How Millennials are Transforming Health Care

25-February-2019 Rajeev Rajagopal Medical Transcription

Millennials now have a major impact on every industry, including healthcare. Reports say this group of people born between 1981 and 1996 could reshape the healthcare industry, especially telehealth, and are upending the primary care model. This demographic seeks the same digital solutions in healthcare as in other aspects of their lives. The majority of millennials want access to healthcare on their mobile devices, according to a Harris Poll survey (www.mobihealthnews.com). Physicians need to maintain accurate electronic health records (EHRs) to meet the needs of millennials and medical transcription services can help with this. Here are the ways in which millennials are transforming health care:

Are less likely to have a primary care provider: Physicians Practice recently reported that a new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that millennials are less likely than previous generations to have a primary care physician (PCP). In the poll, 45 percent of 1,200 random persons ages 18 to 29 reported they did not have a PCP. The reason for this is millennials’ preferences for convenience, fast service, connectivity, and price transparency, which the traditional office-based primary care model does not offer.To get the care they need, millennials are opting for alternatives such as walk-in retail or pharmacy-based clinics or outlets, free-standing urgent care centers that offer flexible hours, and virtual visits at telemedicine sites. A PNC Healthcare study showed that 34% of millennials prefer to go to a pharmacy clinic, while 25% prefer urgent care. Most retail clinics post their prices which are also affordable. Fast service and less waiting times are other attractions of these walk-in clinics.
Have an affinity for telemedicine: Telemedicine allows patients to link with physicians using a phone or interactive video conferencing from the comfort of their home. Reports say that patients have reported higher levels of satisfaction with the telemedicine visit compared to the traditional visit. Millennials are increasingly opting for telemedicine. In a 2017 Employee Benefit Research Institute/Greenwald & Associates Consumer Engagement in Health Care Survey, 40 percent of millennials reported that telemedicine is an “extremely or very important” option, compared with 27 percent among Gen Xers and 19 percent among baby boomers (Healthcare IT News).
Are avid technology adoptors: Gen Y loves technology and are “early technology adoptors”. A 2018 Pew Research Center study reported that more than nine-in-ten Millennials (92%) own smartphones, compared with 85% of Gen Xers, 67% of Baby Boomers and 30% of the Silent Generation. Also, the vast majority of Millennials (85%) say they use social media. This implies that, to target this group, healthcare providers need to understand the tech behaviors and preferences of this generation. They should be able to offer options such as online health portals, self-serve kiosks, online appointment scheduling, electronic medical record review, and online payment facilities.
Research online before making a healthcare decision: Generation Y relies on online resources including and their social networks to learn about their healthcare concerns and options. They google symptoms of their non-urgent health concerns online before they select a physician or fix an appointment. They may even self-treat. The survey mentioned in the Healthcare IT News report found that compared to baby boomers and Gen Xers, millennials are more likely to shop around and research healthcare options. Before seeking care, Millennials were more likely to have: checked on coverage for medications and quality ratings for a healthcare provider; discussed prescription and treatment options and costs with a physician, and used an online cost-tracking tool provided by a health plan to manage expenses.
Are very concerned about security of their personal health information (PHI): With millennials using online portals to send and receive as health care communications, they are also sensitive to data security concerns, according to a www.healthcarebusinesstech.com report. To minimize such concerns, portals used by hospitals and doctors will need to incorporate technology that promotes better privacy protection. When outsourcing EHR documentation tasks, they will need to choose a HIPAA compliant medical transcription service provider.

Physicians are adopting special strategies to cater to the expectations of this generation. According to a Beckers Hospital Review report, many primary care practices are hiring more physicians and nurse practitioners to reduce patient wait times. They are adopting patient-facing digital tools to better serve millennial patients and implementing other strategies to serve their needs, such as:

Replacing the office landline appointment booking method with scheduling software that will allow patients to book their own appointments online.
Sending text reminders on upcoming appointments
Greater flexibility in working hours such as keeping the lunch hour open for visits which is convenient for patients who can’t miss work.
Making it easier for millennials to get care by communicating with them on social media platforms
Ensuring more transparency in pricing and offering payment plans

Industry experts say that PCP practices that don’t refine their operations to meet millennials requirements could experience a fall patient volume over time. Partnering with an experienced medical transcription company in the USA can help providers manage their EHR documentation tasks as they strive to keep up with the demands of this demographic.

How Often Should Patients Meet Their Doctors? [Infographic]

21-February-2019 MTS TEAM Infographics

EHR-integrated medical transcription services can help physicians save documentation time and devote more time to patient care. While a good physician – patient relationship helps patients stay healthy and receive the best care, there is always a concern – how often should patients schedule visits to their physician? It is recommended that patients can visit doctors even when they are healthy to prevent any illness.

