Meritus Health: Improve patient experience one bill at a time
For hospitals, the business office and patient experience are not mutually exclusive, with previous research linking billing processes to long-term patient satisfaction.
To hear how organizations can ensure patient-friendly billing, FierceHealthFinance talked to George Semko (pictured), vice president of Revenue Cycle at Meritus Health System in Maryland. In part 2 of this exclusive interview, he discusses how Meritus is improving experience by preventing billing issues.
In part 1, Semko talked about the health system's commitment to serving financially disadvantaged patients and fulfilling its charity care mission.
To...
Source: hospital impact - June 6, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
FDA's Bakul Patel: For mobile medical apps, patient safety first
by Greg Slabodkin, FierceMobileHealthcare
As Senior Policy Advisor to the Director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Bakul Patel (pictured right) advises the Center Director on regulatory policy issues related to medical device software and systems, health information technology, and mobile health.
In fact, Patel is the primary author of the FDA's draft guidance for mobile medical applications that the agency issued in July 2011. However, the FDA has come under fire from critics, including Congress, for being slow to finalize the agency's draft guidance for mobil...
Source: hospital impact - May 30, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
If we're restoring patient trust, we might want to clue the patient in
by Marla Durben Hirsch, FierceEMR
One of the overarching themes of this year's annual health information data security conference, "Safeguarding Health Information: Building Assurance through HIPAA Security"--jointly hosted this week by the National Institutes of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights--was the issue of patient trust.
Many of the speakers offered ways to better secure data, such as strengthening contracts with EHR vendors, training staff about proper social media and mobile device use, and the like.
But no one seemed to address the issue o...
Source: hospital impact - May 30, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Balancing life: Reduce fatigue and burnout
by Scott Kashman
Ever feel fatigue or burnout? Do you know anyone else who has felt the same?
What do you do to help offset or reduce these feelings? How do you help your colleagues do so?
What triggers this or should I ask what doesn't trigger this?
Let's give this some thought:
Working too many hours (stressing your body and mind physically and emotionally)
Working too few hours (stressing your body emotional and financially)
Sleeping too much
Sleeping too little
Eating too much or too much unhealthy foods/drinks
Eating too little or never indulging in some balanced and fun treats
Participating in too...
Source: hospital impact - May 30, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
A tribute to a person in the integrated care arena
by Kenneth H. Cohn
Julie Manas' Hospital Impact post, "Integrated care: The bridge between quality and efficiency," inspired my post this month because people in her organization are doing what is necessary to improve performance.
As the president and CEO of the Western Wisconsin division of Hospital Sisters Health System, she wrote about the need to view patient-centered care, quality, safety and efficiency collectively to provide improved care coordination.
Her organization's accomplishments to date include:
Aligning physicians with overall strategic direction through leadership on clinical councils
Centers of ...
Source: hospital impact - May 30, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Hospital 'deserts' a growing problem in major urban centers
by Alan Sager
In 1960, 42 acute care hospitals with 8,000 beds served Detroit's 1.7 million residents. But only four hospitals with 2,700 beds survived to serve 700,000 residents in 2010.
All of the survivors are costly major teaching hospitals. Especially in winter, ambulances are sometimes challenged to provide rapid response to the people of a 139-square-mile city whose residential side streets rarely see snow plows.
Detroit is not alone. Hospital "deserts" are conspicuous--and growing--in broad expanses of St. Louis, Cleveland, Washington, Atlanta, several Texas cities, New York City's boroughs, and elsewhere.
...
Source: hospital impact - May 25, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Affordable Care Act has rocky road ahead despite Tavenner confirmation
by Kent Bottles
The 91-7 confirmation by the U.S. Senate of Marilyn B. Tavenner as administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services means we now have a permanent CMS leader for the first time since Mark B. McClellan, M.D., left the post in October 2006.
Republicans refused to allow a vote on Obama's first choice, Donald M. Berwick, M.D.; he served as acting administrator for 18 months under a recess appointment.
Does this bipartisan Senate vote mean we have finally accepted that the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land? Will all Americans now work together to ensure the new law will be fully imp...
Source: hospital impact - May 23, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Meritus Health on its commitment to charity care
by Alicia Caramenico, FierceHealthcare
With critics around the country increasingly questioning whether nonprofit hospitals are providing enough charity care to justify their tax-exempt status, the pressure is on for nonprofits to demonstrate their charitable duties and put their financial assistance programs to work.
