Healthcare Web Portal - The future of healthcare delivery?

Our company Medical Web Experts has worked in the patient portal and healthcare web portal industry for many years now and we've seen a steep increase in interest from healthcare organizations seeking a portal solution. Why the increase? The increase is being driven mostly by the government incentives for EMR and patient portal adoption that the Obama administration implemented. We're also seeing an increase in demand by the consumer and healthcare organizations are following the lead of many successful companies that have implemented healthcare web portals, such as Kaiser Permanente and Cleveland Clinic.

Our Healthcare Web Portal is a leading enterprise solution for larger healthcare organizations as it effectively integrates with multiple medical record data sources simultaneously.

We recently published a press release announcing a new portal project. You can read more here: http://www.prweb.com/releases/healthcare-web-portal/hospital-patient-portal/prweb9050028.htm

Practice Fusion Debuts iPad Apps for EMR Software

Practice Fusion, one of the largest EMR software companies in the United States, revealed their new iPad medical apps prototype at their annual conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. This new technological innovation will allow doctors to quickly and securely access a patients EMR (electronic medical record) from their iPad at anytime.

“Prioritizing usability, doctors can see their day’s appointments and instantly dive into each patient’s chief complaint, allergies, problems, medications, family history, hospitalizations, and more,” reported Josh Constine, a columnist from TechCrunch, about the new EMR software application. “Doctors can record patient dictations of their symptoms, and combine their own assessment and treatment plan with pre-defined treatment plans for common ailments to minimize typing. They can also view lists of tasks, and receive push notifications of updates from their office.”

Practice Fusion is one of the most rapidly growing EMR software companies, boasting an impressive 25 million patients in their medical records systems from over 130,000 doctors. Company CEO Ryan Howard says that the key to their success is that their EMR software is free for doctors to use and they raise money through paid advertisements from pharmaceutical companies, labs, etc.

“When we started Practice Fusion, the market was cluttered with EHR options that were expensive and took a long time to implement,” said Howard. “By offering a fast and free solution, Practice Fusion has gained a major advantage in the market....We are focused on bringing the best free technology to every doctor and nurse.”

Howard says that their new iPad medical apps is currently under construction and expects to be released sometime in 2012.

Four Ways to Generate Referrals for Your Law Firm

Aside from marketing and attorney website design, referrals are one of the most important ways a lawyer can increase their client base. Law firms of all sizes generate a larger percentage of their business from referrals than most other types of companies, so if you work in law it’s important to motivate your clients to spread the word about your services.

1. Establish yourself as an expert. By publishing relevant and important information on your website and sending newsletters to your faithful clients, you’ll ensure that they think of you as someone they can trust for legal information. They can easily send a friend your newsletter or a link to your website for helpful information.
2. Publish the right kind of content. Many of your clients will be confused about their legal situation. By posting content in an easily readable format, you’ll hold their attention longer and perhaps answer some of their key questions. Consider writing “how-to” guides or articles that answer common questions that your clients have. An internet marketing firm specializing in legal website design can assist your practice with writing and distributing good content, including publishing a newsletter.
3. Stay in contact with your referral sources. Especially if they’re current clients, stay in touch with them as much as you can (within reason, of course!). Be sure that your customers are satisfied and they’ll spread the word about you.
4. Offer your services. Especially if you work in immigration law or another field of law that involves extended families, letting your clients know that you’re available to help their families and friends as well can go a long way toward generating referrals for your practice. Consider offering a small discount to their family members – you’ll start the relationship off on the right foot and potentially establish yourself as the go-to attorney for a whole community.

For more information on generating referrals and planning a legal marketing campaign, consider attending the American Bar Association’s R3 conference. The conference will be held November 8-9, 2011 in Philadelphia and aims to help attorneys maximize their ROI through modern marketing and smart planning.

Best EMR: Which is it?

What is the best EMR in the electronic medical record software industry? This is a question I get asked a lot in my day to day consulting with physicians. The reality is that its not all that complicated of an answer. Of the hundreds of vendors that are in the industry, very few can actually compete in the top 10 given the incredible amount of R&D that is required in order to develop and maintain an EMR. This is even more difficult to do since the creation of governing bodies such as CCHIT, that have significant certification costs.