Read the infographic below

The Problem of Medical Care Overuse – When “More” is “Less”

18-February-2019 Julie Clements Medical Transcription Outsourcing

Medical records must contain pertinent and up-to-date information on the advice and/or treatment provided to a patient. Medical transcription outsourcing allows providers to ensure the patient record is an accurate and complete reflection of the patient encounter to facilitate continuity in patient care. Recent doctor visits, discharge summaries, lab and test results, medications, immunizations, allergies are all documented as soon as possible and to be compliant with relevant legislation and industry regulations. However, for years, one major concern has been that of medical overuse – medical interventions which are unnecessary and for which the potential harms may exceed the potential benefits.

Potential Areas of Medical Care Overuse

According to the Institute of Medicine, up to $210 billion is spent on unnecessary medical testing and medical care annually in the United States (www.hcinnovationgroup.com). In addition to the physical and psychological risks it poses for patients, unnecessary care increases medical costs. Further, downstream services such as unnecessary tests may lead to more unnecessary testing and treatment, causing medical errors and other negative consequences. Studies have identified the areas where overuse is commonly reported as:

Medications
Screening tests
Diagnostic testing
Therapeutic procedures (surgery and other invasive procedures)
Site of care delivery (stay in a hospital when a less aggressive site would be sufficient), and
End-of-life care

Examples of low-value wasteful medical care are: annual physical exams, nuclear stress tests for low-risk chest pain, cardiac imaging in people with low-risk symptoms, aggressive over-treatment for breast cancer, unnecessary thrombophilia testing due to concern about passing on the abnormal gene to children, specialty referrals, behavioral health (BH) therapy, and use of durable medical equipment (DME).

Reasons for Medical Care Overuse

There are many causes of medical overuse. The authors of a 2014 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine pointed out that each factor reinforces and amplifies the others, resulting in a “perfect storm of ‘more.'” According to them, the factors contributing to unnecessary overuse are:

Physician training and culture: As a recent report from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center explains, physicians are trained not to miss anything. In cancer, especially, missing something can have grave consequences. Providers often end up doing too much or ordering too many tests. In a survey by researchers from Johns Hopkins and Harvard, respondents cited the reasons for overtreatment as: fear of malpractice (85%), patient pressure or request (59%), and difficulty accessing medical records (38%).
Fee-for-service payment structure: This payment model, which is now recognized as flawed, has led physicians to increasingly perform more procedures and more complex interventions that have little benefit or no benefit at all. The Affordable Care Act, signed into law March 2010, has several provisions that promote focus on increasing value of care. However, a 2017 Forbes report noted that about 86% to 95% of U.S. healthcare providers are still reimbursed based on the number of services they provide. This is driving up unnecessary care and healthcare costs.
Intensive marketing by developers of tests, drugs, and procedures: Pharmaceutical companies aggressively market their products, leading to overprescription of drugs way beyond their clinical usefulness for patients. Direct marketing to consumers via advertising on television, the Internet, the radio and in print is another factor driving inappropriate prescribing.
Defensive medicine: Medical Economics defines defensive medicine as “physicians ordering tests and procedures, making referrals or taking other treatment steps to help protect themselves from liability rather than to benefit their patients’ care”. Research suggests that physicians’ malpractice concerns are a key driver of habits of defensive medicine. Physicians who had a high concern about allegations of malpractice are more likely to order aggressive testing when diagnosing patients with new complaints of chest pain, headache, or lower back pain.
Cultural preference for technological solutions: Patients often prefer treatments that require visible effort and are drawn to expensive, ostentatious technology. While there are many, low-tech technologies in health care that do less harm, high-tech is winning. While technological advances in medicine have actually improved quality of life and increased life span, they can have very harmful effects. For instance, life-saving radiation therapy can have grave consequences if errors occur.
Lack of health care cost transparency: Low-value healthcare services, such as unnecessary imaging are expensive and time-consuming, but provide very little real benefit to the patients in terms of time and money spent. A 2016 study from The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice reported that while 92.2 percent of the physicians surveyed said they felt responsible for managing costs, only 37 percent actually had a proper understanding of the costs of tests and procedures. About one-third of physicians actively tried not to think about costs while making treatment decisions. Such lack of awareness on the part of the provider is a major cause of unnecessary, costly tests and procedures.

Addressing Medical Care Overuse

Improper testing, needless procedures and interventions, and other low-value services are increasing costs of medical care as well as exposing patients to potential harm. The problem of medical care overuse can be addressed only by educating all stakeholders – physicians, patients, hospital and insurance administrators, policymakers, and pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers – on the importance of high-value care. Other measures recommended by the 2017 ACP International Forum on Reducing Overuse and Misuse in Medical Care include:

Value-based reimbursement models in place of fee-for service models.
Strengthening primary care, which will promote cost-effective, comprehensive, and continuous care, helping patients avoid unnecessary hospitalization, emergency visits, procedures, and interventions.
Evidenced based, individualized care, accounting for quality of life and patient choice.
Electronic medical records with proper connectivity and systems that support high-value decision making and reduce duplication.
Eliminating or minimize the influence of for-profit corporations.

