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6 articles were found on your search of:
Issue Date: May 2007
Patients Getting More Engaged in Care
Patients are getting more involved in their care. Health plans are recognizing that patients who are emotionally and intellectually involved in their care are likely to be more loyal than other patients. In other words, engaged patients are worth the investment needed to educate them. Patients invested in their care are helping to propel consumer-driven care
by visiting such Web sites as Mayoclinic.com, WebMD.com, and Revolutionhealth.com. They also are interested in viewing educational videos online on surgical procedures and diseases. In some cases, medical Web sites allow patients to watch surgery being performed live. For many patients, it is easier to learn by viewing than it is by other means.
Key Solutions to Design Problems
Given that many specialists are likely to be intensely interested in the clinical or business aspects of practice, it may be easy to overlook some of the more mundane issues related to office space. This situation raises a question: how can one acquire functional office space that is inviting for patients and useful for physicians and staff? All physicians should consider several design elements before any building starts. One of the first questions to answer involves whether you’ll rent, buy, or build. Check with the real estate experts in your area before you begin your search. If you consider renting space or buying a building, you may find the latter makes more sense depending on your situation. These are issues to address with your tax professional and financial planner. Once you decide to proceed with construction in the office, here are some of the more difficult questions you will face.
Take Steps to Improve Communication
Amedical group’s support staff plays an important role in fostering successful communication between the practice and its patients. Therefore, physicians should be aware of the communication style and the abilities of support staff to communicate effectively. “The communication and rapport-building skills of support staff are the best public relations investment a physician can ever make,” says Susan Keane Baker, a practice management consultant in New Canaan, Conn., and an expert in the role communication plays in physician practice management. Baker is the author of Managing Patient Expectations: The Art of Finding and Keeping Loyal Patients (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998). “Whether it is to save the physician time, to build trust, or to foster positive word-of-mouth commentary, the behaviors and attitudes of support staff have a tremendous influence on a physician’s success.”
Hand-Helds Help Capture Charges
A few moments each day is all it takes Michelle A. Smith-Levitin, MD, to do a small task that adds value to her practice. While standing in a grocery store checkout line or waiting to pick up her children after soccer practice, she can use her personal digital assistant (PDA) to enter patient charge information. Using advanced portable software, it takes her only about 30 seconds to enter codes for each patient. Several taps of the stylus on the screen quickly lead the user through queries to create highly accurate ICD9 and CPT codes.
Solo Physician Succeeds by Seeking Payment at the Time of Service
Robert Berry, MD, is the founder of the PATMOS Emergiclinic, in Greeneville, Tenn., which Berry says provides affordable, quality health care through payment at the time of service (or PATMOS) (at www.emergiclinic.com). He provides care to patients who lack health insurance, saying billing and collecting from insurers is needlessly expensive and time consuming. Health insurance should be reserved for major illnesses and major accidents, he says. Berry has testified before Congress on the costs of health care and the need to provide care for the uninsured. He spoke with editor-in-chief Richard L. Reece, MD, about his practice.
Information Therapy Aids Patient Care
Physicians know that getting the right medical information to the right patient at the right time can improve the quality of care they deliver and also boost patient satisfaction and retention. Also, such information can protect against medical malpractice claims. Donald W. Kemper, CEO and founder of Healthwise Inc., a nonprofit organization in Boise, Idaho, that produces consumer-oriented health information, says that for every moment in care, prescription-strength medical content is available that is evidence-based, medically validated, and specifically useful to help each patient with his or her medical issues. Such medical content is known as information therapy (or Ix).
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