How Patient Portals benefits Care Providers and Patients

The patient portal enables a patient to look at his/her personal health record anytime and anywhere he/she has access to the internet, wherein a patient gets access to the private health information and receives timely updates and reminders by the doctor to their email address. A patient portal is an online Web-based access point that enables physicians and patients to communicate and discuss about the health information from another location. One can safely and securely log in with the user name and password and get access to the personal health record along with other useful functions from any computer or smart phone having an internet access. Although portals can not replace substitute an in-office visit, but they provide numerous advantages. These are typically designed to increase patient's involvement in their own care, because portals inspire viewing test results and health records and that can enable a continuous doctor-patient conversation. Furthermore, portals can aid in reducing expensive paperwork through functioning as online billing and payment centers. Included in the meaningful use Stage 2 terms, providers need to have no less than 5% of the patients utilizing an online patient portal in order to get incentive payments.

Patients are paying more attention and turn more involved with their health and medical care when they've easy accessibility for their health information online, as stated by the "California Healthcare Foundation." Though there's clear data giving support to the requirement for providers available to offer good and user-engaging patient portals, numerous systems introduced up to now have dropped lacking to meet patients' requirements. Providers certainly managed to make a commitment in order to find the reason why it's the case, driven by challenges to satisfy the expectations of patients and communities. The patient portal is a protected online website which provide customers appropriate and round the clock accessibility of personal health information as well as medical records with the internet access. A portal needs to be a kick off point for any other sites, gives the ability to usher in new applications and technology and also reduces expenses of functions. A patient portal also needs to indulge the users and make them frequently access his or her important information.

Advantages for Care Providers with Patient Portal:

Being a care provider, it is possible to adjust the level and timing of data released to patients and customize the portal to match the requirements of your organization. Meet Meaningful Use requirements involving patient for organization certification. Decrease administrative expenses through automating the delivery of appointment reminders and also lab results, enabling patients to complete forms before consultations, and allowing online appointment needs or rescheduling. Offer support for the wide and increasing list of disease sites, so that all your patients get specified and detailed knowledge materials. Gather data for the results and also development evaluation through surveys which capture important information regarding targeted patient populations. Track patient appointment attendance and follow up for any skipped appointments to retain patients in your organization and ensure treatment is received regularly. Furthermore, providers can quickly prepare and share detailed care plans with patients through the direct work flow powered interface.

Advantages for Patients with Patient Portal:

Patient Portal provides patients the details and also resources necessary to make up to date decisions regarding their wellness. Patient Portal remains safe and secure and simple to utilize, irrespective of technical knowledge, providing patients the ability to: Check out appointments with all members of the care group in just one spot, and ask for new or rescheduled appointments by a click of a button. Maintain contact information of the care group focused, which includes care provider images, organization information and also professional contact information. Get e-mail or even SMS text alarms of future appointments. Minimize time period consumed by waiting around in treatment centers through completing forms and additionally questionnaires ahead of time. Get test results speedily through the secure link for your care provider. See a clear, brief review of general health issues and earlier treatment information and provide this particular to doctors as needed. Remain up to date about better health procedures with up-to date medical care information such as side-effects and late-effects of treatment, health checking, support services along with other recommendations for upholding better health results. You can get in touch with a healthcare software development company who can help you with your healthcare projects.

If you would like to develop patient health portal for your health organization, please contact Mindfire Solutions to hire healthcare software developers.

