October 1, 2013
READ THE ORIGINAL MY9 NEW JERSEY REPORT
The network My9NJ reported from Neptune, New Jersey and said, “New Jersey is experiencing a shortage of doctors.” It’s no mild shortage, either. It’s projected that by 2020 the state will be short about 3,000 primary care physicians.
So where are all the doctors?
Read more
October 1, 2013
MIT Technology Review published an exciting article. Jeff Hammerbacher, a 30-year-old reputed as Facebook’s first data scientist, is working with The Mount Sinai Medical Center. He once said, “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.” But those days are over. He wants to engineer data to help doctors better predict the likelihood of illness and complications.
Hammerbacher will apply his insight acquired while working to target online advertisements. These data-crunching techniques will be used to help doctors and researchers suck in medical information and spit out predictions. The hospital believes this data, if analyzed properly, could cut the cost of health care.
Will Big Data Promote Results-Driven Medicine?
Read more
September 30, 2013
The American Journal of Emergency Medicine conducted research and found that emergency doctors “spend significantly more time entering data into electronic health records than they do with patients.” The study concluded that “improved efficiency in data entry would allow emergency physicians to devote more time to patient care…”
According to the published paper, emergency physicians spent 43 percent of their time entering data on a given day. Only 28 percent of their time was spent directly interacting with patients. And, during a busy, 10-hour shift, total mouse clicks neared 4,000.
Here’s what the paper’s author, Robert Hill, M.D. from St. Luke’s University Health Network in Allentown, Pa., had to say:
“Emergency department physicians spend significantly more time entering data into electronic medical records than on any other activity, including direct patient care.”
He lists out factors that get in the way of efficient EHR usage, including operating system speed, server/mainframe responsiveness, typing skills, user-friendliness of system, interruptions, extent of training, opportunity to delegate tasks, and various environmental attributes. However, in his opinion, “Efficient use of the EMR system will increase physician productivity and hospital revenue.” We couldn’t agree more. If you agree with his thinking, too, you can tweet it right now.
September 29, 2013
The Direct Primary Care Journal shared findings recently about the prevalence of iPad usage by physicians. According to the report, the most common activity of physicians who use an electronic health record (EHR) and use a smartphone or tablet is “sending and receiving emails.” The second most frequent activity among tablet users is “accessing EHRs (51% daily).” Compare that with just 7% of physicians using their smartphone to access EHRs.
VIEW THE COMPLETE BREAKDOWN OF RESEARCH FINDINGS ON THE DPCJ’S WEBSITE
We’ve highlighted some of the results here:
September 29, 2013
Special thanks to Physicians Practice, who conducted an interview with Dr. Josh. You can stream it on their site here. He talks about why Kansas is a state that lets doctors truly practice family medicine.
While of course we want to see direct care spread EVERYWHERE in America, there are some advantages to Atlas MD’s location in Wichita. Josh explains how great it is to be able to experiment, and offer a wide range of services – colonoscopies, obstetrics, and more. This has given the practice the power to challenge the status quo and reinvent the patient-doctor relationship to the benefit of all parties, insurance companies included.
September 25, 2013
As we know, thousands of physician practices are opting to dump ineffective EHR systems. Nearly one in five physician users indicated the high likelihood of shifting systems after disappointing first vendor results. And it looks like several new EHR mobile apps are being talked about in physician circles.
“A mandate has been issued and progressive vendors are reacting,” reports Doug Brown, Managing Partner of Black Book Research. “A full 100% of practices participating in the follow up poll expect EHR systems that allow access to patient data wherever physicians are providing or reviewing care.” And, as Healthcare Technology Online found out, docs like to be mobile.
READ THE COMPLETE BLACK BOOK RANKING PRESS RELEASE HERE
Check out some convincing stats on which professions are going mobile, and which devices are most popular. Read more
September 25, 2013
Healthcare Technology Online followed up on a poll conducted by Black Book Rankings. Looks like many providers are leaving their current EMR systems for web-based alternatives. That’s not much of a surprise, though. It only takes a mild reading of the social web’s pulse to know docs’ sentiments range from frustrated to complacent with regards to available software.
According to Healthcare Technology Online, “Healthcare providers have never had a ‘romantic’ relationship with EHRs. On the contrary, many physicians despise the technology. However, the HITECH Act and Meaningful Use (MU) incentives did create an environment of unprecedented EHR demand among the provider community. This initiative achieved the desired result of increasing EHR adoption, but it also created an artificial market for dozens of immature EHR products.”
READ MORE ABOUT THE BLACK BOOK RANKINGS POLL
Here are some noteworthy numbers that were extracted from the study: Read more
September 25, 2013
A new installment of our podcast is live on iTunes. Obamacare is just a week away and the climate is already shifting. That said, we are working to better healthcare with a bipartisan approach, direct care. It’s this bottom up pressure that we believe will transform actual care.
First off, congrats to Dr. John and Dr. Henry who are busy running their new direct care practice in Pennsylvania. They are surprised to be doing the opposite of what most everyone else is doing. Ironically, it’s exactly what they always wanted to do: practice medicine.
LISTEN TO EPISODE 9 OF THE ATLAS MD PODCAST HERE
Drs. Josh and Doug answer more questions and concerns that have been brought up — Should you integrate health apps into your practice? How can doctors use this data effectively? Why is Josh such a fan of FitBit (it’s cool, connected and really helpful for starters)? Will medicine get to a point where docs can track diabetics’ A1c levels daily or weekly?
As always thanks for tuning in.
Also, Drs. Josh and Doug will be in St. Louis on Oct. 12 and 13 attending the first summit dedicated to direct primary care. Send them an email or tweet if you want to meet the docs in person.
September 24, 2013
It’s Dr. Josh here. We had a doctor write us in response to our Atlas MD price listing recently. The doc asked,
What about X-rays, MRI, and emergency visits like broken bones?
Thank you for the question. We’ll gladly expand on how we negotiate for discounted services.
September 24, 2013
Zackary Berger is a faculty member of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He contributed a new post to the Kevin MD blog (yes, we’re fans of Kevin, too!) because his institution recently switched from a home-grown EMR to EPIC, which as you know has been reputed to be an EPIC failure. Supposedly we’re reaching the “nexus” of electronic records and communication, a future where scientists and physicians and patients can give meaningful information and get meaningful insight in return.
Fact is, we think this future might remain for the time being just that, the future. That’s why we’re starting small, focusing our EMR on patients and docs having a meaningful electronic interaction. In time, this might lead to more paths of communication, and more meaning to be derived from digital data. The metaphor we use is this: imagine someone in a time predating the wheel, planning a system of stone roads. For now, maybe we should get the wheel spinning, and then see where we can go with it.
This complex highway of data and boxes and buttons might be a little premature. When Berger read an article by a colleague of his who is researching the use of these new EMRs he noticed something. Patients are given “access codes” in order to tap into the extraordinary benefits of these EMR programs. But guess how many people are actually activating them?
Only 20%. Hmmm, is that even a good number? Berger is wondering the same thing. We’re thinking it’s more like crickets in response to the big sell that is EPIC EMR, perhaps indicative of the disengaging reality of today’s EMRs.