ClientTell Blog

15 Sept 2011 – GA Governor Nathan Deal recently visited the greater Valdosta area on his goodwill tour of the state of Georgia. During his visit, Governor Deal toured many of the city’s key landmarks, educational institutions and businesses.

After touring the South GA Medical Center and The Valdosta State University Nursing Center, Governor Deal spent a portion of his afternoon at the ClientTell headquarters with ClientTell President Pat Sullivan.

With a legislative and strategic focus on battling both childhood obesity and rising healthcare costs, Governor Deal learned how ClientTell’s leading notification technology is being used nationwide to improve public health, wellness, and compliance rates.

ClientTell CEO Patrick Sullivan stated that “utilizing private enterprise to positively influence the public good is a component of our corporate mission. ClientTell’s technology and business expertise is helping our many clients improve the overall quality of the healthcare they deliver. These concepts dovetail nicely with Governor Deal’s public health initiatives and we look forward to contributing to the Governor’s efforts in this area.”

Sullivan and Deal also collaborated on how private businesses in Valdosta can work cooperatively with the city’s educational and technical training components to better prepare workers and provide jobs.

Lastly, Sullivan and Deal discussed the growth of cutting-edge jobs in the healthcare industry and how ClientTell is leveraging that trend into its continued success as a business.
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For more information on Governor Nathan Deal, please visit Georgia.gov.

If you overhear one of your patients in the waiting room ask another. “Are you on Facebook” – they are not discussing some new medication or therapy you might be prescribing. They are talking about the phenomenon of Social Networking. And what started out as strictly a “social network” is now the biggest thing to hit marketing since direct mail. If you are not aware of Social Media and how it can be leveraged to promote your practice, it’s well past time you were.

Consider these amazing statistics:
• It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users
• It took TV 13 years to reach 50 million users
• Even the Internet itself took 4 years to reach 50 million users
However, Facebook added 100 million users, in less than 9 months! In 2010 Gen Y surpassed Baby Boomers in total population numbers. 96% of them belong to Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, or some other social network.

In light of competition, and decreased revenue from all sources, an unfortunate fact for most practicing physicians is that if you are not actively seeking out and adding new patients, your practice faces extinction.

What is Social Media?
At its most basic level Social Media (SM) is a new way; many would say the new way that people are communicating Social media supports the most basic human need – to communicate and interact socially. From a media standpoint SM is a marketers dream, because it transforms the traditional media model, such as broadcast television from a monologue –one to many – to a dialogue, many to many. This brings what has been one of the most effective ways of “advertising” a medical practice – word of mouth – into the 21st Century. In the past, when a patient was pleased enough with your service they would tell a few friends, who might tell a few more – through connections on Facebook those friends could number in the hundreds, even the thousands.

The large-scale healthcare providers get this. Already the Mayo Clinic’s Facebook page has close to 10,000 fans. Having a presence online now is more important than ever. Face it; in the mind of anyone born after 1980, if you are not online you do not exist. But to use online marketing effectively, means not just throwing up a website. SM gives even the smallest practice, with little or no marketing budget, a great away to get exposure and develop a brand. Believe it or not the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is people 35 years and older. The patients you want to reach are online.

The main way people look for a new Primary Care Physician is to use Google. Go ahead and “Google” yourself, or the name of your practice group. Where do you show up? If it’s not on the first page – no one is going to find you. Signing up for a Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter account, under your name or your practice’s name, gives it that many more opportunities to be found by the search engines. These SM sites also allow you to interact with your patients in a way beyond your regular website.

With social networking any updated information you need to get out about new services you are providing is fast and free. For example, if you have moved to a new location, printing fliers and mailing them out is slow, and costly – if you Tweet it or post it on your Facebook page it is instantaneous, and patients can ask direct questions about any new services you may be providing.

And finally, SM can be used to promote your career. LinkedIn is now the number one way most firms recruit new hires, and that includes hospitals, group practices and other healthcare facilities. Posting your profile on LinkedIn is a great way to get your foot in the door before sending a resume to a potential new employer, and with a thorough and up to date profile detailing your work and accomplishments – you may even find yourself being recruited without having to send a thing. And if your practice is struggling, you just might welcome that job offer!

With the passage of the healthcare reform act very closely on the heels of the HITECH Act portion of the stimulus package, the question for almost all medical practices right now no longer is if you will implement an EHR solution but when.

No matter what vendor or group of vendors the practitioner ultimately chooses for his or her Electronic Health Record solution two things remain clear: EHR implementation is an expensive endeavor, and failing to plan for it properly can make it an even more costly one.

