Cancellations in Bad Weather? You May Need A Specialist to Help Fill Open Slots

Posted by James Kanka on

Cancellations in bad weather? You may need a specialist to help you fill open slots. If you work in operations in a healthcare provider organization, then you know how bad it can get when the weather gets bad. Patients cancel or need to be rescheduled. Holes in the calendar have to be filled to avoid costly downtime. The phones are jammed and you might also be short-staffed.

Here’s how an actual medical practice in Baltimore is responding with technology:

We are a busy practice, and patients expect to wait at least three to four weeks for an appointment in the best of circumstances. Like any practice in our area, we get cancellations as soon as there is a hint of bad weather. But we hardly get stuck with any open slots. At least not for very long. As soon as someone cancels, the opening is posted on Everseat, and usually not more than a minute or two later an existing patient or even a new patient clicks on it to indicate they want to take that appointment. Our office is notified in real time and can determine in a matter of minutes whether it makes sense to fit them into that slot or to accommodate them in some other way. How do these patients know our available appointments are posted on Everseat? When they call us or visit the office, we tell them about it. We say that they can opt in for digital notification of available open slots. At any given time, we have dozens of people who have chosen to be pinged on their smartphone when something convenient for their specifications opens up. When they get in, they feel like they won the appointment lottery. And we are delighted because we are here to take care of our patients and there is nothing we would rather be doing.IMG_0781_2

Here are a few thoughts to consider as you cope with weather chaos or think about what you will do when it next comes your way:

  •    When patients start canceling, you need an efficient and reliable way to replace them with the right patients in the right slots.
  •    Using the phones to find the right patients on short notice is not easy. And it’s probably not working. At least not well enough.
  •    If your practice is closing due to weather, re-booking all of those patients will tie up your staff and your phones for hours.
  •    As great as your EHR or other tools are for many things, for this job you need technology, strategy and expertise
  •    With Everseat, you can automate the entire process. You will get more done in less time; for the practice and the patients.

Everseat partners with health and wellness provider organizations of all sizes across the United States. We want to work with you. Email us at providers@everseat.com. We can have you up and ready before bad weather hits again.

How to Determine ROI for Health IT Investments

How to Determine ROI for Health IT Investments

Posted by James Kanka on

It’s an encounter that nearly every independent physician has had by now at least once: the sales pitch for a tech solution that will improve the way the practice runs. The promises are big — simplicity, efficiency, “painless” billing, seamless appointment-booking — and as the medical technology industry continues to grow, it seems likely that the capabilities of these products will, too. It’s certainly growing: EvaluateMedTech’s World Preview 2015 forecasts that worldwide sales will reach over $477 billion by 2020.

Another familiar moment for doctors? The sticker shock when glimpsing the price tag on a shiny new EHR, patient portal, or online scheduling tool. For example, HealthIT.gov quotes the cost of purchasing and installing an EHR at as high as $70,000. But by some estimates, implementing an EHR could cost over $163,000 for a single doctor. And that’s before factoring in software licensing, training, and maintenance fees, not to mention unforeseen costs. Patient portals, too, are expensive to initiate, yet can ultimately encourage your patients to be more engaged with their care.

With all this money — and time, for training, onboarding, and testing — the inevitable question arises: Is this new technology I’m about to invest in worth it? Or, to put it another way, how can I determine the return on my investment? Though every software product and service out there is a little different, it is possible to calculate the ROI of your tech investment by considering the following framework.

Identify cost centers the technology is meant to alleviate — and calculate how much those pain points are costing you today.
What functions of your practice are the most time-consuming — and ultimately the costliest? Is it fielding patient phone calls on your scheduling line? Or are bottlenecks in your recordkeeping process disrupting the flow of patient paperwork? If you’re already keenly aware of where operational inefficiencies lie in your practice, then begin to investigate just how much these inefficiencies are costing you on a monthly and yearly basis. Knowing where a new solution is needed and knowing how much a given process is costing you now gives you a measuring stick against which to compare any costs associated with a new technology.

Make a reasonable estimate of what costs will be post-implementation.
Of course, vendors selling you EHR technology and other software will promise the moon, including low costs for getting up and running, then maintaining the system they tout. You’ve heard it before: “cut your collection time in half,” or “reduce average hold times to less than 30 seconds per caller.” Remember, companies want your money and your signature on the dotted line, and if their reps think that quoting phenomenal results will put the pen in your hand, they won’t hesitate to tell you about the absolute best performance scenarios they’ve got. So remember to apply a healthy dose of skepticism to whatever sample numbers you’re being given. That said, those numbers aren’t a bad place to start when you sit down to make your evaluation of how a given piece of software will affect your monthly and yearly costs.

