Category: Children’s Health Network

Hiring Millennials For Your Practice — And Keeping Them There

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By 2020, your staff may look a little different.

As we head into the 2020s, the Millennials (those born between 1981 and 1997) are poised to make up over half of the American workforce.1 They will make up a significant portion of your staff, whether as physicians, nurses, receptionists, or maintenance workers.

You want your practice to have the best and brightest. So, how can you hire Millennials — and keep them?

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1 Pew Research Center (April 25, 2016)

Value-based Care: 3 Ways To Leverage It To Benefit Your Practice

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Value-based care has been a breakthrough idea for payers. But to many physicians, it might seem like the vampire that just won’t die.

Yes, it’s designed to lower costs in the long run, a goal most of us can support. But there’s always a fear that it might not align with optimum patient care … and can put a significant burden on your practice.

Still, value-based care seems to be creeping into more contracts as payers, particularly the government, work to get costs under control. So, the question arises: Are there ways to leverage it for the good of your practice? Here are 3 strategies to consider.

1. Amp Up Your Patient Satisfaction Rates

The shift toward value-based care has put a stronger emphasis on patient satisfaction rates. In that capacity, you’ve always been ready to deliver excellent medical care. But maybe you could look at some extra details that are part of the care experience at your office.

For example, you might see opportunities to:

  • Improve your scheduling system
  • Make your billing statements easier to understand
  • Increase your number of follow-up calls and appointment reminders

You also might consider providing financial counseling to patients, or referrals to payment assistance programs, if you’re not already doing so.

Value-adds like these can boost patient satisfaction rates and improve health outcomes in the process.

2. Launch Quality Improvement Projects

It’s an old formula: Prevention saves money. If your reimbursements will be tied to your patients’ long-term health, maybe it’s time to take a look at some new quality initiatives in your practice.

value-based care

Your quality improvement projects can provide valuable data to payers in the value-based care arena and tie into parallel projects, such as complying with HEDIS quality measures.

3. Make A Stronger Impact On Population Health

It’s no secret that payers have taken a stronger interest in population health management as they move toward value-based care. This gives physicians an opportunity to look more broadly at their patient populations — for example, children with chronic conditions like asthma or diabetes.

To “move the needle” toward better health for these patients, the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) suggests three keys to a successful population health management program2:

  • Data analytics
  • Technology adoption
  • The inclusion of the patient as a partner

In particular, consider new technology that provides real-time data and predictive analytics. These tools can drive clinical decisions that better support your patient populations, HIMSS notes. Contact a health information technology consultant to discuss how to implement tools like these with your EMR and workflow.

When your at-risk patient populations start to show better numbers — fewer hospitalizations, more days without asthma attacks, lower blood sugar — you’ll not only create grateful parents. You might also make value-based care contracts easier to manage over time.

Share this article with a colleague who is implementing value-based care contracts into his practice.

1 AAP News (March 9, 2017)
2 HIMSS News (June 20, 2016)

4 Time-Saving Strategies For Your Medical Practice

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It’s been a long day, and once again, you’re struggling to finish up documentation and paperwork that you couldn’t finish at the office. Where did the day go?

Administrative tasks can change your job from being solely a physician to being a physician who’s also a data entry clerk, medical assistant, and technician. As these duties pile up, spending clinical time with patients can seem like a luxury.

A 2016 study found that most physicians spent 13 to 16 minutes with each patient1—and physicians across the country think less time with patients is hurting the doctor-patient relationship.2

What causes time drains at your office? For most physicians, the roots are multifaceted — ranging from hidden opportunities to improve practice management to unexpectedly malfunctioning technology.

No matter what the culprit, the bottom line is that time drains subtract facetime with patients … and can be financially costly.

Here are potential time-saving solutions to 4 common challenges that physicians face.

1. Problem: Patient Time Hijacked By Electronic Health Records (EHR)

According to one recent study, in a typical day at the office, physicians spend only 27% of their time face to face with a patient, and almost half of their time managing EHRs.3 Physicians also devote an additional 1 or 2 hours to completing EHRs4 after the office has closed for the day.

Solution:

Ask patients to share part of the data entry burden for you.5 They can fill in basic information through the patient portal — such as which medications they’re taking — before their visit.

Don’t settle for the default settings. Work with your EHR vendor to customize the workflow6 for you. This can minimize unnecessary steps and streamline the process.

