10 Patient Communications Tips For Hospital and Clinic

Hospital systems and hospital-owned clinics have an opportunity to connect with patients, potential patients and those who influence them like never before. Below is a list of 10 ways to do it, and please note none of these include spending more on traditional advertising.

1. Create and locally promote your physician locator.

2. Make sure your physician locator includes maps, directions, parking instructions/validation information, and links out to area services for patients’ family members, such as pharmacies, restaurants, shopping.

3. Create and locally promote a searchable patient ambassador network tied to physicians, clinic locations and conditions, so your patients can read about others “like them.”

4. Encourage patients and their “care guiders” to provide satisfaction or “How Are We Doing?” information at every stop along your system’s health care path.

5. Leverage technology to communicate with patients where they are — mobile, online, your waiting room, Facebook, email.

6. Any time your clinic is going to make a referral to a specialist, provide printed materials that cover information on that specialist from the physician locator.

7. Create two-way communications opportunities for patients to build a community of care with them.

8. Ensure every patient-facing messaging effort accomplishes the following objectives:

• Sets appropriate expectations
• Guides through your system’s healthcare maze
• Educates patients and care guiders
• Improves satisfaction, from general practitioner to hospital to recovery to rehab

9. Always provide quality, custom and easy-to-understand patient education materials on conditions and treatments options.

10. Finally: Always, always, always connect with patients! Use images, words and methods your patients will understand.

Source - healthcarecommunication

Effective Tips For Better Revenue Cycle Management

To keep bottom lines healthy, organizations are turning to a process called lean revenue cycle management.

Here, Gallagher provides six tips on lean revenue cycle management.

1. Focused on the mission

In order to maximize the benefits of lean management, everyone involved in the improvement process must be aligned

2. Keep an eye on Changes

It is more important now than ever to keep up to date with latest legislative decisions,” Gallagher said.

3. Understand payer contracts

Gallagher says it’s crucial for those involved in the revenue cycle to fully understand payer contracts.  

4. Scope value stream

In lean management, a value stream defines all the activities — both value-added and non-value added — required within an organization to deliver a specific service

5. Information technology is not everything

Going out and purchasing what Gallagher calls a “magic” software package is not going solve the problem, revenue cycle management or otherwise.

6. Internal transparency

Gallagher said, “it is important to be transparent internally and to not point fingers or play the blame game, but rather to focus on what you can do to fix the process.”

Source: medicalpracticeinsider

4 Healthcare Tips That Can Save Your Life

Thousands of people contact our organization with medical questions, and most of them--no matter how smart they are--contact us because they don't know how to get the medical information they need to stay well or to recover from illness. Going online can be very helpful, very confusing, or even dangerous.

Here are some simple tips to help:

1. Don't wait.

2. Be thoughtful about treatment decisions.

3. Research doctors and medical facilities.

4. Stick to reputable websites.

Read Full Article - huffington post

Obamacare Or Not, Republicans Should Focus On Reducing The Cost Of Health Care

For all the endless talk about reforming the health care system these past five years, it’s remarkable how little we've done to solve its actual problems. Spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize insurance coverage for several million people? That’s the easy part. The hard part is addressing the fact that American health care is so expensive.

The high price of U.S. health care is the fundamental reason tens of millions of Americans are uninsured. It’s the principal suppressor of middle-class wage growth. It’s a constant threat to businesses’ operating margins, and it’s the primary driver of the federal debt.

Continue Reading.....

Reform Update: Flood of New Patients Worries Mental Health Workers

Many behavioral healthcare advocates and providers across the country are reporting significantly increased demand for their services because of the Medicaid expansion in some states. But they are worried about whether underfunded and understaffed mental health centers will be able to adequately serve the flood of new clients.

Officials at Arapahoe/Douglas Mental Health Network and AspenPointe in Colorado say they have noticed an uptick in the number of Medicaid patients they're seeing. Those organizations did not have data on exactly how many more patients they're seeing.

Mindsprings Health in Grand Junction, Colo., saw an increase from about 250 people a month to 350 a month since January, and most of that increase was Medicaid patients, Michelle Hoy, the organization's regional director, told Health News Colorado. Similarly, the Mental Health Center of Denver reported that calls increased from 2,030 in January to 2,156 in March, compared with 1,500 in March of last year.

Read More on Modern Healthcare