Medical transcription services help physicians ensure error-free medical record data entry. However, when it comes to avoiding medical care overuse, physicians need to make sure that tests and treatments they order are really beneficial for the patient.

What Patients Want from a Healthcare Provider?

14-February-2019 Rajeev Rajagopal Medical Transcription

A good patient-doctor relationship is vital to ensure quality patient care and medical transcription services minimize the burden of medical documentation on physicians so that they can spend more quality time with the patient and improve their productivity. Tedious medical documentation can stress and burnout physicians and affect doctor patient interactions. This is because patients may be looking up to their physicians as regards health practices and behaviours in addition to receiving their knowledge and expertise. Physicians could set a good example for patients and thereby have a strong public health influence. Understanding patient’s perception of physicians is important to explore their feelings about their care.

A final year medical oncology trainee Ricky Frazer working at Velindre Cancer Centre in Wales says in a bmg.com article that it is important to empower patients to be partners in decision making. As a patient himself, due to Guillain Barré syndrome, he has given new insights about what patients want and what they think about a physician.

Access to various sources of information: Healthcare providers often advise patients about good sources of information and the risks of searching for information on Google about their diagnosis and treatment. Some departments like oncology, neurology etc have nurses working with the team whom the patient can talk to afterwards and there are many support groups online that you can join. Prior medical knowledge and abundant information about a disease and its symptoms, signs etc can be confusing. So, Google should not be recommended to patients. The information provided to the patient should be comprehensive rather than a single summary sheet on medical condition.
Know the routine results: Doctors often request routine tests and add them to the patient’s notes. Knowing the routine blood test results is important for patients. Telling your patients about their routine blood report will take only a few minutes. You can also assign nursing staff to provide this information to the patients. This will help minimize unnecessary anxiety in patients.
Patients would want doctors to realize that for them as inpatients the day doesn’t start with the doctor’s ward round: Doctors should remember that for inpatients days in the hospitals can be very long. Their day starts as early as 7am with nurses’ changeover or maybe even earlier when the water jug is changed. For many patients, the morning routine may seem like a military operation. The reality is that many patients need to go for shower or get ready. So, a couple of hours at the start of the day are essential for patients to perform drug rounds, showers, and have breakfast. Doctors have to be mindful of the challenging tasks that health professionals and patients have apart from waiting patiently to be seen by their doctor and team.
Patients want to know their journey: Patients often see the nurses discuss their case, which usually occurs at a distance from the patients. Patients are often not involved in the discussion and sometimes junior doctors quickly summarize the case. All patients may not know or understand the seriousness of their disease. As a part of empowering patients it is important to be open and honest in front of the patients.
A small help can be a boost: Some patients become very weak and need assistance to go to the bathroom or to get undressed etc. Healthcare assistance can be a boon to the patients and any kindness and compassion shown to patients who are weak and vulnerable can provide a moral boost.

A 2017 study titled “Patient Provider Relationship Study” which included 2100 patients in the age group 21 to 70, found that all patients wanted four key things:

Better connectivity: Unable to reach a physician at the time of urgency is frustrating for patients and according to the study, millennials’ preference for convenience is changing the traditional healthcare system. Today’s patients are tech savvy and they expect a better digital experience from their healthcare providers. An ideal way to improve connectivity is by leveraging mobile apps. There are customized apps that allow patients to communicate with hospital staffs, book appointments easily, pay bills, and change appointment schedules.
Use of technology: Today, almost everyone owns a mobile phone and patients are more likely to go online via their mobile phones. Patients are attracted to technologies that would help them better manage their appointment with the doctor. A growing number of people also prefer receiving appointment reminders and other information through a secure text message. Studies show that around 73 percent of patients want to be able to text their doctor’s office whereas 79 percent would like to receive text messages from their doctor. Physicians can facilitate patient preference with the help of automated text reminders, follow-up reminders, patient confirmation, and last minute schedule.
More quality time with the doctor: One of the most common complaints among patients is that they don’t get time to spend with the doctor. This is due to the physician’s increased paperwork, heavy workloads, medical documentation and the physicians are already over burdened that they are unable to spend time with the patients. However, with the right technology physicians can minimize their stress.

According to a Mayo Foundation study, a strong patient physician relationship is fostered by ensuring the following things:

Eye contact: Which creates a sense of connecting, listening and caring
Partnership: A two way proposition where both patient and the physician are comfortable
Communication: Honest and open communication between patients and physicians is essential especially in serious cases, so that patients can openly address their fears and concerns to the physician and develop a sense of trust and confidence in the treatment and achieve the positive results. Good communication also ensures better patient engagement.
Time: Time is what physicians do not have and what patients want from healthcare providers. Patients want to spend quality time with their physicians to share their concerns, clarify doubts and build a good rapport.

Healthcare providers should approach the patient with a pleasant smile and this makes patients much more comfortable. With the introduction of EHR, doctors and nurses are forced to spend most of their time in health record documentation and other administrative work and spend less time with patients. Handing over the medical documentation process to an established medical transcription company could enable physicians and nurses to spend more quality time with the patients and establish a strong patient-doctor relationship.

