Major FCC Development in HIT for wearable Body Sensors

 

FCC finalizes wavelength ruling for medical body area networks

The Federal Communications Commission has officially set aside a portion of the nation's wireless spectrum to wearable medical sensors, reportedly becoming the first nation in the world to do so.

In a Sept. 11 announcement, the FCC finalized a vote taken on May 24 to set aside spectrum in the range of 2360-2400 megahertz for medical body-area-networks, or MBANs, with the 2360-2390 MHz range restricted to indoor use. The decision, to take effect on Oct. 11, means wearable sensors will be able to send and receive non-voice data in that range without interference from Wi-Fi or other devices, though they'll still be considered secondary users.

This announcement sets in play the further development of remote monitoring either in hospital ICUs, during transportation in and out of hospital as well as remote-monitoring from the home or chronic facility facilitating  Real cost savings as opposed to governmental edicts, such a PPACA

The medical device can now be certified by a standard, and a secure protocol established.  Undoubtedly the FCC will want to finalize and certify the device(s) as reliable and accurate under a variety of circumstances.

The light is now green for device and remote monitor companies to proceed.

 

Technorati Tags: medical devices,wifi,hipaa,fcc,fda,remote monitoring,icu

New Requirements for Non-Profit Status of Hospitals

 

More IRS and HHS chicanery:

A little known tax provision listed in Obama Care adds additional mandates on all non-profit hospitals in order for them to maintain their non-profit status.  If all new requirements are not met, hospitals may lose their non-profit status and be fined $50,000 annually. 

The new mandatory requirements read right out of a community organizer's handbook.  Any non-profit hospital must meet the following new requirements or lose non-profit status and face a $50,000 fine annually:

POWER TO THE PEOPLE !

The citizens’ community’ will decide the following:

1. Meet the community health needs of all citizens

a. Health needs will be determined by persons who represent the broad interests of the community served by the hospital

2. Meet the financial assistance policy requirements which include:

a. Eligibility requirements and whether service includes free or discounted care

b. Must show how the hospital came up with the prices for care

3. Must impose price controls so to charge the same for all people whether patients have insurance or not

4. Must provide audited financial statements to show how the hospital spent their money servicing the community healthcare needs

a. If not all needs are being addressed then why not and what is being done to address the needs

The trick to these new regulations is that they are ambiguous.  There are no specific guidelines thus; someone (federal bureaucrats) will need to decide pricing, financial assistance guidelines and how the hospitals get paid. What this tax provision does in the real world is give the government and the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sibelius dictatorial control of over 50 percent of all hospitals in the United States.  Their oversight and mandates will impose price controls and force hospitals to provide regular care to everyone regardless of insurance or ability to pay. 

Through new ambiguous regulations hidden within laws and with the largest set of tax provisions in the last 20 years, the IRS and HHS are now in financial control over a majority of U.S. hospitals and the healthcare industry.

Please ensure all your friends and family know the truth. Please forward this email and get the word out.  November 6^th is election D-Day.

The Team at Generation America

 

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Gazing into the Future for Social Media in Health Care

 

Written by a prominent social media expert and marketing guru, Brian Solis, the image portrays the folly of denial and remaining static.

Social Media is a difficult market to explain or stay current. It seems to ebb and flow each day.  Analytics has become a byline for return on investment.

Physicians will often compare efficiency on the amount of time or money invested to return an increase in reimbursement.  That metric however will soon become less important for those providing care with insurance reimbursement.  One issue that may not be entirely expected is that many more physicians will not interface with insurance companies, nor Medicare.  In most states there is no requirement to accept Medicare in order to be licensed.

In today’s health care environment being listed in a provider directory is essential to maintaining a patient base.  Belonging to a provider panel, IPA is essential. The effect of planned accountable organizations has yet to be determined.

Physicians during the last decade have been inclined to distance themselves from financial liability as profit margins have declined.  In return for relief from liability and more regular hours physicians will accept employment, and leave the driving to others.

