Happy Birthday Radiology

RSNA 2014 Celebrates Sharing. . . and Keeping It to Yourself

RSNA 2014 was all about sharing—and not sharing!

This year marked the 100th annual meeting of the Radiology Society of North America (RSNA), and the society celebrated by creating an atmosphere of connection and kinship, while bringing history to life. Attendees shared in the spirit by diagnosing vintage x-ray images, witnessing a re-enactment of Wilhelm Roentgen's laboratory and checking out antique equipment.  A special memory book enabled meeting-goers to share memories of prior meetings.

From an IT standpoint, sharing figured prominently into this year’s event too, with the accent on cross-enterprise image and data communication to meet the growing mandates of healthcare reform.  At the same time, in the face of the myriad of financial challenges recent policy shifts present, one major element radiologists clearly did not want to share was their relationships with referring physicians.  Much of the talk on the RSNA floor was about ways to support referrers and revenues by enhancing service to clinicians.

At the event, vendors across the bustling halls focused on technologies that will help radiologists streamline interaction with referrers—making the life of both physician groups easier.  At the IDS booth, a major focus of excitement was the groundbreaking introduction of a platform supporting the twin goals of sharing . . . and not sharing.  New AbbaDox Exchange cross-enterprise image and data exchange platform supports automated radiology report distribution right to a referrer’s EHR.  With this efficiency and convenience, why would your referrer want to send patients anywhere else?

The new technology also supports the clinician’s ability to data share with any provider who has access to their patient records.  And, because it relies on Meaningful use (MU) Stage II compliant Direct Messaging, it brings referrers one big step closer to sharing in generous MU reimbursement. 

AbbaDox Exchange eliminates the complexity of HL7 data mapping, setup and maintenance as well as the time-consuming user input typical of other image sharing systems.  It blends seamlessly with existing workflow.

The subscribing facility’s images and radiology reports automatically and transparently flow to the AbbaDox cloud platform.  Based on information in the report, they then are forwarded to the referring physician’s Direct email address, along with a link to the related diagnostic quality images. After viewing, the EHR-ready communication can be saved in the referrer’s EHR system or other patient file. The Direct standards specify a simple, consistent way to send authenticated, encrypted health information directly to trusted recipients over the Internet.  Image links that accompany reports will also help referrers meet certain Stage 2 MU requirements.

The new IDS offering clearly was one of an exciting group of groundbreaking RSNA introductions that will keep radiologists positioned to thrive amidst the challenges of the future. Along with a look back, the RSNA 2014 provided a fascinating, not-to-be-missed glimpse of  what the specialty will look like during the next 100 years.  IDS is proud to have been a part of that picture.

The Customer Comes First

Streamlining the Referral Process with a Physician Portal

It should go without saying—but is too often overlooked.  The easier you make the referral process, the more patients you are likely to have referred. After all, in this age of healthcare reform, almost every medical practice is challenged to make the most of its time, and the specialists who support referrer efficiencies often win big in patient recommendations.   And also remember that once patients enter your office, a satisfying patient experience will reflect positively on your gatekeepers, helping them with their own patient retention.

Today, a robust referring physician portal can help you streamline the patient referral and intake process, in addition to supporting timely results distribution for your completed exams.  The best portals automate workflow for your staff as well as for referrers, so that offering this extra service with a smile isn’t a drain on anyone’s time.

Here’s what to look for in a high-performance patient portal to help support the referral process:

• Online appointment requests. Enabling your referrers to send appointment requests before their patients leave the office helps ensure compliance with the next steps in care.  Naturally, every physician has a vested interest in following through with patients and helping to support a positive outcomes.  Immediate online exam ordering also helps lock in your new patient relationships to avoid any shopping around for alternate providers.
• Electronic exam ordering.  Online exam ordering is a convenience for both referring physicians and patients and also helps ensure patient follow through.  Look for a portal that provides easy access to common procedural codes.
• Insurance verification.  To ensure continuity of care, many physicians will want to take the extra steps to refer patients to a practice that accepts their insurance.  A good physician portal will offer referrers the opportunity to verify patient coverage before referring them to your practice, saving complications and time for all involved. 
• Patient educational material.  Providing referrers with a selection of downloadable and printable patient educational materials for common procedures will help your referrers explain upcoming exams and provide reassurance.  Materials may be intended to support physician/patient discussion during an appointment or for post-appointment education.  Handouts should be written simply and clearly, avoiding medical jargon and focusing on the benefits of the upcoming exam.
• Pre-exam instructions. Likewise, portals can provide pre-exam instructions, such as required fasting and special diets, medication avoidance and tips on comfortable dressing. Again provide these in a clearly written, simply laid out flyer.  Supplying these in advance helps streamline the procedure for all involved.
• Practice introduction.  Welcome to Our Practice . . . Make patients feel at home and committed to their choice of a specialist.  Providing referrers with a short, eye-catching flyer detailing your qualifications, hours and location also will help simplify the exam process and help ensure patients arrive in a timely fashion.  Be sure to direct them to your practice website for additional information.
• Web Chat.  A web chat feature is particularly convenient when referring practice staff is using your portal so that any questions can be answered expediently. 

