The key to patient-centered care - a concept that continues to evolve - is the relationship between physician and patient. Finding the balance between patient engagement and information technology, however, can be challenging.

IT has benefited healthcare practices in many ways. For example, it allows patients to service themselves when it comes to transactional exchanges, such as scheduling appointments and reviewing bills.

There are fears, however, that IT can also create distance between the practitioner and patient, reducing face-to-face contact. Here are three tips to ensure that doesn’t happen:

1. Accept that patient-centered IT initiatives help the physician. Small practices need to adopt the same features as their competitors, including large practices as well as low-cost primary care providers such as CVS and Walgreens.

2. Determine your needs. Patient-centered IT practices vary. Some practices use patient portals to optimize patient input. Others use email, text, video and mobile apps to create an impact across a broader spectrum of their patients' health. You’ll need to find what works best for your patient. Younger patients, for example, might prefer text messaging; older patients might prefer email.

3. Reconsider your reimbursement model. IT advancements have patients emailing, text messaging and video conferencing their doctors without payment. That puts pressure on the physician to do more for less. This is a problem with your business model, not your IT. You can't offer services that eradicate half of your service visits or you'll bankrupt your practice.

For details, please see “Five Keys to IT and the Physician-Patient Relationship.”

In order for your IT department to be successful, you need a strategic plan that will both optimize your workflow and help to define your practice’s needs. The well thought out and executed plan will exhibit a focus on the experiences of your staff and patients. Here are five considerations that can help you develop your strategic IT plan.

1. Improve the patient experience. Many healthcare practitioners consider the patient experience a major challenge, yet don’t give much thought to how IT can improve it. Consider what you can do electronically to support patients, whether they're in your facility or not. Electronic forms? Email and text message reminders and confirmations? Kiosks?
2. Consider best practices. Technology can help you get to know your patients better. The Web, for example, can be used as a first point of engagement. Ask a few questions of visitors, then tailor your responses to their needs. A patient interested in a first consultation would receive different information than one preparing for his or her first round of cancer treatment.
3. Don’t forget the staff! Your staff needs successful workflows to interact effectively with patients. Common errors are multiple devices and different logins. Keep in mind how clinicians work to develop efficiencies. Your staff needs to be able to provide clinical care without being tied to a PC.
4. Use social media. Social media often isn’t included in IT planning, as it’s usually more of a marketing consideration. Without thinking about how it will be used, it will become difficult for patients and staff to have a singular experience. Your IT department needs to work with other departments to develop a social media plan that will yield a consistent presentation to the end user.
5. Use integrative planning. Typically, IT does its strategic planning in isolation. Ideally though, IT would plan with other departments. This “integrative planning” allows for a consistent plan supported by all parts of the practice.

Do you need to save money on your IT costs? If so, here are five things you can discuss with your IT provider: be practical, be creative, invest in training, consider enterprise-directed IT, and consider long-term costs and benefits. Below we discuss each in more detail.

1. Be practical. Extend the life of existing systems to help you get the most out of their value.

2. Be creative. Think outside the box. You might allow doctors and nurses to use their own smart phones and tablets on the job, foster development of your own apps, and leverage inexpensive cloud services, such as Google Apps.

3. Invest in training. It's easy to underestimate the cost savings associated with training—and the easier a system is to use, the less training you'll need to provide.

4. Consider enterprise-directed IT. Much of the technology that's interesting and cost effective right now isn't consumer directed – it's enterprise directed.

5. Consider long-term costs and benefits. With new technologies popping up left and right, choosing the right ones is critical. Those that protect against data breaches, for example, may be the most important given that a recent ID Experts and Ponemon Institute report found data breaches in U.S. healthcare organizations have cost providers more than $6 billion a year.
   

   Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

Data breaches and patient privacy rights were some of the most popular health-care IT topics in 2011, and that's unlikely to change in 2012. Below we review some related topics to help ensure that you stay clear of potential hurdles in the coming year.

Medical identity theft resulting from data breaches are causing patients much distress, emotionally and financially—and this often results in patients switching providers. That can hurt health care providers financially, since the average lifetime value of one patient is more than $113,000, according to a study by Ponemon.

