The Official Omedix Blog

We’ve been busily preparing for our exhibit at the NextGen Users Group Meeting and are excited to head to Washington DC!

It’s funny how healthcare has just lagged behind in doing things online.  In many ways, I can understand it — earlier today I spoke with a pain management doctor about whether he wanted to allow patients to request appointments online. 

I of course think anything I can do online is great but understand the bar is a lot higher for most people who don’t work with tech every day.  But the doctor explained how when a new patient calls up his practice, because “pain” is such a general concept they have to ask quite a bit of questions.  They’re also weary of the patient who’s jut seeking another renewal of Vicodin as part of their drug addiction.  So, it just didn’t make sense to do the online appointments in that case.

But he did want his patients to fill out their paperwork online before their first visit, and he wanted to make it easier for them to pay their bill online.  He also really liked the idea of the patients educating themselves about their condition, and of using tools in his office to illustrate — for example — what a Facet Joint Injection actually involved.

The takeaway is pretty simple: Healthcare wants to go online, but it really has to make sense for the practice.  This conference should be interesting because we’re going to meet so many different kinds of practices across so many differen specialties, and it will be great to hear about what does make sense at this point in their practices.

We’ve started using a concept known as the “online receptionist” here, and my guess is that will resonate well with people.  Anyway, we’re off to Washington!  Looking forward to it.

I went to the HIMSS Conference in Chicago earlier this year.  When I wasn’t getting milkshakes in a booth designed to look like a 1950’s diner or learning about the latest & greatest with interoperability, I took a few minutes to chat with Eric Fishman, MD of EHRTV.com.  Dr. Fishman interviewed me on the Omedix Patient Portal, PortalPlus.  Check it out!

We just got back from the GE Centricity Healthcare Users Group meeting, where we unveiled our new patient portal, PortalPlus.

We started Omedix back in 2004 with the mission of using the web to create better medical practices.  When we began, we helped our clients do that by providing medical website design and patient education services.  We basically wanted to make sure that when patients and colleagues went looking for their doctor online, they saw a professional looking site that was easy to use, resourceful, interactive and up to date.

Eventually, we realized that just putting up an online shingle wasn’t enough, so we began working with clients to help them attract new patients over the Internet with search engine marketing.  Then we realized that just getting new patients to the site wasn’t enough.  We had to help our clients actually convert those patients into new patient requests or online appointment requests.

And then we realized even that wasn’t enough.  We needed to enable our clients to interact with their existing patients in a way that really leverages technology to make life easier for them.  That’s why we created PortalPlus.  With PortalPlus, it’s now possible to:

Streamline Patient Registration
Instead of having patients struggle with pen & paper, they just go to your website, fill out all forms online, the information is reviewed by a staff member, and magically deposited into your Practice Management System.

Reduce Phone Calls
Patients call because they need to request appointments, refill prescriptions, pay their bill, request medical records, and a few other simple yet time-consuming routine transactions.  We’ve now put these online so that your patients just log in, select the transaction they want, fill in the form, and they’re done.  Your staff go to our practice portal to view the request and then process it in any number of ways.

Streamline Delivery of Lab Results
Instead of time-consuming phone calls, you can deliver lab results to patients right through the portal.

Plus Many other Items I’ll Write About Soon!
Patients can view their medical record, prepare for their appointments, send secure messages, pay their bill directly by credit card, plus a few other nifty features.

At the GE Centricity Healthcare Users Group Conference, we had our first public unveiling of PortalPlus, and the response was wonderful.  It showed me that there’s a real need for these kinds of systems, although I have to admit I’m somewhat baffled that only around 15% of all practices even have a patient portal.

The fact that receptionists actually hand-type patients’ registration info reminds of 1989 more than 2009.  Also, the reality is that with just a tiny bit of data entry, or with no data entry at all, a good patient portal will leverage the heck out of information *that you already have in your practice.*  For example, if your practice management system tells me that patient John Doe is scheduled for a particular visit, I can automate an email reminder to John, send him an invite to the patient portal to view important prep information, suggest personalized patient education he should read based on his appointment type, and automate a survey about his experience afterward.

All these things create a superior patient experience while requiring virtually zero time for the practice to set it up.  It’s just technology leveraging your existing data.

Anyway, our patient portal is ready for primetime, and you’re welcome to read some preliminary patient portal marketing information to learn more.

Thanks for reading, and looking forward to writing again soon!

Josh

We recently launched a new version of PhoenixHeart.com (screenshot below).  So what makes this site worth a blog post of its very own?

It’s the first site that we know of that actually has an interactive video conversation with the patient.  Websites back in the day were basically all about static content that put the burden on the website visitor to “extract” out information that she was looking for, which often meant wading through dense pages full of text and stuffed with links.

Today’s user wants simplicity and immediacy.  We also realized that choosing a medical practice involves so much uncertainty, which creates fear, which makes the process of choosing a practice uncomfortable for patients.  We realized that, in an ideal world, the doctor would take a few minutes of his time to meet with every single prospective patient and answer questions.  In reality, of course, a doctor could never do such a thing; it would simply be way too time-consuming.

So we asked ourselves “How can we create an experience where the patient feels like he’s meeting personally with the doctors?”  We realized we could record a great conversation once, and then reproduce it in a format that made the patient feel like he was actually sitting down with the doctor and having that one-on-one conversation. Hence, the birth of the interactive video tree.

