Medical Management One Blog

For site to site data transmissions (your practice to a diagnostic center, your practice to a hospital), set up a virtual private network, or VPN.  A VPN connects two locations and uses the internet for data transmission, but encrypts the connection forming the virtual network.  Typically, when your clinicians access hospital records, they log on to a secure hospital website (https) which encrypts the session and protects the data that is being transferred or viewed.

When implementing an EHR system in your clinic, it is important to win the support of the providers and other clinical staff who will be using it in everyday interactions with your community of patients.  Demonstrate that the utilization of electronic records will improve the accuracy of your record-keeping, improve the quality of your care, and enhance every one’s ease of access to patient health information.  
 
Train clinicians to use certain functionalities in the software to bolster accuracy.  In some EHR systems, physicians are able to double check drug interactions and import pertinent information throughout a patient’s entire record with one simple step.  Key in to the unique capabilities of your EHR system and make these functions part of your clinical protocol in order to minimize overlooked, but important errors.  Additionally, emphasize that the ability to access reportable digital information on patients’ disease states and treatment therapies – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from home, the hospital, or a nursing home — allows for high-quality continuity of care.

When selecting hardware for clinicians to use to access electronic health records, issues of security, mobility and flexibility are important.  Many physicians find that a tablet PC best addresses these issues.

First, a provider is able to take the tablet when he or she leaves an exam room so that patients may not gain access to the network in the provider’s absence.  Additionally, the use of a tablet allows continuity of one log-in session as opposed to the requirement of multiple log-in sessions created by the use of several hardwired PC workstations throughout the office.

Much like a paper chart, a tablet PC allows for greater mobility in the clinic: A provider has access to nurses, medical assistants, and other clinicians while holding the tablet or moving it from docking station to docking station.  Multiple hardwired PC workstations do not provide the same mobility and flexibility.

New technology in the health care industry is growing beyond medical record maintenance.  The latest advances serve patients’ and providers’ interests in prevention and compliance:

PDAs have merged with cellphones to play host to an array of clinical decision support applications, including those that assist providers with prescription medication and diagnostic issues.

Technology in the home health sector is predicted to boom in less than ten years, as remote health monitoring becomes a mainstay for the chronically ill or recently hospitalized.  Variations on telehealth monitoring are hitting the market and are expected to revolutionize the care of patients with diabetes, renal failure, congestive heart failure, and chronic lung disease.  Patients are responsible for checking their vitals, which are then wirelessly communicated to the provider.  This sort of technology allows patients to avoid last-minute emergency room visits and subsequent hospitalizations.

Search engines are improving the quality of their medical query results and several companies, including Google and Microsoft, are teaming with large clinics to produce platforms for secure storage and exchange of health care information.  Platforms such as these would provide patients space to aggregate their health history, including test results, medication lists, and appointment reminders.

Verifying insurance benefits prior to a patient’s office visit is an administrative procedure most successful practices perform. With new advances in network technology, this task has become easier to accomplish — and with much greater accuracy.

Most importantly, electronic verification of benefits provides both healthcare practitioners and their patients access to patients’ most up-to-date insurance information, ensuring the ease and accuracy of decision-making in subsequent diagnostic testing, laboratory, and/or referral considerations. With access to current benefits, providers send patients for additional work-up of their health concerns to specialists and facilities approved by the patients’ insurance plans.

Electronic verification of benefits also decreases both the patient’s check-in time as well as front-office staff time during the check-in process. Patients no longer have to make several visits to the front desk and front-office staff do not have to manually enter patients’ demographic data (also reducing clerical errors).

The decision to implement an electronic insurance verification system will introduce a more convenient patient experience, from check-in to check-out — and after hours, when medical decisions are still made. Given the complexity of maintaining Electronic Health Records (EHR), it is useful to note that it is not necessary for an electronic insurance verification system to be integrated with a practice’s EHR — and, as a stand-alone service, the system proves more cost-effective without sacrificing functionality. Consider the Clearwave kiosk and network — able to integrate with your EHR, but may also efficiently collect and transmit data independent of it.

CVS/Pharmacy, Walgreens, and other big box stores continue to make headway into the health care industry beyond dispensing medication.  Still, many primary care physicians have yet to respond to this phenomenon in a manner that adequately and competitively serves patients’ needs.

One proactive response to in-store clinics is to bring the prescription medication closer to the dispensing provider: establish a Medication Dispensary in your office.  The benefits of point-of-care dispensing include:

• Increased patient satisfaction, owing to the convenience of immediately available medication.
• Increased patient compliance, also owing to the convenience factor.
• Reduction in pharmacy-related phone calls, both incoming and outgoing.
• Greater oversight of patients’ therapy, including the ability to remind patients of refill dates.
• Immediate knowledge of drug-drug interactions and formulary preferences via electronic communication with insurance.

Because your Dispensary would communicate with Prescription Benefit plans in the same manner as outside pharmacies, there is no difference in cost to your patients — and you likely saved them the time and travel expenses incurred when filling prescriptions elsewhere.

Consider the benefits of satisfying both patients’ expectations of convenience and your own expectations of patient compliance through an on-site Medication Dispensary.