Declining Trust in Healthcare Providers – Reasons and Consequences

11-February-2019 MTS TEAM Medical Transcription Outsourcing

Trust is a fundamental aspect of any type of relationship, personal or business-related. For instance, a company outsourcing medical transcription service to physicians has to build trust and reliability as a dedicated business partner. This is very important, given the sensitive and confidential nature of the information they handle. Similarly, trust is at the center of a physician – patient relationship, and this is what we examine in this blog. Studies and surveys show that patients’ trust in their doctors and overall healthcare is on the decline. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that in 1966, 73% of Americans said they had great confidence in the leaders of the medical profession, whereas in 2012 only 34% felt the same way. A 2017 SERMO survey showed that 87% of U.S. physicians believe that patients trust their doctors less than they did ten years ago. This lack of trust can have grave consequences such as reduced patient compliance, worse outcomes, poor physician – patient interactions and physician burnout.

What is the reason behind this lack of trust? Social scientists point out that this is largely due to higher levels of education, the spread of the internet, and the failure on the part of physicians and healthcare institutions. When an insurance company declines to pay for a procedure or increases the co-pay for an office visit, it is the physician who has to communicate the bad news to the patient, which causes a dent in their relationship. With the internet acting as a large resource of information and with the increased access people have to this medium, patients do their own research and arrive at their own conclusions regarding diagnoses and treatments. Now, patients tend to question their doctors and if their information conflicts with their doctor’s opinion, they may be less likely to trust their doctors.

The editorial published in the September issue of Lancet Oncology, highlights this issue saying that the clash between greater patient autonomy, falling trust, and the rise in social media has led to an increase in self-diagnosis and the user of alternative therapies by cancer patients. As a result, patients may refuse conventional, proven therapies and increase their risk for death compared to patients who follow recommended treatment protocols.

According to Martin Ledwick, head information nurse at Cancer Research UK, there is nothing new about dealing with fake news and it has been around for a long time. As a charity, their position is “to challenge where there isn’t a decent evidence base for a treatment that is being promoted.” He further said that the Cancer Research Centre set up an online platform 10 years ago, where people could post suggestions about alternative therapies and other treatment options. An experienced team of nurse staff would respond to the inquiries. Ledwick believes that the growth of the Internet in recent years has created a platform for people to share ideas and opinions, and when complementary treatments are offered, people take them. But the problem is, sometimes people think alternative therapies are better than conventional methods.

Social media, widespread misinformation, specious journalism and political marginalization have led to self diagnosis and patients’ demand for specific treatments. According to a study published in 2017, cancer patients who use complementary medicine are more likely refuse surgery, and chemotherapy among other proven treatments. Wrong information and false news are propagated widely via social media and other online platforms. Limiting the spread of misinformation is important to regain patients’ trust in physicians. Efforts should be taken to stop spreading wrong information and make people aware of the harm wrong information and unproven alternative therapies can cause to cancer patients as well as people suffering from other serious health conditions.

Spending quality time with patients is important for physicians to educate them about their health condition and recommend what is good and bad for them. This will empower patients to be more cautious and not fall for wrong information. To gain more time with patients and obtain relief from documentation requirements, physicians can associate with a good medical transcription company that offers real-time transcription. Physicians must work to build trust via good communication skills, and trust and communication with a patient-centered approach can ensure improved patient outcomes. Patient satisfaction will also increase when they perceive that their provider cares about their wellbeing. When patients trust their physicians, they are also likely to better adhere to the treatment prescribed. Physicians and healthcare institutions can conduct regular patient satisfaction surveys and research to evaluate their services. This will help with excellent planning to provide improved services.

Optimize Staff Scheduling to Enhance Care Quality and Efficiency

07-February-2019 Julie Clements Medical Transcription

Optimizing electronic health records (EHRs) can improve clinical efficiency and many organizations rely on outsourced medical transcription services to achieve this goal. However, clinical workflow optimization also depends on efficient staff scheduling and workforce management. This is even more important as the nation is facing a provider shortage. Diligent workforce management is crucial to cutting hospital/practice operating expenses and improving care delivery.

Efficient workforce management is a priority for all industries and healthcare is no different. A joint survey from the Healthcare Financial Management Association and Navigant reported that healthcare executives predict labor budget increases and continued shortages of physicians, nurses and mental health providers. Among other things, diligent labor management was named a top priority area. The Healthcare Finance report on the survey cites Danielle Dyer, managing director of Navigant, as saying, “The need to more effectively manage labor by staffing to demand will only intensify as operating margins continue to diminish, and as the pressure to enhance care quality and efficiency increases. These results magnify the need for provider leadership to objectively analyze their current practices to better staff departments and meet dynamic patient volumes”.

