How should healthcare professionals manage their time?

Physicians are already very busy but they are about to get a lot busier with the Affordable Care Act and the influx of new patients in the market.
With so many patients health on the line, physicians don’t want increased demand to lead to below par service. This means you need to start managing your time now.
Let’s give you a few tips.
       Set goals: Take time to establish goals for your organization and create your short term, long term schedules. Make sure to write them down and discuss with your supervisor to gain additional input. Goals should be identifiable, measureable, and actionable. 

       Prioritize your tasks: Make sure you prioritize your tasks when you arrive for work and spend as little time on wandering around or on Facebook. Write all your tasks in a prominent location and post them where you can see them all day.

       Use technology: Modern healthcare systems like CureMD are designed to streamline healthcare practices by optimizing practice management and organizing health records. When your practice is online and organized, you and your patients save time. Patients can schedule their appointments, make changes, and communicate with your staff through the Patient Portal. 

See what they offer in their Practice Management solution.

     Use Electronic Health Records: If your employer hasn’t already done so, request that the organization switch to Electronic Health Records (EHR). Electronic records cut down on paperwork while making it easier to find pertinent patient information. The faster you can access and update patient records, the more everyone benefits.
For more information on the benefits of transitioning from paper charts to an electronic record solution, check out this white paper: 3 Steps to a Paperless Practice.

      Delegate your responsibilities: Don’t think you can do everything on your own. If you have help available, use it. Assistants, administrative staff, interns and volunteers are there for a reason. Take their help
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      Learn when to say no: Increased stress and decreased productivity aren’t goals you should strive for, so carefully consider requests and know when to turn someone down.

What time management tips can you offer to other healthcare professionals? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Fewer Ophthalmologists linked to poorer retinopathy treatment



According to a study published in the April issue of JAMA Ophthalmology, fewer individuals with diabetes, diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) receive care in areas with less access to ophthalmologists.
Diane M. Gibson, Ph.D., from Baruch College-City University of New York in New York City, utilized data from the 2005 to 2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to identify 1,098 individuals with diabetes, 345 with diabetic retinopathy, and 498 with ARMD.
"Adequate access to ophthalmologists is necessary to ensure that this large number of individuals at high risk of and already affected by diabetic retinopathy or ARMD have the best visual health outcomes possible," Gibson writes.
Researchers found that individuals who lived in a county in the highest ophthalmologist availability quartile were less likely to be unaware they had diabetic retinopathy (predictive margin [PM], 66.1 versus 84.1 percent). They were also less likely to have vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy (PM, 1.4 versus 2.6 percent), compared to individuals who lived in a county in the lower three quartiles of ophthalmologist availability.
Those living in a county in the lowest quartile of ophthalmologist availability were more likely to be unaware they had ARMD (PM, 93.8 versus 88.3 percent), compared to those living in a county in the higher three quartiles of ophthalmologist availability. No outcomes were significantly tied to optometrist availability quartiles.

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Meaningful Use Stage 2



In Meaningful Use Stage 1, the CMS had established a timeline that required providers to progress to Stage 2 criteria after two program years under the Stage 1 criteria. This original timeline would have required 
Medicare providers who first demonstrated Meaningful Use in 2011 to meet the Stage 2 criteria in 2013.

However, the Stage 2 criterion has been delayed. The earliest that the Stage 2 criteria will be effective is in fiscal year 2014 for eligible hospitals and CAHs or calendar year 2014 for EPs. 

Get ready for Meaningful Use Stage 2 with CureMD and increase the bottom line of your practice.

http://www.curemd.com/meaningful-use.asp

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What ACO features are needed in an EMR?



Accountable Care Organization (ACO) is a healthcare organization composed of voluntary healthcare professionals that include providers, healthcare professionals, hospitals, labs and practices, who come together to perform quality care delivery service for Medicare eligible candidates. EMR stands for Electronic Medical Record, and ACO must use an EMR software to provide high quality service.
Let’s go through some of the ACO features an EMR needs to accommodate.
Standards monitoring and proper management tools, are not efficient in patient service feature in a lot of EMRs out in the market. This result is inconsequential referential integrity when using an EMR. It makes the tracking service of patients a headache or in other words, an impossibility. Take an example. Patient service item is required to be recorded in three sections: exam note, order and message. The verification function from the exam note to the order is inefficiently performed quite frequently, in an EMR while in an ACO’s patient service the tracking of the patient is efficiently performed. It is done so by keeping a track of all events derived from the patient visit or data gathered through contextual tools in order to manage patient service.