Make sure to format all patient education material  as standard PDF  documents compatible with most office printers.  Test all files to ensure they seamlessly download, print and look great.

Keep in mind that all these offerings mean nothing if your referrer’s office staff is not familiar with your portal and how to use it.  Once your portal is up and running, have your marketing representative stop by and provide a brief demonstration—perhaps along with a basket of edible goodies.   Remember many people find new technology is exciting, medical personnel included.  So impress staff with your commitment to leveraging the best new high tech developments at every level, and make sure they are on your team.

The Customer Comes First

Catering to Your Referrers with Advanced Reporting and Speech Recognition

Welcome to the first installment in our series

Although it’s often just a single sheet of paper or digital document, the referring physician’s final report is among the most crucial factors affecting your referral stream and the profitability of your practice.  If your reports are not timely, precise, well-organized and geared towards your referrers’ preferences, then your entire medical business can suffer. Reports can make a major difference in the success or failure of your practice.

So not surprisingly, a robust reporting platform powered by advanced speech recognition is vitally important in the current competitive healthcare environment.  If you're not leveraging all of today's innovative tools, your competition may have an unfair advantage—and not just on paper.

 

All speech recognition and reporting solutions are not created equal.  Evaluate systems, and look for key features and functionalities.  The best systems will enhance your own practice’s workflow by providing the flexibility to support each physician’s reporting preferences through customized protocols, terminology unique to your specialty and practice, easy embedding of key images and more.  Faster workflow accelerates report generation and results communication to your referrers.  Through advanced templating, a good system will also support reports that are more precise, consistent and easy-to-understand.  That’s another major benefit for your referrers.

 

Most medical practices will benefit by minimizing the time and expenses of maintaining and upgrading a reporting platform.   A cloud solution like IDS Voice2Dox will shift this responsibility to your vendor and enable easy anywhere, anytime availability of transcribed reports.  Industry leading Voice2Dox also offers a host of important productivity-boosting features for any medical practice.  Many of these have extra value for physicians who work in multiple locations or provide virtual consultation or teleradiology services.   

Today, a state-of-the-art reporting platform should include:

·      Support for the medical speech recognition engine—or engines—of your choice.  Some practices prefer the flexibility of cloud-based technology, while others will choose an onsite solution.  The best engines will help your practice ensure overall accuracy and correct medical terminology.  Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2 is among the best solutions for local installation, while SpeechAnywhere is a high performance cloud-based recognition engine.  Voice2Dox supports both, and will offer compatibility with a full range of additional voice engines in the future.

·      A broad selection of easily customizable report templates specific to your practice area to enhance reporting efficiency.

·      Powerful and robust template management capabilities to ensure easy access to all templates throughout the practice or department.  This not only speeds workflow but provides all physicians with access to consistent reporting features—leading to standardized reports.

·      Roaming profiles that deliver the same familiar work environment in any location, whether office, hospital or home, and universal PACS worklist compatibility to assure appropriate prioritization of exam reading.

·      For teleradiologists—support for simultaneous communication with multiple PACS and other image viewing solutions on the same workstation.  This will enable use of a single familiar reporting and robust speech recognition platform with all client image viewing platforms for familiar, ultra-fast workflow.

·      Easy Crop and Paste addition of thumbnail images.  Often, a picture really is worth a thousand words for your referral base.

·      Automated reminders about exam specifics such as modality, types of studies, and imaging location to speed workflow.

·      Floating checklists of key report content based on modality and exam type.

·      Advanced editing functions such as drag and drop repositioning of phrases, and report availability on mobile devices for revisions on-the-fly.

·      Built-in Critical Findings workflow to ensure compliance, while allowing workflow to progress.

·      Physician portal for remote signing, editing and archiving. 

·      Automated routine sharing, including public, mentor-follower and explicit share.