According to Patient Engagement HIT, organizations can better manage provider shortages by focusing on a better staff scheduling strategy, creating incentives for new hires, and utilizing non-physician clinicians. One widely recommended solution is collaborative staffing. Under this model, hospital staff can view open shifts that they are qualified to work across multiple units and facilities. It empowers employees by allowing them to work with managers to fill open shifts based on their skills and preferences, and the patient’s best interests. The collaborative care model allows healthcare organizations to leverage underutilized resources, prevent use of more costly resources, improve staff engagement and satisfaction, and optimize staff scheduling.

Healthcare Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) or digital health solutions can optimize staffing and workflow. A www.healthcare-informatics.com article points out that even a basic IoMT solution can collect and collate data on staff location and expertise, patient acuity and location, and availability and location of critical diagnostic and therapeutic equipment. Using analytics, managers can leverage the data to improve workflow and make better staffing and scheduling decisions so that the right people are assigned to the right places, improving care, patient satisfaction and staff morale.

In a www.outpatientsurgery.net article published December 2018, Leslie Mattson, RN, BSHM, a nurse consultant with ALM Surgical Solutions in Atlanta, GA offers 8 tips to ease staff scheduling in these surgical centers:

Assign routine late days in advance for unexpected late days when cases exceed scheduled times, or for a late add-on case
Provide differential pay to acknowledge extra time
Flex time in and out based on volume, role, and patient arrival and discharge times
Pay PRN staff incentives for extra work and better availability during holidays, when staff shortages can occur
Have a plan for a month or 3 months to overcome challenges that can occur due to scheduled outs or increased staffing needs
Schedule staff meetings to review staffing challenges and discuss solutions.
Arrange lunch on busy days.
Mentor and train the right person to support the future staffing leadership needs

Other tips to improve staff scheduling:

Use shift templates to create a schedule once and only fill in missing shifts as they occur
Allow staff to make their availability known so that the best person available can be selected for each shift based on their skills
Let staff to swap shifts
Inform staff of schedules in advance using multiple means, including scheduling software

The Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) recommends organizations identify trends in patient traffic and reorganize their provider schedules by reviewing their provider supply and patient demand for both in-office appointments and phone call or secure message consultation. According to the IHI, patient traffic should be tracked on a daily or weekly basis, as well as on a seasonal basis as flu season, allergy season, snow-bird season, and school physicals when there is an increase in demand for appointments.

In a report published in 2017, Cerner Corporation provided several instances of how providers implemented commendable staffing solutions, “putting the right care giver, in the right place, at the right time”. At Banner Thunderbird Medical Center (BTMC) in Glendale, Arizona, better EHR documentation has led to data-driven business decisions. BTMC used Cerner’s Clairvia, an integrated patient-centric and outcomes-driven software suite, to adjust BTMC’s staffing based on the needs of individual patients.

Nurse management at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), the first and largest pediatric hospital in Southern California, implemented a workforce management tool that could calculate a patient’s acuity based on information captured in the EHR. The solution provided nursing staff of changes in patients’ statuses, allowing nurse managers to remodel staffing to meet the needs of individual units.

The more data available, the more proactive hospitals and health systems can become. In the above instances, clinical documentation within EHR systems allowed nurses to classify patients. Medical transcription outsourcing plays a key role in getting the care patients need documented accurately and in a timely manner in the EHR.

Major Trends and Challenges in the Healthcare Industry

04-February-2019 Rajeev Rajagopal Medical Transcription

The United States has a complex healthcare system and medical documentation has become more strategic and imperative with the introduction of the electronic health record. Medical documentation contains details about an individual’s health history and other clinical data that are important from the point of view of optimal care. At present, EHR-integrated medical transcription services are providing valuable support to physicians in meeting their heavy documentation needs efficiently.

To meet the rising needs of the patients, cut down costs, stay competitive and create a patient-centered experience, the healthcare industry is adopting new technologies. Digital technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, 3D printing, and nanotechnology are the future of healthcare industry. According to IMEG Corp and Transwestern, shifting the emphasis to prevention, health preservation, early intervention and person centric approaches are the main factors that drive the need for building effective value-based healthcare model.

Let us look at some of the major trends and challenges in the healthcare sector, as outlined by Transwestern Senior Vice President DainaPitzenberger, in a cpexecutive.com article.