Beyond PatientKeeper CPOE or Meaningful Use Stage 1 & 2

These days a number of healthcare centers have started with CPOE - Computerized Physician Order Entry systems for past past few years now. Many of these hospitals have successfully confirmed the Meaningful Use Stage 1. Driving doctor acceptance or adopt for CPOE to 80% or more is a crucial issue. CPOE certainly is user-friendly, hassle-free, as well as it save doctors time. To put it another way, this is what the doctors basically desire to use. Computerized Physician Order Entry systems are built to change a medical's paper-based ordering method. They permit users to digitally prepare the entire variety of orders, keep an online medication management report. In addition they provide safety alerts which are alarmed whenever an unsafe order or a duplicate drug therapy is entered, in addition to medical decision support to assist caretakers for cheaper choices or even alternatives which best match founded hospital protocols. CPOE systems could, once properly set up, significantly boost performance and also enhance patient safety and care. Computerized Physician Order Entry systems reduces delay in order completion, decreases mistakes or errors regarding handwriting or even transcriptions, enables order at point of care or off-site, offers error checking for the duplicate entry or for wrong doses or tests.

Since all the computerized physician order entry systems are not similar, KLAS Research approached PatientKeeper during the early 2013 to participate in their "Tip of the Spear" report, a series which evaluates innovative technology. PatientKeeper is among the most recent available CPOEs, that blends with different EMR systems that includes an easy user interface that enables doctors to submit medical orders electronically at a fast rate and PatientKeeper CPOE has achieved exactly that according to an interesting review by KLAS investigation. PatientKeeper CPOE was developed based upon doctors work flow, it is therefore simply and effectively implemented by doctors. They would be able to convert everything that they usually perform the whole day for example - ordering labs, radiology etc. PatientKeeper is a consistent system which links every single department in the hospital and also to healthcare community. As per the study, KLAS talked with medical and IT people from 6 separate organizations which represent over 35 different hospitals utilizing PatientKeeper CPOE. According to number of interviews, KLAS discovered a number of regular concerns within users, especially about system functionality, features and functions, training time period and satisfaction on the whole. PatientKeeper CPOE helps save doctors time the whole day by simply making it easier to allow them to put in a single click "favorite orders", or even order again from laboratory outcomes.

Lets take a little insight to Meaningful Use Stage 2 which puts in a larger focus on swapping clinical data between providers and allowing patient engagement. Since, Meaningful Use Stage 2, set to start in 2014, develops around the utilization and abilities of EHRs launched in Medicare Meaningful Use Stage 1.To include more advanced procedures in place and raise the interoperability of Health Information and also adopt standardized data platforms, regulations need to get in touch with care providers. The Meaningful Use Stage 2, has the similar core and menu structure as in Meaningful Use Stage 1. However, it has higher limits and more requirements. Eligible providers should meet 17 core objectives and 3 menu objectives in order to attest to Stage 2 successfully. In order to successfully attest to Stage 2, the eligible hospitals or critical access hospitals (CAHs) has to meet 16 core objectives and meet 2 of 4 menu objectives.

Despite the fact that the Meaningful Use project comprises of measures, prerequisites and time-lines, it exists to fulfill a significant pair of objectives: Smooth, precised data-sharing around care givers and a higher care after all patients. The general quality of the program is that it encourages a secured, more proficient approach to practice medicine. Making it feasible: a complete, complete-certified EHR, and a technology partner with the advanced processes, resources, experience and services to aid care givers in effectively attaining Meaningful Use. You can get in touch with a healthcare software development company who can help you with your healthcare projects.

We can help clients with their Clinical software development process. If you would like to develop clinical information management systems for your health organization, please contact Mindfire Solutions to hire healthcare programmers.

Measures to reduce healthcare costs

Expenditure rose rapidly in Health Care during 10 years in the last quarter, an improvement that may possibly envisioned increased expenses for consumers this year. Costs for health care increased with a 5.6% yearly rates during the forth quarter, the Bureau of Economics Analysis stated a week ago. The leap resulted an acute increased modification with the government's estimation over consumer expenditure in general and included for almost 25% of the economy's 2.6% annual development within the last 3 months in 2013. This drives the increase of $8 billion rise in hospital revenue, significantly more as compared to earlier 4 quarters put together, as reported by the Census Bureau and Royal Bank of Scotland. RBS economic expert Omair Sharif states the rise in hospitals' earnings were puzzling due to the amount of inpatient days dropped 1% throughout the 4th quarter. The rise is really a reasonable differ from slow-growing rates in health care costs and also investing during the past few years. Lot of unemployed people in America moved with no medical insurance or perhaps restricted any investing while in the recession as well as during the slow improvement, states Dan Mendelson, CEO of consulting company Avelere Health.