During the past two years concierge medicine and direct medicine have become a new financial model which decreases overhead for doctors and perhaps patients as well. With the profound reduction in bureaucracy it may also improve quality of care.

The Yellow Pages are dead, and have been replaced with the search engine, and social media is fast becoming an additional resource, facebook, google plus and perhaps a new social media platform of the year will arise.  Social media platforms are interactive and require regular and frequent updating to eliminate the impression they are stale and old news.  Many search engines have new algorithms that  evaluate how often content is  updated and may position your rank according to those criteria.

In terms of business planning medical concerns need to be proactive and plan to  include social media in their marketing budgets, just as was done during the yellow page era.  Twitter and Facebook identifications will become common place in printed material, email, stationary and other brochures.

Any physician seeking to engage in social media should read several primers on social media, outside the health care field, written by Brian Solis

The Hidden Power of Your Customers: 4 Keys to Growing Your Business Through Existing Customers

Now Is Gone: A Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs

Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization (Que Biz-Tech)

The End of Business As Usual: Rewire the Way You Work to Succeed in the Consumer Revolution [Hardcover]

Once you have these under your belt we can go on to more specific applications in health care.

del.icio.us Tags: brian solis,social media,roi,facebook pages,twitter trend,google plus,search engine,provider directory,yellow pages,concierge medicine,direct medicine

Mappy Health Train Express

 

What word rhymes with happy? Why Mappy of course ! What social media platform gives instantaneous information,in real time as to outbreaks of infectious diseases? Mappy can track the outbreak of mosquito borne diseases, influenza outbreaks, and a multitude of other potentially harmful infectious diseases.

Mappy was the result of a ‘Challenge” by HHS for development of innovative health software. 

HHS describes it’s new application, developed by: Social Health Insights.  Early on it is tracking the outbreak of West Nile Virus

“We are Tracking Disease Trends, 140 characters at a Time !”

 

MappyHealth - Monitoring disease trends, 140 characters at a time -#NowTrending2012 Challenge from Mark Silverberg

Twitter challenge sparks innovation in tracking local health trends
New web-based app leverages Twitter for real-time early warning of disease outbreaks.

Local public health officials can use a free new Web-based application, MappyHealth , to track health concerns in real time in their communities using Twitter, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) announced today.

MappyHealth is the winning submission of 33 applicants in a developers’ challenge, “Now Trending: #Health in My Community,” sponsored by ASPR. Health officials can use data they gain through the app to complement other health surveillance systems in identifying emerging health issues and as an early warning of possible public health emergencies in a community.

The challenge grew from a request made by local health officials to ASPR for help in developing a Web-based tool that could make social media monitoring more accessible to local health departments. Studies of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and the Haiti cholera outbreak demonstrated that social media trends can indicate disease outbreaks earlier than conventional surveillance methods. However, many Web-based apps look back after a disease outbreak, rather than attempting to identify health trends as they emerge in real time.

This more than clever and highly usable application (web based) allows for selection of criteria by selecting criteria on the top banner, such a condition, location, and twitter trend.  A visually captivating feature is the ‘running ticker tape” display of trends in episodes such as tick-borne diseases, typhoid, tuberculosis, varicella with indications as to increases or decreases in the last 4-24 hours depending upon the magnitude of each criteria.

Social Media here performs well for quick display of important information translated from tabular chart data sets into friendly, usable and easily identifiable data sets in a graphic user interface.

Kudos to Social Health Insights, LLC

 

del.icio.us Tags: social media,social health insights,twitter,cdc,public health,infectious disease,HHS challenge,medical software,epidemics,twitter trend,health trends,real time,mappyhealth,2012 challenge

Governance….is it in the Right Place?

 

There seems to be a similar problem with government and healthcare.

It comes down to governance. Congress and the executive branch seem to be inept at the least, incompetent, or at times malicious.