Major Trends in Healthcare

Virtual health is a major development in the healthcare industry. Wearable devices to advanced cloud to radiofrequency identification are some of the advancements that help to improve healthcare quality and build a good patient-doctor relationship. With artificial intelligence, handheld medical equipment and digital pills, doctors can provide better treatment for patients. Hospitals are now forced to meet the new regulations and codes to ensure a better patient experience. Hospitals are being measured for satisfaction and the results are posted for the public to stay compliant with payer regulations. Poor satisfaction directly impacts reimbursement.
Another trend is that the healthcare industry is realizing that patients, just as other business consumers, are expecting a greater user experience like that provided by Amazon, Google, Uber etc. The healthcare industry is watching other organizations in the hospitality, retail, wellness, and entertainment sectors, and many major insurance providers have started acquiring physician practices. Hospitals should be watching this new trend.
Another emerging trend is a change in the medical office building – it has more collaborative space, built-in technology, less waiting room area, smaller overall facilities, shared physicians’ office and education training space.
Home healthcare is a trending set-up. It aims at moving more services to outpatient and telemedicine delivery. This helps to cut down costs; moreover, healthcare is now moving closer tothe patient’s home. Home healthcare emerged due to better reimbursement and efforts to prevent readmission. Hospitals are preventing reimbursement losses by paying for home healthcare and telemedicine care.
The biggest opportunity for the healthcare industry is to completely disrupt the current model and put the patients at the center of their focus. Another opportunity for the healthcare industry is to lower the turnaround time and also enhance the efficiency of patient visit and their interaction with physicians.
Advanced technology can be used to diagnose patients prior to symptoms and integrate retail, leveraging data. New technology tools will facilitate partnership with non-healthcare sector firms, and also enable providing medical services closer to patients’ facilities rather than making the patient come to them.

Challenges

The main challenges the healthcare industry is facing are meeting various regulations, obsolete facilities, services that are not reimbursed and keeping up with the technology. Even today, there are a group of providers who still believe that patients need to come, wait to see the doctor face-to-face and move from location to location to see various specialists. But this is not the future. The healthcare industry has to focus on improving the patient experience with home healthcare, e-health, telemedicine and other innovative solutions.

The key requirement for providing better patient care is error-free medical documentation. For hospitals to implement the latest technology, they require flawless medical records. For efficient and timely medical documentation, the ideal option is to hire a medical transcription service company that can offer error-free and accurate medical records. They use advanced technology and equipment that ensure speedy transcription of dictated medical notes. The services are cost-effective and will bring increased profitability to your healthcare organization. Physicians and other healthcare professionals will no longer have to spend valuable time on documentation tasks and instead focus on giving better patient care.

Healthcare Assistance at Your Workplace – a More Affordable Option

31-January-2019 MTS TEAM Medical Transcription

Technology has transformed healthcare industry just as other industry niches. It has made numerous positive changes in treatment and patient care. Advancements in medical technology allow physicians to diagnose and treat patients much more efficiently than before. Technological innovations range from diverse methods of treatment offered to the patients to various types of software and techniques used in medical transcription service. With the convenience offered by technology in the form of telemedicine, online consultation and so on, patients are also expecting more innovative and affordable treatment options.

Now, medical services care can be taken to the patient’s side rather than the patient coming to a doctor or healthcare facility. In San Francisco, Camilla Ring got her blood pressure and heart rate checked by Dr. Anju Goel in her office itself. Ring’s appointment was booked through a Santa Monica start-up known as Heal. It provides doctors to offices so that nobody has to leave work to get examined. In the last two years Heal doctors have served employees at Hulu, GoPro, Twilio, AEG, etc. Heal doctors usually handle non-emergency cases and in case of emergencies they send patients to urgent care units. Around 40 percent of Heal’s house calls are done at large companies and according to co-founder and CEO Nick Desai, Heal doctors have consulted 70,000 patients and 65,000 used insurance to pay for the visit. The new start-up earns money from patients and insurance companies. Blue Shield of San Francisco has included Heal house calls in its preferred provider organization plans. The company provided their service to 11,000 Californians. Typically, house call options are expensive but Heal service is affordable and saves a lot of time.

Heal doctors works for around 40 hours a week. Medical assistants drive the doctors to the appointment and drop them off at their respective house at the end of the day. Dr. Goel says that this profession allows doctors a lot of time with patients without being distracted by other patients. According to Glenn Melnick, a health economist at the University of Southern California who led a recent study on a health system’s house call program in his region found that doctors could see only three or four patients and the doctors-on-demand model takes the burden of travelling from the patients and shifts it to the doctor.

Ring, a product specialist at Strava had used Heal twice before for home visits when she was ill, and she was impressed by the convenience of not having to leave the office for physician’s appointment. Ring’s appointment was covered by her insurance. Strava funds up to $2500 per employee for medical expenses or health care reimbursement account as per their health plan.
Heal offers minor services like flu shots at companies. Tech companies as well as other organizations are waking up to the advantages of having medical assistance provided at their doorstep.

Just as developments in medical treatment provided to patients, the traditional method of medical transcription has also evolved. Today, with EHR-integrated medical transcription service, physicians and other healthcare professionals can ensure more accurate patient care documentation. HL7 interface provides the framework for integrating, sharing and retrieval of EHR. It provides an encrypted and secure means of transferring files. By outsourcing medical transcription to meet their documentation requirements, physicians get to spend more time with their patients, listen to their concerns, and provide the most effective treatment.

7 Tactics to Improve Medical Practice Efficiency and Revenue

28-January-2019 Julie Clements Medical Transcription

In order to maintain error-free patient records, most healthcare organizations in the US outsource their transcription tasks to medical transcription companies. Outsourcing is a more cost-effective option than handling the documentation task in-house. In addition to this, there are many strategies that healthcare providers can implement to enhance efficiency and productivity.