Furthermore, the 2010 Affordable Care Act offered incentives to medical centers in order to become much more efficient as well as restrict patient admitting again. Insurance firms progressively have moved expenses on patients with high-deductible methods along with the various other steps, motivating Americans in order to restrict visits to physicians and medical centers, he states. However, such developments may perhaps are grading down, and also extended ascending challenges upon medical care expenses, for instance the development of pricey advanced treatments, tend to emerging again, as stated by Mendelson. Ever since late 2011, companies have actually added 2.6 million employments, as well as the jobless rates has dropped down from 8.5% to 6.7%. "The enhanced economic climate could cause people getting the means to invest in medical care services," American Hospital Association spokeswoman Jennifer Schleman stated for the 4th quarter leap in hospital income.

The cost-effective Care Act's authorized for American people to enjoy coverage of health the current year or else give a penalty might fuel additional expenditure increases this year, states George Miller, a member in the Altarum Institute's Center for Sustainable Health Spending. The centers for the Medicare and State Health Program Services is expecting health expenses to go up by 6.1% this year, which would be an increase of 4% in 2013, as a result 11 million people in America could be benefited from Health Insurance. The consumers spend on health care may also become expensive. Yearly health rising prices has actually been reduced ever since the recession and also ended up being the 50-year reduced to 0.9% in the month of January, as stated by Capital Economics. However the falling was basically to a certain extent because of the expiration of a huge number of drug patents in the year 2011 and 2012, resulting costly top quality medicines to get replaced with lower priced generics. Among less patents expiring in the couple of years, "the majority will end up in drug rising prices to be reversed," as stated by Paul Dales associated with Capital Economics. Dales considers one among the list of factors which should move yearly healthcare rising prices to 2.5% over the next couple of years as well as push whole rising prices, except food and energy costs, over the Federal Reserves 2% goal as soon as the following year. Which may encourage the Fed to increase rate of interest much before expected in 2015, he states.

EHRs - Electroni Health Records and HIEs - Health Information Exchange with e-Prescribing plays a vital role in health care in reducing costs. It includes an added level of patient safety monitoring as well as enhancing the standers of patient care in general. EHRs are complete health records which includes information on medical procedures, diagnoses, lab results and vaccinations while giving an overall electronic review of a patient's medical life. Whereas HIEs is designed for allowing the exchange of EHRs around all the healthcare stakeholders that provides records which can be used during the treatment or care. The EHRs and HIEs not simply gain access to data and minimize medical errors; better quality patient-centered attention but they also facilitate lower cost. The cost of care can also be reduced by implementing an integrated total population care management. Which not only improves quality of care but it significantly enables much better health results. Population care management solutions can enhance healthcare delivery along with high quality, while encouraging healthcare recommendations as well as cutting down the costs. You can build healthcare softwares within allocated budgets and time schedules through healthcare software development companies.

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Future of Accountable Care Organizations

The challenging and changing nature of healthcare industry is leading to the emergence of Accountable Care Organizations or ACOs. An ACO is actually a group comprising of primary care specialists, doctors, hospitals along with associated healthcare providers who work together and have a common aim to deliver coordinated high quality care to the patients. The ACO was created by ACA or Affordable Care Act, based on the vision of creating a health care system, which is more effective as well as connected. In ACOs, accountability for clinical processes as well as patient care coordination are shared by multiple providers. The main aim is to help in the reduction of health care expenses and also for quality improvement of national healthcare.

