Doctors Tell How They Use Social Media as Professional Watercooler

Our physicians are beginning to get the idea and use the tools available.  I can only believe the benefit to our healthcare will be improved

Excerpt:  The social media world is such an intense, immediately responsive place that you can have tremendous amounts of traffic pointing out the good and bad about an article itself technically, about the concepts that were put forward, and about potential flaws that were in a paper,” said Dr. May, a cardiologist from Lewisville, Texas.

Like Dr. May, many physicians have turned to social media to help them manage the overwhelming amount of new information they need to know to provide quality care.

Read full article via Doctors tell how they use social media as professional watercooler – amednews.com.

Doctors are a Broken Record We Don’t Comprehend >80% of the Time

Interesting article on our future of healthcare?  —  some pioneers already adopting the new.  What do you think?   News

Excerpt:   As both the private and public sector aggressively shift healthcare incentives from a “do more, bill more” to a value and outcome based model, healthcare providers ignore patients role in driving outcomes at their own peril

Read full article via Doctors are a Broken Record We Don’t Comprehend >80% of the Time – Forbes.

How to ‘Digitally & Socially’ Win Over Your Legal – Regulatory Team

The article contains good advice and steps to follow for not only the healthcare industry but many of the steps equally translate into best practices for other industries as well.

Excerpt:  This afternoon’s article provides some top tips in order to maintain a happy working relationship with your legal and regulatory teams, particularly when it comes to implementing social media communities.

Social media in the pharmaceutical industry continues to generate a great deal of interest, discussion and debate – creating unintentional, adversarial relationships for brand marketers. For brands that decide to move forward with a social media concept, gaining legal / regulatory approval can be a significant hurdle. In this article, we will examine three ways that brand teams can better collaborate with their regulatory counterparts in the review and approval process, and succeed in bringing their social media communications to life.

1. Packaging your social media concept for legal / regulatory success

When approaching your legal / regulatory team with a social media concept, you will need to help them understand the framework of the campaign you are developing, and the business rationale behind it

Read full article via How to ‘digitally & socially’ win over your legal/regulatory team | pharmaphorum.

How Health Insurance Companies and Employers Are Dealing With The New Medical Loss Ratio Mandate

Human resources management  —  benefits healthcare and the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  Small business need-to-know

Excerpt:  The Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) mandate, within the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, requires insurance companies to spend 80 to 85 percent of premium dollars on medical care and health care quality improvement. This provision just started in August, but how will it impact the insurance industry and employers?

“The MLR Legislation has a perverse incentive; when utilization and costs increase, an insurance company makes more money,” says Mark Haegele, director, sales and account management, with HealthLink.

Smart Business spoke with Haegele about what MLR does and the ramifications for health insurance companies, brokers and, ultimately, employers.

Read full article via How health insurance companies and employers are dealing with the new Medical Loss Ratio mandate | Smart Business.

Employee Health Insurance Safe Harbors Expanded

Small business need-to-know and news-to-watch human resources management benefits — healthcare.

Excerpt:  The safe harbors, described in Notice 2012-58 and previous notices, provide methods of determining the full-time status of seasonal employees and those with unpredictable work schedules for purposes of the “shared responsibility” requirements of Sec. 4980H, enacted in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, P.L. 111-148.

Generally, for months beginning after Dec. 31, 2013, the law requires employers with at least 50 full-time employees on average during the preceding calendar year to sponsor and offer full-time employees and their dependents health coverage meeting certain requirements or else pay an assessment. The law defines full time as working on average at least 30 hours per week, but Congress left it to the IRS, along with the U.S. Department of Labor, to prescribe how that average is computed and applied.

Read full article via Employee health insurance safe harbors expanded.  From Journal of Accountancy via IRS

Streamline Your Efforts With Social Media Systems : Innovation :: AMEX

Check out three social media workplace systems outlined in this article — providing how-to and task solutions within the workplace, including the one in excerpt below is for physicians  ….  Our doctors are getting their own chat, learn and collaborate space …  sounds like a winner to me.

Excerpt:  The use of social media in the workplace is a burgeoning area of development for companies creating apps and platforms to boost employee productivity. According to USA Today, the global market for these and similar workplace tools is expected to grow to a $4.5 billion sector by 2016. It was pegged at about $767 million in 2011. Social media for business is not just about how to get workers to be more productive, though. It’s also about fostering new collaborations and increased creativity. Check out these three examples of how social media is fostering connectivity and bringing colleagues together brand new ways. ………

Doximity: A more specialized example of how social media platforms are penetrating the workplace is Doximity. Think of it as something akin to Facebook for health care professionals. With it, your doctor can plug into an online web of other physicians. Specialists and those in primary care can trade notes, records and other kinds of information. Beyond that, Doximity hopes to become a forum among health care professionals for the exchange of best practices. And there’s a commercial incentive for participants as well: to promote one’s services to the medical network at large

Read full article via Streamline Your Efforts With Social Media Systems : Innovation :: American Express OPEN Forum.

