I believe we meet it. That’s why it’s so transformational what we’ve done here.”
Even when damaged equipment is beyond the help of data recovery or restoration techniques, there are other places to look for--and recapture--data, according to the American Health Information Management Association.
1.Check non-clinical departments: You might be able to reprint or upload data and documents from undamaged databases. Check areas such as admission, transcription, or the business office, for example.
2.Look to the ancillary departments: Laboratory and radiology databases, for example, may have the data you're looking for.
3.Go back to the source: As long as documents exist in the dictation system, they can always be transcribed again.
4.Find partners in care: Primary care physicians, specialists, and other care givers may provide missing pieces of patients' records.
5.Go outside the neighborhood: Request copies of any records you sent to healthcare facilities outside of your own system or network.
Read more about health information disaster planning on AHIMA's web site.
When computers or other equipment used to store health data suffer flood, fire, or storm damage, an electronic data restoration company can often save the day. But to ensure they do so in a way that's compliant with privacy laws, the American Health Information Management Association says contracts should ensure the company:
Does not use or disclose information and uses safeguards to prevent use or disclosure of the information.
Reports any inappropriate use or disclosure of the information of which it becomes aware.
Ensures that subcontractors or agents with access to the information agree to the same terms.
Indemnifies the healthcare facility from loss due to unauthorized disclosure.
Returns the information at the termination of the contract or provision of a certificate of its destruction and assurance that the contractor retains no copies.
The contract should also detail what methods will be used to recover the data and how long it will take to return the information and/or equipment. And don't forget a termination clause that goes into effect if the business partner violates any material term of the contract.
Despite the progress many organizations are making toward implementing electronic health records systems, there's still an awful lot of paper in the healthcare world. So when disaster strikes--such as the Midwest floods this April or the tornado that hit Joplin, MO, in May--virtually every organization is at risk of losing some kind of data.
A new fund set up by the charitable arm of the American Health Information Management Association, the AHIMA Foundation, aims to help association members return to work to help their organizations recover that data after a fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, or other disaster.
When computers or other equipment used to store health data suffer flood, fire, or storm damage, an electronic data restoration company can often save the day. But to ensure they do so in a way that's compliant with privacy laws, the American Health Information Management Association says contracts should ensure the company takes measures not to use or disclose recovered information and uses safeguards to prevent the use or disclosure of the information.
The contract should also detail which methods will be used to recover the data and how long it will take to return the information and/or equipment. And don't forget a termination clause that goes into effect if the business partner violates any material term of the contract. AHIMA has a number of recommendations for contract provisions.
Even when damaged equipment is beyond the help of data recovery or restoration techniques, there are places to look for data, and some can be pieced together from different sources, AHIMA says.
"The national association's goal is, of course, to support those members though the good times and those bad times. And this spring has certainly been representative of some of those bad times,” Midwestern native Rose T. Dunn, AHIMA's interim chief executive officer, said in a phone interview.
News coverage of disasters often highlights hospitals that are impacted by storms and other natural disasters. But when it comes to data recovery, smaller healthcare organizations such as neighborhood clinics and physician offices can be hit just as hard--if not harder.
"Unfortunately, many of those types of smaller ambulatory centers are typically paper-based and so they have much more chance of having that material lost forever, especially with flooding," Dunn says.
And it's not just medical records that are at risk in small, paper-based organizations. "Not only have they lost all the health information for all those patients, if they've lost all of their computer systems and their files they have lost even all of the forms and everything that they would use to reopen," AHIMA board member Lynn Kuehn said in an interview.
Further complicating data recovery after disasters is the fact that health information professionals often work outside of the clinical setting.
"Much of the non-patient care teams in healthcare facilities today do work remotely," Kuehn "So those individuals--coding professionals, transcription professionals, those who perform cancer registry operations and activities of those sort--are all done remotely today for the most part. So those individuals, when they lose their homes … those computers are toast. Folks need to be able to replace that technology in order to get back to work."
The AHIMA Foundation's Health Information Relief Operation Fund, will give cash grants to health information professionals who need help after a natural or man-made disaster. Seeded by a $10,000 donation by AHIMA, the HIRO Fund (pronounced "hero") is currently accepting applications and donations on its website.