So what is the best EMR software in the industry?

I tell most of my small to medium sized practices to look at eClinicalworks or PrognoCIS. I know both companies very well after years of coaching physicians through the EMR selection process. Of the pool of 10-15 different products that these physicians would often view, these two products came out on top the most. Of course there are many other good products on the market such as Greenway, E-MDs and Practice Fusion - I have the most confidence in eClinicalworks and PrognoCIS.

You can read EMR Software Reviews on my website Health Technology Review.

Electronic Medical Record Doc Directory Shows Who’s Putting Healthcare Online

The Internet has transformed communication worldwide, and these changes have affected how we do business as well as manage tasks in our daily lives. People use the Internet to work, do banking, pay bills, make phone calls and watch movies or TV – so it’s no wonder that they’re interested in making their daily routines even more convenient by bringing even more tasks online.

But while even the public library has gone online, one field has been surprisingly resistant to adopting internet technology: healthcare. The vast majority of physicians, hospitals and healthcare professionals are still using paper charts, paper medical records, a classic paper filing system and outdated methods of billing. Electronic medical record technology offers a way to take records and billing online and allows healthcare offices to send patient information instantly, which greatly improves patient care. Some offices have even implemented patient login portals on their websites, which allow patients to request appointments and prescription refills or even chat live with their doctors online.

So if the technology exists, why haven’t more doctors implemented the new system? Many cite the inconvenience of learning a new system or the cost of implementing electronic medical records. Patients, however, are demanding that healthcare mold to new technologies and be as accessible as their bank accounts over the internet. Electronic medical record software and consulting company EMRapproved recognizes this and has created their Tech Savvy Doc Directory – an online listing of doctors who use EMR technology in their practices. It allows patients to search by specialty and location to find a physician near them who incorporates EMR and other medical technology. Patients who are demanding more are starting to see solutions, and hopefully more physicians will adopt EMR as they realize how important it is.

You can learn more about EMR at my website www.healthtechnologyreview.com by reading the FREE eBook on Electronic Medical Records.

Source article about Electronic Medical Records

Older women seeking pregnancy more than ever

Robyn, our on-staff nurse and medical content writer wrote a particularly interesting post titled the Rise of Pregnancy in Older Women May Have Societal Impact. The post discusses the trends in women seeking to get pregnant much later in life as women are generally putting off having kids until later in life, for a variety of reasons. At the same rate Generation Y'ers are getting married later, so what will that mean for women seeking to get pregnant in 30 years from now?

Center for Human Reproduction, a client of ours is a infertility and ivf clinic that specializes in older women pregnancy. They published a press release today about Pregnancy in Older Women stating that the medical industry and society are completely unprepared for where this growing trend is taking us. "Medicine is not ready to manage pregnancy in older women safely and society is not ready to help them cope with older motherhood.", says Dr. Norbert Gleicher from the Center for Human Reproduction. This topic has become even hotter as of late since the New Yorker magazine published a lengthy story about it, with an elderly women in a nude "Demi Moore" pose featured on the cover.

Rx Medical Web formerly known as Empire Essentials Marketing and still following the leader...

Following up to an earlier post I made a few months back about a new web design company that entered into the medical industry and decided to flat out copy my company's website (www.medicalwebexperts.com) site structure, targeted keywords and even content. Well since then this company changed their name. Formerly known as Empire Essentials Marketing this new brainchild is now Rx Medical Web (www.rxmedicalweb.com). From what I can tell this isn't even their actual company name, maybe its a DBA, but in any case they're probably planning on changing it again at some point as it seems they don't really want to get creative and build a website with their own ideas.

(I'm still flattered by the way. Maybe even more flattered as our site must be so good that even though they know that we know that they copied our site they still can't help but keep on copying.)

Outside of general similarities and jumbled content, here's the most striking similarity:

Rx Medical Web Footer - 10/13/2011

Medical Web Experts Footer - 10/13/2011

Lets see how things pan out for this operation. Either way, its a long climb up Rx Medical Web!

Feature in Medical Executive Post

Check out my latest feature in Medical Executive Post. Medical Executive Post is a website dedicated to helping medical professionals with their businesses, with a special focus on business financials. I'll be writing articles for their site, discussing topics such as business finance, practice marketing and business tips for physicians. Special thanks to the team at Medical Executive Post.

