Author: blogger

Mystery shopping the healthcare industry may strike some as counter-intuitive. Medicine and commerce have traditionally been mutually exclusive endeavors, but as medical practices consolidate and look more and more like regular businesses, patient retention becomes a growing factor.

The era of crotchety doctors and long waits in DMV-esque waiting rooms is drawing to a close, and many healthcare providers have embraced reputable mystery shopping firms as a partner in improving the patient experience. Here is what they are measuring:

Healthcare providers audit the appointment setting process.

Medical offices are typically a beehive of activity, and this is often reflected in the poor quality of the phone conversations we have with receptionists and other staff. Mystery shoppers are most often asked to audit the following, when calling to set an appointment with a medical practice:

Was the staffer courteous and helpful?

Did the staffer gather the required patient information?

Did the staffer ask how the caller learned of the practice?

Did the staffer tell the patient what to expect at the visit?

Did the staffer offer directions to the office? Did the staffer confirm the appointment details?

A good firm will ensure all calls are recorded so the client can hear how the call went.

Hidden video is becoming more prevalent for healthcare mystery shoppping, and gives an objective diagnosis of how your office is performing.

Healthcare providers audit the office visit.

Once the patient arrives at the office, there are many things that can affect the quality of the visit. Mystery shoppers audit everything from parking lot to the office and back. Here are the most commonly audited aspects of a medical visit:

How difficult was it to find the office?

How was the patient greeted?

How long was the check-in process?

Were the appropriate forms completed?

What was the wait time?

What was the condition of the waiting room?

How long did the patient wait in the examining room?

Were nurses and doctors friendly?

Did the doctor follow procedure in explaining the diagnosis?

Were options given?

Reputable firms offer mystery shops in the following types of healthcare practices:

Family practices

Pediatrics

PT/OT

Obstetrics

Dental

Orthodontics

Hospitals

Immediate care clinics

Cosmetic Surgery practices

There is a trend towards using independent contractors in many of the settings listed above. It is especially important to audit these situations, as there may not be as strong an allegiance from hired guns than from permanent full-time employees.

Wellness is not simply an absence of illness, it is an active process of becoming aware, planning for, and carrying out healthy choices that bring about positive change.

Understanding and maintaining wellness is critical in every one of our lives – and in the lives of the people we serve who are recovering from mental illnesses and substance use disorders.

As members of the behavioral health community, we must engage in the active process of becoming aware, planning for, and carrying on the hard work of healthcare system reform. This kind of healthcare system wellness is our responsibility. Federal healthcare reform legislation is a big step in the right direction. However, maintaining wellness is an ongoing process. In considering the wellness of our healthcare system there are several dimensions we as providers and consumers of healthcare services should be attending to. These dimensions of healthcare system wellness include funding, health information technology, service provision, quality improvement and research. Some examples of the planning and activities we can take part in.

Funding

– Reform the payment system to stop the promotion of paying for procedures and replacing it with payment based on the quality care.

– Aggressive reform of billing practices that stymie providers from making the necessary changes to create seamless healthcare services. Including funding for coordination of care, case management, transportation and allowing providers in every state to bill for more than one service in a day in the same clinic.

Health Information Technology

– The development of patient registries for the uniform collection of clinical and administrative data. Registries will allow for better monitoring and continuity of care while helping to make the business case for behavioral and primary care services integration

– Making sure that our electronic health records are compliant with Health Level Seven (HL7) international interoperability standards. Required by the US Department of Health and Human Services, these standards will enable electronic medical records to exchange, manage and share information between providers.

Service Provision

– Adoption of the healthcare home approach to care. This approach requires a bi-directional care provision which challenges the traditional thinking about how providers work with one another. Specialty mental health and primary care providers must reach out to one another and work in a coordinated fashion to provide disease management services for people with severe mental illness and/or substance use conditions.

– The implementation of wellness programming as a Medical Home standard of care for all people diagnosed with a severe mental illness and/or substance use condition.

– The expansion of peer-led wellness programming as an effective way to promote healthy living and care coordination.

You must have been very familiar with the significance of health-care sector worldwide. Because of constant demands & intense requirement by the huge population, healthcare pros and doctors always deal with changes & execution of newer rules & regulations. However, the healthcare sector needs to be vibrant to serve each & every patient from the very beginning. Population is rising considerably, so is the kind of diseases.

Despite of whether the medical has a small number of patients, or even thousands of them, the whole thing about the patients like medical bills, records, etc. requires to be properly maintained, and it is not simple at all to supervise bulk accounts of patients so accurately; without an adequately effective and self managed software. Healthcare contract management software productively solves such confusion in the healthcare industry.

Why Healthcare Contract Management Is So Crucial?

You must be wondering why healthcare contract management is so crucial. Well, if you ever had spared few minutes to glance around the atmosphere of a hospice, you must recognize the significance of software. Any health-care department whether small or big, manages patients with different issues. The quantity of patients being managed matters a lot, but the most important thing is the kinds of documents thatre maintained for every single patient. Furthermore, the most important thing is all the documents are extremely dissimilar from each other and requires to be maintained accurately; else the result you better know!