According to healthcare IT professionals the biggest roadblock they see to a successful Electronic Health Record implementation is failing to set clear goals.

In a recent report, published by the American College of Physicians, Jerome H. Carter, M.D., said “You have to plan”. Dr. Carter is also the Founder and CEO of NTM Informatics in Atlanta, GA and is currently the Chair of the HIMSS EHR Adoption Task Force. Dr. Carter says despite overall increased interest in adoption of EHRs, improved products, and vendor relations – many EHR implementations today are still dismal failures – and often for the same reasons; unclear objectives and expectations and poor management and lack of staff involvement.

Practicing physicians who have undergone successful EHR implementations, and healthcare IT developers agree that implementing an EHR solution starts long before you sit down and discuss details with your chosen solution provider. A successful EHR implementation actually begins the precise moment when you make the decision it is time to move away from paper records. Here are some of the expert’s tips on how to plan for a successful EHR implementation.

Rely on those in the know – EHRs are no longer an industry in its infancy. There are many outstanding professional EHR trainers out there who have helped hundreds of practices make the transition from paper to EHR. Make use of the expertise of these trainers.

Scheduling – Work with your staff and EHR Vendor to develop a realistic implementation schedule – and then stick to it. Set clear goals and specific milestones.

Set Clear Goals – You need to first understand exactly what you hope to benefit from an EHR. Is your goal to see more patients? Increase revenue? Get home earlier every day? – It doesn’t matter, there is no right or wrong answer, but you must know what it is you want for your practice to be matched with the right technology.
Listen to your staff – Your staff, and some members more than others, will be impacted most by EHR implementation. Listen to them. The very ones who may be the most diehard complainers about not wanting to make the switch, are also most likely the very ones who have been grousing about the inefficiency of your paper records for years. Work with that, show you staff how the EHR will actually make their jobs and their lives easier – and they will likely become your implantation’s biggest advocates.

And finally, if your main interest in implementing an EHR is to cash in on the Medicare incentives available before 2014 – make sure that you adopt a solution that meets “meaningful use” criterion.

There was a time when the practice of medicine seemed almost recession proof. If you are facing the cash-flow woes of most physicians, then you know that is indeed not the case. Perhaps family practices have been hit the hardest by the current economy and recent “healthcare crisis”, but even the most exclusive practices have been forced to do more – with less.

There are many ways the medical office, as with any business, can “trim the fat” without compromising patient care. Here are few methods to streamline — to improve the bottom line.

The unfortunate truth of the matter is, with reimbursements being cut – the only way to improve your revenue is to see more patients. But if you do not do that efficiently you will do more harm than good. One of the best ways to streamline a practice today is to implement an EMR. It is understandable that in an article about “saving money” it is hard to justify that kind of investment. But EMRs do eventually pay for themselves, admittedly with a protracted payback. On the other hand, if you already have an EMR in place, and many practices do – insist that you are using it to its fullest extent. Be sure you and your staff understand every function that your system is capable of – you will likely be surprised at how much time can be saved by using all of the features that already exist in your EMR.

Consider implementing automatic patient reminder service if that is not part of your EMR. If you do not have an EMR, such services are not a huge investment, and can make a big difference in your income.

Billing
One of the best ways for any medical office to save time and money is to think about outsourcing medical billing. Taking the weight of dealing with billing off of your in-house staff frees them up to concentrate on core competencies, and otherwise make your office run more smoothly, or affords you the opportunity to save money by cutting staff.

Perhaps the best reason to use an outside billing service however is that they are most likely much better at collections than your in-house accounting staff.

Medical billing companies only make money if they are successful. It is in their own best interest to aggressively pursue your past-due accounts. Also, outsourced medical billing services have to be up on the latest regulations regarding bill collection and changes in billing codes- this is their primary business, not yours.

General Money Saving Tips
These may seem obvious but consider:
• If you pay for your heat and electricity in the office, install a setback thermostat; they cut utility bills in the office as well as at home!
• Buy office supplies and other non-medical supplies in bulk from one of the large “warehouse stores” such as Costco. If you work in a medical building, and if you do not do so already, consider ordering supplies with other practices.
• Try renegotiating your lease with your landlord – in these times he or she may be willing to lower the rent, rather than risk an empty office space.
• Speaking of space, are you using yours as efficiently as possible? Could you rent out part of your space to an income-generating partner or ancillary service provider?
• Put off any unnecessary purchases of big-ticket items, or office improvements. If you do have to buy something, look for quality used equipment rather than new.