Don’t forget to factor in time.
Many doctors on the other side of a tech adoption process don’t take into account how much time it takes to prepare for, implement, and train staff on its use. During the ramp-up phase, you might be less productive than you were before you added the technology. Additionally, in the case of a new EHR implementation, depending on the size of the practice and technology used for converting existing patient records into digital files, it can take months (and staff overtime or outside help) to successfully scan and properly store every record. And remember — just because your patients’ data is saved in electronic form doesn’t mean that their paper files can be destroyed immediately. Depending on the state and the capability of your EHR to provide full copies of a patient record, you may still be required to retain paper records for up to five years.

Be realistic about the degree to which the technology will be used.
One of the longstanding concerns associated with technology in the healthcare sphere is that patients and providers will shy away from use — for doctors because of fears that it may hinder their efficiency and communication with patients more than it helps, for patients because they don’t see the benefit, and for both because the technology may feel too difficult to learn. Indeed, Deloitte reports that while nine out of 10 doctors say they are interested in mobile health technology, only about 24 percent are actually using such tools. And the majority of Americans say they aren’t yet using a patient portal. So it’s important to be mindful of how quickly adoption will follow implementation.

Despite the cost and effort associated with a successful implementation, health IT tools are undeniably the wave of the future, especially as patients get more plugged in and their expectations begin to change. And there are major payoffs to using tools that work well — 79 percent of providers said that an EHR improved their practice efficiency. It’s critical to use the framework above to guide your decision-making about any new technology to make sure that the product is realistic to your practice and its unique expenses. There are also lots of good ROI templates and forecasting calculators out there these days that can help you navigate. If you’d like to talk more about low-cost ways to improve efficiency and patient satisfaction, we’re here to help, so reach out today.

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How to Digitize Your Practice in 4 Easy Steps – Part 4: Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe

Posted by James Kanka on

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The number of customers affected by data breaches in the healthcare industry this past year have been staggering:

  • Anthem Blue Cross: 80 million customers affected
  • Premera Blue Cross: 11 million customers affected
  • Community Health Systems: 4.5 million customers affected

The Anthem breach, the biggest one yet, is expected to have damages that exceed its $100 million insurance policy.

That kind of money is quite attractive to thieves. According to PwC, the private information attackers were after can command $1,300 per patient record on the black market.

Between electronic medical records and bring your own device trends (or “shadow-IT”), the transition from paper files to tablets, and a whole host of other “digitizing” practices are changing how we view patient privacy.

The process of securing your patient’s data can be daunting – especially if you’re a small business without an IT department.

However, the fact is that in the majority of these breaches, both within and outside the healthcare industry, implementing well-known security measures could have prevented these attacks from happening in the first place.

Securing your data with these measures is a must if you want to avoid a data breach – even the smallest breach for a small business can be enough to send it into bankruptcy.

A full explanation of all these measures requires a certified security engineer. While they may be pricey, it’s well worth the money.

But like implementing any piece of technology, you should never go into the security contracting process without knowing some of the industry lingo to help you understand what is being recommended to you.

Here’s some of the measures your security engineer may tell you about:

Firewalls:

These are hardware or software devices that filter traffic based on certain criteria such as where the traffic is going, where it is coming from, and what kind of traffic it is. Most routers these days come with a firewall built in, but to get full protection it should be configured by a security professional.

Intrusion Detection and Protection System:

These are devices that are placed across your computer network that are able to detect and/or react to cyber attacks. There are a few different types of IDPSs based on whether they just detect an attack or whether they detect and respond (passive vs. active), whether they sit on a networking device like a router or on the host system like your desktop computer (network vs. host), and how they analyze the traffic (knowledge based vs. behavior based). This last one is of special importance, as one security analyst said that a behavior based (aka anomaly analysis) IDPS could have prevented the Anthem attack. Whereas a knowledge based system utilizes a library of known attacks to determine if the network traffic is friend or foe, a behavioral-based system looks to see if the traffic is deviating from normal traffic patterns.

Encryption:

This is a process of using letters, numbers, and mathematical formulas to make your data unreadable to outsiders. There are thousands of different encryption techniques and technologies. For instance, HTTPS, which is a secure internet protocol, you probably use everyday. If you have any kind of patient data, there are probably legal requirements that say it should be encrypted – and if not, you should be encrypting anyways. Encryption is one of the simplest ways to make sure your patient data stays private.