Exchanges related to an ACO are entered as miscellaneous message in an EMR. The information pertaining to Counterparty Credit Risk transactions automatically comes in an EMR too, without a proper audit trail. An EMR should be able to identify information accurately from the source.
EMR systems make Continuity of Care Record comply with Meaningful Use, but fail to keep track of the lifecycle of the record. Electronic transaction should be tracked in an EMR software to its source efficiently, from authorization, claim and medical billing. The feature of ACO needed in an EMR is the ability to track the CCR within the EMR software. It will result in producing a proper patient note, and will transmit the visit note to the source of the CCR, which will help in smoothly tracking the process.

There are many structural EMR issues that remain unanswered in an ACO. It is by trial and error method, demand and supply chain and by going to the basic functions repeatedly, the missing features will be added. Since, the use EMR is a necessity of an ACO, EMR vendors should try their best to adequately build the support structure needed to provide the collaborative care ACO aims for. This can be made possible by the combined effort of ACOs and EMR vendors who are interested in filling up the gaps in their product.

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Overcoming the EMR Software skepticism for care providers



Modern innovative technologies in healthcare have lead to consistent changes taking place in the healthcare industry and in the way healthcare professionals provide care. Since care providers are not experts in technology or in using new technologies, they are usually overwhelmed when it comes to the implementation of Electronic Medical Records software (EMRs). Care providers are certainly faced with terms and phrases that they are not aware of when a vendor or any stakeholder is providing training on new technologies or concepts such as Patient Portals or Clinical Decision Support.
The ideal solution to resolve this issue is to create basic templates which include all the required information and definitions of words which are new to the doctors i.e. a glossary. This template should be distributed before the next training is to take place so that everybody involved is educated on the matter. Also, it would help the doctors if all the jargon and abbreviations are changed to simple and easy-to-understand words for future reference. This might actually help the doctors in becoming familiar with the changes quickly – ensuring higher productivity in the future.
If the EMR software had the ability to search for items in their records that would really make things easier for doctors and save their time. Most of the time, doctors have to navigate through a score of pages on the EMR software to find out if the patient was ever on a specific medication or drug. If the EMR has an internal search which would sort through all patient information, then that would solve this problem and the doctor would be easily able to search for specific search queries.

Overall, if an Electronic Medical Record is simple to use and understand, then care providers would be able to save a lot of time, cost and effort, which is what they need to realize for them to whole heartedly start using EMRs.
Read more about: MACRA is a Reality Affecting Us Sooner Than We Think

Exploring the Market for Electronic Medical Records



As a care provider, when you have decided that you want an Electronic Medical Record installed at your practice – then it is time to go the EMR market and check out the various options you have.

As a popular software solution, Electronic Medical Record is abundantly available in the market, offered by thousand of vendors, all promoting different features, functionalists, design, usability and costs. This can hence be very overwhelming for care providers who are in a rush to get this technology-oriented predicament sorted out.

Research suggests that most of the times, care providers take little interest in the details of the product itself, and in fact base their purchasing decision on cost and visual appeal that the software brings with itself. It is imperative for providers to think about the long-term and base their decision on what their current needs are and what their needs would be in the future.

It is infinitely better to purchase an integrated EMR solution that includes Practice Management Solution, Patient Portal and Medical Billing Services. A standalone Electronic Medical Records solution or a Practice Management Solution can lead to compatibility issues which further lead to disruptions in daily workflows.

An integrated Practice Management Solution has the ability to streamline administrative and financial matters for practices, allowing for higher productivity and profitability. This also drives efficiency and eradicates delays in reimbursements – enabling providers to do what they have been trained to do i.e. treating patients and not worrying about administrative time-taking aspects of a busy practice.

With Patient Portals, care providers can help and facilitate patients to request appointments, order prescription refills, communicate with patients and enable quality care especially in the case of Patient Centered Medical Homes.

Integrated with Electronic Medical Records, Medical Billing Services permit quick charge capturing and submission of claims right from the EMR software.
Conclusively, care providers should opt for the solution that best suits their needs. A solution which is easy-to-use, worth the money, and that has a great reputation in the market.