According the results of a recent survey by Infosys, consumers worldwide overwhelmingly will share personal information to get better service from their doctor; however, they are very discerning about how they share.
For example, Americans, Europeans and Australians feel comfortable sharing data with doctors (90 percent), banks (76 percent) and retailers (70 percent); however, the research shows contrasting nuances.
Consumers won’t readily share personal medical history with doctors. The study shows consumers understand the benefits of sharing data but remain cautious of data mining (especially in Europe): 39 percent globally describe data mining as invasive while also saying it is helpful (35 percent), convenient (32 percent) and time saving (33 percent).
It’s rare to find an organization where document management doesn’t play a major role in day-to-day operations, and healthcare is no exception. Advancements in patient record technology have revolutionized how healthcare systems operate and have greatly improved patient information sharing between different physicians, departments and even disparate organizations.
With recent HIPAA regulations and the impending Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) mandates, which require electronic health records (EHR) adoption by 2015, the focus on technology in the healthcare space will only get stronger in the coming months, as more and more organizations put measures in place to achieve compliance.
Guest post Ruby Raley is director of healthcare solutions at Axway.
One little-discussed but widely recognized aim of the HITECH Act’s meaningful use Stage 2 requirements is to stem rising costs and improve outcomes by engaging the consumer to take control of their healthcare. But how is the consumer supposed to take control of anything when their health plan determines which clinicians and hospitals they can visit, and their doctor controls their health record?
That’s an issue the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recognized as they developed the incentives for the HITECH Act. To address it, they adopted the electronic health record (EHR), a tool that (1) helps clinicians and hospitals reap incentives and avoid penalties by proving they’ve achieved meaningful use, and (2) puts the certification burden on EHR vendors instead of clinicians and hospitals.
athenahealth released the results from its fourth annual Physician Sentiment Index (PSI), which each year checks the pulse of a national pool of physicians to see how they’re feeling about navigating various industry changes and challenges.
According to athena, the company leveraged the Epocrates’ physician user base to survey to 1,200 providers to identify information on physician awareness and opinions of healthcare and health IT.
As might be expected, the results of the survey include findings and some notable themes:
Doctors Who Go it Alone are Hurting the Most – Again, a trend we continue to see and as we might continue to expect as more corporate health system money gets pumped into the ambulatory market, independent doctors, who account for just more than half of the physicians surveyed, are feeling the most pressure when it comes to industry change and requirements.
Among the many misconceptions providers have about using a practice management software for their daily workflow, they believe that the software slows them down. A good PM software will never slow the doctor down and instead, will make their workflows efficient, save them time, remove the daily monotony of work and reduce the paper work.
The second misconception providers have about practice management software is that it makes them spend lesser amounts of time with their patients. While this may be true for those providers who still don’t know how to effectively use the software, it is entirely false because a practice management software actually allows providers to spend more time with their patients.
Milton Silva-Craig, president of TransUnion Healthcare, discusses his thoughts for the future of healthcare, payment reform, new patients and financial pressures in the reform era and changes he sees on the horizon.
How has the role of data analytics changed in the healthcare industry, especially in light of the ACA and reform?
It is no longer a nice tool to have at your disposal. It is a requirement. It is the foundation necessary to support the outcomes of reform. Moving forward, reimbursement will be tied directly to outcomes and performance. The only way to measure such performance will be through the use of data. It will be the insights gleamed from the data that will allow providers to be successful in managing the intersection of patient care and a healthy business.
Guest post by John Moynihan, healthcare segment manager, Global Industry Marketing, Siemens Enterprise Communications and Randy Roberts, vice president, mobility portfolio, Siemens Enterprise Communications.
Technology in business today can seem like a zero-sum game. When the employees win, they are able to do whatever it takes to be productive. But doing that tends to tie the hands of IT, keeping them from locking down devices and services well enough to make sure their information is secure. This situation is becoming more common in the medical industry, with clinicians and computing staff often at odds over convenience versus security. Doctors, traditionally reluctant to adopt new technology or take any risks with tried-and-true methods for caring for their patients, have taken to mobility as a duck to water.
Because access to patient information allows them to better do their jobs, doctors in particular are quickly adopting tablets and smartphones. And while they’re not ignorant of the security risks of these devices, particularly the potential for patient information to be lost or stolen, their focus is on caring for their patients. In fact, even if their business doesn’t provide or specifically allow for mobility, they are bringing their own devices into the office.
Using electronic health records to automate reporting of quality measures reduces reporting time required for one measure set alone by about 50 percent, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
According the a release issued by Kaiser Permanent, for the six measures studied in this paper, we were able to extract between 43 percent and 100 percent of the elements needed for the measures.
“With an increased focus on transparency in the healthcare industry, we are seeing significant growth in the number of public reporting initiatives, and automated quality reporting allows us to keep up with these initiatives without adding to high overhead costs.” said Jed Weissberg, MD, senior vice president of Hospitals, Quality and Care Delivery Excellence, Kaiser Permanente. “An added benefit of automated reporting of quality measures is that some data become available real-time, further enabling us to improve care in an expedited manner.”