Penetration testing:

Penetration testing is when a professional versed in information security attempts to hack into your network. They’re looking for all the vulnerabilities that hackers would be looking for in an attempt to compromise your data security. After their hack, testers will give you a report of all the weak points in your computer and network security, allowing you to patch them and prevent the bad guys from getting your important information.

Authentication:

This is the process of confirming that the user is exactly who they say they are. The most well known authentication process is submitting a username and password to log on to your computer. The general rule of them is that the more levels of authentication, the more secure your data will be (the harder it is to impersonate an authorized user). So for example, in addition to a username and password, many companies (especially in the defense industry), will also require the user to swipe their ID card into a reader attached to the computer or scan their thumbprint.

I know a lot of these technical terms may be overwhelming – but there is a good piece of news when it comes to creating a secure environment for your data. While technical controls get all the attention in the news, they will never be as important as good policy and human resource controls.

A few of these include:

  • Training users about how to detect and protect themselves from common cyber attacks (like phishing and downloading viruses and other malware)
  • Conducting the appropriate background checks on new hires
  • Utilizing secure work practices like separation of duties and task rotation
  • Making regular security reviews/audits a core part of your business
  • Limiting employee access to important patient data on a strict need-to-know basis

So now you’re ready to really protect your patient’s valuable information. Patient privacy and security is extremely important, so arming yourselves with knowledge is the first line of defense against security breaches and attacks. The next step is to find a security engineer consultant to help you implement all the security measures we just addressed.

That concludes our four part series on how to digitize your practice. We hope that this information has been informative and useful as you start on your journey to digitizing your practice.

How to Digitize Your Practice in 4 Easy Steps – Part 3: Get Your Share of the Data Gold Mine

Posted by James Kanka on

The term “open source” is thrown around a lot these days, especially when mentioned alongside the names of tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. But despite it’s deeply technological roots, you don’t have to be a software genius to take advantage of all the benefits open source can provide.

Briefly speaking, open source (and open data) means allowing public access to programming source code (the building blocks of computer software and applications) and data sets.

One of the most popular examples of open source development is the Linux operating system. This is an operating system that has been around since the early 90’s, but has developed hundreds of varieties as both professional and amateur programmers are able to access the original source code and customize the operating system to suit their own needs (and the best part – it’s free!).

A good example of open data is New York City’s open data program. You can go here to find just about every kind of data piece imaginable about the city, from restaurant health inspection grades to a list of all licensed taxi drivers and the average daily inmate population of the city’s jails.

For the healthcare industry, the primary benefits of open development have to do with data sharing and opening everything to everyone. Think about it: there are trillions of bits of medical data being collected everyday, from the newest invention in the Internet of Things, to the traditional research being conducted by Universities and pharmaceutical companies across the world. Like New York City’s data sets, these can be combined by individual practices, hospitals, etc. to come up with new insights into their own businesses and the healthcare industry in general.

So how exactly does this help you?

Imagine using Google data of the top health searches in your area for specific marketing and ad campaigns to bring in more clients. Or, using the latest research data from multiple health disciplines to come up with unique, holistic solutions to common health problems you’re seeing in your practice. You can even share your own data with other practices to increase patient awareness on topics of concern.

Of course if you’re like any law-abiding provider, your first concern about all this data sharing is the privacy of your patients. The aggregate information method of data sharing uses a collection of personal data with all identifying information removed. This is the safest way to use data without compromising the privacy of patients. If you plan on using or distributing patient data, make sure that it is completely scrubbed of all identifying information, lest you open yourself up to lawsuits and legal investigations.

The other way to use open development is by utilizing the open source code that is planted across the internet. With the right skill set, you can utilize this code to create and customize your own applications.

You can find open source code for just about everything these days, it’s all a matter of figuring out what you want to build, finding the code, and then finding a programmer to tailor it for you.

This concludes part three in our 4-part Digitize Your Practice series. In the conclusion of the series, we’ll look into the biggest concern your patients have when it comes to digitizing your practice: their privacy.

The Uber Model: Better Healthcare Through Improved Patient Access

Posted by James Kanka on

It’s hard to imagine, but America’s healthcare system is rare amongst other industrialized countries. This is mostly due to the privatized model that we have been conditioned to deal with our whole lives. It seems that uniqueness is not equated with success; our country is consistently ranked at the bottom of healthcare systems based on measures of quality, access, and efficiency.

The United States is unequivocally the most expensive health care system in the world as well, yet patient satisfaction remains embarrassingly low. It’s astounding that this trend continues in this country despite the increasing amount of technology and innovation driven citizens.