It is impossible for any medical practice to thrive today without being proactive about the cost of doing business.

Attending a medical conference or convention has always been part of Continuing Medical Education. However, in these tough economic times, you may be faced with cutting back on the number of conventions you go to. Your income may be down, incentives by the sponsors of the conventions are fewer and fewer, and your practice may suffer for the time you are away at a medical conference. Now more than ever it is important to understand how to make the most out of any medical conference you choose to attend.

Despite the enticing brochure or email alert that you just received – the question you need to ask yourself is “why should I go” to any given medical conference. To answer that question you need to do cost- benefit analysis as you would with any other major purchase decision for your practice. Length, topic, and location are the key factors. How far away is the conference? What will it cost to get there and stay there? How long will you need to attend? And, ultimately what will you gain from the subject matter? A local seminar with an attendance fee of $45.00 that lasts an hour on a new protocol specific to your practice may be a no-brainer to attend, your specialty’s annual week-long meeting on the other side of the country – not so much.

In the past when times were different, many practitioners looked upon medical conferences as not only a chance to obtain needed CME credits, but to catch up with old friends and colleagues and enjoy an interesting tourist location. While such social opportunities are certainly still part of the major conventions, today the decision to attend or not attend is far more often driven by the content of the meeting, then the allure of sandy beaches.

Know Your Objectives

If you have made the decision to attend a given conference, according to professional event planners the best way to get the most out of your time there is to plan ahead. Know what you want to achieve at that meeting before you sign up for your badge at the registration table. Prioritize to maximize your time. Understand why it is that you wish to attend, whether that is for specific CME, practice management solutions, or personal development – and plan to attend lectures and seek out vendors and presenters that match your goals – before you arrive. The agendas of almost any medical conference are usually available online long before the convention begins – some are even downloadable “Aps” to your smartphone or PDA.

The medical conference is still a great way for medical professionals to share ideas, communicate best practice solutions, and generally enhance the practice of medicine. However, as with just about everything else in your practice today – you need to streamline your approach to attendance – to get the most bang for the buck.

In the front and center debate about Healthcare Reform, both Electronic Health Records, (EHRs) and Healthcare Information Technology (HIT) have seemed to take a bit of a back seat. However, now that the dust has settled on the Reform Bill, practicing physicians need to be reminded that more than a year ago, before the passage of Healthcare Reform as part of the original stimulus bill, President Obama created incentives and set asides for implementation of EHR and other HIT solutions. If you have not thought seriously about Electronic Medical Records, now is the time to start.

First some definitions. If you have at all looked into an EHR solution then undoubtedly you have come across several different terms. EHR, EMR and PHR – it can all start to seem so much like alphabet soup. As already stated, EHR stands of Electronic Health Record. The earlier accepted term was EMR for Electronic Medical Record – and now there is another solution commonly referred to as a Personal Health Record or PHR. There are technical, albeit subtle differences between the three.

If you do not understand the differences, you are not alone – the terms are often misused interchangeably even by those who sell the products!

Particularly between EHR and EMR, there may seem to be little or no difference, but there are clearly defined technical distinctions, and you need to be aware of these because the incentives in the Health IT portion (also known as the HITECH ACT) of the Stimulus Bill, are based on what defines an EHR.

In 2003 Health Level 7, part of the American Standards Institute was given the responsibility by the Institute of Medicine to come up with a precise definition of an EHR. HL7 based its definition on functionality. It defined an EHR as an integrated system that had to have over 100 specific capabilities and levels of function. The point of HL7’s definition was the idea of integration and that an EHR was a system that accomplished all of the specified tasks. HL7 made it clear that all of those operations did not need to be provided to the hospital, facility or medical office by a single vendor.

So in other words, you could get the software that runs your patient information services such as appointment reminders and lab result notifications from one vendor, and your e-prescribing software from another, as long as they all work together in a single functional system. This is the main distinction between an EHR and an EMR. In fact, according to HL7’s definition, an EMR can be part of the entire EHR solution.

These subtle distinctions may seem trivial, but they all become important as certifying bodies search for what will define “meaningful use” that will guarantee that a given EHR solution will qualify for the incentives in the HITECH Act. This idea of Electronic Health Records as an integrated system was backed-up by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). Furthermore, the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT), the non-profit organization that has been given the contract by the federal government to certify EHRs, currently uses the original HL7 critera as the core for issuing its certifications.

With incentives that are becoming available, and with every medical practice being forced to streamline, cut expenses, and do more with less – over the next few years, the decision to implement an EHR solution will likely be one of the most critical to any practice.