However, now with contract management software from Contract Guardian, the overall administration of the medical and legal accounts of the hospice could be maintained effortlessly. Financial facets such as billings could be maintained effectively. Other diverse financial facets like modifications in insurance plan could be updated mechanically. The personnel employed such as the clerical staffs and accountants will surely get minimized with the use of Contract Guardians healthcare contract management software.

As far as the privacy & security is concerned, the health-care sector is occupied with authoritarian acquiescence and strict guidelines. You might have control on your patients data & billing, but what about the whole other operations of offices or hospital. Contract Guardians software will optimize the worth, control & acquiescence reporting for each agreement. Their healthcare contract management software will meet the requirements of health-care sector by supplying the most instinctive & adaptable contract management application in the industry. In fact, Contract Guardian offers you the tools to control the exact requirements of health-care. A reliable contract management software can develop unlimited kinds of agreements with countless user defined fields.

In today’s business world employers all across the county are struggling with the decisions of how to operate as lean as possible without taking away anything from their employees. With regards to an employers retirees there are some options that organizations can use to help offset some of the costs. Two important and helpful programs that an employer should look into that help save money on healthcare costs are theRetiree Drug Subsidy Program (RDS) and the Early Retiree Reimbursement Program (ERRP)

In 2005 The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced the Retiree Drug Subsidy (RDS) program. What the program does is reimburse municipalities, unions and private employers for a portion of their eligible expenses for retiree prescription drug benefits. Over the years employers have slowly but steadily cut back on their prescription drug coverage for retirees. CMS introduced this program with the goal of encouraging employers to continue providing high-quality prescription drug coverage to their retirees. The nice part about this program is that it is very straightforward and there is usually little to no benefit design changes to current coverage.

Another more recent, yet temporary program that is offered to employers to help with healthcare costs is the Early Retiree Reimbursement Program. The Program was established by the Affordable Care Act, which was a part of the Healthcare Reform Bill passed in early 2010. The program provides $5 billion in financial assistance to employers to help them maintain coverage for early retirees age 55 and older who are not yet eligible for Medicare. The program will reimburse employers 80 percent of all medical costs per retiree, which includes their spouses and dependents. The cost must however be between the $15,000-$90,000 worth of expenses. Employers can use the savings to either reduce their own health care costs, provide premium relief to their workers and families or a combination of both.

Figuring out how to operate efficiently and effectively without cutting into employee benefits is a real challenge. It is becoming even more important in this economy to continue to search out and explore any available option for your organization that keeps it competitive and keeps your employees happy. There are options out there that are meant to help employers save money, for answers to questions about these programs visit rdsservices.us.

While some of the basic ideas and concepts constituting what is known today as bloodless medicine have been around for centuries, the idea of a set of medical and surgical techniques aimed specifically at eliminating the necessity of blood transfusions has only been around since the 1960s. The idea was spurred mainly by Jehovah’s Witnesses, who became outspoken about their opposition to blood transfusions in the beginning of the 20th century.

Physicians were initially skeptical about performing complex surgeries and operations without using blood transfusions. However, after decades of campaigning and even federal court cases, Witnesses won the right to be treated without blood transfusions.

The early practitioners of bloodless medicine worked almost exclusively with Jehovah’s Witnesses to perform bloodless surgery. In many cases, doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals noticed the results from bloodless operations were actually better than similar operations where a transfusion had been performed. Benefits included quicker recovery times and lower costs. Eventually, these physicians began publishing their results, noting the advantages to these bloodless procedures over traditional blood transfusions. They also explained these benefits to other physicians and encouraged them to adopt the practices with non-Witness patients.

After surgeons in New Orleans and Los Angeles gained attention for performing bloodless open heart surgeries (or “bloodless hearts”), the popularity of bloodless surgery techniques with physicians began to spread around the world. By the late 1970s, bloodless medicine was available at healthcare systems in the U.S., Canada, Europe and India.

Not long thereafter, the public began to take notice as well. Concerns about the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) led to people beginning to question where the source of donated blood used in transfusions was coming from. Fear over contracting AIDS through contaminated donor blood led to large numbers of non-Witness patients requesting bloodless surgeries.

Physicians have generally welcomed the increased demand for bloodless surgery in the modern medical climate. Bloodless surgeries have a number of specific advantages to both the patient and surgeon, as well as benefits to the hospital systems offering bloodless surgery. Because more than 50% of surgeries in the U.S. are pre-planned or elective surgeries, many doctors are actually encouraging their patients to consider blood transfusion alternatives.

Why do doctors and healthcare professionals like bloodless surgery methods? There are a number of specific reasons why a particular doctor or healthcare system might choose to offer bloodless medicine program. However, there are two huge advantages that benefit the doctor, the patient and the healthcare system.

1.) Bloodless Surgeries have fewer complications –

Fewer complications mean fewer post-surgery procedures and a quicker recovery time. This is obviously good for patients, but it is good for physicians as well. It frees up more of their time and lessens the likelihood that they could lose a patient in surgery.