Consider outsourcing medical transcription to enhance office efficiency and productivity.

Tips to Increase Efficiency in Medical Practices

There are many facets to running a successful medical practice than record management. With changing laws and regulations, increased reporting requirements, and heavy patient influx, physicians need to focus on certain key areas and activities to deliver the best possible patient care and stay financially viable. Here are 7 tactics that can improve medical practice efficiency and revenue.

Embrace technology: Today, digital strategies play a critical role in healthcare. Besides EHRs, telemedicine, portable diagnostics, apps, social media, conferencing and telemedicine have transformed the way patients interact with clinicians. Virtual visits allow physicians to see more patients, and are a cost-effective tool for physicians in rural areas, or those who see more elderly patients who have difficulty with in-person visits. Physicians and their teams need to successfully integrate effective digital solutions into the practice and take advantage of them. They also need to know how to work with empowered patients who ask more questions.
Implement online appointment scheduling: According a Medscape report, one of the critical challenges that practices face is that of scheduling patients. Online scheduling allows patients to see when a physician is available and schedule their appointment using the practice website. Online appointment scheduling eliminates phone time wasted scheduling and rescheduling appointments, freeing up staff for more important work.
Tackle uneven appointment schedules: Uneven appointment schedules result from having too many bookings on the same day, no-shows and complex patients who exceed the allotted visit time. Tactics recommended to deal with this problem:
- Reminding patients of their appointment by calling, texting or emailing them.
- Rescheduling appointments for late arrivals.
- Limiting same-day appointments to patients who are critically ill; patients who request same-day appointments should be carefully screened by the physician or registered nurses (RNs) or nurse practitioners.
- Determine the patient’s full list of complaints in advance of the office visit, and work with patients to decide which complaints can be addressed during this visit and which can be postponed to a later visit.
Streamline EHR data entry: Physicians find documenting patient information in the EHR a time-consuming and difficult task. Moreover, data entry tasks reduce the time that physicians spend with patients at the visit and lead physicians to fall behind with their work and schedules. A www.chattmd.org article suggests the following strategies to deal with this:
- Customizing the EHR inbox so that physicians receive only the information they need: According to the AMA’s STEPS Forward™ module, messages that can be routed to other relevant office staff include: daily progress notes for hospitalized patients; nurse visit notes for preventive care; routine physical therapy progress notes; test results ordered by consultants; previsit labs; and refill requests.
- Getting EHR data entry support: Non-physician clinicians or scribes can be used to enter information into the EHR.

Outsourcing the clinical documentation task to an experienced medical transcription company will also ensure that physician dictation is transcribed accurately and in custom turnaround time. Expert medical transcriptionists will enter information accurately and efficiently by using customized EHR templates created by the physician.

Optimize front desk operations: Make sure that front office staff is not overwhelmed. Job sharing is important to optimize front desk operations. If they forced to multitask, they usually end up not being able to do any task well.” Assign a different person for each job, and then cross-train them so that they can help each other out in high-volume periods,” advises Laurie Morgan, a senior consultant at Capko and Co. in San Francisco, California. (www.chattmd.org).Strategies to improve front desk operations include: allowing receptionists to focus on serving patients instead of answering phone calls; simplifying patient questionnaires and ensuing that all key information is captured; allowing patients to fill out forms on a patient portal; having patients provide information in advance, which is important for insurance verification, and helping patients fill out paperwork if needed.
Revamp the practice website: Today, practice websites play an important role in marketing and reimbursement and to connect with patients. One survey found that even when referred by other physicians, patients check for online reviews and information. Up to 63 percent of the respondents said they would choose one provider over another because of a strong online presence (i.e., availability of relevant, accurate and compelling information). Practice websites need to make a good impression, make it easy for patients to find the information they need – including contact information – and to book appointments and fill in forms. With majority of web searches happening on mobile devices such as smartphones, having a responsive or mobile-friendly site is critical. Responsive website design is important for search engine optimization (SEO) as over 60 percent of Google searches are now from mobile devices and Google boosts mobile-friendly websites.
Take steps to boost practice revenue: Physicians should be knowledgeable about current reimbursement opportunities and take advantage of them. They need to understand value-based reimbursement and payer incentives, as well as penalties that may result from not participating in value-based programs. Conducting a periodic review of their billing and coding practices is critical to detect gaps and address them to maximize reimbursement opportunities. With deductibles rising higher than ever, practices also need to take steps to improve patient collections.

How Medical Transcription Services Can Help

Besides enhancing your office efficiency and productivity, outsourcing medical transcription can also help the medical institutions save their valuable time as well as money. Medical professionals can fully utilize their time for patient care and maximize their productivity, resulting in better revenue. By outsourcing the transcription task, they can easily manage various medical reports such as physical reports, patient history, laboratory summaries, consultation notes, referrals, follow-up letters, death summaries and X-ray reports cost-effectively in short turnaround time.

