“Every movement needs its heroes,” said ONC head Dr. Farzad Mostashari, referring to the health IT industry during a sit-down at the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives’ (CHIME) Fall Forum Thursday afternoon.
Mostashari’s talk set the healthcare IT Twittersphere abuzz with snippets and snappy commentary, most notably his comparison of an impossibly perfect Muggle universe to paper-based practices and hospitals.
“It’s the most important thing that we could be possibly doing – getting a healthcare system that will get us better healthcare at lower costs,” he added. Among other things, Mostashari attributed lower costs to going paperless.
We’ve all heard this on more than one occasion, however, so the real question deals more with the actual roadmap to health IT heroism. While journalists and experts often call on entrepreneurs to make headway, we believe your practice can take on some of the heavy lifting. PYP takes to Twitter to discover how.
Smartphones Make Smarter Practices
Health tech startup @FirstStopHealth, an online medical concierge service, tweeted the following question:
The benefits of medical apps are numerous – ePocrates means drug dosage and interactions live in your pocket, QxCalculate will help you smoothly develop patient risk profiles and Radiology 2.0 for iOS uses Yale University medical content to create case-based imaging presentations almost instantly.
And, of course, the adoption of smartphones in the clinical setting can help ramp up the spread of healthcare IT. Earlier today, for instance, med tech news source @Medgadget tweeted about @LGTmedical’s upcoming vital signs DSP, which “uses any smart device as medical sensor interface.”
This kind of technology establishes avenues for collaboration, makes going paperless easier and facilitates interoperability – all necessary factors in the looming health IT takeover.
Know a Thing or Two About Marketing
This afternoon, Advanced Web publication Executive Insight (@ExecInsight) quoted Good Samaritan Hospital CIO Chuck Christian during his own CHIME talk, remarking to attendees:
There are a number of ways to do so – try placing a computer kiosk in your practice waiting room to ‘nudge’ patients to register for the patient portal, a call-to-action on your homepage, or even an add-on announcement with billing statements and newsletters.
And while marketing your patient portal is one way to drive health IT, you can also create a marketing plan to connect directly with patients. Already 72% of young adults are likely or very likely to take advantage of online scheduling, so why not cultivate friendships and ensure that percentage continues to climb for decades to come?
Plant the seed. They do, after all, make up the generation most likely to incorporate health IT in their lives.
Even including social media presence as part of your practice-marketing plan helps – tweet or share articles on Facebook about health IT. Use social media and even blogging as a platform to demonstrate health IT thought leadership and show both the industry and your patients how forward-thinking you and your staff are.
Hiring Health IT Talent
While on the topic of young adults, Senior Advisor of Healthcare Transformation and Technology at Deloitte’s Center for Health Solutions and all-around online influencer Dr. Harry Greenspun reposted HealthIT.gov’s interactive, nationwide map of the ONC’s Community College Consortia to Educate Health IT Progessionals program.
There are a number of resources at your fingertips in terms of human capital. It’s telling that the ONC conferred $116 million to these 82 community colleges and nine additional universities to promote healthcare IT programs in higher education.
These students are usually very adept, having received training in assisting healthcare professionals to accurately maintain billing documents. They’re also very familiar with medical terminology, know how to use health IT systems well, understand healthcare as a business, and have even studied coding.
In other words, if you’re looking for an EHR consultant, a revenue cycle management system specialist, or an even in-house medical biller with the expertise of practice management systems, keep an eye out for recent grads at nearby colleges and universities.
And in some ways, healthcare IT undergrad and grad programs could be changing the way we use the world. There is still time to become a leader in this bourgeoning movement.
What have you done to promote health IT in your practice?