AHIMA will also assist members who have trouble paying their membership dues or completing continuing education credits to maintain their certification due to disaster. And it plans to update its disaster preparedness and recovery resources, including a number of free online articles, tools, and templates.
"We never know when something's going to hit," Kuehn says. "Joplin told us that--overnight their world changed with 20 minutes of warning. We need to be prepared ahead of time--and that's what our field is all about; disaster planning and making sure we are one step ahead of the game."
You don't need an app to tell you too many Americans are fat. But what if there were an app that could not only analyze public data from your own community—down to a specific zip code or individual level—but also tell you what your healthcare organization could do about it?
That's the idea behind one of the latest Health 2.0 developer challenges—this one from The Aetna Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Hartford, CT-based insurer Aetna Inc. The foundation is offering a prize pool of $50,000 for the three best browser-based applications that make the reams of government public health data more accessible for healthcare professionals and leaders.
There are two especially helpful sources of public government data that are most useful in the fight against obesity, says Anne Beal, MD, the foundation's president. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHNES) can help healthcare professionals identify obesity problems. It includes biometric data on cholesterol and blood pressure levels, height and weight measurements of a national population sample, and the number of people that have diagnosed or undiagnosed diabetes, for example.
So that data identifies the problem. That just leaves data to answer the question "What can healthcare leaders do about it?"
"The literature has shown that it's actually the micro changes that we make in our daily lives every day that really impacts rates of obesity for a specific population," Beal says. "How walk-able is the community, how many supermarkets are there, how many playgrounds are there per square mile? All of those [environmental] factors help determine the small decisions that we make every day as far as food choices as well as caloric expenditure."
The answers to those questions lie within the second government data trove—data.gov—which includes environmental information such as the ratio of grocery stores, liquor stores, and playgrounds in any given neighborhood.
And so the app developers will be working to harness the data from those and other sources to help physicians, healthcare leaders, public health workers, researchers and the rest of the healthcare community to start addressing obesity on that micro-level.
"The data might tell you that you don't need one playground, you need 100 playgrounds. Or the data might tell you [that] you can get away with five playgrounds if you open up two more supermarkets," Beal says. "They say that healthcare, like politics is local. And the real opportunity that exists is to make those data much more locally available and meaningful."
What can healthcare leaders do with all of this information? They can use it to improve the health and wellness not only of their own patients, but potential patients as well.
"Most hospitals have big community benefit work that they do. And I can see using this kind of information to say, on the part of the hospital, 'Here's what we're going to do around promoting walking trails or parks or supporting farmer's markets,'" Beal says.
Beal says she hopes developers—who will partner with public health professionals while working on the apps—will come up with something hot, new, unique—a game-changer, if you will. Yes, it has to make use of data and it has to make that data useful by presenting it at a micro-level—specific to the patients of an individual provider. But she also hopes developers will present all that data in a way that is compelling, and that can be easily shared through social media.
Data, Beal adds, could be the key to solving a number of health issues. It can be used to improve care coordination and to facilitate integrated care models. "Providers, in particular, need to figure out how to talk to one another and how to share data and information about an individual patient in their care."
Aetna's projects have included not only obesity but also racial inequities in healthcare. It used its own data to help ensure that all of its enrollees were getting the same quality of care, access, and outcomes and, where that was not the case, develop programs around diabetes and hypertension, for example.
Other healthcare organizations can do the same, Beal says.
"Everyone is sitting on data—whether you're a hospital or a health plan—everyone is sitting on data. And we really need to think creatively about the utility and application of our data to … create evidence-based and informed interventions to improve health and wellness."
The top prize for Aetna's Health 2.0 Developer Challenge is $25,000 and two free passes to the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco this fall. Second and third prizes are $15,000 and $10,000, respectively. Applications will be judged on their user-friendliness and interactive capabilities; the quality of health data integration; creativity and innovation; and potential for impact, Aetna says.
Additional points will be given for including a health services researcher on the developer team and for incorporating non-health data sources and data sets that enable analyses at the individual, zip code or county level.
Five other Health 2.0 developer challenges were also issued this month:
The Medicare Claims Data Developer Challenge: Create an online dashboard for comparative effectiveness and health policy research that is suited for health researchers, data entrepreneurs, students, journalists, and others who would like to access Medicare claims data.
