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.

Sectra User Meeting

We just returned from the IT and medical technology company, Sectra, User Meeting in Denver, CO. Luckily, we were treated to superb weather and escaped just in time avoid the city’s mid-May snowstorm. My colleague and I were there to help present CloudFlex, the integrated reporting and imaging system for telemammography.  You can learn more about this groundbreaking reporting and imaging solution in the cloud by reading Cat Vasko’s article in the March issue of ImagingBiz.

What a top-notch event! Held at the eclectic Curtis Hotel, the 3-day event was well-orchestrated with informative and educational sessions, excellent food, and entertaining activities.

Upon arrival, we knew we were in for a unique stay with the mid-century decor of this downtown hotel. Sporting orange retro lamps, an entire wall graced with giant Barbie doll heads, and Pharrell’s hip song “Happy” cued by motion sensors, this place makes it nearly impossible NOT to be happy during your stay. Check out my slideshow  to see for yourself. The common areas are cheerful, and the large outdoor patio and bar, complete with massive fireplace, was a great gathering spot. My room was on the Chick Flicks floor, where Charlie's Angels and Thelma and Louise rule. Other floors with “personality” include One Hit Wonders, Pedal to the Metal and Sci-Fi. My bed was about as close to a fluffy cloud as you can get, and even with the Elvis wake-up call, I didn’t want to move from it.

On to business. Sectra's tag line "Knowledge and Passion" was the focal point of Icelander Sverrir Ragnarsson’s motivational “Go for the Gold” meeting opener. His inspiring message and clever delivery kept us engaged and amused while reminding us that passion should be our beacon in our professional and personal lives.

Dr. Torbjörn Kronander, MSEE, Ph.D., MBA, president and founder of Sectra Imtec AB, set an optimistic tone when he addressed the audience with “What’s New at Sectra.” Clearly, an extremely bright and accomplished man, his humility was rather touching in this culture of self-promotion and vainglory. “I do one thing very well,” he stated. “I am a good recruiter.”

Along with Dr. Kronander, Sectra executives Mikael Anden and Marie Ekstrom stressed the company's priorities in order of importance: customers, employees, and shareholders. By aligning company strategy this way, success is inevitable, they testified. As the 2013 first in KLAS award demonstrates, the initiative to keep customers happy is not just a pledge but a principle embedded in operations.

Mats Bjornemo gave us insight into the company’s plans for product development. The roadmap is impressive and forward-looking. Sectra’s recent release of DoseTrack, which earned AuntMinnie’s award for best new radiology software at December’s Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting, is one example of its allegiance to innovation.  Shawn McKenzie, CEO and founder of Ascendian Healthcare Consulting gave a compelling talk on why imaging centers should implement dose monitoring programs now and not wait for legislation to take action. He’s slated to speak at the Association for Medical Imaging Management’s (AHRA) Annual Meeting in August in Washington D.C. I recommend attending his session.

The evening field trip to Red Rocks amphitheater was a notable highlight. Our tour included a behind the scenes look back stage and, of course, the breathtaking -- literally for those of us living at sea level -- outdoor theater.  Some fitness freaks were scaling the seat rows 2 levels at a time, and while I was envious, I plan to save my next visit for sitting, not jumping, on those benches by seeing one of the many summer outdoor concerts -- likely be an unforgettable experience.

Radiology Referral Marketing in the Age of Reform

Given today’s changing healthcare environment, imaging centers must be more aggressive than ever in maintaining their current referral base, while at the same time growing the current referral base.  In other words, effective customer relationship management (CRM) never has been more important.

Many may know that they have a powerful marketing tool at hand in the vast quantities of data available to them in their HIS, RIS, or billing systems.  But having the data is only half the equation. The trick is to take that data, manipulate it and employ metrics to interpret what’s really there.  Using data and analytics as business intelligence, imaging centers can target marketing priorities with laser precision and act intelligently on referral trends.