It is time to take back not only the United States, but healthcare as well. Our leaders despite their best attempts have failed and continue to fail.

I read a blog by a respected family physician yesterday, who has decided to leave the practice that he started almost 20 years ago. He is the type of physician who has always been an innovator, beginning with his use of EMR over 15 years ago. He is known for speaking at national meetings about the benefits of health IT long before there was an ONCHIT, or RHIOs and the ARRA and HITECH. You can read his story. He  articulates very well his consternation with his group practice which took on a life of it’s own and clearly sets his new goals with firm guidelines as to how it will operate.

Rob Lamberts MD has been a dedicated physician who has worked within a difficult system. ….he is making a healthy move for himself and his family. We cannot expect providers to operate in a health system for the betterment of their patients in a constant state of frustration which evolves into what I call a “traumatic stress disorder” We cannot expect more physicians to fall on their sword to overcome the enormity of what government has done to us all (in the name of balancing budgets, preventing fraud, proper coding, treatment paradigms and more. When I read of Dr. Lamberts decision I was ‘blown away’. He is not the type to make a compulsive move.  He has acted responsibly and given more than 90 days notice to his partners and patients, alike.

I cannot speak for Dr. Lamberts, it would be far easier to throw up one’s hands and go with the flow. He knows, he already had started a successful medical practice, investing hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more likely millions of dollars in his medical practice, adding new physicians, equipment, and facilities.  Anyone who has started a medical enterprise knows the pitfalls of taking on new associates. Contrary to popular opinion group practices can be more inefficient than small closely held or solo organizations.  Eliminating insurance will eliminate much overhead, and rightly give back that responsibility to those who buy it…the patient.  This one feature will engage and empower patients in their health care costs.

Before I digress further, let me close and stay on topic.

Good luck Rob Lamberts, M.D.  You are far from alone. I only hope that most on a new path will succeed. The next step is to leave medicine altogether, some get an MBA then become health care executives (at least they have choices then). Some will become ‘entrepreneurs”, some will become disabled, or retire early.

Health Care is much too important to allow politicians to control and make decisions which have repeatedly gone sour.  They ignore good advice, take direction from the wrong directions, from powerful self-interest groups, foundations, non profit organizations, academia, pharmacy and insurance conglomerates. 

Sometimes we wish for something and when we get it we realize what a mistake it is or was.  Perhaps now is that time to reassess what health reform should be, not what it is turning out to be.  As we step through meaningful use stage I, stage II and eventually stage III it becomes apparent how flawed PPACA has become. It was all there, but no competent people read it before it was passed by a highly partisan congress.  Each side was out for it’s own selfish motives, righteousness and truly unconcerned about the burdens and extent of PPACA.

Yes, it is time to retrieve our responsibilities as physicians to govern. Most of us were intensively trained in decision making.  As regulations increase bureaucracy increases exponentially, with increasing cost, complexity, and diminished accountability.

Numerous new forms of physicians practice have appeared, concierge practices, direct practices, and cash retainer practices.  All do away with the physician being responsible for processing insurance claims. 

The present situation evolved shortly after Medicare developed mandatory assignment with direct payment to the provider. Then it progressively became worse, fueling medical inflation.  Following the curve I expect the same will occur with Obama care….Although I want health care for all and affordability.  Obama care is wrong for our patients.

 

del.icio.us Tags: governance,rob lamberts md,onchit,rhio,arra,hitech,emr,health reform law,ppaca,aco,obamacare,scotus

Mitchell Poll Reveals that Boomers will Purchase Health Care Apps

 

How important is social media to mobile health apps?  Very, according to Mitchell Research, a national polling company based in East Lansing, Michigan. Susie Mitchell is founder of MitchellPR a consulting firm focused on helping technology deliver mobile health and wellness apps to Baby Boomers.  A 30 year journalist and public relations veteran, she has a keen understanding of the 78 million person cohort. She is president of the nationally recognized marketing research, public relations and public affairs firm Mitchell Research & Communications, Inc. writes the BoomerTech blog and a weekly blog for AARP called App of the Week.  She is co-author of the book, Growing into Grace: Adventures in Self Discovery through Writing, which assists women in finding peace with their lives as they age.