In observance of the Memorial Day Holiday ClientTell will be closed Monday May 31, 2010. In order for your calls to be made efficiently please send appointment reminder files through Tuesday June 1, 2010 no later than Friday May 28, 2010.

Thank you and have a safe Memorial Day!

Social Networking

The digital age is here, and social network marketing is critical to creating a brand identity, building communities, and maintaining communication with clients. The corporate world is recognizing this, as every major brand has a Facebook page where it can reach out to its community of loyal followers

The same technology that can be used to update interested consumers on the latest products from NIKE, Lexus or Honda – can and should also be used to keep your patients abreast of vital health information.

Last year, during the peak of the H1N1 outbreak, your patients were undoubtedly subjected to a lot of misinformation, and in some cases downright lies about dangers and exposure levels, the source of most of which was the internet.

Yet, when used responsibly by true healthcare professionals these same digital technologies can be leveraged to ensure that you patents receive accurate and reliable information. Case in point: hospitals in the UK sent out text messages informing patients of the symptoms of H1N1, and what to do if they were experiencing them.

The hospital used an outside “patient messaging service” that is linked into the hospital systems patient database. Use of such a platform to communicate specific info about the Swine Flu is a great example of how forward thinking physicians can use text messaging, an increasingly popular method of “personal” communication, which patients appreciate.

Furthermore, text messaging such as this allows practices of all sizes to send “community” specific information to patient groups. For example, you can send a message to all of your diabetes or arthritis patients updates about new treatment options available through your practice, or in your area.

Texting is also a great way to send your patients appointment reminders, appointment conformations, and lab results.

So, while the Internet and social networking can often be a bane to practitioners, who have to deal with patients coming in “knowing it all” – these technologies can also be leveraged responsibly. This allows not only healthcare agencies, but also individual practitioners, to ensure that patients receive accurate, reliable, and timely information during a real or potential health crisis – and helps to once again establish you, the practicing physician, as their most trusted source for medical information.

There was a time when healthcare seemed to be almost recession proof. Any physician, regardless of the area of practice, knows that today, that’s is just nowhere near the truth any longer. Add in the uncertainty caused by the impact of the recently passed healthcare reform, and many doctors now find themselves in the unfamiliar, and uncomfortable position, facing almost every other business during tough times – finding ways to do more, with less. However, if there is one thing that can be said about medical professionals, it is that they are a tenacious lot – and certainly up to facing challenges.

Just as physicians know the best way to treat disease is to be proactive – now is not the time to “wait and see” when it comes to your medical practice surviving and thriving in this recession.

Traditionally, practicing physicians did not have to rely as much as other types of businesses on advertising and marketing to survive. However, today, due to the on going healthcare crisis people are seeing themselves less as patients, and more as “medical consumers”. With lack of adequate health insurance and higher deductibles, patients are going increasingly out of pocket for medical care. They are now shopping for healthcare the same way they shop for everything else. And that means branding and brand loyalty are as important to your practice as they are to NIKE or McDonalds.

“Branding” is a great way to improve any medical practice. Yet many physicians may not be that skilled in the areas of marketing and public relations, certainly these skills are not taught in medical schools. With your practice facing a financial crunch, you may not have the ability to hire an outside marketing or PR firm. Here are some ways you can start to establish a brand identity for your practice and leverage the latest marketing techniques.

Make Use of Your Staff

As we said earlier most physicians may not have the skills, or background, certainly not the time, to establish a brand identity and marketing strategy for their practice. However someone else in your office might, probably your office manager, or practice manger. They will have studied marketing as part of their training to become a medical office manager; they may even have an advanced degree in business administration. In any event, as the main point of contact between the medial practice and the public, the PM can be crucial in establishing and maintaining the brand identity for the office and the physician within.

Now is the time to establish, or increase your online presence. According branding experts, the internet and Social Networking is critical to creating a brand today. Start with a blog. Then continue to build brand awareness by leveraging the large aggregators such as Facebook or Twitter. Delegate this responsibility. Most practicing physicians will not have the time, nor desire to partake in such activities, but your office manger, or other member of your staff is likely already using these very sites!

Colorectal cancer screening saves lives. If everyone aged 50 years old or older were screened regularly, as many as 60% of deaths from this cancer could be avoided.

ClientTell can call your patient population on demand to remind them to schedule their annual screening. The process is very easy, simply contact us and we will get you started. It is a great way to improve the health of your patients through preventative healthcare.
To learn more or get started, please call our office at 1.877.244.9178.