Additionally, security and privacy breaches can lead to class-action lawsuits, which will increase in 2012, according to Kirk Nahra, a partner at the law firm Wiley Rein LLP. This was certainly the case in 2011, and shouldn't change in 2012. The result will inevitably be increased costs for affected health care providers.

That will likely lead to two major changes in the industry. First, security and privacy training will become paramount. Although many health care providers already have related procedures in place, in many cases their staff members ignore them. Since most breaches are caused by human error, training will likely become more common.

Additionally, health care providers will likely utilize cyber liability insurance. Cyber Data Risk Managers has said this will be particularly true as health care providers continue to implement their electronic medical records (EMRs), as breaches can be both costly and damaging to the organization’s reputation, as noted above.

An electronic medical record (EMR) implementation isn't just about replacing paper charts with digital technology. EMRs also provide a perfect opportunity to review and improve your workflows. The result can be increased efficiencies—which means decreased costs.

Your medical practice has probably been doing things the same way for a long time. Maybe you think you do things well, and most likely you actually do. Most practices, however, have not recently reviewed and optimized processes to the extent possible. Few have standardized procedures in writing, for example.

Implementing an EMR won't automatically make these improvements. In fact, most people think EMRs solve problems, but they actually amplify problems that already exist in a practice.

Because of this, adopting an EMR presents a good opportunity for you to make your practice more efficient by reviewing processes and optimizing your own workflows. In fact, you may find that with little effort you are able to identify new efficiencies that could save time and money.

Be patient, however. The adoption of technology is an iterative process. In other words, while EMRs are full of functions that will bring efficiency to your practice if implemented correctly, this won't happen overnight. Give it some time. Typically, health care groups are in the learning and adoption phase of their transition for several months. You should see results after that.

Electronic medical record (EMR) implementations aren't always simple—especially for small physician groups, which may lack dedicated information technology resources. However, following a few best practices regarding your constituents can help ensure that the process proceeds smoothly. Here are three.

Personalize for physicians. No two physicians are exactly like, so no two physicians should have to do things the same way. And that applies to functions both large and small. People approach even the simplest of technologies, such as email and word processing, differently. A good EMR will provide several ways to accomplish the same task, so be sure you offer physicians the option to choose which will best fit their practice styles.

Include nurses. With that said, an EMR isn't all about the physician. While physicians may be leaders and key decision-makers, they are not the exclusive users of an EMR. According to some reports, nurses account for almost 75 percent of chart use, and physicians just 25 percent. As a result, one of the greatest mistakes of EMR implementation is forgetting about nurses. When you create an EMR committee, be sure to have nursing representatives on it.

Round on users. Just as physicians and nurses "round" on patients at a hospital, you should round on everyone in the practice to gauge their comfort with the EMR. Thirty days and then again six months after you go live, visit each user to observe how he or she uses the EMR, take suggestions, and offer tips about how to best use the EMR within your workflows.

Electronic medical records (EMRs) are safer than their paper counterparts, according to a new survey of physicians—but a similar survey of patients didn't get the same response. They think paper is still safer, which means some education is in order.

The survey, which was conducted by GfK Roper on behalf of Practice Fusion, asked patients and medical professionals how they view EMR safety versus paper chart safety.

Fifty-four percent of physicians answered that EMRs are safer, with just 18 percent selecting paper as the safer option. Patient views, however, differed: Forty-seven percent of them said paper is safer, with 39 percent selecting EMRs as the safer option.

Also interesting is why physicians and patient responded the way they did when choosing paper records. Of physicians who believe paper is the safer option, 36 percent said paper is more secure because it is less likely to be hacked or lost. Of patients who believe paper is the safer option, 59 percent said paper records are more private than EMRs, allowing for more control over who sees them.

Interestingly, of the patients who said EMRs are safer, 77 percent said the greatest benefit of EMRs over paper records is being able to access records when needed.

What does it mean? The medical community is rejecting paper charts and embracing technology, says Practice Fusion—and that's easy to understand if you're a practicing physician who has any experience with an EMR. But it's also easy to understand patient concerns, which means more education about why EMRs are safer than paper charts is necessary.