There is a lot more to purchasing a mobile health app.  Providers need to be involved, and training sessions increase the likelihood they will be used as designed. 

And price point for the app is important.  About 36% would spend $1 or $2 on a medical app and 30% would spend $3 to $10.  This is good news, for app developers, insurance providers and doctors.

A common conversation amongst Boomers is that we all want to live longer and we all want more active lives.  Ask almost any Boomer what he or she thinks about getting older and you’ll hear the proclamation, “I’m not giving into aging.”

And we often say we will go to great lengths to keep the tentacles of Father Time at bay.

Now a new study shows that a majority of Baby Boomers (those born between 1946-64) who own smart phones are willing to put their money where their mouths are and purchase health apps that help monitor and combat chronic diseases.

The takeaway

Boomers want to help manage their chronic disease care, they are willing to pay for the mobile apps to help them―but they need assistance in learning how to use the apps.  There’s an opportunity for health care providers to develop 12-step type app/disease management programs to help get this medical giant under control.

What is troubling, however, is the resistance of older Boomers to be digitally connected.  The group that needs help the most is missing out on terrific apps to help them manage chronic disease. 

Lessons learned

·Just because chronic disease apps exist doesn’t mean they are used.
·Just because someone downloads a chronic disease app doesn’t mean he or she will use it.
·There needs to be a human liaison between the app and the Boomer user.
·Once the group gets comfortable together, they are willing to share their ideas and outcomes, which will make adherence to the app more likely.
·And, once they get used to it they are very likely to share their app with friends, increasing the number of users!

Searching for support groups:  Facebook groups, Twitter lists, Google Circles are a good place to find others who are familiar with health apps. Search YouTube, there are many professional and amateur training videos available.

Doctors need to step it up and encourage Boomer patients to download and use the health care apps.  If they don’t already own a tablet, trends show they will be purchasing one soon.

In my next post we are going to discuss the ideal platform…smartphone vs. tablet and operating system, iOS vs. Android.

                 

 

del.icio.us Tags: mhealth,mobile apps,mitchell pr,boomer tech,facebook pages,google circles,baby boomers,millenial,chronic disease

The Real Low Down on Social Media, Is it B.S.?

 

Stolen from The Gilmorr Gang

 

Well, despite my commitment and interest (prurient, perhaps) I am beginning to sense a high ‘smell factor’.

Does this apply to #hcsm as much as other venues?  I think not. Most of our content is real and applies to very interesting and important content. I mean there are some interesting pundits pundit ting constantly about reform, deficits, HIT, Medicare, ACOs, PPACA……in addition to SOPA…

Is it my civil right to Google, tweet or Facebook?  Ask my spouse….no rights without responsibility.

Please do comment here, or on G+Gary Levin or +Digital Health Space ,  Facebook me, or even G-d forbid a quick ‘tweet @glevin1 .

Waste in the American Health Care System?

 

 

According to the influential Institute of Medicine, (AP) — The U.S. health care system squanders $750 billion a year — roughly 30 cents of every medical dollar — through unneeded care, byzantine paperwork, fraud and other waste, the influential Institute of Medicine said Thursday in a report that ties directly into the presidential campaign. (As printed on the BenefitsPro website today) in an article posted by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar , in an article titled, “Waste Not, Heal Not.” 

The ‘nuclear option’ of $750 billion dollars does little to itemize and correctly identify needless spending. It lumps it all in one bucket, private medicine, institutional medicine, government medicine (military and/or Veterans Hospitals and outpatient (ambulatory) or in patient health care.