·      Automated distribution to ensure reports reach their intended recipients quickly and efficiently.  Choose a system that caters to physician preference with delivery via email, fax, remote printing, referring physician portal and EMR interface.

·      Analytics to track productivity and eliminate bottlenecks in your workflow and radiology team.

·      Affordable transaction-based pricing.

Quite simply, if you depend on referrals, it’s smart to focus on your reporting and to cater to your referrers!  

The Customer Comes First

. . . Practicing Medicine with a Retailer’s Mindset – Part II

The rules of medicine have changed.  To remain successful, physicians must be concerned with not only quality-of-care but also the quality of the referrer and patient experience. Consider these strategies for leveraging technology to deliver an extra measure of customer service to your patients and referrers.

• Use state-of-the-art voice recognition and reporting systems to ensure that your patient report is timely and easy-to-read. Choose a system that caters to physician preference with delivery via email, fax, remote printing and EMR interface.  Also, look for one offering automated critical results communications.

• If your practice provides diagnostic testing, enable easy access to the full test results online, again possibly through a physician portal.

• Online exam ordering or scheduling is a major convenience for referrers  and immediately locks in your new  patient relationships—avoiding patient shopping for other providers.

• Take advantage of analytics technology to eliminate workflow bottlenecks, helping boost appointment time turnaround and avoid long office wait times as well as speeding referring physician reporting.

• Make all patient forms available digitally for completion before an appointment—either through email or a patient portal.

• Train your team to provide a pleasant patient interaction, from the first phone call to the time patients leave the office.

Also, while a physician contact management system delivers a real boost for referral marketing, you can also use it as a customer service tool. Automating periodic referrer and patient appreciation emails is essentially service with a smile, and a great way to keep your practice top of mind.

Join us next time for a detailed discussion on choosing a voice recognition and reporting platform to optimize interaction with your referring physicians. 

The Customer Comes First

. . . Practicing Medicine with a Retailer’s Mindset – Part I

The rules of medicine have changed.  To remain successful today, physicians must consider not only all-important quality-of-care but also the quality of the referrer and patient experience. For many, that’s a new mindset and an added challenge in an already difficult environment. Physicians have to learn to think like marketers and deliver added value and service. 

Drawing on our years of experience supporting not only the clinical but also the business aspects of medicine, IDS has seen many of these challenges up close and helped practices thrive in difficult business environments.

In our new blog series, The Customer Comes First, we draw on this background and offer insightful advice on how to rise above these challenges . . .  and the competition.  We invite you to return for our continuing series. Please enjoy…and prosper! 

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Let’s be frank – It’s a new world in medicine.  Patients are playing an ever-increasing role in their own healthcare decisions, including choosing the specialists who treat them.  While most have insurance, some are paying with cash and even shopping around for pricing. 

Additionally, the doctors you depend on for referrals are also increasingly demanding. They clearly understand the value of their recommendations and expect you to cater to their needs and preferences, from a rapidly returned phone call to timely patient reports in the style and format of their choice.  They also expect their patients to receive high quality service—not only clinically but on a personal level as well.  The patient experience you deliver reflects both on your practice and on referrers, who in turn want to keep their customers happy. 

Granted, you have years of training, advanced equipment, IT technology and carefully devised workflows that keep your practice functioning effectively and efficiently.  But in today’s competitive environment, physicians would be wise to take a cue from the from the retail industry. Customer service is king—or at least gives you a strong competitive edge.  Today, Have it Your Way is more than just a slogan.  It’s an integral part of business . . . so make sure you hold the pickles and add the onions if that’s what the customer wants.

Of course, while catering to referrers and patients, you can still practice medicine with conviction, passion and for profit.  But making smart choices is key.  Technology can go a long way to boost your customer experience, from initial exam scheduling right through referrer reporting. And it can even help you manage your marketing to both physicians and patients.

This blog continues tomorrow, when we’ll provide a sampling  of the tactics we’ll cover in depth going forward as this series continues.

Tales from the Trenches

Real Life Stories of the Triumphs and Tribulations of Healthcare IT in Practice

For Fast ROI, Think Speech Recognition

In today’s challenging healthcare environment, cost-cutting is a way of life.  New efficiencies enabled by healthcare IT can have a big impact on achieving this goal—but often return on investment (ROI) takes time.
 

