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So I just came back from this conference that spent alot of time speaking about what a "consumer" expects of their healthcare. Speed and access kept coming up as did Web presence and e-vists and on-line scheduling of appointments and all kinds of things that made my head spin. Does anybody incorporate anything like that in their practice? Or are you all like me in terms of face-to-face encounters with a liberal amount of time wasted on the telephone?
-Alberto

I refuse to even waste time on the phone. Remember, for most of us, the only thing we have to sell is our time. Do not short-change yourself. And, in our country where lawyers prevail, treating a patient without a face-to-face encounter is too dangerous. If a patient requires my opinion, evaluation, advice or treatment, I expect to be compensated for it. Patients also want antibiotics for colds, cures for cancer, fountains of youth and erections on demand. Just because it is what a patient wants does not mean it is what they need or what they should have.

Leslie

Santos, as a developer, I personally believe
"e-vists and on-line scheduling of appointments" are over rated, and are just a myriad of technology too fraught with possible HIPPA violations for the small practitioner to worry about.

With a really good scheduling system it takes my MA less than 2 minutes to make Mrs. Jones (89 years old) appointment. I would hate to have Mrs. Jones calling me for support to make her appointment! If you have a younger patient base maybe, but I don't think it is ready for prime time. On our own website, www.jmcopeland.md we are able to put our registration forms online for our patients, and that saves use both time and money.

I think we should wait a few years to see how the new "healthcare" will look. Just my two cents...

Thanks for the soapbox, Leslie. So I take it you do not have a web presence for your practice? *wink* Me neither. I have a largely medicare population with most of my folks speaking predominately spanish and most of my english speakers are not computer saavy. My associate, interestingly enough, has alot more of the college kids from the local school. Alot of them find her from their insurance company's website. And this, according to the conference, was the new trend. Obviously my patient population wasn't the demographic of the talk. But, college kid insurance pays alot better per visit than medicare does in our area (at each level of E&M code). So... attracting more commercial insurance would be a good thing... if others in this group were having success with it.
-Alberto

Actually, Santos, I do have a website. But, one cannot schedule appointments online. I have not yet migrated to giving them the ability to download forms but I am not opposed to that. I too have a mostly older population and asking them to get on the computer would be disasterous. But the factor which drives me more is not that my patients are not computer savvy but that I am an old fogey. I still believe medicine is a service industry and that involves face-to-face interaction. I do not have voice mail (I personally cannot stand it). When patients call they get to talk to someone they know. Someone whose face or voice they recognize from a previous office visit. Someone who has helped them previously or knows they can no longer drive or knows they need their meds delivered or knows their husband died last month. I am skeptical that any technology present or future will be able to provide that kind of personal interaction.
And, believe it or not, I think almost all patients would really prefer to see you face-to-face. If a patient calls in wanting a script for an antibiotic for a sore throat and my staff replies, "Oh gee, Mrs. Catarrh, you sound like you do not feel well at all. I am sure the doctor would like to see you in the office," most patients are happy that you care so much about them to notice just how crappy they feel.
Even though I do my banking on-line, I would prefer to go back 20 years where I knew all the tellers in my bank. Where I could call and talk to Mrs. Lire who goes to my church. But since I no longer feel my bank cares about me and because when I call I get someone's voice mail or, worse yet, someone in Pittsburgh, I may as well just bank on-line.
But, like I said, I am and old fogey. I will now cautiously descend from my soapbox.

Leslie

We have a web presence. We do online appointment scheduleing. Most of our patients love it, and we strongly resist manual scheduling except for same-day appointments when the online system says "full." We have few older patients since we dropped Medicare.

Patients can download forms from the site, but that is currently broken. I think its a MS issue. Something cut off some Adobe "add-ons" that had been running on mystem. When I reactivated in IE, i could pull the forms up again.

We do a limited amount of online consultations. Most patients want this for free, and we charge for it. So they can come in, or pay for the online consult.

If a patient sends in a request through our portal, we will send them their lab results. Many patients do, however, want you to send it right after they send the request and can become quite demanding---till they tick me off.

Wayne, I took a look at the website and it looks neat. How do you integrate AppointmentQuest with AC?

You just export your AQ schedule to a excel spreadsheet. Then, in AC, you just go to Import, Appointment Quest. If you set your custom form up like mine, it will also import the address of the patient (but not the insurance info. at least , not yet Jon?)