President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney are accusing each other of trying to slash Medicare and put seniors at risk. But the counter-intuitive finding from the report is that deep cuts are possible without rationing, and a leaner system may even produce better quality.

Here are some of the quotable from the article:

"Health care in America presents a fundamental paradox, ……

"The past 50 years have seen an explosion in biomedical knowledge, dramatic innovation in therapies and surgical procedures, and management of conditions that previously were fatal ...

"Yet, American health care is falling short on basic dimensions of quality, outcomes, costs and equity," the report concluded.

If banking worked like health care, ATM transactions would take days, the report said. If home building were like health care, carpenters, electricians and plumbers would work from different blueprints and hardly talk to each other. If shopping were like health care, prices would not be posted and could vary widely within the same store, depending on who was paying.

If airline travel were like health care, individual pilots would be free to design their own preflight safety checks — or not perform one at all.

IOM panel members urged a frank discussion with the public about the value Americans are getting for their health care dollars. As a model, they cited "Choosing Wisely," a campaign launched earlier this year by nine medical societies to challenge the widespread perception that more care is better.

Politicians inflame opinion and obscure the reduction of useless health care as ‘rationing of care’, when in reality inefficient and wasteful health spending creates shortages and unintentional rationing causing many to go uninsured.

More than 18 months in the making, the report identified six major areas of waste:

Unnecessary services ($210 billion annually);

Inefficient delivery of care ($130 billion);

Excess administrative costs ($190 billion);

Inflated prices ($105 billion);

Prevention failures ($55 billion),

Fraud ($75 billion).

Adjusting for some overlap among the categories, the panel settled on an estimate of $750 billion.

The present mindset is that our health system. or lack thereof is not and major reform is necessary, which brings us to step II.  Our usual cure for a problem (i.e., to make things more efficient and  less expensive are to throw money at the problems, which includes things such as incentive payments to MDs for acquiring electronic health records, the HITECH Act which provides resources for training health IT personnel, the enormous expense of designing, planning and implementing Accountable Care Organizations, the inefficiencies of disruptive technology and disruptive reorganization. 

If one want to create more chaos and dysfunction, then do exactly what is happening now. 

Examples of wasteful care include most repeat colonoscopies within 10 years of a first such test, early imaging for most back pain, and brain scans for patients who fainted but didn't have seizures.

The problem with preventive recommendations and/or recommended testing and treatment protocols is that they are often wrong, are used for many years, and then rescinded, creating confusion and loss of trust by patients.

The expected outcomes are far from being accomplished by PPACA.  It remains to be seen if it will be affirmed by the next congress.

 

del.icio.us Tags: hitech,aco,ppaca,incentive payment,iom,institute of medicine

Health Insurance–Motivated Disability Enrollment and the ACA

 

Jae Kennedy, Ph.D., and Elizabeth Blodgett, M.H.P.A.  September 5, 2012 (10.1056/NEJMp1208212)

The United States relies on employer-based health insurance to cover working-age adults and their families. As a result, Americans who are unable to engage in full-time work because of a chronic health condition must not only seek out wage replacement but also pursue alternative sources of health insurance.

We believe that HIMDE is an important driver of the unsustainable growth in enrollment in public assistance programs for people with disabilities. The Social Security Administration currently has programs — such as the Ticket to Work and Medicaid Buy-In programs — that address this problem by preserving health insurance benefits for disability-program enrollees who return to work. These programs cannot address the system wide cost and structural factors contributing to HIMDE, but certain reforms included in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) do address such factors — meaning that stabilization of federal disability programs through a reduction in HIMDE is an unacknowledged but important benefit of the ACA.

Although Medicare and Medicaid funds are not as immediately vulnerable as SSDI, and the cost of these programs is a perennial concern. Unsustainable enrollment growth in disability programs contributes to this cost because Medicare and Medicaid coverage are closely linked to receipt of SSDI and SSI: SSDI beneficiaries receive Medicare 24 months after their financial benefits start, and most new SSI beneficiaries are simultaneously deemed eligible for Medicaid coverage.

