A recent study by mobile engagement provider Mobiquity, Inc has found that while 70 percent of people use mobile apps on a daily basis to track calorie intake and monitor physical activities, only 40 percent share data and insights with their doctors.
Working with an independent research firm, Mobiquity’s “Get Mobile, Get Healthy: The Appification of Health & Fitness” study reveals the opportunity for healthcare professionals and organizations to leverage mobile to drive positive behavior change and healthier patient outcomes. According to the survey, 34 percent of mobile health and fitness app users said they would increase their use of apps if their doctors actively recommended it.
According to Mobiquity’s research,73 percent of people claim to be healthier by using a smartphone and apps to track their health and fitness. Fifty three percent discovered they were eating more calories than they realized. Sixty-three percent intend to continue, and even increase, their mobile health tracking in the next five years; 55 percent of today’s mobile health app users also plan to introduce wearable devices like pedometers, wristbands and smartwatches to their health monitoring in coming years.
Smartphone health tracking trumps social networking
For many, using a smartphone to track their health and fitness is more important to them than using their phone for social networking (69 percent), mobile shopping (68 percent), listening to music (60 percent) and making/receiving phone calls (30 percent).
But there’s room for improvement
What’s stopping people from using their health and fitness apps more? Doctor recommendations would be a big motivator, said 34 percent. Privacy was also a concern for 61 percent. But the chief reason people quit using these apps is simply because they forget – something that could and should be addressed by app developers to ensure health apps are less disposable.
“Our study shows there’s a huge opportunity for medical professionals, pharmaceutical companies and health organizations to use mobile to drive positive behavior change and, as a result, better patient outcomes,” said Scott Snyder, president and chief strategy officer at Mobiquity. “The gap will be closed by those who design mobile health solutions that are indispensable and laser-focused on users’ goals, and that carefully balance data collection with user control and privacy.”
Mobiquity commissioned independent research firm Research Now to survey 1,000 consumers who use, or plan to use, health and fitness mobile apps. The study was conducted between March 5-11, 2014.
Guest post by Darin VanderWell, Director of Product, DocuTAP.
Rumors about the next phase of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) EHR Incentive Program has prompted concern among healthcare providers. To truly understand meaningful use Stage 3 and its impact, it is important to differentiate between the rumors and the truth.
The final rule for meaningful use Stage 3 has yet to be published, so discussion on its effects are based on available drafts. Even those drafts are in question since the December 2013 announcement that Stage 3 would be delayed until 2017. One reason cited was to allow more time to research the impacts of Stage 2 before finalizing Stage 3. The delay will be particularly important for that research, since compared to Stage 1, 2011 Edition, there are so few Stage 2 vendors certified currently.
As for what is expected, the attention turns from data capture and access (Stage 1) and information exchange (Stage 2) to improved outcomes in Stage 3. One expected goal is to simplify and reduce the reporting requirements on those attesting. Some of that change can be achieved by consolidating the program’s current objectives, which I expect hospitals and providers will welcome, provided it truly reduces the reporting burden and does not coincide with other, new objectives and reporting requirements.
Stage 3’s goal of improving outcomes will be incredibly interesting – through November 2013, CMS had disbursed nearly $18 billion in incentive payments. Until now, the program’s success has been judged by the number of participants adopting certified EHRs. At some point during Stage 3 (or thereafter), we will know whether those payments have truly improved outcomes.
For physicians’ practices in the 21st century, connectivity is the buzzword. Getting doctors connected to data, patients connected to healthcare providers, and practices connected to networks are just a few of the web-fueled scenarios coming down the pike.
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act is a game changer and affects just about every aspect of modern medical care. HITECH, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, promotes the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology.
As is often the case with a shift this monumental, there are both benefits and challenges of connected healthcare that practice groups will have to address. First, let’s take a look at some of the benefits.
1. Join the Digital Revolution. Just as other industries that went digital years ago, healthcare benefits from the streamlining offered by a networked environment. Clinical interoperability of healthcare IT lowers costs and enhances efficiency by facilitating the comprehensive exchange of health information between care providers, hospitals and patients. The trend is toward innovation in healthcare as the industry as a whole responds to consumer demands and government reforms.
2. Safety in Numbers. As of 2013, more than 323,000 American medical practices and hospitals adopted EHRs and attested as meaningful users, indicating a 266 percent increase over 2012, according to CMS statistics. However, even with this upsurge in participation, those numbers represent only a small percentage of US hospitals that currently keep electronic records and contribute to the health information exchange. So, while the risk of being an early adopter is largely gone, your practice group could still be near the front of the adoption wave.
3. It’s easier. As you can see from the statistics in the previous point, healthcare IT adoption is in an early phase, and for most practices, there is a lack of centralization. To help elucidate the complexity of the system, look no further than the state of Florida, where there are at least 672 EHR vendors. Connecting health information digitally creates a central database that greatly simplifies the process of storing and retrieving all patient data. It’s like finding the needle in the haystack every time.
Earlier this year, Mobile Future released an infographic about the current state of digital health. The graphic detailed impressive statistics: Now, more than 247 million Americans have downloaded a health app for their mobile phones and 42 percent of U.S. hospitals utilize digital health technology. These numbers are increasing every day.
These impressive statistics would not been achievable without the liberation of enormous amounts of health data over the last few years, which has help catalyzed a new era of health innovation by giving innovators and entrepreneurs the resources to develop new products and tools to help the everyday consumer make better, more-informed choices about their health. The digital health arena has also become a major economic driver and is on an upward trend with no ceiling in sight. Rock Health reported in April that venture capital funding for digital health in Q1 of 2014 totaled almost $700 million, an increase of 87 percent from Q1 of 2013.
