Monthly Archives: May 2012

Show me the money

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I think Ken Terry at FierceHealthIT has got it just about right.  Physicians are busy people – looking to get paid for their work.  For now it would not appear that social media offers sufficient  upside commercially nor clinically.  There is no compelling reason for physicians to spend significant amounts of time interacting with patients or potential patients.

I think this is changing and will continue to change.  We will see patients with very detailed health records and detailed information on the performance of physicians looking for a different service.  This may require a new commercial model.  Perhaps it will also impact the clinical care model – with more remote service, before and after a visit to the physician.

But for now I would expect to see busy physicians staying busy and not spending a great deal of time interacting with patients online.

 

 

Does it come down to keyboard/ typing skills for doctors?

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As we follow the determined efforts in the US to push EHR/EMR interesting to read that they have many of the problems that we see in our own marketplace.  What do we do for medics who do not type or do not type quickly & accurately?

Interesting piece about the resistance to having doctors spend their time typing in the US.  This in particular relates of use of CPOE – if you don’t enter the data then you don’t get the warning (then and there) about what you are ordering.  Abd, in the US, Meaningful Use has been set up to incentivise medics to use EHR – including CPOE.

This is nothing new.  Keyboard skills have been a challenge in banking & finance, retail, engineering & construction.  Having experience of pushing out ERP solutions across multinationals have seen lots of these challenges.  We need to keep the eye on the end game – capture the data once and leverage the data.  Can definitely apply also in healthcare.

Obviously application design/ interface and relevant devices all have a role to play in making all of this a lot easier.  We want consultants, nurses, pharmacists, doctors all updating the EHR.  So we need to design smartly, support users and provide relevant and customised training.  Lastly, those inputting the data, must see the end benefit – safer experience for patients, less mistakes by professionals, streamlined processes.  All of this has to pay for the effort expended in inputting the data.

 

 

Stop making excuses – use social media to promote your hospital, your services, your consultants

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One of the better books I’ve read in some time re social media has been The New Rules of Marketing and PR (David Meerman Scott).

Was interested to read his recent post on the subject of using social media to promote businesses in regulated industries.  In fact this post focuses on the healthcare sector.

Seems to me that there are a lot of people looking for excuses/ reasons not to get on with it – it’s too much effort, the lawyers won’t like it, the consultants don’t like it.  All the time an opportunity to interact with patients is being missed.  And, more generally, to interact with the general public.

 

Social networking – potential use by orthopaedic consultants

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Great piece in ‘Orthopaedics Today’: Social media: Orthopedists discuss its role as surgeon’s friend, foe or both. The article is a discussion between a number of orhtopedists re potential positives and negatives of social networking.

A number of interesting points are made in the article:

Social media are here to stay (more than 1bn people using them).  And healthcare/ health treatments are a big topic on social media.  So it ain’t going away.

The doctors see merit in use of social media between themselves on one level and also in engaging with patients – on another level.  At one level there appear to be real concerns about participating in any network which is not restricted to fellow professionals. At another level there is a recognition of the need to communicate with the public – and some potential benefits e.g. patients being better informed, being more aware of professionals, etc.

There are obviously a number of serious concerns about potential legal liability, confidentiality and, on a practical level, the potential loss of time while participating in social media.

Reading all of this – as a non medic, but a consumer of medical services – it seems to me too defensive/ negative.  There is huge potential for much more collaboration between doctors and patients – many patients are more than willing to invest significant time and effort in researching their own condition, recording symptoms over a period of time (See sites such as patientslikeme.  I expect the patient/ doctor interaction will change significantly over the next number of years – enabling doctors to provide improved and more personalised services to patients.

 

Risks in handover, risks in transition

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Many hospitals find themselves in a state of transition – where some of the patient record is held on computer, while some is held on a manual chart.  Various processes are put in place – including printing of information from computer systems and inclusion of the hardcopy on the patient chart.  But surely this type of scenario must give rise to a risk that a nurse or doctor dealing with a patient may not have all the relevant, up to date information, to hand?

With this in mid was interested to read about a new protocol being tested to address handoff between medical teams at ehd end/ beginning of a shift.  This piece reports on an initiative at Boston’s Children’s Hospital.  It’s not looking to address any specific gaps in the manual v. electronic record but rather to ensure effective and complete communication between teams at changeover of shifts.