Business Model Innovation Through Process Change – HBR

A great read from HBR this morning on innovation and strategies.  Leadership and management

Excerpt:  More and more companies I see these days are making strategic process changes to drive unprecedented business model innovation. Forbes has embraced online collaborative publishing as it adds a substantial online presence to its traditional print magazine. Healthcare organizations are implementing electronic health records systems so they can migrate from islands of medical services to sharing patient data across care providers. Consumer packaged goods manufacturers are monitoring social media to get real-time information on their customers’ perceptions and share it with brand managers.

Business model innovation — often enabled by new technology platforms — isn’t new

Read full article via Business Model Innovation Through Process Change – Brad Power – Harvard Business Review.

The Year 2020: The Doctor Will (NOT) See You Now!

Our future healthcare as presented in this article may not be so far away as it sounds.   In my opinion, all strides forward are in the right direction!!

Excerpt:  Healthcare is in a great state of transition now. Financial concerns, reimbursement and coverage, and an aging population will be powerful drivers of change. Technology will be a beacon of innovation that will help address many of these concerns without the compromise of care. The innovation, and the rate of change is simply amazing and the future is looking very healthy indeed.

Read full article via The Year 2020: The Doctor Will (NOT) See You Now! – Forbes.

Stanford Medical Residents Launch iPhone App to Help Physicians Keep Current on Research

There is an app for that — here is another good idea.  Keeping our healthcare providers up to date and informed is a good thing.

Excerpt:  As evidence-based medicine takes a greater foothold, medical residents and physicians are tasked with the seemingly constant challenge of staying up to date on the latest treatments and drugs. To help their colleagues keep current on medical advancements, Stanford medical residents Dave Iberri, MD, and Manuel Lam, MD, introduced a new medical app that features physician-written summaries of landmark clinical trials.

Read full article via Stanford medical residents launch iPhone app to help physicians keep current on research | Scope Blog.

IT and Healthcare: Evolving Together at the Cleveland Clinic

This article is interesting for several reasons: the innovation strides and how-to, the changes and improvements to healthcare for provider and consumer; and for all entrepreneurs and small business owners, it should promote ideas of how you might design your next product or service to join in the movement and enhance the new efforts while developing a new business for you.

Excerpt:  At the heart of all this is the clinic’s comprehensive use of information technology. The chief information officer is C. Martin Harris, MD; he also serves as a health technology advisor for President Barack Obama. The clinic is a pioneer in providing information to patients and linking patient involvement with medical records and healthcare practice improvement. It is also vigorously experimenting with medical IT in new forms of patient engagement and education, including social media. In this interview, conducted in 2011, Martin Harris explains his view of two rapidly changing arenas, information technology and healthcare, and how they could evolve together. This interview is also available in video format.

Read full article via IT and Healthcare: Evolving Together at the Cleveland Clinic.  From Strategy + Business

Don’t Get Hit With Fines Under Health Care Reform

Small business heads-up, news-to-watch and need-to-know.  Make sure you are within the law in offering insurance benefits.  Are you discriminating in offering better benefits to executives or …..   read full article.  Human resources management.

Excerpt: The Affordable Care Act requires businesses that offer health insurance to provide it to at least 70% of the employees. It also requires that company executives not discriminate by having better insurance plans for some of their employees. The IRS penalty for companies with 50 or more employees that are found to be discriminatory may be fined as much as $100 per day per person or 10% of the annual premiums whichever is less–up to a maximum of $500,000.

Brett Goldstein, director of retirement planning at American Investment Planners in Jericho, NY states, “Many businesses have health insurance or better benefits for owners and top employees. However under The Affordable Care Act, offering health insurance or different insurance to just a few key employees will be considered discriminatory.”

What constitutes discrimination under The Affordable Care Act? Goldstein says that offering the top employees health insurance with shorter waiting periods or lower premiums could be discriminatory and lead to fines.

Differences in health plans can exist between different classes of employees. For example, a company can have different benefits for salaried employees vs. hourly employees, but not for “executives” vs. other employees.

Read full article via Don’t Get Hit With Fines Under Health Care Reform | Fox Small Business Center.