In addition to making the private insurance market more accessible, the ACA will also change the public insurance landscape for disabled workers. The law originally required all 50 states to provide Medicaid coverage for persons with incomes below 138% of the federal poverty level, but the Supreme Court has ruled that such an expansion is not mandatory.4 The effect of Medicaid expansion on HIMDE will therefore vary by state. States that currently have very low income-eligibility thresholds or do not cover childless adults will dramatically increase the number of adults eligible for Medicaid if they opt to expand their programs. Adults with potentially work-limiting disabilities residing in these states will be able to obtain Medicaid without first obtaining SSI through disability eligibility.

The current process of directing applicants to SSI and/or Medicaid for benefits creates added bureaucracy and eligibility also requires asset determination as well as prior income from Medicare employment contribution.

The system is ‘rigged’ against those who never or could not gain enough credits to be eligible for SSDI.

A Simple and Inexpensive Message

 

This inspirational quote says it all. No need for multi-million dollar studies by institutes, government agencies, nor non-profit agencies.

 

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Health Insurers are Feeling the Pressure of Looming PPACA

 

In a series of announcements it becomes apparent that things are not well in the health insurance industry.

Shareholders of WellPoint (Blue Shield in California) are griping about a reduction of their dividend by lowering its 2012 adjusted earnings forecast to a range $7.30 to $7.40 a share, down from $7.57 a share (yes, that’s correct….approximately 15 cents/share. Times must be even tougher for them than the uninsured, and unemployed.

Further investigation

Shares of the nation's second-largest health insurer fell 12% in midday trading, and the disappointing results dragged down shares in other insurance companies.

In contrast, rival UnitedHealth Group Inc. raised its full-year profit estimate when it reported second-quarter results last week.

WellPoint said second-quarter profit decreased by 8%, which also fell short of Wall Street expectations.

The company reported earnings of $643.6 million, or $1.94 a share, compared with $701.6 million, or $1.89 a share, in the same period a year ago. More shares were outstanding in last year's second quarter.

Enrollment during the quarter ending June 30 dropped 2% to 33.5 million members as WellPoint cited heightened competition in certain markets.

The company said it expects medical costs to rise by about  7.5% for 2012, a slight increase over its previous forecast. Overall, revenue in the quarter ended June 30 rose nearly 2% to $15.4 billion.

Angela Braly, WellPoint's chief executive, said, "We are disappointed with the need to lower our guidance but believe it is the right action to take given the challenging market we see."

Later in the day Angela Braly was sacked by the Board of Directors

Angela Braly, the chief executive of WellPoint Inc., resigned late Tuesday after intense pressure from shareholders who have been unhappy with the company’s performance.

WellPoint announced that John Cannon, its general counsel, would temporarily fill the CEO role until a replacement is chosen. Cannon is not seeking the role permanently.

WellPoint, one of nation's biggest insurance companies, is the parent of Woodland Hills-based Anthem Blue Cross.

“Now is the right time for a leadership change,” Jackie M. Ward, the company’s lead director, said in a statement. “We believe the remaining executive team is dynamic and strong, with great potential to drive WellPoint’s future success.”

Shareholders have been vocal in their dissatisfaction with the performance of the company under Braly. They have decried the company's lagging stock, managerial missteps and disappointing earnings.

Still, the timing of Braly’s resignation is a bit unusual in that WellPoint agreed last month to purchase Medicare provider Amerigroup Corp. for $4.9 billion. It is uncommon for companies undergoing a significant acquisition to change leadership so soon after the announcement of a deal.

The investor unrest follows years of consumer fury that beset WellPoint as it repeatedly raised premiums on many families and small businesses by 10% or more. The nation's second-largest health insurer runs Blue Cross plans in California and 13 other states and has more than 33 million customers nationwide.