It’s time to demand better health care. Making it more inexpensive is undoubtedly an end goal, but providing more accessible and efficient means of acquiring it are achievements that can be more immediate.

How can this be done, you may ask? The answer lies with Uber.

Now, you might be saying “I thought Uber was within the transportation industry?” Of course you’re correct, but the same model can be applied to the health care world.

Uber has been tremendously successful because of its streamlined, convenient, and accessible approach for users. If patients started demanding the same from providers, the problems of absurdly long wait times and unattainable access to healthcare would be improved. Just as Uber allows users to see available transportation within their immediate radius, providers could allow patients to see open appointments very near to them.

A disproportionally large percentage of Americans depend exclusively on their primary care provider for appointments and referrals, often subsequently resulting in waiting for weeks or even months just to be seen. A recent study published by the Washington Post illuminates the significant problem of wait times; the average wait time for all specialties, including family practice, was 18.5 days for new patients in metropolitan areas, with even longer averages in more rural areas. Some attribute this to a physician shortage, while others believe that the improving economy has caused more citizens to book appointments. Either way, wait times are a trend that’s expected to rise in this country, that is, unless something is done to disrupt the problem.

The time is now to begin integrating more technology into the ancient habits of America’s healthcare industry. Uber has revolutionized the way our country thinks of individual transportation services. Gone are the days where you might stand for ten minutes trying to hail a taxi. These same improvements of convenience and access are at the fingertips of the nation’s healthcare industry. Now we must make this disruption happen.

How to Digitize Your Practice in 4 Easy Steps – Part 2: Homemade Healthcare

Posted by James Kanka on

Sara is a 28-year-old laboratory assistant at a large pharmaceutical company. She’s a new homeowner, and along with the constant stream of home repairs, she maintains a busy schedule of kickball leagues, pet ownership, dating, and marathon training.

In other words, she’s a very busy woman doing things she loves. So needless to say, she’s always on the lookout for ways to for ways to streamline all the things she likes less – like dental appointments, haircuts, and arranging for a taxi to take her to the airport.

One way she does this is by using apps on her phone to avoid the traditional time consuming ways of doing things…

  • She uses Uber to book trips to the airport (with the simple touch of her screen) instead of calling a dispatcher for a taxi that may or may not show up on time.
  • She uses Everseat to book appointments at her convenience on the same day, instead of having to wait weeks or months with traditional phone booking.
  • She doesn’t have time to run to the dentist, so she uses a specially made camera attached to her phone that is able to take pictures of her teeth. These pictures are then sent to the dentist, who can tell her whether or not she needs to come in for a check up.

Notice the trend? It’s the trend of greater customer convenience, of customers taking more of the service-providing process into their own hands.

Of course healthcare is not immune to these trends. As more and more people gain access to the internet, more and more will be informed of the new tech trends impacting their health care and access to their health care.

In last week’s article, we talked about the explosion of the Internet of Things – the trend towards digitizing devices so that they can utilize the computing and communications power of the internet. It’s this trend that’s driving the trend towards greater customer convenience.

When we can connect just about anything to the internet anywhere we choose, we expect the internet to do all sorts of things.

For the healthcare industry, that means conducting more diagnoses and treatments from the comfort of the patient’s home. It means being able to send reminders to a patient’s refrigerator that they’ve had too many carbs for the day. And it means patients can do post-op on their couches while providers monitor their vitals via a smart phone.

Another trend you’ve probably already seen is people using the Internet to do their own medical research – for better or for worse. But you shouldn’t immediately discount the information they’re bringing you…

First, while it may increase the number of armchair physicians coming to your office with maladies you’ve never even heard of and their equally absurd remedies, it can also provide you with new insights into medicine and medical technology that you may have never thought of before. Or new ways of doing business with them that brings in more money for you.

Second, you can use these experiences to take the time and explain your thoughts on the new information. This will help protect them from a lot of the snake oil remedies that are easy to encounter on the internet.

Thirdly, just by listening to your patient and (at least pretending to) taking their idea seriously you show them that you care about them. A simple lack of bedside manner is enough to drive a patient into the arms of a competitor who will listen – and of course their money goes with them.

So just remember: the trend towards empowered patients isn’t going away anytime soon. The sooner you embrace this, the more quickly you’ll bring your practice into the Digital Century.

That concludes part two in our 4-part Digitize Your Practice series. In Part III of the series, we’ll look into one tech trend that’s finally entering the healthcare industry: the open source development model.