FierceHealthFinance talked to George Semko (pictured), vice president of Revenue Cycle at Meritus Health System in Maryland, about how the organization is serving financially disadvantaged patients in a post-reform healthcare landscape.
Read the full interview at FierceHealthFinance. (Source: hospital impact)
Source: hospital impact - May 23, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
'How' trumps 'what' in patient experience success
by Jason A. Wolf
Since my last blog post where I stressed the need for our continued commitment to push the patient experience movement forward I have had a positive, life-changing experience.
Early on Friday, April 19th as we were wrapping up Patient Experience Conference 2013, my wife called to let me know she was having contractions. "Nothing imminent," she calmly told me.
It is not often you spend three intense conference days stressing the critical importance of patient experience--of people and process, patient perspective, strategic imperative--only to turn around and be that patient or family member yourself. ...
Source: hospital impact - May 23, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Just what is healthcare reform anyway?
by Jonathan H. Burroughs
That was a question a physician asked me at dinner last week and I answered simply, "World-class quality, safety and service at half the price."
Healthcare reform/transformation is a problem in the guise of a political conflict. What the two political parties argue over is who has the legal right to control and regulate the healthcare market: the federal government, state governments or private industry. This is a war that has been waged since we began as a nation and it shows no sign of slowing.
Unfortunately, while corporate lobbyists spend hundreds of millions of dollars to defend their entr...
Source: hospital impact - May 21, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
At the VHA, there's an app for that
by Greg Slabodkin, FierceMobileHealthcare
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provides medical services for more than eight million veterans each year through the Veterans Health Administration, the largest integrated healthcare system in the country with over 1,700 sites of care.
However, much of VHA's infrastructure was designed and built decades ago under an older concept of healthcare delivery that focused on hospital-centered, inpatient care.
To better address the medical needs of today's veterans, the VHA has launched a number of mobile healthcare initiatives. Neil Evans, M.D., and Kathleen Frisbee, MPH, Ph.D...
Source: hospital impact - May 18, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Delivering 'in-the-moment' healthcare
by Anthony Cirillo
I recently attended something called the Landmark Forum, three days of self-introspection.
The net-net: Things in life happen. We then create a story around it. The story then defines our reality. And it limits our possibilities.
See, we all show up at work with baggage. We have stories of why things are the way they are and they affect all aspects of human relationships.
In his Marketing Profs article, Howard Lax, Ph.D., says the memory of an experience trumps the actual experience.
Context, he says, defines the parameters of our thinking and sets our expectations. That is why it is so hard to br...
Source: hospital impact - May 18, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Give patients an honest view of health reform
by Raymond Hino
I focus a lot of my blog posts on community engagement and maintaining open lines of communication between our community hospitals and the people that we serve. This is an ever-evolving process.
Recently we tried something new to communicate with and educate the public. We held our first ever "Summit on Hospital Finances." We wanted to put on a program that would be worthy of the three-hour weeknight time commitment that we were asking our constituents to make.
Here is how it went: The program started with an outside speaker bringing into context where the plight of our local hospital is in the greater...
Source: hospital impact - May 18, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Deliver 'in-the-moment' healthcare
by Anthony Cirillo
I recently attended something called the Landmark Forum, three days of self-introspection. The net-net: Things in life happen. We then create a story around it. The story then defines our reality. And it limits our possibilities.
See, we all show up at work with baggage. We have stories of why things are the way they are and they affect all aspects of human relationships.
In his Marketing Profs article, Howard Lax, Ph.D., says the memory of an experience trumps the actual experience.
Context, he says, defines the parameters of our thinking and sets our expectations. That is why it is so hard to bre...
Source: hospital impact - May 16, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Physicians, let your caring show
by Carla Rotering
In 1979, my young son came home from school with pictures of what his parents did for a living. Mine was an entire page covered in circles and when I asked him what he thought I did, he replied, "You make rounds."
I thought it was funny--but I also realized my little boy had no idea how deeply I cared about the patients I shared my days, and sometimes my nights, with.
As an adult, he has come to know the depth of caring physicians hold in their hearts and minds as we go about our work. Yet as these years have passed, and as the culture of medicine has shifted in intensity, demand, diminished autonomy ...
Source: hospital impact - May 16, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