John Deutsch featured on Medical Executive Post

Content is King! Medical Content Writing Services by Medical Web Experts

With the introduction of Google Panda, the game of Search Engine Optimization has changed forever. Content farm sites such as HubPages and Ezine saw traffic drops in excess of 50% overnight. What does this Google algorithm update mean for your website? It means you need to focus more on content than anything else. Content isn't just the new basis as to which pages are generally (there are still other factors such as incoming links) ranked by Google, but its also key for monetization of your website, whether that be advertising revenue or leads. People like interesting content, they read interesting content and take action on interesting content. Content on your most visited pages should be over 95% unique and there should be a unique article/page for every one of your most relevant keyword phrases.

Medical Web Experts now offers both basic and advanced medical content writing services.

Questions about content writing, Google Panda or Search Engine Optimization? Feel free to leave a comment on this post.

Doctor marketing blog for post-Obamacare era

Doctors have taken a big hit financially since the implementation of Obama's healthcare reform program. I've seen our smaller practices that we work with hit especially hard. These practices are generally also the most challenged when it comes to marketing, as they have little financial and staff resources to implement an effective marketing plan. This combination of slipping revenue and inability to stop the trend has serious consequences on patient care. Physician practices at the end of the day are businesses and therefore need to earn a profit in order for them to maintain and high level of service.

The blog we created gives physicians easy tips to help them market their practices better. You can read the Medical Marketing Blog here.

Website hacking is on the rise and what it means for your medical practice

Its a fact and its something that medical practices need to start paying closer attention to. Since the creation of HIPAA, there's been a lot of bark and no bite, and while the principles of HIPAA are good, its an extremely complicated law and is difficult to effectively implement in a medical practice. However, outside of HIPAA there are some serious threats that medical practices are exposed to when they engage in online activity.

I recently wrote an article on this subject which can be read here: Website Security for Medical Practices

ROI of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) based on residual traffic

Below's a link to an article I just wrote explaining the residual benefits of a Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I've been doing internet marketing for the past 8 or so years, and I've always found it difficult to express to a client the real benefits of SEO and why its so important to stick with a campaign long term. Its a rare situation when you have a client invest heavily in and SEO campaign, see it to a successful point, then stop it completely. The client used in this case study is a very unique case and is a perfect example of the residual benefits of SEO.

Orginal Article: Medical SEO ROI


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Egg Donation video by Medical Web Experts

Here's a video our company just completed on Egg Donation for Center for Human Reproduction.



This video is part of a multi-video project (approximately 10) that will be coming out over the coming weeks. More to come.

Empire Essentials Marketing: Following the leader...

After being in the medical web design and marketing business since 2003, I'm proud of the company I've built and the service we continue to provide to our customers.  Its a big market and there's room for more competition.  Today, I was shown the website of a new competitor in medical web design and marketing marketplace with a pretty interesting looking team and a blatantly copied website. While I'm flattered, its pretty ridiculous that these guys thought that we would not notice this and they would not have to change their website around when we found this. This is not the first time someone has copied my websites before.  RevenueXL copied my old company's website. But karma in the form of black-hat SEO techniques finally got the best of them.

Lets be realistic here Empire Essentials Marketing. You're a "Web Design and Marketing Firm" and you are judged by your clients on your "creativity" and "ethics". If you really want to be a long term player in this market, pick up your skirt and don't copy the #1 in the industry.

They're probably going to be disappointed to know that we're planning to redesign our site over the next few months, so they might need to change their site all over again. Sorry guys!

I had to switch to Internet Explorer half way through the screen captures since their site does not load properly in Opera.

Example #1 - MWE Site

Example #1 - EEM site

Example #2 - MWE site

Example #2 - EEM Site 

Example #3 - MWE Site

Example #3 - EEM Site

Doctor Social Bookmarking

My company, Medical Web Experts just announced the launch of a new website (www.doctorbookmarks.com), a social bookmarking site for doctors and other health professionals. We did this to address the challenge of serving up relevant content to physicians which is essentially impossible to find in the mainstream social bookmarking sites, ie. Digg, Reddit, Folkd, etc.