A New York hedge fund, Royal Capital Management, sent a letter to WellPoint's board last week saying that Braly has "failed miserably" as CEO and that "it is incumbent upon the board of directors to fulfill its fiduciary responsibility to shareholders by changing leadership." Royal Capital, which held about 838,000 shares of WellPoint as of June 30, declined to comment further Monday.

It’s not encouraging to know that Wellpoint’s patients’ welfare is in the hands of hedge fund experts, who are not exactly known for their pristine ethics or morals.

Let’s hope that the  free market enterprise system can self correct to overcome the foolishness of Obamacare.

 

Technorati Tags: Wellpoint,Blue Shield,hedge fund,obamacare,Angela Braly,United Health Group,PPACA,Amerigroup,Medicare

Online Physician Ratings: Know What's Being Said About You By Simon Sikorski, MD | August 13, 2012

 

This?                                            or  This?

                     

Last week, 50 doctors in New York gathered for a meeting to discuss one of the biggest controversial topics affecting their association: Each doctors' online reputation. Most of the attending physicians have embraced patient reviews into daily activities while others have not. How serious has the issue of online reputation become?

Like it or not, physicians are being drawn into social media.  One of your group associates may be online in other settings which might influence your own reputation.

It behooves you to ‘Google” yourself and read what is on the internet, and if necessary do whatever is necessary to edit the content.   Not having a Google identity can also have a negative connotation as much as ‘negative review’.  Ignore social media and Google at your own risk.

In less than one year, patients’ online behavior of how they look for doctors has changed by 65 percent. Eighty percent of new patient volume will screen their doctors on Google. In 2011, physician ratings sites accounted for only two percent of that behavior. Now it’s 60 percent, according to comparison of our 12 case studies vs. 120 online marketing campaigns in 2011. In early 2012, most of the digital health companies have started big advertising campaigns competing to list physicians and offer statistics about their practices.

Doctors are becoming very concerned about how their colleagues’ online reputations impact the profitability of their organizations. In one case study for an ambulatory surgery center, we showed that improving the reputation for six of 15 doctors brought in 33 new out-of-network cases in less than four weeks. Why was this so significant? Because previously the same ASC had to spend about $8,000 in advertising just to get five out-of-network patients.

Physician Reputations and Review Websites: Who Owns Your Name?

There are no longer any doubts that patients Google their doctors. In the case of patients seeking fee-for-service options, the behavior of turning to “Dr. Google” occurs 100 percent of the time. What your patients find at that point is critical for your bottom line. The information below will help you understand why taking charge of physician online reputations has never been more important and why you should take action now.

The reason for taking action now is because there are now over 100 doctor review websites creating businesses structured around your name. Any doctor without a strong online presence by the end of 2011 is already affected. At this point, any doctor with a license already has a profile somewhere. This is especially true for group practices and hospital-employed doctors who almost never have any other public-facing profiles they own outside of what their employer publishes about them on the corporate website.

The impact of doctor review sites on a medical practice and hospitals. The implications for the hospital brand and their profitability were severe. In one example, a small ASC was outcompeting a local hospital purely on the fact that their doctors embraced patient reviews and the hospital was still afraid of even featuring the doctors on its own website.

Here are some of the most disturbing findings about what physician rating sites publish and why you should do something about it now:

1. Outdated reviews, some from four to five years ago

2. Outdated addresses and phone numbers. Why is that significant? When that phone number rings at your old practice, that’s where you’re losing your patients to. Again, for group practices and hospital-employed doctors, this is even more significant because some hospitals are monetizing on this while the actual place where they do work, is failing. Yes, that's right. When patients call a physician's old phone number the receptionist schedules those patients to see their doctors.

3. Old patient satisfaction scores marked as percentages. Most of the surveys were filled out years ago by one to four people. The two most important questions for you are: How many patients do you see during the year? Are between one and four reviews representative of that number?