One of the must-have competencies that is required for the proper formation as well as functioning of ACO is interprofessional team care along with aid management. In the unforeseeable future, it may be assumed that there will be a shortage in the supply of skilled healthcare professionals. With a constrained supply, more effective models of leverage will be required, which will lead to interprofessional team care applications. In fact, it is best to come out with a design of physician compensation, since the financial scenario is such that having plans of salary-based compensations might be a good idea. It is also a good idea to manage the system properly by regularly updating the performance metrics as well as benchmarks along with regular evaluation. Recording the performance in balance sheets is another addition on the to-do list.

From both clinical and operational perspective, ACOs actually make sense. The healthcare organizations these days are often filled with faulty communication habits as well as inefficient workflows, which affects both outcomes as well as quality in a negative way. The issues can be countered by the recognized ACOs, only if they meet some indicators along with derived data of some key areas, like experience of care providers along with patients, care coordination, safety of patients through analysis, reporting along with error prevention and the 'at-risk population' which includes health of elderly as well as physically sick people.

The complex nature of healthcare makes it necessary to approach issues in cohesive groups that work together, so that objectives like expertise sharing, creativity, development of new skills, influencing decisions as well as increase of personal autonomy are achieved. The formation of such teams may be possible only by elimination of barriers that may be encountered in regular communications. For unlocking the quality outcomes as well as team performance, communication excellence is needed. In healthcare, communication must be simple through simple conversation with each other. Any gap in communication may result in limited quality service. If issues are not addressed, it may result in ineffective, inefficient as well as potentially unsafe performance, which might lead to unintended outcomes.

Since healthcare system products are services, to make ACOs really effective as well as the potential future of healthcare, evaluation should be done in respect of parameters like reliability, tangibles, empathy, assurance, communication, accessibility along with clinical measures. When these measures are achieved, then high performance teams can be developed and bonus benefits will be experienced along with job satisfaction.

The diverse nature of ACO is complimentary to the diverse natures of the patients that they serve. Almost half of them are organizations led by physicians, with 20% including critical access hospitals, rural health centers as well as community health centers, which serve rural along with low income communities. Their good work helps ensure that high quality medical services are accessed by normally under-served populations. It is possible by putting extra attention on the patients. Currently, the demand as well as popularity of ACOs are growing steadily. With more than 3 million medicare beneficiaries being served by ACOs, the program may seem to be the future of the healthcare industry. There are plans of launching some additional ACOs in 2014 which will be continued annually. You can build healthcare apps within allocated budgets and time schedules through companies having clinical software development expertise.

We provide healthcare software development services. If you would like to hire healthcare software developers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions. 

Engaging patients using technology

Every patient draws satisfaction and comfort on being extended good personalized care. With technology permeating the healthcare space, there is a strong feeling amongst many people that the degree of personalized care is only going to improve in the future. Infact, technological innovations are also expected to find progressive solutions to the hurdles currently faced in managing and curing fatal diseases. This is the consequence of the paradigm shift in the manner in which people have started viewing the impact of technology on healthcare. There is a high degree of willingness from their end to become part of the solution to the world's healthcare problems with the aid of all sorts of technologies – to the extent that they are now open to virtual doctor visits and to the extensive use of remote medical devices and health sensors. Basically, there seems to be no hesitation whatsoever in embracing a form of healthcare which makes it possible for them to access care outside the hospital premises, share their information anonymously for better outcomes, receive care which is highly personalized i.e. even take into account the patient’s genetic details.

Given the expectations which patients have, it has become imperative on the part of providers and physicians to acknowledge them and subsequently device ways to address them. Though the inhibitions on the part of patients towards using personal health records and mobile apps for managing their care is on the wane, physicians in turn can be reluctant to accept electronic data from patients due to liability concerns. A research was done in order understand the reasons for the apprehension on the part of the physicians and the subsequent steps taken to address them. The major concerns included timeliness of data availability, adequacy of response, volume of data, accuracy and decision on who should respond. Based on the findings, some steps have been suggested to make it possible for physicians to better engage with patients using technology.