Here's the original press release: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/first-doctor-social-bookmarking-site-launched-by-medical-web-experts-122326073.html

Start bookmarking!

Top popular patient portal and online medical record systems

A colleague of mine just posted a great article about the ten most common online medical record systems where people can store and manage their own medical records online.

http://melissalefurge.blogspot.com/2011/04/10-online-medical-record-applications.html

CONCIERGE MEDICINE: VALUE OR JUST SNOB APPEAL?

Hotels and airlines have been doing it for years. Concierge service for top clients. Why not in Healthcare? Concierge Medicine to the tune of mints on your pillow at a hotel! Talk about healthcare reform! Of course there is a price tag attached, but is there value, or just added expense or snob appeal? Does it serve a real purpose or is it just another means of the rich folks being able to show off, and the rest of us having to settle?

Much in the same theme as practically all airlines and hotels, some healthcare providers, such as Miami, Florida based EliteHealth have developed a way to let you feel very, very special as a patient. On the other hand, why should anyone have to pay for feeling like a “special person” or receive individualized treatment? Being realistic many of us enjoy being “attended to”, and even feeling that we are receiving special services; being pampered. But, when consulting with healthcare providers, whether it been a private practitioner, a HMO, or even an Urgent Care Center, should we all not feel special, and like we are an individual? Why should we have to pay extra to receive “a certain person assigned to us” for this or that? Perhaps, a nice cotton robe in the exam room instead one of those dreaded, crinkly paper gowns? Coffee and tea in the waiting area? Why not the ultimate dream in the patient experience, current magazines and newspapers!

For those who can afford to spend the big bucks it’s a great thing. Realistically and objectively these concierge level healthcare services do have their other, more practical benefits. For example, additional free examinations, same or next day appointment guarantees, more coverage both at home and abroad, an advocate or mediator to help resolve conflicts with the plan provider as well as your personal service providers. Some plans even provide luxury travel assistance and planning! There are pluses, it can’t be denied, and there is some strong appeal to spending the cash if you have it. Perhaps even more so in the face of all these healthcare reforms, shrinking services, access and availability problems, it may be worth some scrimping and saving if you need to.

On the other hand, for those of us who can’t scrimp anymore, or simply don’t have the money, do we just go to the back of the line to enter our doctor’s office as we do when we buy the cheap seats on a flight? Is there a need to develop a caste society within the frontiers of the healthcare world? If a provider is capable of offering these additional and accelerated services, super-personalized attention, additional accesses, special amenities and augmentations, why weren’t they doing it in the first place, at least in part if not in whole? What this may be saying is nothing more than, “Hey, we discovered that we really are able to provide our people with a better level of service and this and that, and we could probably have done at least some of this before, but, we also discovered we could charge more for it, so…”

Ultimately, you have to decide what the value is in paying the additional costs associated with the additional services, coverage, perks, etc. Ultimately, it will work for and benefit some of us. For some it will simply be another trophy. For others it will just be a reminder of what some can and others can’t afford and beg the question of equality versus economy. Either way, it appears the days of the simple “Good Ole Country Doc” are long gone.

The future of VistA. The Open Source EMR

The Department of Veterans Affairs announced on the 1st of April a new initiative to convert their current Electronic Medical Record (EMR) installations to the full open source version, in an effort to for private companies to collaborate on the application.

April 1, 2011 - The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) today released a draft Request for Proposal (RFP) aimed at forming an Open Source community around its ground-breaking VistA (Veterans Integrated System Technology Architecture) electronic health record (EHR) system. When award is made under a planned RFP for a custodial agent, VA will commit to deploy the Open Source version of VistA to all of its facilities, and will contribute all non-security essential modifications to the product it makes or pays for directly to the Open Source custodian. VA will also commit to participate in Open Source VistA with other public and private sector participants.


The entire press release can be read here: http://www.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=2075 

New "Smart Rooms" implemented in Detroit Medical Center

A colleague of mine, Melissa Le Furge recently wrote about some new advancements at Detroit Medical Center in automation through Healthcare IT.  The article, found here: http://melissalefurge.blogspot.com/2011/03/detroit-medical-center-launches.html discusses how this has been done, and what we can expect from other hospitals in the future.

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