Walgreens Health Guide Challenge: Design an application that aggregates Health and Human Services data for both consumers and Walgreens' new, in-store Health Guides.
Using Public Data for Cancer Prevention and Control Challenge: Create innovative health applications using data from the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences and other Federal agencies.
The Academy Health challenge, Relevant Evidence to Advance Care and Health: Create applications that provide high-quality, evidence-based, useful information that builds on data generated in the process of care.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Apps for the Environment: Develop apps that engage students, colleges and universities, and software developers to create solutions to help people understand environmental conditions that could impact health and help communities make informed decisions about environmental impacts.
You know those people who say they'd miss having ink stains on their fingers from reading print newspapers? Or who say the experience of reading a book on a Kindle, Nook, or similar device just isn't the same as opening up a paper book? Well, there's a part of me that agrees with them. But there's a part of me that also thinks they're full of it.
And as soon as someone gives me a free e-reader or iPad, I'll let you know whether or not I'm right about that.
Something similar is happening with physicians across the country. Docs complain that they have to enter information into the computer. They rail against change and moan about workflow and claim they have no idea what buttons to push to pull up their patients' electronic medical record.
But once they start using electronic documentation and have had enough time to see the benefits, suddenly they'd never go back to paper records.
"I used to hate doing discharge summaries," says John Umekubo, MD, medical director of clinical informatics at St. Mary's Medical Center in San Francisco. "Now I don't mind it because it's so fast and I think I'm doing a good job. I'll never go back to handwriting. It's just too painful. I think that's universal—people who have converted to electronic will never go back to handwriting."
St. Mary's has employed a number of solutions to address its handwriting legibility issues since 1990, when they were cited by the Joint Commission for it. And, yes, they started with good old paper.
It didn't work out very well.
The organization identified the worst handwriting offenders and asking them to print their notes in block letters. Have you ever tried to write anything in block letters other than the words "YARD SALE"? There's a reason busy docs scribble in cursive—it's a lot faster than printing, let alone block printing.
After that, the organization developed some homegrown word processing templates with some fields already filled out. Docs could fill in the blanks from their computers in neat Times New Roman 12 point type. Unfortunately, the documents weren't easily secured—and physicians weren't exactly thrilled with the idea of typing in passwords every time they created, opened, or closed a document. The idea of printing in block letters was starting to look pretty good.
That was in the late 90s. Finally, along comes the electronic medical record. Pre-populated fields, printouts as neat as a pin, and more secure storage than a "My Documents" folder.
That didn't exactly go off without a hitch either.
The funny thing is that the notes were so legible that everyone could read them—and could clearly see that the actual content of the notes wasn't particularly stellar—in part because physicians were cutting and pasting chunks of text over and over into document after document.
So how did St. Mary's solve the problem? With evolving technology that combines speech recognition and pre-filled templates and that's integrated with medical records—it's automated documentation of a kind not possible nor imagined back in the 90s. You can read more about it—as well as the potential future of electronic notes—in this month's HealthLeaders magazine story: Speaking of Solutions.
Technology might be to blame for growing obesity rates—think couch potatoes and hours of video gaming that doesn't involve jumping around with a Wii remote in your hand—but it could also help fight fat. Apps to track calories and weight loss or to "encourage" folks to lose weight have been around for a while (witness the parade of cute but not-so-sophisticated apps on the government-backed Apps for Healthy Kids. But healthcare professionals and researchers are working to take health and fitness apps to new levels—adding more sophisticated analytic capabilities and better functionality but also making them easier to use.
Crunching the nutrition numbers
Everyone knows you should read nutrition labels. And some of us even do. But a quick glance at the number of calories and the grams of fat doesn't tell the whole story. You also have to look at carbs, protein, fiber, cholesterol, and sodium levels. And—perhaps trickiest of all—you have to determine the ratio of really bad fats to the slightly less bad fats (plus you have to remember which ones are the really bad fats and which ones are the slightly less bad fats). Then there's ingredient lists, packaging claims that may or may not be misleading … Well, you get the point.