They include the following:

• Achieve an understanding of the nature of information patients would be expected to share , how they would do it and who would be the person responsible from the clinical team to review the information and at what frequency
• Identify and train a member of the clinical care team to monitor incoming data and decide urgency
• Have a protocol in place to handle medical emergency
• Use the correct judgment to arrive at a decision on whether or not a patient-generated electronic health information needs to be included in a physician’s medical record

The above points can act as valuable guidelines for providers as well in their endeavor to engage patients using technology. Besides, they will also enable them to offer highly effective, efficient and most importantly patient-centered care. With better data and technology at their disposal, it will be possible to see what is happening to patients more easily and, if need be, make the required adjustments in real time. In the new emerging payment models like Accountable Care Organizations, technology can actually play a very crucial role in engaging patients - by prompting more preventive behavior and spurring patient-physician discussions. The new models aim to negate fee-for-service by offering incentives and savings to patients for doing things the right way. This is where they expect technology to play a major role. Mobile health app development teams can help you build clinical and EHR/EMR software projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide healthcare software integration and Healthcare testing services. If you want to hire certified healthcare software testers for testing your medical application, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

The issue of Patient Safety with EHRs

Optimal use of Electronic Health Records is expected to bring in fundamental and revolutionary changes in the healthcare industry. Its adaptation has already resulted in enhanced patient care and coordination. Things are only expected to get better moving forward. However, it is very important to understand that Health IT is like a tool which needs to be used properly to derive the real benefits – that there are also possibilities of negative unintended consequences also, leading at times to adverse events if not used in the right way. Keeping this in perspective, guidance has been issued to enable healthcare personnel recognize clinical mishaps or unsafe conditions arising out of an electronic health records as and when they occur. Most of such incidents don’t otherwise get reported since the concerned clinicians and risk managers don't see the role of health IT in those adverse events. Some of the common causes of such adverse events related to EHR or Health IT, in broad terms, are because of

• system interface issues
• wrong data input
• wrong record retrieval
• software functionality
• configuration issues

To conclude that the adverse results are specific to EHRs only and will not occur otherwise will not be apt. Even if one were using papers, the likelihood of such occurrences still exists. Identifying the source is critical here as with EHRs, errors can have a cascading effect very fast with erroneous data getting auto populated into related fields.

It has been widely accepted that if health IT errors are unaddressed; they will act as huge lag factors in improving the overall patient care. Hence, efforts are being put at various levels to combat it. Since EHRs have fundamentally altered how physicians interact with patients, its adoption amongst the existing group of physicians has not been a smooth one. Inadequate technical support and changing regulations have only added to the woes, so much so that time and again there are questions raised in the physician fraternity on its effectiveness. To ensure that the next generations of physicians do not join their predecessor in holding such prejudices, medical school curriculums are being changed so as to include the required training on EHR usage. The aim is to maximize the understanding and acceptance of EHRs right from the beginning. As long as they consider it as part and parcel of their job, there will always be an intent to find solutions to issues arising out of them and not question their existence at the first place. There are many ways to guard against IT-related incidents in healthcare setups. For e.g. some of steps which can be taken could be to

• have a good monitoring system
• support a culture where such incidents get reported the moment they are identified
• establish a Health IT patient safety priority list

Among EHRs, it has been noted that the ones used in emergency departments seem to be more prone to errors. Research done in this field has suggested that such a trend could be a fall-out of the unique characteristics prevalent in these departments. Some of those would be rapid turn overs, frequent care transitions, interruptions and variance in patient volumes. EHRs have not been robust enough in handling so many factors.