2. Problem: Endless Refill Requests

Handling refill requests may not seem like a significant distraction, but the amount of time it takes adds up. On average, a practice’s refill requests can take up to 200 hours per year.

Solution:

Adopt synchronized bundled prescription renewal7: The physician renews all of a patient’s chronic medications (except narcotics and benzodiazepines) at the annual physical, and prescribes refills that will last until the next visit.

3. Problem: Explaining Medical Concepts Slows Down An Appointment

Sometimes, even the most clearly worded explanations of medical concepts still confuse patients. For physicians, this can mean extra time spent re-explaining ideas — possibly several times — until patients understand.

Solution:

A picture is worth a thousand words: Consider using a visual aid.8

Many iOS and Android apps, such as drawMD, can help physicians make their point and save time. Physicians can save images to a patient’s EHR or share them with patients through the app.

4. Problem: Nurses And Staff Can’t Get Off The Phone

Patients want to know all of the details about their healthcare, so it is inevitable that they call your medical staff for answers. Consequently, your staff becomes busy taking phone calls and doesn’t always have time for their other tasks.

Solution:

Leverage your website to cut down on phone time.9 Make sure your information, such as hours and location, is up to date.

Consider publishing a section for frequently asked questions, uploading pre-visit forms, and, if possible, online scheduling. This easy-to-find information can mean fewer calls and more time for your staff.

Saving time is just one aspect of practice management. Subscribe to the CHN newsletter and receive more practice management tips.

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CHN Group Purchasing: A Path To Major Savings For Your Practice
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1 ASC Review (April 7, 2016)
2 PBS (July 21, 2017)
3, 4 Annals of Internal Medicine (Dec. 6, 2016)
5, 6 Medical Economics (Jan. 10, 2017)
7 American Academy of Family Physicians (November/December 2012)
8,9 Physicians Practice (Oct. 8, 2013)

4 Ways To Manage The Pediatric Physician Shortage

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It’s no secret that the demand for pediatric care in the US has steeply outgrown the number of practicing physicians.1 “Our next appointment is four weeks from now” has become a familiar refrain at pediatric offices across the country.

The statistics help tell the story:

The shortage is, in part, a reflection of the fact that becoming a pediatric physician takes about 6 years of additional training. But a pediatrician may well earn less than a specialist, a fact that makes medical students think twice before they specialize in pediatrics.

Faced with this pediatric physician shortage, your practice might need to take creative approaches to meeting young patients’ healthcare needs. Here are 4 strategies to consider.

1. Remove Barriers For Non-MD Providers4

From a patient’s perspective, “doctor” generally means a physician with an MD. However, many nurse practitioners (NPs) are trained as primary care providers in pediatric care.5

Not only have nurse practitioners been providing many primary care services to pediatric patients, they’ve also expressed willingness to take the lead in patient-centered medical homes.6

Hiring NPs might ease some pressure on your office, particularly during the winter months as more patients present with viral illness symptoms.

Another option: medical assistants, who can perform advanced medical duties, such as:7

  • Serving as a contact person for patients with chronic diseases
  • Providing customized health education for parents
  • Serving as a “health coach” for older children (e.g., young athletes)

Practices are recognizing this opportunity, with perhaps surprising results. For instance, New Jersey’s Atlanticare Special Care Center (a practice for adult patients) reduced emergency room visits percent8 by adopting a medical home model that uses medical assistants as health coaches.

2. Let Doctors Be Doctors

It’s a problem that keeps growing for physicians nationwide: administrative tasks take too much time away from patients. This is when practice management strategies become critical.

In our last blog, we talked about ways to improve management at your practice to save time and deliver better care. For example:

  • Add synchronized, bundled prescription renewal through your patient portal
  • Use visual aids to explain medical concepts, which can save time
  • Leverage your website to answer patient questions and reduce the amount of time your staff spends on the phone

Keep seeking out strategies like these and, if necessary, consider hiring a practice consultant. Even a few minutes of time saved per day can significantly add up on a monthly or yearly basis.

3. Embrace Telemedicine

Telemedicine9 may be another low-cost solution to help manage the pediatric physician shortage. And, its technology evolves, providers may be able to diagnose a wider range of issues more accurately.

Telemedicine is already addressing a major root of the shortage problem — uneven geographic distribution of providers. It’s often difficult for rural hospitals to support many specialists.

Telemedicine allows small hospitals or practices to connect to bigger medical centers and make more specialists available to their patients.