Australia's Victoria University created a weight loss app that helps interpret nutrition information labels. Shoppers, all with a Body Mass Index greater than 25, used their smartphones to scan GS1 bar codes on breads, breakfast cereals, and biscuits. They received a simple 'traffic-light' rating for each product, based on National Heart Foundation guidelines.
Over four weeks, the test subjects completed weekly 3-day food diaries followed by a trial stage where they scanned products, purchased products and retained their shopping dockets.
Researchers compiled a database with participating consumers' personalized characteristics and combined product data of breads, breakfast cereals, and other carbs, including their description, serving sizes, and sodium and saturated fat content and displayed it on the users' phone.
Although most participants didn't change their buying habits (in part because they were still buying food for their families), the study did have some positive results. Subjects reported that the application made them more aware of their diet and 40% changed their purchase decisions based on the information provided.
The study established that while technology could make information accessible, education and motivational tools are needed to encourage participants to change their overall purchasing and eating habits, according to the study's authors.
The only problem? The users wanted more data. More than 90% said the system would be more useful if more products were included.
App developers are working fast to build those databases. One example: Quickka Calories PRO, which offers nutritional information for more than 20,000 food items, delivering the user with a list of calories, carbs, fats, fiber, protein, and salt content. It can also do so via barcode scan for more than 9,000 items.
Shaking up childhood obesity
Salt Lake City, UT–based Intermountain Healthcare recently announced it has developed a free app for children and teens to help them make good nutrition and fitness choices.
The new application is part of Intermountain's LiVe campaign which reaches out to parents and children about the importance of increasing physical activity and adopting healthier eating habits to prevent obesity.
The LiVe application makes it easier to set fitness and healthy eating goals—but it's also kid-friendly and has a sense of fun. For example, the app uses a roulette function to help you generate ideas to increase your physical activity. Select what type of activity you're interested in—inside games, outside games, night games—shake the phone, and an activity is suggested.
Users can also track progress toward their weight loss goals, such as eating more fruits and vegetables, drinking more water, and increasing physical activity.
Adding more functions
Researchers at San Francisco State University are testing how effective smartphones can be in helping people maintain a healthy lifestyle and decrease the risks from obesity. They developed an app that tracks the food and portions patients eat, calculates calories burned during exercise, and offers text messaging with health coaches.
The study subjects include overweight or obese youth at San Francisco General Hospital's Teen Clinic and focus groups consisting of SF State students.
A consumer version of the food tracking app is available online—a more sophisticated app will be available after the two-year study is complete. But even that version has lots of functions—it has programs on smoking, hypertension, and pregnancy. Patients can track medications, mood, even the quality of their sleep. And diabetics can track glucose levels, carbs, and meal frequency. It also uses elements of social media—allowing users to share their numbers with others, for example.
"So much of our health system is focused on the clinician and the doctor telling the patient what to do, but by using this technology it really centers all the decision making and puts the information in the patient's hands," said one of the researchers, Katherine Kim, a biology professor in residence at SF State's Health Equity Institute. "They get to decide what they do with it."
Christina Sabee, assistant professor of communication studies at SF State who's work focuses primarily on doctor-patient communication, believes that the use of technology has the potential to improve the entire healthcare system.
"Technology is something that we use every day, and to ignore it and try to get people to not use it seems counterintuitive," Sabee said.
Poor communication, such as exchanging important clinical information about patients during shift changes, is the largest barrier to achieving patient safety goals, healthcare leaders say. And electronic medical records systems? Well, despite the fact that they're an effective tool to improve datasharing and, in turn, quality, healthcare leaders aren't exactly raving about how much they're helping.
Numbers from the most recent HealthLeaders Media Intelligence Report, The Drive to Patient Safety, suggests leaders are underestimating—or discounting altogether—just how much electronic data can improve communications.
When asked to describe the patient safety benefit that electronic medical records have provided their healthcare organizations, 31% of respondents said that IT has been an integral part of patient safety and that their organization is seeing gains because of it.
But only slightly fewer respondents (25%) described patient safety gains from IT as "episodic." Another 16% were even more down on EMRs—saying they have not seen the patient safety gains they hoped to gain from their IT platform.
