How patients benefit when we move beyond HCAHPS
November 12th 2016As is often the case in healthcare and business, no one single tool provides sufficient information to create sustainable solutions for a challenge at hand. And so it goes with the HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey.
Patient satisfaction surveys are good in principle, bad for practices
November 10th 2016Patient satisfaction surveys are here to stay and, used correctly, can perhaps add value. But with all the information available today to patients, they will simply “rate” you with their feet, leaving for another provider if truly dissatisfied-no survey necessary, saving everyone a lot of time and energy.
5 proactive strategies to make more time for patients
November 10th 2016If we believe that time spent with patients is the most important piece of our patient care, we must have the conviction and courage to do what is right and say no when we need to say no, whether it is to payers who don’t value our time, or government data collection mandates that take time away from our patients. In return, I ask my patients to appreciate our efforts to dedicate our time for them.
7 tips to protect patient data from visual hacking
November 7th 2016With a major hack of an insurance company’s database having made front-page news not long ago, it’s natural that many physicians think first about electronic data when they think about protecting patients’ private health information (PHI).
Anti-Trump document draws hundreds of physician signatures
November 7th 2016Calling a Donald Trump presidency “a threat to the goals of medicine,” more than 600 physicians have signed a statement opposing him and urging others in the medical community to vote against the Republican presidential nominee.
4 reasons why online patient communities should be embraced
November 5th 2016Online patient communities are dramatically changing how patients engage with the healthcare community. In fact, more than 40% of patients say that information found via social media affects the way they deal with their health.
What every small practice should know about MACRA
November 4th 2016The nearly 2,400-page final rule for the Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) has been reviewed by healthcare experts, and the general consensus is that it’s an improvement compared to the proposed rule, but challenges for small practices remain.