In The Know - MEDSEEK News and Expert Opinion on the eHealth Industry

MEDSEEK signs 59 new software agreements and consulting projects during 2007

Today we announced the results from 2007, and it was another great year of revenue growth. During the year we welcomed 19 new health system customers (representing over 40 hospitals) and signed 59 software agreements and professional services engagements. While we finished our seventh consecutive year of revenue growth, we tackled some challenges and continue to work hard to serve our customers as we grow. We are very excited about 2008, as it will be a year of continued growth and new product innovation.

“Over the past 12 months, MEDSEEK has made a significant investment towards the development of a state of the art technology platform that will be the foundation for the delivery of MEDSEEK solutions to the market over the next 5 – 7 years”, said Peter Kuhn, president of MEDSEEK. “We are proud of the work we started to enhance our enterprise portal offering and continue to work hard to deliver these enhancements in 2008”.

For the complete press release visit our news channel.

Hospitals from around the nation converge on Omaha to share cost and quality transparency best practices

Last week Alegent Health and MEDSEEK hosted the inaugural "Power to the Patient"forum in Omaha, Neb. The purpose of the hands-on, practical workshop was to share Alegent's experiences in deploying MyCost [cost transparency web-based application] with health systems around the nation. With more than 45 attendees from over 10 organizations from diverse markets converging to learn how to enhance the experience their patients and community has with their organizations, we can say the event was a huge success.

MyCost was born out of Alegent's decision to offer a consumer-driven health plan (CDHP) option for its 8,500 employees, and the need for transparency in enabling consumers [their employees] to make informed decisions based on quality and cost of service.

As a result of strong leadership, and the desire to do the right thing for it's employees and community, MyCost and Quality Reports were published via Alegent's web site in early 2007 and late 2006, respectively.

The service, despite early trepidation, has been widely adopted by the community and the forum was conceived by Alegent and MEDSEEK to share their successes and lessons learned with other organizations.

To learn more about Alegent Health's experience read their case study.

 

New study supporting the value the patient experience plays in driving hospital revenue

McKinsey & Co recently published survey data from over 2,000 interviews with patients and over 100 physicians. The purpose was to begin quantifying the influence the patient "experience" has on a patient's [and their physician's] decision making process in selecting a hospital.

Wow! MEDSEEK has been advocating this for the past 12 years. It's great that such a great consulting firm validates the value we create for our hospital customers.

It's one of the first studies to explore the relationship between the non-clinical "experience" one has with the hospital and it's relative impact on the selection of services and where to receive them.

Key findings include (paraphrased from the report):

• About 41% on the nonclinical experience has an influence on their choice of hospitals.
• More than 50% of patients interviewed said they definitely would switch to a hospital known for giving its patients a positive experience—all other things (including the quality of clinical care) being equal.
• About 75% of patients reported they will consider switching if they think that a specific hospital will keep them better informed about their treatment.
• 94% of the primary-care physicians (and 92 percent of the specialists) said that patients now have at least as much or more influence over which hospital they will visit as they did three years ago.
• Remarkably, our survey found that almost 30% of the general practitioners would honor their patients’ requests to be treated at hospitals with a reputation for providing a superior nonclinical consumer experience even if they thought those facilities were clinically inferior to one or more of the alternatives.

An abstract of the results are clipped here:

clipped from www.mckinseyquarterly.com New research indicates that US patients and physicians are more and more likely to base their choice of hospital on nonclinical aspects of a visit—like convenience and amenities. Yet few hospitals have the marketing skills, the organizational structure, or the operating approach needed to deliver a distinctive experience in the way that retailing and hospitality companies do. As competition for commercially insured patients heats up, US hospitals will have to invest in the capabilities needed to learn what these patients want and to deliver an experience that could attract them. Hospitals that succeed should gain a sustainable competitive advantage.

The full report is available for purchase from McKinsey & Co.

Welcome Athens Regional and Glendale Adventist

With the new year, we are excited and energized to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Lots of great new initiatives, and more importantly, lots of new customers.

With the rush of the holidays to contend with, our teams were busy delivering software and bringing new hospitals into the family. As the year came to a close, Athens Regional Medical Center in Athens, Ga.(home of my beloved  bulldogs) and Glendale Adventist Medical Center in Glendale, Calf. signed software agreements to deploy their eHealth customer portals, and were the last two of the 19 new customers that joined the MEDSEEK family in 2007.

Not to be outdone, our existing customers have and continue to keep us very busy with new patient and clinical portal projects. In recent months we signed 21 new software and professional services agreements with 11 existing customers. It's great to be recognized with a "thank you" (as we've previously posted), but the fact they continue to invest by giving us their business says it all.

Visit our news channel to read the full press release:
Six Health Systems Select MEDSEEK as Their Enterprise Portal Partner

Customer success stories highlight the impact eHealth has on the hospital community

What makes MEDSEEK successful? The diversity of our customers. Each has unique challenges, but we bring them all together. It's the shared experience, technology platform, and our applied expertise that separates MEDSEEK from others and drives value for our customers.

Check out our latest customer success stories and learn how each customer deployed eHealth solutions to achieve their corporate goals.

University Health Care System in Augusta, Ga. invested in a consumer portal to reinforce their system brand and their promise of comprehensive health services to the entire Augusta community. It's a promise no other organization can deliver in the market and they turned to their Web properties to create ubiquity.

