March 2007

One in Three

Administration associated with health care claims and billing accounts for nearly one out of every three dollars that patients spend on health care, according to a PNC Financial Services Group survey of executives from hospitals and insurance companies.

According to their press release, more than three-quarters (76 percent) of the U.S. consumers surveyed said they think that health care administration should account for just 10 percent or less of total health care costs, with a large majority indicating they would be "highly upset" if those administrative costs were as high as 30 percent.

Additional survey results include:

- Hospital executives reported that one in five claims submitted, on average, is delayed or denied and 96 percent of all claims must be submitted more than once.
- Hospitals that do not use electronic billing or claims submission processes reported, on average, resubmitting a claim 11 times or more, or nearly four times more than those hospitals using electronic processes.
- Insurance executives surveyed said they go back to hospitals two times, on average, to get all the information needed to pay a claim.
- Nearly a quarter of consumers reported having had a legitimate claim denied by their health plan; one in five ultimately paid the claim out of their own pocket.
- When asked how much could be saved annually if they had a more efficient claims, billing and payment process, one-third of hospital and health plan executives both said their organizations could save at least $1 million a year.
- The benefit of automated processes most often cited by insurance executives was that claims processing time significantly reduced, and 63 percent said that customer satisfaction had improved.
- When asked where the cost savings would be applied, the area most often cited by hospital executives was "reinvested in improving patient care."

Tags: Healthcare+PR, HMO, Managed+Care, Medical+PR, Online+PR

Posted by Shawn Whalen on March 26, 2007 at 3:39 PM
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EMR Grumbles

I heard some interesting grumbles at HIMSS from doctors about the evolving pressures of EMR adoption. Acute care vendors see small medical group practices as a major market opportunity. Spurred on by Stark law reform, the vendor big boys are forcing acute care systems onto small practices. They are tapping their hospital CIOs to distribute their EMR solutions to the associated medical practices. Docs often have to choose to adopt hospital-recommended systems or deploy and pay more for their own. If they go with the hospital choice, their data may be owned or co-opted by hospital.

Some docs feel their EMR choices are being narrowed by third parties, be they payors, RHIOs, CCHIT or hospitals each of whom have their own preferences. Certain states are funding initiatives to deploy EMRs to small practices, using a self selected list tied to CCHITT. All these pressures and continued market consolidation may put the more economic or specialty EMR developers out of business. Then again, new services like the free Google EMR and V.A.'s Vista will continue to make the EMR market interesting to watch.

Tags: EHR, EHR+PR, Electronic+Health+Records, Electronic+Medical+Records, EMR, EMR+PR, Healthcare+PR, Online+PR

Posted by Shawn Whalen on March 19, 2007 at 2:58 PM
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Open Sesame

It was only a matter of time before open source and healthcare IT came together. The VA's OpenVista system was released as open source code last week.

Vendors are following suit. McKesson and Red Hat announced an end-to-end open source healthcare solution. Philips Medical Systems is using CollabNet for its new collaborative software development infrastructure. Palm is using Tolven's open source EHR records on their Treos smartphone. Medicity launched an open source healthcare portal. The U.S. is following in the footsteps of other countries in this regard; Brazil's whole healthcare system is built on open-source technologies.

One hurdle to these open source efforts will gaining CCHIT approval where applicable, compatiability with RHIOs and payor systems, and countering proprietary software vendors' claims that open source is unreliable. We see how effective that was for Microsoft ;)

These bleeding edge examples are largely symbolic in the big picture today, but like open source in the enterprise in another ten years it will be a different story.

Tags: Healthcare+PR, Linux+EMR, Online+PR, Open+Source+Healthcare+IT

Posted by Shawn Whalen on March 12, 2007 at 10:12 AM
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60 Minutes is Knocking

Communicating in a Crisis

Part Nine in a Continuing Series on PR Strategy and Tactics for Healthcare IT Marketers

Despite the best-laid plans, a sudden disaster challenges PR pros to do their best thinking on their feet. The stakes are highest in the first few hours because the initial media coverage creates perceptions that linger. Let's discuss crisis communications with insights drawn from the Schwartz Communique newsletter.

Communicating information in a crisis is never as easy as it sounds, primarily because the information itself is often scarce. This leaves corporate and PR pros in a sticky situation, trying to satiate a hungry media with little to offer.

We at Schwartz have had first-hand PR experience with crisis communications. One powerful example was the aftermath of an explosion and fire at a plant owned by West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. By responding quickly, compassionately and responsibly to this terrible accident, we were able to help West weather a difficult time for the families of those hurt, the employees and the company itself. The West team stayed focused on three guiding principles throughout the ordeal:

Tags: Crisis+Communications, Healthcare+PR, Medical+PR

Continue reading "60 Minutes is Knocking" »

Posted by Shawn Whalen on March 6, 2007 at 4:33 PM
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Live From HIMSS!

One of a Kind: Forget the dozen+ clients we had exhibiting ;) Here’s a HIMSS first, a healthcare PR agency taking space.

I Want My GWN-TV: One of the more interesting technologies was from GetWellNetwork, an interactive patient care solution putting education and entertainment resources at the patient bedside.