April 4th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in News, Research
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Improving handoffs from the emergency room back to the primary care physician will require changing how electronic health records are used, better reimbursement to both the hospital and ambulatory doctors, and malpractice reform, according to a study. The rising use of hospitalists and larger primary care practice sizes has contributed to the difficulties faced when an ER doctors tries to reach a physician who best knows the patient.
Haphazard communication and poor coordination can undermine effective care, according to a new research conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change. Researchers conducted 42 telephone interviews between April and October 2010 with 21 pairs of emergency department and primary care physicians, who were case-matched to hospitals so the perspective of both specialties working with the same hospital could be represented.
Among the findings in the report, telephone communication was essential in some cases, but particularly time-consuming. Both emergency and primary care physicians reported successful completion of each telephone call often required multiple pages and lengthy waits for callbacks. While placing and receiving telephone calls might seem straightforward and quick, providers said each small action multiplied across dozens of patients can become a daunting burden, with little immediate reward or reimbursement. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
April 3rd, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in News
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Patients may not want to discuss clinical matters via social media, but they’d gladly set pay their bills when reminded. Social media’s value in communicating with patients is limited to the administrative aspects of it.
Americans still want traditional ways of communication when they need a clinical consult. A survey finds 84% would not use social media or instant messaging channels for medical communication if their doctors offered it, according to the communications firm Capstrat.
Respondents were more favorable toward conferring with the doctor via e-mail (52%) than they were by Twitter and Facebook (11%), chat or instant messaging (20%) or a private online forum (31%).
Even among those 18 to 29 years old, 21% said they would take advantage of an online forum if their doctor offered it, while 72% would take advantage of a nurse help line if available.
Respondents said they’d take advantage of online appointment scheduling (52%), online access to medical records (50%), or online bill payment (48%).
“It appears consumers are willing to move administrative experiences such as bill payment and records access online, but when it comes to conferring with their health care providers, people still prefer more traditional communications,” said the firm’s president, Karen Albritton, in a press release. “The implications include a way for doctors to free up more time for their patients by moving the right interactions online, and an opportunity to forge stronger connections through personal interaction.”
Patients want the same convenience of online appointments and bill paying from their doctor that they get in other areas of their lives, reports a second survey.
73% of those surveyed would use a secure online option to get lab results, request appointments and pay medical bills. The first caveat is that this survey was done by Intuit. The company is best known for QuickBooks, but its health care division offers patient portals for doctor’s offices. The second caveat is that respondents were surveyed online, which would skew results to people digitally inclined anyway.
With those two caveats in mind, the survey also found that:
–Almost half would consider switching doctors for a practice that offered online access.
–81% would schedule their own appointment via a secure Web service and fill out medical/registration forms online prior to their appointment.
–78% would use a secure online method to access their medical histories and share information with their doctor.
–59% of generation Y respondents said they would switch doctors for one with better online access, compared to only 29% of baby boomers.
–45% of patients wait more than a month to pay their doctor bill, and when they pay, half still send a paper check in the mail.
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
March 31st, 2011 by Elaine Schattner, M.D. in Opinion
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The Times ran an intriguing experiment on its Well blog yesterday: a medical problem-solving contest. The challenge, based on the story of a real girl who lives near Philadelphia, drew 1379 posted comments and closed this morning with publication of the answer.
Dr. Lisa Sanders, who moderated the piece, says today that the first submitted correct response came from a California physician; the second came from a Minnesota woman who is not a physician. Evidently she recognized the condition’s manifestations from her experience working with people who have it.
The public contest – and even the concept of using the word “contest” – to solve a real person’s medical condition interests me a lot. This kind of puzzle is, as far as I know, unprecedented apart from the somewhat removed domains of doctors’ journals and on-line platforms intended for physicians, medical school problem-based learning cases, clinical pathological conferences (CPC’s) and fictional TV shows. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medical Lessons*
August 6th, 2010 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Better Health Network, Humor, Opinion, True Stories
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I have a new “smartphone.” It’s a Droid from Verizon. Pretty cool. I like what it can do, though it tends to enable me tendency to chronically check my email. I like the features, between ease of texting, voice dialing, etc. But it’s big, compared to me dear departed flipphone, whose corpse lies in state in my pickup truck.
But I noticed one day, as I reached around my side, that the large phone now on my hip felt remarkably like my revolver. Odd feeling that. I was in public and I remember panicking, wondering if I had forgotten to conceal my concealed weapon for some reason.
And as I pondered this, I realized that both represent fundamental differences in the way we view individuality. Maybe it’s a stretch, but I’m a writer so I’m supposed to stretch. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
August 10th, 2009 by EvanFalchukJD in Better Health Network, Health Policy
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If you were hoping for a thoughtful discussion on the reform of our health care system, I have bad, bad news.
It turns out that health insurers are “villians.” Public anger over the massive, mostly unread, reform bills is “manufactured,” and anxiety created by the expectation of unknown changes to people’s most valued benefits is the result of disinformation and “fishy” stories.
It’s like an employee benefits roll-out gone horribly awry.
The protests and disastrous town halls look to me just like the kinds of angry protests that happen all the time when employers make important changes to a benefit plan and the employees either don’t understand them or don’t agree.
Blaming the people who don’t follow what you’re doing and why is a big mistake. Sure, there is politics. But health care is a serious, emotional issue, and it should be no surprise that people react badly when they think something to do with it may be taken away.
Dreaming up ideas of how health care ought to work is relatively easy. But figuring out how to implement it is hard, and there are no short cuts. The people who actually run benefits plans – employers, benefits consultants, HR professionals – can tell you: there is no replacement for communication, engagement and respect for opposing views.
The strategy of demonizing those who aren’t on board is a mistake, and is as likely to set back the cause of reform as it is to further inflame an already volatile audience.
*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*