The rest couldn't say one way or the other because they don't yet have an EMR. But here's another twist to think about. Although 28% of respondents said they don't have an EMR, only 10% of respondents identified that lack of electronic medical records as their biggest stumbling block to adopting a strong patient safety program.
In other words, those who don't yet have an EMR don't see that as such a big deal when it comes to patient safety.
So what are the biggest barriers to better patient safety? Well, not surprisingly a good chunk cited culture (16%) and another chunk put it down to lack of personnel resources (16%). Others blamed lack of physician leadership (11%) or lack of executive leadership commitment (5%).
But the problem most frequently cited as the biggest stumbling block to better patient safety? Poor communication.
Take a moment to soak in just how bad that communication is: We asked respondents "How often is important patient care information lost during shift changes?" A whopping 69% answered always (56%), often (12%), or sometimes (1%). Only 27% said it rarely happens and only 5% said it never happens.
Here's another one: We asked "How often do things fall through the cracks regarding patient safety when transferring patients from one unit to another?" Again, "sometimes" was the clear winner at 56%.
Do you see the disconnect, here? Electronic data is a solution to what leaders say is their biggest problem. Electronic data doesn't hitch a ride home in the back of a nurse's mind at the end of his or her shift. Electronic data doesn't get lost when it's mixed in with the take-out menu pile and it doesn't get ruined when someone spills coffee on it.
In short, electronic data doesn't "fall through the cracks" unless you willfully refuse to look at and use it.
This is not to discount human interaction and communication—healthcare is, after all, a very human-centric business. Report advisor James Eastham, president and CEO of Valley Baptist Health System in Harlingen, TX, notes that many safety issues could be avoided or minimized with an extra minute or so of one-on-one communications.
But as the survey suggests, communication issues are a "challenge for healthcare," says the lead advisor on the report, COO of Bassett Healthcare Network COO Bertine McKenna. "There are thousands of people who are involved in patient care. Ensuring that we communicate all the key things during handoffs—shift to shift, inpatient to radiology for a test, or floor to floor, to cath lab and back—is a challenge."
Electronic data can improve communication—and, as McKenna puts it, communication and quality go hand-in-hand. "The electronic medical record solutions will help us with this and is an investment in patient care and safety," she says.
According to this survey, at least, there are way too many healthcare leaders out there who don't seem to get that.
Wouldn't it be nice if someone gave you $206,817.63—simply because you asked for it? Well, that's more or less what happened at the Houston-based Richmond Bone & Joint Clinic.
"We were missing a big opportunity at our check-in desk to address balances in advance of the patient's visit," says CEO Juliet Breeze, MD. "So we would check the patient in and because the check-in people were so busy, they would sometimes forget to talk to the patient about the balance that we already knew was due."
The practice installed check-in kiosks that are integrated with its payment management system. The kiosks alert patients to current and past balances—they can pay with the swipe of a credit or debit card. Patients who don't pay can't complete the check-in process without speaking to a financial counselor.
At the end of the first year, collections were up nearly $207,000—a 5% increase. Breeze says she's also saved on the cost of sending out paper bills and on salaries, as fewer FTEs are needed to staff the front desk now.
The clinic is one of many healthcare organizations that is using technology to increase revenue and reduce costs before the patient ever sees the doctor.
Orlando Health uses a software program that monitors patient registration in real time—alerting staff to potential mistakes (such as an insurance subscriber ID that's off by a digit) so they can fix errors on the spot.
The organization has reduced the number of claims edits from about 1,000 a day to about nine a day—at seven cents an edit, that's a savings of about a quarter million dollars. Claims accuracy used to hover around 80%; now it's 95%—and jumps to nearly 100% after 24 hours, when registrars have had a chance to correct or complete missing data.
Other organizations are taking even simpler steps—allowing patients to pay their bills and co-pays online, for example. Florida-based Adventist Health System doesn't just patients pay their bills; it lets them set up a recurring payment plan. Not only has it increased collections, it also saves on account management vendors, reduces the cost of sending out paper statements, and—best of all—patients like the convenience.
You can read more about how these and other organizations are using technology to increase collections, improve front and registration desk efficiency, and improve patient flow and satisfaction in this month's issue of HealthLeaders magazine.