However, one busy multi-site radiology practice found that adopting an advanced speech recognition solution was a strategy that enabled almost immediate cost savings.  Through a transition from live transcriptionists to integrated IDS Voice2Dox technology, Midstate Radiology Associates succeeded in implementing complete speech recognition-enabled reporting in just months.  The technology eliminated the sizable expense of 8-1/2 FTE transcriptionists, while realizing a host of other benefits for the Hartford, CT-area imaging group.

“IDS Voice2Dox, together with its AbbaDox clinical reporting workflow portal, far exceeded our expectations,” comments Richard Maskowsky, Radiology IS Manager for the practice, who was heavily involved in system implementation.  Initially, the practice had hoped to move to 50% automated, digital reporting within one year.  However, after just 30 days, it achieved 70% digital and 85% within four months.  The cost savings were important and immediate.  Few, if any other type of IT application, would be capable of altering workflow significantly enough to deliver such immediate ROI.  

A large and growing practice group, Midstate Radiology operates two independent imaging centers and reads studies onsite at MidState Medical Center (part of the Hartford HealthCare System in CT) as well as at four additional medical clinics.  The practice knew it needed to make a move from traditional transcription to a more modern system but had difficulty identifying a vendor that could could support its complex workflow and integrate seamlessly with its Sectra PACS.  Midstate also wanted a range of customizations and specialized report templates to enhance reporting efficiencies, quality and accuracy.  Additionally, it sought a cloud-based system to manage offsite maintenance and ongoing system upgrades.

Gary Dee, MD, the Midstate radiologist who spearheaded physician involvement, explains that the practice selected IDS Voice2Dox because it provided a full range of advanced features and turnkey management in the cloud.  IDS also offered a robust range of complementary technologies that made the company an excellent strategic business partner for future expansion.

Since up and running, IDS Voice2Dox and AbbaDox reporting solution have functioned flawlessly, and radiologists are extremely happy with the ease-of-use. The immediate adoption and streamlined information flow contributed significantly to Midstate’s ultra-fast, cost-cutting digital transition.

Voice2Dox launches with a single keystroke from within Midstate’s Sectra PACS.  After dictation, the intelligent routing system automatically routes certain complex studies to the practice’s transcriptionists, while others are automatically sent to voice recognition. 

Today, advanced technology is crucial to the success of any radiology practice.  Faster exam TAT enabled through an advanced speech recognition system means better patient care.  In addition to direct cost saving over medical transcriptionists, it also results in new efficiencies, which can boost the productivity and profitability of any practice.

Imaging IT Forecast: Sunny Skies with Clouds Ahead

However you feel about healthcare reform, one thing is certain—when it comes to IT, the forecast is clouds ahead. In today’s demanding environment, the benefits of cloud technology significantly outshine those of a traditional client/server systems for almost any hospital or physician practice, particularly in medical imaging. If you have not looked skyward, it’s high time you broadened your horizons.

What’s around the corner?  In today’s rapidly changing environment, a major benefit of cloud technology is that new and improved technologies are easily and cost-effectively available as needed to both large and small organizations.  To compete, successful cloud vendors must truly keep ahead of the technology curve by providing leading edge, feature- rich applications and other solutions.  That means users can leverage breaking technology without heavy investment in system upgrades, whether it’s the newest version of a HIS, RIS, PACS or billing software.  Hardware upgrades also are typically frequent to keep communication ultra-fast and your enterprise IT humming with efficiency.

Because many cloud systems are internet based or are optimized for access by multiple sites in multiple locations, they provide a simple, fast and cost-effective way to communicate with referring physicians, patients and to share health records and diagnostic images with other radiologists or clinicians for conferences and second opinions.  Supporting better, more efficient medicine, cloud technology minimizes retakes by easily enabling exams to follow patients who are transferred to other facilities or see various specialists. 

Remember, today the more things change, the more they often change again.  Therefore, as software upgrades become increasingly frequent, the squeeze on IT staff time can be considerable.  But, again cloud technology’s built-in maintenance provides an answer.  It  complements existing IT infrastructure without adding additional systems maintenance and administration of  upgrades, freeing up internal IT staff time.

Typically funded through ongoing monthly fees, cloud solutions shift IT costs from a capital expenditure to an operational budget.  They also often lower costs because users are buying into a solution from a specialized vendor to multiple sites, creating an economy of scale. 

What’s the down side to a move up to the sky?  Some sites prefer the philosophy of onsite IT ownership.  But vendors are often flexible and you may be able to get started with a flexible short term agreement.  There’s nothing to buy or install.  Try it—you just may like it.  After all, it’s the cloud, and nothing is written in stone.