From the successful implementation of the Affordable Care Act through Healthcare.gov to newly released Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) data, both the demand for and ability to create new products that service consumer needs are at the forefront of investors’ minds. But with new opportunities for innovation also comes new risks and challenges. Along with privacy and security issues regarding the distribution of patient data which has been a hotly discussed public topic the last few months, concerns about storage, access, and sharing are on the minds of data distributors and data users alike.
At the Health Data Consortium (HDC), created as a public-private partnership, has the support of government, nonprofit and private sector organizations who all believe in liberation of health data for the public good. HDC has made a multi-stakeholder commitment to health data, which was reflected in the diversity of constituencies that attended our Health Data Leadership Summit in November last year. This leadership summit resulted in the release of our whitepaper on the multi-stakeholder perspective of health data priorities in the U.S. healthcare system.
Guest post by Linda Sue Mangels, BSED, MSED, CPHRM, senior risk management/patient safety specialist, the Cooperative of American Physicians.
Doctors often get into the field of medicine because they love helping people (their patients). However, from time-to-time, a patient’s behaviors and actions may require the physician to sever ties. Non-compliance with the treatment plan, rude, abusive behavior, repeatedly not showing up for appointments, drug-seeking behavior and non-payment of services rendered are all reasons physicians terminate their patient relationships. A good relationship/partnership between the physician and patient is essential for optimal treatment outcomes.
If, for whatever reason, it is not possible to establish this partnership, it is best for the patient to seek treatment elsewhere.
However, a physician can’t simply stop providing care to a patient. In fact, once the physician-patient relationship is established, the physician must continue to provide care to the patient to avoid allegations of abandonment until one of the follow occurs:
1) The patient terminates the physician-patient relationship.
2) The patient’s condition no longer requires the care of this particular physician.
3) The physician agreed to treat only a specific condition or agreed to treat only at a specific time or place.
4) The physician terminates the physician-patient relationship by notifying the patient in writing of withdrawal from care after a specific time which is stated in the letter. The patient is also given information necessary to obtain their medical records or transfer to another provider.
Guest post by Michele Hibbert-Iacobacci, vice president, information management and client services, Mitchell International.
Employee morale is a constantly at the forefront of the healthcare industry because of on-the-job stress, do more-with-less mentalities and a consistent cost containment focus. With the introduction of ICD-10, employees who work in healthcare as medical coders will be expected to maintain productivity and produce quality coding. We are changing the communication language used between payers and providers and have an expectation that everyone speak the same language as of a specific date.
Although difficult to attempt in a short time frame, this language change has been coming for many years and we should be ready by October 1, 2015. While the industry has been given more time to prepare, this transformation will still have an effect on the medical coding professional from a morale perspective, let’s face it – do coders know ICD-9 or what? Most have ICD-9 memorized so change will be a very new condition for the medical coder to deal with.
Steps to mitigate morale issues should be reviewed and/or introduced to minimize pushback and employee attrition. Skilled coding professionals are needed in the industry, they are valuable and the ICD-10 language barrier is one that requires specific steps to maintain medical coder involvement.
Having worked as a coder for many years, I can attest to the following as ways of boosting morale:
Guest post Ken Perez, vice president of healthcare policy, Omnicell.
“Politics is the art of the possible.” -Otto von Bismarck
This was supposed to be the year for permanent repeal of the sustainable growth rate (SGR), a formulaic approach intended to restrain the growth of Medicare spending on physician services. There was the rare cosmic convergence of bipartisan and bicameral support for SGR reform proposals at the end of 2013, and cost estimates by the Congressional Budget Office of a long-term “doc fix” reached new lows earlier this year.
But those hopes were dashed, as permanent SGR reform bills from both sides of the aisle died in the Senate. Instead, Congress agreed upon yet another short-term SGR patch. On March 27, 2014, the House, under a suspension of normal rules, approved via a voice vote a one-year patch to the SGR that would avoid a 24.4 percent reduction to Medicare’s Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) slated to take effect April 1, 2014 (replacing it with a 0.5 percent increase to the PFS for 12 months). Then on March 31, the Senate approved the patch via a roll-call vote, and President Barack Obama signed the bill into law that same day.
Why did the efforts to pass a permanent doc fix fail? The aforementioned bipartisan and bicameral support of SGR reform proposals was limited to “policy,” i.e., the future system by which physicians will be reimbursed by Medicare. Congressional Democrats and Republicans did not see eye to eye on the so-called “pay-fors” that would offset the increased government spending that would result with repeal of the SGR and allow the reform legislation to be deficit-neutral.
There have been dramatic changes to the look and feel of healthcare communication and collaboration technologies over the past few years. The demands of healthcare reform have shaped new challenges not previously seen or imagined, and in turn have spawned the development of entirely new solutions to meet those needs.
As healthcare professionals discover new and broader uses for healthcare technology in patient care, one goal remains – driving efficiencies that bring the nurse back to the patient’s bedside, which in turn improves both the quality of care and patient experience. In doing so, technology solutions must also defy the four walls of the hospital to connect clinicians across the care continuum whether or not they are physically on site.
As healthcare communication technology has progressed, the topic of mobility has become hotter than ever. Today’s hospital workforce needs to be increasingly mobile and collaborative. This requires solutions that are no longer defined by time or location. Healthcare employees are constantly on the move, and must be able to securely connect from anywhere to answer questions and respond to emergencies. Naturally, communication systems that can keep up are in high-demand. When a clinician has the ability to instantly locate the resources and information he or she needs, while in transit, treatment delays and medical errors are prevented.
A recent study by mobile engagement provider Mobiquity, Inc has found that while 70 percent of people use mobile apps on a daily basis to track calorie intake and monitor physical activities, only 40 percent share data and insights with their doctors.