The governing bodies realized that in order to find a solution to this issue, it will have to finally boil down to clinicians having the ability to share their insights with system developers. Since it is they who observe problems first-hand, they are best placed to share inputs related to making the required improvements. Also, it was concluded that just encouraging the clinician fraternity to work without subsequent actions from the IT side will lead to no positive developments whatsoever. Taking this into account a set of principles was shared with the EHR vendor industry to act as guidelines, the focus of which are on the following:

• Patient safety
• Privacy and security
• Patient engagement
• General business practices
• Clinical and billing documentation
• Interoperability and data portability

Besides the above, there are also implementation guidelines which have been shared with the vendor community. They have also been quite receptive to the guidelines and view this as a very important step taken so as to knit together stakeholders determined to improve the healthcare delivery system.

You can hire developers from healthcare solutions development companies in India who can help you build clinical and EHR/EMR software projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide Healthcare software development and Healthcare testing services. If you want to hire healthcare software developers for developing your medical application, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

What are the major issues in using Medical Devices

Medical devices do not work standalone any more. They are at one level part of the networks of providers who use them and at another that of all other networks of all other providers they get connected with; courtesy the phenomena of interoperability and Health Information Exchanges. Under such fast changing circumstances, the impact of incidents of hacking, malware and other cybercrimes related to the devices have the potential of taking gigantic proportions. Is there any one stakeholder who is to be blamed for the majority of the accidents that result out of medical devices? A thorough analysis done reveals that the outcome, which in some cases could be really serious, can have a genesis involving any of the concerned ones. For e.g. the manufacturers could be at fault for not issuing regular updates which they are expected to. Because each patch would require a review by the regulators, they might give it a skip altogether in order to evade the process of going through the grill every now and then. The hospitals might not also report all problems as and when they arise. A classic case in point could be devices running on old versions of operating systems which might get affected by malware but would not get updated with the latest version of an antivirus as it would require a review by the regulator. All such activities are not necessarily in the best interests of the patients at large.

A security breach, when it happens in a medical device is not just an instance of patient information getting jeopardized. Technically, from the perspective of a provider, it becomes a HIPPA liability. From getting the device to malfunction it can clearly put at risk the lives of patients. It is not uncommon to hear of incidents of hacking, malware and cybercrimes leading to disastrous outcomes. What is a matter of real concern is that as HITECH pushes forward with its EHR adoption drive, it will eventually lead to medical devices getting tightly connected to EHRs. It will thus increase the possibility of problems arising out of faulty medical devices taking gigantic proportions. Once the Stage 2 of Meaningful Use goes into effect, the widespread presence of interoperability and health information exchanges can result in one infected medical device corrupting distinct EHRs it eventually gets linked with.

For Healthcare facilities, it is highly important to ensure the following

• ensure that there is no unauthorized access made to medical devices or networks
• track and monitor medical devise and network activity continually for early detection of any infection.
• have in place antivirus and firewall which get updated regularly
• stay in touch with manufacturers to stay updated on any particular risk they are aware of
• have provision to isolate devices in the event of their getting infected
• ensure continuation of activities during adverse events also

Most of the medial devices are built in such a manner that anyone who manages to have access to the password can get into the firmware of the devices and potentially change it. Since cyber and intentional attacks are a reality, a loophole like this can easily be exploited; especially if it has something to do with implantable electronic medical devices such as heart defibrillators and insulin pumps. FDA, on realizing this, has made it mandatory starting next year to have in place an agreement which would mean that only the device makers have the required access to alter the programming logic.

Broad guidelines issued to manufacturers require them

• to limit device access
• ensure that individual components have a high degree of protection
• build provision for quick recovery and retention in the event of breakdowns
• be quick to build security for devices keeping in mind the environment they operate in

Many start-up ventures are quite bullish on the potential medical devices have. This has led to a good amount of innovation in this field. Wearable technology is one area which is seeing a lot of traction with projections of the market reaching approximately $6 billion by the year 2016. However, since getting the regulatory sanctions is a critical element in the equation, and the process is expected to be a tough one, venture funds have not flown in at a desired pace yet. Healthcare software development teams can help you customize medical devices as well as build interactive dashboards for you to analyze the data.

We provide mobile health app development services as well. If you would like to hire developers for healthcare application, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.