The American Academy of Pediatrics supports the increased use of telemedicine10, touting its potential for:

  • Improving access to care
  • Increasing communication among providers
  • Enhancing continuous care by linking primary and specialty care providers

4. Make An Impact On Education And Training

Medical school enrollment is increasing every year, but many students make their residency choices out of practical necessity instead of personal preference.

This might drive them away from pediatrics, a field that doesn’t generally offer as many residency programs as other primary care fields, such as family medicine, general surgery, and obstetrics/gynecology.11

Medical practices could emulate some private organizations and consider establishing scholarship and fellowships to encourage more young physicians to pursue pediatrics.

All of these steps combined may help reduce the physician shortage in pediatrics and make excellent care available to more young patients nationwide.

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  • 4 Time-Saving Strategies For Your Medical Practice
  • What Do Healthcare Consumers Value Most? 4 Key Insights
1, 2 Health Capital (March 2014)
3 American Academy of Pediatrics (June 2014)
4 Wall Street Journal (June 2013)
5 New England Journal of Medicine (June 2013)
6 New England Journal of Medicine (May 2013)
7, 8 Fortune (August 2015)
9 Becker’s Hospital Review (January 2013)
10 American Academy of Pediatrics (June 2015)
11 Residency Place

3 Breakthroughs In Pediatric Care Over The Past Decade

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Any way you look at it, the field of pediatrics has grown in exponentially ways. It didn’t even come into its own as a distinct branch of modern medicine until the 1930s.1 Even then, it took several more decades before the first pediatric subspecialty — cardiology — received its own board recognition in the 1960s.2

oxygen was administered to newborns via large mask in 1939, in Berlin, Germany
This is how oxygen was administered to newborns in 1939, in Berlin, Germany. Source: Huffington Post

The years since then have been full of medical innovations that have saved the lives of countless children. As the end of this year approaches, here’s a look back at some of most significant technological advancements over the past 10 years.

3D Printed Hearts

3D printing is becoming the next frontier of organ-transplant medicine. For instance, this year, a soft silicon-made, 3D printed heart beat for about 30 minutes in a Zurich lab.3

Although 3D printing is still far from creating a full replacement for a human heart, this technology has significantly improved the outcomes of heart surgeries for children.

For example, cardiologists and surgeons at Children’s Nebraska use printed replicas of patient hearts as models to help prepare for surgery.4 Using MRI and CT scan images, Children’s physicians create models and enlarge them to study a patient’s heart defects more closely.

Surgeons then have the opportunity to practice on these printed models, which leads to more precision during surgery and fewer complications for children afterward.

The continued improvement of 3D printing technology offers a glimpse at an even brighter future for the smallest cardiology patients.

Gene Therapy For Leukemia

Even though leukemia is the most common type of cancer in children and teens, its exact causes have eluded researchers.5 However, at least some types have been linked to gene mutations.6

Last summer, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first type of gene therapy in the United States, which was designed to treat certain children and young adults with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemiasup>7.

The treatment “reprograms” the DNA of a patient’s own T-cells8 to recognize cancer cells. These reprogrammed cells are then infused back into the patient’s body. In a clinical trial with 88 patients, 73 went into remission within 3 months.

Physicians and researchers saw the advance as a new class of cancer therapy that might eventually be adapted for all cancer patients.

Bridge-Enhanced ACL Repair (BEAR)

While ACL tears are some of the most common sports injuries,9 they’re notorious for the time and effort they require for full healing. Reconstruction surgery10 usually requires taking grafts from other parts of a patient’s tendons, and recovery typically takes several months.

For the past 2 years, Boston Children’s Hospital has been using an alternate approach that appears to have great promise. Rather than relying on tendon grafting, the new surgery11 uses a sponge bridge to connect the torn ends of the patient’s ACL. In about 6 to 8 weeks, the ligament grows back and replaces the sponge.

The full potential of this new surgery is still being studied,12 but it has sparked interest among physicians and patients alike. In addition to a quicker recovery, the surgery is less invasive than traditional ACL repair and has the potential to become a game-changer for young athletes.

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  • The ECHO Grant: Getting To The Root of Childhood Obesity
  • What Do Healthcare Consumers Value Most? 4 Key Insights
1 Verywell (April 2017)
2 Nature (August 2004)
3 CNN (July 2017)
4 Smallbeats (September 2016)
5 American Cancer Society
6 Cell (September 2015)
7 FDA (Aug. 30, 2017)
8 LA Times (August 2017)
9, 10 American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons
11, 12 Boston Globe (March 2016)

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