William Osler Health Centre in Ontario, Canada approached their portal with an inside-out view. The challenge came from the need to provide instant, real-time access to clinical information for their medical staff. Osler was transferring the management of one of their hospitals and needed to minimize disruptions and maintain continuity of care. With their initial success, Osler expanded access to include five other facilities within their local region.

Conway Regional Health System in Conway, Ark. had more modest goals, comparatively speaking, but their achievement was extremely important to the community hospital system. Back in 2004, Conway simply wanted a more efficient and easier process for managing their Web site. Once achieved, they realized how Web empowerment can improve relationships with their community and physicians. As they move towards patient self-service not only has traffic to the site doubled, they are raising more funds than ever for their foundation. Human Resource productivity has improved as well as their physician recruitment efforts.

What do each of these organizations have in common? MEDSEEK. Check out their full stories and more at our customer success channel.

Create value while providing a great experience, and customers notice

As we prepare for the new year and reflect on the past year's accomplishments and lessons learned, it's important to remember why we do what we do, and the value we [vendors] create for our customers.

While we're always focused on areas for improvement within our customer relationships, it's great to receive feedback expressing real gratitude and appreciation. We all work hard to create a positive experience with every touch, however we often focus on the relatively few negative ones. In this time of reflection, we wanted to share a recent email we received from a long time hospital customer, based in the midwest, that speaks to the positive impact we [vendors] all dream of having.

Hello to our MEDSEEK support friends.

I know we don't all share the same holidays and we have never sat in a room and sipped tea, shared a pitcher of beer or a bottle of good Cabernet--  you know the kind of things real friends would do... but despite that- over miles, over airways and over emails -relationships still form and I wanted to tell you just how important you each have become to us in a small Indiana town, miles from where you live and work.

Because of your creativity, your design ideas, your skill in connecting dots, your tenacious sense of accomplishment, and your unrelenting customer-focus-- daily you deliver up thousands of bits of important clinical information that is used by more than 360 of our physicians, billers, codes, case managers and others to provide excellent care for the citizens of our Hoosier community. And yet those users don't know you.  And certainly those patients don't know you nor even know that you exist. You in the vendor world are literally "behind the scenes that are behind the scenes!"  But we in IT know you and we want you to know how important your work is to our community's health. We know how important is is that you are dedicated to doing right things right.  We know you are there and we place our trust in your technical support and your willingness to keep our information stream flowing and even to making it better!

We have high expectations and we have great visions for serving up accurate, meaningful health information so that we can all take better care of ourselves and our patients- whether it is a clearly graphed ABG lab result that gets oxygen to a patient faster,  a quick Radiology result or PACS image that a Doctor views at home so she can get a clearer picture of a patient's deteriorating condition and get them moved more rapidly into an ICU bed or an arrhythmia that a Cardiologist can view and order IV meds over the phone from their office or a history and physical document from 2 hospital visits ago showing up on a smart phone,  the work you do is very important and the wonderful way you do your work is highly valued and much appreciated.

As we all prepare to rest-up and start a New Year-  please accept our thanks for all that you do to keep MEDSEEK up and running at BMH!

We appreciate the 'thank you' and please know that these are the relationships we strive to have with each and every customer.

Hospitals from Ohio to Florida (and places in between) select MEDSEEK

We are pleased to welcome four new hospital customers who recently joined the MEDSEEK family. Duncan Regional in Duncan, Okla.; Jupiter Medical Center in Jupiter, Fla.; The Regional Medical Center (aka "The MED") in Memphis, Tenn.; and Southern Ohio Medical Center in Portsmouth, Ohio.

Both Duncan Regional and Jupiter Medical Center will deploy our Enterprise Portal Management platform and marketing services to build their consumer portals. The platform includes our SiteMaker content management system, ADAM health content, HealthDay newsletter, and healthcare-specific plug-in modules, along with expert marketing services.

Duncan Regional Hospital is a progressive, 126-bed community hospital that is constantly evolving to meet the ever-changing needs of their community. By creating a interactive web site that provides comprehensive information to the community and convenient access to services, Duncan expects to significantly enhance the overall experience their patients and consumers have with the hospital.

In the spring 2007, the management team at 276-bed Jupiter Medical Center wanted to "blow up" their web site and deploy a more robust portal that integrated content from multiple sources while appropriately positioning hospital services.

The MED, a 350-bed teaching hospital, is faced with tremendous competitive pressures to retain the best physicians in Memphis. While a quality nursing staff and top-notch medical technology helps, convenience is at the heart of their physician loyalty strategy. The IT team recognized early-on that providing clinical information to their physicians when and where it's needed is mission-critical. By implementing our Enterprise Portal Management solution to deploy their clinical portal, The MED is able to offer their medical staff and referring primary care physicians convenient access through a simple web browser, which they believe will improve collaborative community care and clinical decision-making.

Southern Ohio Medical Center, a 220-bed regional system and AGFA Healthcare customer, selected MEDSEEK to deploy their clinical portal, due in part, to the complexity of their system architecture and need for some new clinical integration points. In particular, Southern Ohio will be working with us to develop a data store for their laboratory results to avoid costly interface charges. This new customer joins the MEDSEEK family as a result of our value-added reseller relationship with AGFA Healthcare.