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

Why Practices Should Facilitate Continuing Education for Healthcare Providers

Healthcare professionals understand the importance of maintaining an awareness of emerging technologies, biomedical research findings and evidence-based medical practice guidelines. Practitioners are aware that access to this knowledge impacts practice, which influences patient outcomes. It is near impossible for healthcare providers that are heads-down in practice to stay current on every updated guideline and recommendation or to dedicate enough time to conduct their own research. This is where continuing education comes in, and the reason why many states and accrediting bodies mandate continuing medical education (CME) on an annual or other systematic basis for licensure, renewal of licensure and maintenance of certification.

CME is an integral component of continuous professional development and, because the population of healthcare providers is so heterogeneous, it is imperative that CME courses and opportunities target the healthcare provider to whom the content appeals. Specialties such as Cardiology, Endocrinology, and Urology, just to name a few, all have different focuses in order to maintain the utmost knowledge in their area of expertise. It seems reasonable that the state(s) in which the healthcare provider is applying for licensure or licensure renewal set forth the required CME content. Interestingly enough, even the state-mandated CME content varies considerably from state to state.

The time investment, and potential cost investment, associated with CME must be acknowledged by practices and healthcare organizations (HCOs) who are investing in the continuous professional development of the healthcare provider. As one example, MEDSEEK recently partnered with Private Health news (PHN) to enable HCOs to engage healthcare providers efficiently and cost-effectively by streamlining communication and targeting CME credits to the specialty interest of each subscriber. As the trend in HCO-employed physicians continues to rise, strategic physician engagement becomes paramount to attracting and retaining the very best providers.

For practices and HCOs, turnkey physician e-communication programs such as MedNews Plus, as a component of a virtual medical office product, is an invaluable ‘in-house’ tool that makes life easier for physicians by helping them to achieve CME credit requirements within their normal workflow. Therefore, CME offerings should be compatible with the workflow of the healthcare provider. Not all providers have the ability to take time off from practice to attend a conference or continuing education seminar. Practices and healthcare organizations should utilize today’s technology to promote online CME, while allowing healthcare providers to not only receive credits but also equip providers with the most current medical and scientific knowledge to improve care delivery and, ultimately, patient outcomes.

Strategic patient management and engagement is a critical challenge that healthcare organizations must meet as we move beyond Meaningful Use and towards accountable care. Implementing physician engagement strategies, such as making CME credit requirements a part of the daily workflow, allows physicians to concentrate on improving the patient experience and quality of care.

--Daria Byrne, Ed.D, MSN, RN
MEDSEEK Clinical Solution Manager

Further to an article by Carrie Rossenfeld in Medical Office Today, to which Daria Byrne was a contributor. MEDSEEK’s Clinical Solution Manager shares her insights into the importance of continuing medical education.

Physician Adoption: Piggybacking on Current Behavior

I recently spoke at MEDSEEK's annual eHealth Client Congress and revealed that prior to working for MEDSEEK that I spent about five years as a drug dealer.  Yes, I was employed in the pharmaceutical industry and worked with physicians on a daily basis in New York City.  It was there that I first started to realize the issues that providers had with access to information - the need to collaborate and the importance of providing physicians efficiency.

Learn more about MEDSEEK's Virtual Clinical Experience for Physicians

In a recent meeting, Dan Ansel, CEO of Private Health News mentioned to me that during the early 2000's he had been working around physician education. He said that the pharmaceutical companies were offering primary care providers a desktop computer free of cost - with the understanding the physician would spend one hour of the week speaking with a company representative.  Fast forward the tape 18 months and the desktop was removed from each office.  Why?  The workflow and actions that the pharma companies were betting on didn't piggyback on an existing behavior for the physician.  EMR's were just being discussed and it "didn't make sense" for physicians to go to a computer during the day.

