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

eConnect Physician Portal Designated Category Leader in the Clinical Portal Market Segment of the 2008 Top 20 Best in KLAS Awards

I was delighted to receive notification today that MEDSEEK’s clinical portal software, the eConnect Physician Portal, has been designated Category Leader in the Clinical Portal market segment of the 2008 Top 20 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Professional Services report. We know and understand that this recognition comes as a direct result of feedback that our clients have provided – and for this we are extremely grateful. We are privileged to work with a number of progressive and innovative healthcare organizations focused on the patient and physician experience, and we are honored to be recognized by both our clients and the KLAS organization.

KLAS, an independent healthcare IT vendor research firm, recognizes healthcare vendors for their leadership in working with customers to ensure satisfaction. The KLAS Category Leader ranking measures performance based on customer surveys and in-depth interviews and gauges insight into specific strengths, weaknesses and future expectations for companies and their products. This annual recognition assists medical facilities in providing an unbiased and accurate vehicle for measuring performance in the healthcare industry, allowing for further understanding of how well suppliers and products perform. We owe a debt of gratitude not only to our clients, but also to our employees without whom this honor would not be possible. Many thanks to all of you for your support. We couldn’t have done it without you!

To view the Best in KLAS and Category Leaders click here.

What do Patients Want?

The Commonwealth Fund has released the results of its 2008 Survey of Public Views of the U.S. Health Care System, conducted by Harris Interactive. According to a telephone survey of 1,004 random U.S. adults, 80 percent of respondents believe that the healthcare system needs either fundamental change or complete rebuilding.

MEDSEEK Leads in KLAS® for Clinical Portal Software Solution - MEDSEEK Leads KLAS ® Portals Segment as of August 22, 2008

MEDSEEK recently received the news... we are leading in KLAS® rankings for our Clinical Portal software solution.

reThinking eHealth Webinar Announced: Give the Providers What They Want

Birmingham, Ala.– July 21, 2008 –MEDSEEK, the leading provider of enterprise portal connectivity solutions, announced today that Dr. Asim Masood of William Osler Health Centre and Dr. Jay Wallin of Mount Carmel Health System will present a Webinar in the monthly educational series reThinking eHealth. The session, titled “Give the Providers What They What: Two physicians share ways their facilities have improved provider satisfaction,” will take place on Wednesday August 27th at 2pm EDT, 11am PDT.

Question: In Hospital-Physician Relationship Programs, How Critical Is an eCommunication Strategy?

The following article was recently published in the eHealthcare Strategy & Trends March 2008 edition. It is the first part of a two part article.

Mel Flesland, a Senior eHealth Specialist for MEDSEEK, contributed to the publication of this article and discussed the importance having of a physician portal strategy. Mel will also provide her insight as part of a panel presentation at MEDSEEK's upcoming eHealth Client Congress in May. She teamed up with MedStar Health in Lutherville, Maryland and Microsoft Corporation to launch HealthVault in conjunction with MEDSEEK's patient portal. Mel will present alongside Cindy Tanenbaum with MedStar Health and Dr. James Mault with Microsoft on Wednesday, May 7th at 1:45pm CDT at The Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Read entire article below...

“Year of the Physician” Initiative Leads Adena Health System to Invest in Clinical and Patient Portal

Breaking down data silos and organizational barriers to ease burden on physicians and their patients

One million health consumers and counting

Not all RHIOs are fading.  Just look north for clinical connectivity and interoperability success.  William Osler Health Centre, with partners AGFA Healthcare and MEDSEEK, is delivering real clinical value to their physicians and community.

Here's a quote from Judy Middleton, CIO at William Osler, published in a recent article in The Brampton Guardian regarding Osler's successful adoption of MEDSEEK's Clinical Portal and it's expansion to the entire LHIN.   

clipped from www.northpeel.com "This makes us trailblazers," said Judy Middleton, Chief Information Officer for WOHC. "If a physician has a patient at Osler, and the patient says 'I've been at Oakville or I've been at Credit Valley', then all the information from their visits will be accessible by the physician. So in terms of expediting treatment and care, you have much more information (at your disposal)."

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.

Canadian clinical connectivity initiatives gain momentum

Several Canadian clinical connectivity initiatives are showing strength as adoption grows. AGFA Healthcare, along with MEDSEEK, continues its success in the Canadian market. 

Healthcare Information Management & Communication and Canadian Healthcare Technology published stories on the successes several hospitals are having in connecting physicians with clinical information to improve community-wide patient care.

Where are RHIOs and clinical connectivity initiatives heading?

While the news about the ongoing viability of RHIOs continues to be questioned, MEDSEEK is one of the few vendors creating a broad reaching connectivity platform to exchange clinical information between hospital and physician practice systems. While we're proud of our track record, it's gratifying  when other people recognize our contributions. Take a look at a recent post to the HISTalk blog by Art Vandelay (an obvious alias):

“Re: RHIO failures. I attended a set of meetings for our local health information exchanges (HIE). The first stumbling blocks were the politics and the leveling of the data competitive advantage a few organizations experienced. These issues weren’t resolved before the lack of a sustainable business model and funds for initial investment seem to have really impacted the project. We never really got around to the privacy concerns. Without a government mandate or a realignment of incentives, this just isn’t going to happen soon. I see this concept coming-back in about 5-10 years, once the vast majority of the country has baseline clinical data repositories installed and functioning and the standards committees have had time to meet and align. Very localized initiatives where hospitals exchange data with their affiliated physicians’ computerized medical records are likely to start springing-up in the place of HIEs. This scope can be managed. Vendors to watch include Novo Innovations, Medicity, MedSeek and dBMotion. The technologies and services of these vendors seem to set them apart from others in the pack.”

We have experienced what Art (Seinfeld fan perhaps) describes first hand. One such customer is working with us to develop connectivity with community physicians, as part of a broader patient portal and clinical portal initiative. Most recently we achieved a major milestone that moved beyond our eConnect application's ability to push/pull clinical data between the medial center's information system and physician EMRs from GE Healthcare and Cerner. With support from GE and Cerner (after customer encouragement), MEDSEEK delivered the ability to "post" the hospital encounter data directly into the physician's EMR. While this is not rocket science, it does illustrate the evolution of data connectivity between systems, from real-time access/viewing to sharing and transfer of ownership.

For more on our clinical connectivity projects (an example of a successful regional RHIO) read our case study on the Western North Carolina Health Network and its DataLink initiative. Their story was also picked up by Health Management Technology magazine.