To be more precise, medical transcription services enhance efficiency and productivity by:

Allowing medical professionals to focus on their core business activities
Reducing operating cost: By outsourcing, you can significantly reduce the operating cost as there is no need to own a dictation system or upgrade to the latest equipment.
Saving cost: Medical transcription firms help medical professionals save 40% to 60% on the cost of medical transcription. With the help of a medical transcription service provider, you can save cost on employee benefits, such as payroll taxes, medical office space, health insurance and office equipment.
Speeding up reimbursements: In medical transcription outsourcing, patient medical records are created on time. This can speed up reimbursements as patient medical records provide the base for coding and billing.

Other benefits of medical transcription services include:

High level of accuracy
Encrypted and secure file transfer
Improves work flow
HIPAA compliant medical transcription services
Eliminates transcription headaches
Shortens turnaround time
Provides security measures to prevent vandalism of any information stored on the system.

Are you worried about improving your medical documentation?

Read our blog post How to Improve Medical Documentation Efficiency

As physicians look for tools to better practice efficiency and revenue, medical transcription companies will continue to deliver quality documentation solutions to maintain patient data integrity.

Get accurate and timely HIPAA compliant medical transcription services!

Using Text Message Communication to Improve Patient Outreach

24-January-2019 Rajeev Rajagopal Medical Transcription

The EHR integrated documentation solutions that medical transcription companies provide help physicians focus on and communicate better with their patients. Another strategy that is currently allowing physicians to enhance patient engagement is text message communication. Automated patient outreach simplifies scheduling appointments, reminds patients of screenings and preventive care, and promotes adherence to arrival times and NPO status before surgery. Text messaging tools make access to care easier for patients as well as providers.

Text Messages to Manage Appointments

Missed appointments hurt health office revenue. Text messages have become the preferred option over phone calls to reach patients. Calling patients to manage appointments would lead to phone lines getting tied up with staff calling patients or patients calling to cancel or reschedule appointments. Patients could end up waiting even more than 20 minutes to connect with a scheduler.
PatientEngagementHIT.com noted that a survey by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) found that two-thirds of healthcare organizations use text message reminders in their practice. Most use messaging programs to send appointment reminders and to allow the patient to confirm or cancel the appointment. Compared to phone calls, text messaging offers many advantages:

Text message reminders reach the patient directly in their text inbox
Avoids the challenges patients face in logging into and accessing their patient portal
Text messages are read right away
Texting is unobtrusive
All text messages are usually read
Younger patients are likely more responsive to texts than calls
Texting is cost-effective
It reduces manual processes and staffing concerns, reduces risk of human error, and improves office efficiency
Improves patient satisfaction
It is secure

Beyond the Appointment Reminders

Text reminders are being used for more than just preventing no-shows. Practices are using text messages to

Remind patients to schedule for their checkups
To support preventative care by reminding patients of a mammogram, colorectal cancer screening or other preventive services
Track patients with serious conditions (chronic disease management)
Instantly notify patients of test results
To alert patients about check-in procedures, copayment requirements or other information to ensure appointments run smoothly
To send payment reminders

The PatientEngagementHIT.com article discussed the positive experience that North Florida Women’s Care had with text messaging. According to the report, text-messaging reduced the clinic’s no-show rates by half, increased the clinic’s referral conversion rate by 25 percent, provided the opportunity to prompt patient reviews, and improved patient relationships with the practice. The strategy succeeded because most of the patients visiting the clinic are younger and more tech savvy, and poised to adopt text message outreach into their healthcare experience.

Text Messaging Not Always the Best Option

However, experts note that digital messaging would not be the right option in some situations. For instance, telephone call or in-person visit are the preferred option for delivering bad news. Also the patient portal or phone calls are better alternatives for follow-up about how a patient is feeling or if the patient has a question about her health. These in-person communication methods preserve the human element to healthcare.

Also, while text messages are convenient, they also come with security and confidentiality risks. For instance, many text messages tend to remain on the device indefinitely. If the phone is hacked, misplaced or stolen, sensitive information may be leaked to third parties. This includes Protected Health Information(PHI) or personally identifiable data about a patient’s past, present, or future physical or mental health, including prescription information and insurance payments. Moreover, text messages sent by normal means are not encrypted and the data can be seen by anyone who intercepts the message.

HIPAA requires health providers to take steps to secure patients’ PHI, regardless of the communication medium used. Providers must first inform patients about the security risks involved in texting, get the patients’ consent to use texts, and document the patients’ consent. They must also have mechanisms put in place to ensure the integrity of PHI.

As healthcare providers look to improve efficiency with patient outreach, technology can be a big support. Text message communication improves patient satisfaction because it makes certain aspects of healthcare easier for patients. Like outsourced medical transcription services, secure texting solutions save time and valuable resources, and improve the provider-patient relationship.