Let’s Bring Back Accountability – HBR

Well, this is certainly a timely subject.  Following the economic crisis, there are some efforts in the works to make business and business executives accountable.  Wouldn’t that be great!?   And, in addition to accountability in business, let’s also make changes to our healthcare system to make healthcare providers accountable without a lawsuit to force same.   Read the healthcare article posted Friday, Patient Communication Study Shows Doctors Regularly Withhold Truth

Excerpt:  From customers’ and suppliers’ viewpoint, Company X is fast growing, exciting, and high-energy. Inside, though, it’s a tornado. Fighting fires, arguing over who committed to what, why it didn’t happen, and noticing things that fell through the cracks in just enough time is normal.

How can this happen when they have weekly departmental meetings, keep track of action items, and post projects and timelines everywhere? Easily! There is no accountability. They don’t hold each other accountable for commitments. They’ve seen what happens when you fail, and it isn’t pretty, which undermines individual commitment. Requesters frequently change their minds, reprioritize, or create new, more urgent projects without ever really closing the loop on the old ones.

Read full article via Let’s Bring Back Accountability – Deborah Mills-Scofield – Harvard Business Review.

Patient Communication Study Shows Doctors Regularly Withhold Truth

An article on consumer healthcare today — read this!    It is “news to use” everyone.

If you are depending on your healthcare provider and trusting that his communication with you is always  in your best healthcare interest — don’t be so sure.  If you are smart enough, healthy enough and savvy enough, you will be able to know the truths from the untruths — but how many can do that?

What would you do if you could not get information and an honest answer from your healthcare provider? — if go elsewhere is your response, you should be aware that because of malpractice threats and suits, healthcare providers abide by an unwritten rule to protect their colleagues first and regardless, and they expect the same from those colleagues in return.   Unfortunately, it is not if this will happen to you but when it will happen.  What will you do?

Personally, I have been so incredibly fortunate to have good health and mostly good healthcare providers throughout my life.  However, my “when” happened with a recent surgery.  Following surgery, I knew information was being withheld, and I knew I was being told untruths.  My surgical consequences are not life threatening, but they are life changing.   Sadly, the surgeon is a friend of a friend, and in addition, passed my pre surgery due diligence.  I expected the best, and at the very least, accountability.

Have we allowed healthcare providers to now have immunity from accountability unless taken through the courts?   It is no small wonder malpractice costs and the trickle down costs back to consumers are out of control!!

 Excerpt:  Researchers surveyed more than 1,800 physicians from around the country, working in a variety of specialties, to ask about how they perceive and handle patient communications.

Nearly 35 percent of respondents said they did not “completely agree” that they should disclose serious medical errors to their patients, and approximately 20 percent said they had not revealed a mistake to a patient in the last year because they feared being sued.

Read full article via Patient Communication Study Shows Doctors Regularly Withhold Truth.  From HuffPost

Three New Trends for Consumer Health Apps

Here is an update on healthcare apps  — uses and trends — plus a link to the original study.  Good read for healthcare provider as well as healthcare user.

Excerpt:  Of the more than 13,600 consumer heath apps we analyzed in April, the vast majority fit snugly into one of our 12 main subcategories, which include cardio fitness, dieting, stress relief, chronic condition management, and medication adherence. Since we began tracking consumer health apps in early 2010 we have noticed a handful of emerging categories of apps that are only now becoming large enough that one might consider them a trend.

Here’s a list of three mini-trends that didn’t make it into our consumer health apps report this year:

Read full article via Three new trends for consumer health apps | mobihealthnews.

The iRobot Doc Will See You Now: Roomba Maker Enters the ER

More on healthcare trends this morning.   Your emergency room visit may be with a robot — say, what?    Have you been to a doctor recently?   Very few doctors today are without a computer screen — now, since I love tech, gadgets and power of using all same, I cannot say this is a bad thing.   Although, admittedly, I mentioned just recently one finds you are talking to a doctor’s back as he engages with his computer screen — I guess the most natural next step is JUST THE COMPUTER, or robot, sans doctor.  Interesting read.

Excerpt:  Some of us complain their doctors are too stiff, lack warmth and are too robotic. But calling such doctors “robots” may be a disservice to RP-Vita — the latest telepresence, healthcare bot from InTouch Health and iRobot.

RP-VITA (Remote Presence Virtual + Independent Telemedicine Assistant), unveiled this week at the Clinical Innovations Forum in Santa Barbara, is a remote-controlled telepresence robot that combines InTouch’s “telemedicine” technology and the autonomous navigation innovations introduced in iRobots’ AVA robot at CES in 2011.

Read full article via The iRobot Doc Will See You Now: Roomba Maker Enters the ER.  From Mashable