Wednesday, April 20, 2011

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.

Friday, April 8, 2011

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 

Sunday, April 3, 2011

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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