4. Physician rating websites advertise on Google for your name. This is perhaps the most unethical practice. Here’s the hidden business structure:
• The company publishes advertisements for your name
• Public clicks on the advertisements to go to a website where either bad reviews are posted about you, or an empty profile exists
• Next to your name are doctors that purchased an advertisement on that website and are displayed front-and-center
• In effect, your name is directing your possible patients to other doctors
•Those listings offer patients ability to call for an appointment or schedule one via their platforms

So in addition to paying for a subscription, physicians advertising on these sites are paying for new patient leads. Furthermore, the company has to be “fair” to all subscribers so it will advertise for different doctors at different times so that patient volumes can be distributed more evenly or more patient leads can be given to subscribers who pay premium fees.

For doctors in New York state, the problem is even more significant. The New York Department of Health forbids doctors to publish patient testimonials, while these businesses can. When I spoke to our legal counsel, I found out that the regulation is so broad in its meaning that it prohibits the doctors to use patient reviews in any format. There is no such regulation for the ratings websites.

“Dr. Google” has become the most feared background check available to anyone with access to the Internet. Mobile phones made that access possible to virtually everyone. In effect, Google has become a reference check that establishes a level of trust for an appointment to be scheduled. What patients find is completely up to you. I hope this short expose proves of value for doctors still thinking whether they should invest in their online reputations.

 

Simon Sikorski, MD is the CEO of Healthcare Marketing Center of Excellence. He is a regular speaker at physician conferences about reputation management, brand advertising, and ROI from internet strategies and social media. E-mail him here.

 

Technorati Tags: google search,doctor rating sites,reputation management,social media,sikorski MD,angies list,healthgrades

Breaking News on the Social Media Frontier

 

                            

The Second Generation of Social Media advances on health care. We are just at the frontier of social media engagement in healthcare.

I am one who sees things out of the box. I rebel at walls, at being defined by others and observe a wave of rapid advancement triggered by the infinite number of interactions between physicians and physicians and patients and patients and patients. (read that one slowly).  Rather than being bridled by old rules in a new medium, unless we adapt and change we will be swept away by new media just as newspapers and print book now play a much less dominant role in publishing.

It becomes apparent how mobile health is revolutionizing health care in countries that have a much greater shortage of physicians and larger population health challenges. In those countries there is no ‘box’ to restrict innovation and growth. It will be necessary for us to break down barriers and ‘rule’ set forth by government which decrease efficiency and increase costs.

Events in social media evolve at a quickening pace.  At a time when healthcare has accepted social media, social media evolves further.

Not so  subtle changes are being announced by the creative genius of what I would call “socialite media experts.  Simplicity of design, intimacy of intercourse, and        .

New domains, such a Medium, Branch, Beyond, Lift, all the progeny of Obvious (the original owners of Twitter).

Lift has a blog describing it’s goals .

Obvious describes itself in this manner, “The Obvious Corporation is more of a philosophy than a company or product. We focus our long term view on ideas and technology that can be generally described as “world positive.” When opportunities resonate with our worldview, we do what makes sense to help them succeed. So far, a small portfolio of companies across a variety of disciplines and a vision for how publishing could be improved have grabbed our attention.”

Medium presents a forum for stories, as  “collections” , which are defined by a theme and a template, as well as photographs.

Meanwhile  check out these:

Been There. Loved That 

Look What I Made

The Writer’s Room

 

All of these sites have popped up in the past several months. All are currently in beta and being rolled out by invitation .

As Steve Jobs said,

“Stay hungry, Stay Foolish”  (Stanford University 2005, commencement address)  His statement was not original since it originally appears on the back page of THE WHOLE EARTH CATALOG 1974

                                      

Is Social Media the current  iteration of “The Whole Earth Catalog?”  Is Social media a form of counter-culture revolution in the same manner as the catalog was at that time?

 

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