As I type I'm traveling to California to see six clients in three days. During this time I will be studying the physicians to see what they do prior to, during, and after each meeting.  One thing is for certain, they will all be checking their smartphones (Blackberry, iPhone, Droid) and/or iPads.  We need to recognize this in eHealth circles; we need to answer the call that physicians are making to hospitals and healthcare organizations.  They want real-time data, alerts and notifications to their hand-held devices, and a reduction in paper in the inbox to more productive and meaningful news and updates.

If we can start to piggyback on existing behavior - we have a much better opportunity in being successful and having long term loyalty for the providers that we serve.

Bradley Hawkins, Vice President Clinical Experience, MEDSEEK

iHT2 Summary: Creating Value Based Care ACOs

At iHT2 in San Francisco, we learned that as we get closer to the notice of proposed rulemaking for ACO’s (possibly next week?) existing organizations are closely looking at how they can move from volume based to value based care.  Comments were made by many throughout the event, including Mark Blatt Director, Global Healthcare Strategies, Digital Health Group Intel Corporation, that while Congress is incenting us with $40B in upfront dollars, the government (much like GM) will go bankrupt if it does not squeeze $400B out of the system in the coming 10 years.  As part of this revolution, healthcare organizations – which have done little to change in the last 10 years – are being forced to rapidly evolve in a compressed amount of time if they want to remain solvent in the coming future. 

ACO’s are not a “project” and the serious healthcare organization is quickly aligning with payers/employers and physicians, looking at technical and physical infrastructure and contemplating continuity of care models that will ultimately make the patient the focal point of care.  HCO’s will be required to look at managing populations in order to build healthy communities and are currently putting together the right technology and tools to be prepared to electronically exchange data and measure the impact of their efforts.

Other countries such as Sweden have dramatically reduced the number of hospitals from hundreds to double digits all while seeing overall improvements in the populations care and at a lower cost.  Americans are poised to see dramatic changes in the way their traditional physician and the care team perform their job and the level of participation and prevention that will require them to manage their own care.  Get ready for the revolution.

Learn more about how to become an accountable care organization and download Accountable Care Organizations: The Next Steps

Bob Cushman
Sr. eHealth Consultant, MEDSEEK

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...

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.

eHealth delivers, lets take a closer look

Our very own Peter Kuhn was published in the December 2007 issue of ADVANCE for Healthcare Information Executives. Several customer success stories are highlighted including East Jefferson General Hospital in Metairie, La, Edward Hospital & Health Services in Naperville, Ill., Munroe Regional Medical Center in Ocala, Fla, and Henry Ford Health System (HFHS) in Detroit, Mich.

Here's an excerpt:

Today's information-driven society is changing health care (for good or bad we'll save for another discussion) forever. Consumer expectations are more demanding of our institutions, where access to timely, relevant information is a clear market differentiator. Hospitals that embrace these changing dynamics will thrive in the coming years.

As hospitals begin addressing these new challenges, many are turning to e-health as their foundation for creating a positive, differentiated experience. It's certainly not the only answer, but key to engaging and interacting with an information-driven constituency.

Shifting processes to the Internet

By leveraging the power of the global network to fundamentally transform how they interact with their constituencies — consumers, patients, physicians and employees — and shifting business processes to the Internet, organizations can differentiate themselves in their local hospital market.

Smart, progressive organizations that invest in their constituents' overall experience with the organization will find that their investment will more than pay off in improved patient and physician satisfaction, more effective community advocacy, increased downstream revenue, better employee collaboration and clinical excellence. The investment also will strengthen their ties to consumers, patients and patients. In the past, for example, hospitals built office space within or near their hospital to forge relationships with physicians. Smart organizations will continue to use that tactic, but they also will use Web portals to supplement their physician recruitment and retention initiatives.

Hospitals currently are deploying Web portals that enable doctors to access and direct patient data remotely, sparing them a road trip to the hospital or forcing them to make clinical decisions without the benefit of all the information they need because the patient's paper record is unavailable. Given the choice of selecting a hospital that helps them practice more efficiently versus one that doesn't, physicians will go with the former.

Innovative hospitals also are delivering information online to help patients take better care of themselves and schedule appointments, making it more convenient for existing and prospective patients to interact with and access their services.