Launching this site has already led to some surprising insights about the power of this kind of format:

• Video is familiar.  Right off the bat, we start developing rapport between the patient and doctor.
• Video is engaging.  It’s not just another text site.
• Video is easy.  Just sit back and relax and watch the video play.
• Video is simple.  We observed elderly patients using the site and it made sense to them.

We’re excited to see what happens over time with the site, and we’ve already enlisted three more video tree sites (all in different specialties).  We’re also already improving our process and our technology.  We now know how to do a better job of directing the doctors in the video, how to speed up the time between filming and loading onto the site, and more.

We’ll keep posting here as new and innovative medical practice website designs are launched!

I’m writing now from beautiful (and breezy) Charlotte, NC where I managed to convince the hotel to give me a mostly undeserving room upgrade, and so I have a rather spectacular view of downtown right now!

This is our third consecutive year showing at the AAOE Conference (it used to be called BONES).  This is basically the premier conference for the administrators of Orthopedic practices around the country.  There are around 500 administrators total, and at least 50 different vendors.

A simple but meaningful thing kept happening to me today: I ran into people I’d met before, or clients of ours, or people I knew, or people I didn’t know but recognized from previous years.  First of all, it dawned on me that running into people you know and had fun talking to is FUN!  Some kind of neurochemical is released when it happens because it just makes me feel happy to catch up with people even if we’re only mildly acquainted.  There’s something wonderful about strengthening a human bond; it’s very fundamental to our existence.

The week before last we began a new project with a 3-physician pediatric group in Scottsdale, AZ.  I’d met the practice manager over a year ago and she expressed a strong interest in working together.  She still researched us along with two other companies, and it still took a year before she was ready to sign a contract.  At the end of our first meeting — which went very well and was also fun — we had an interesting exchange:

Her: You know, I actually compared you guys to two other companies.  Do you know why I chose Omedix?

Me: Charismatic personnel?

Her: Haha, well, you were still around 1 year later.  Both of the others had disappeared. 

How does this all tie together?  The “Life Truism” I referenced in the title is that business is built on relationships, that relationships are built on trust, and that trust takes time to build and is very precious.  It’s so easy to look from afar at a company and try to see why they’re business strategy made them so successful and completely miss the point that if your clients don’t actually like you and trust you, nothing will ever happen.

Initially, our company is almost always evaluated based on price, quality, and features.  But I feel like whenever I have a really good personal connection with a prospective client, we wind up getting the business.  I feel like I enjoy my work so much more when I have a good personal relationship with our clients.  It just makes the world such a happier place.

So, here at the AAOE Conference for Year #3, it’s kind of a cool feeling because we’re not strangers here anymore.  People know us.  People know we were here last year, that we’re here this year, and that we’ll be here next year.  That kind of thing is powerful and builds trust.

I’ll write another conference post probably by the end of the conference — talking one-on-one with so many practice managers is incredibly enlightening — but for now it’s time to get some sleep!

This graph (if you can’t see it, click the “Read More” link below) was on this morning’s iHealthBeat. This is basically yet another indicator that patients are going to become increasingly choosy about where they get their medical care in the future.

Offering your patients the ability to view their medical records online doesn’t necessarily mean you show them the ENTIRE medical record. One of our clients recently saw a patient who he felt was making great efforts to acquire narcotics from him. In his encounter notes for the medical record, he mentioned this to advise other doctors in his practice. Does he want the patient to see that? No, but does he want the patient to see that he diagnosed her with endometriosis as well as the medications and dosages he prescribed? Yes.

One thing that’s interesting about so many of these technologies is that they raise uncertainty more than anything else. And in the face of uncertainty, we tend to gravitate toward the status quo. It’s becoming apparent to me that as we continue to release a stream of more innovative services, we’re going to have to put a considerable amount of effort into identifying the potential issues, laying out the possibilities, and genuinely helping our clients decide if a new technology is a good fit for them.

That having been said, there are some very exciting things on the horizon so stay tuned!

So, as President of Omedix, part of my job is basically to promote the merits of integrating the Web with your practice. If I were presenting to a group of 100 doctors and practice managers on “Why Should I Bother with a Website for My Practice?” I would essentially say the following:

• New Patients
• The Yellow Pages costs you how much?
• For many people today, you don’t exist if you’re not on the Web
• Search engines will bring you new patients
• When someone wants to learn more about you by word of mouth, what do they do?
• Boosting Efficiency
• How to hire free labor: make your patients do your data entry with online forms
• Common questions should never be asked again: just put them on your website
• The Patient Experience
• Would you want to talk about bacterial vaginosis in your office cubicle?
• Patients are irritated that they can’t connect with you online
• Secure Messaging CAN be a good thing…when done right
• Patient Education
• An educated patient is a better patient
• Most malpractices suits aren’t because of malpractice but poorly managed expectations
• Why most practice’s patient education solutions basically suck

Here’s the interesting thing about this presentation: It all relates to technology that’s been around for nearly 5 years now. Translating the “benefits focus” into the services that are available for these kinds of things this is all basically just talking about:

• Building a website
• Search Engine Marketing
• Online Forms
• Secure Messaging
• Web-Based Patient Education

But despite being around technology-wise for 5 years, these tools are only in the last few months actually reaching a level of maturity to where they’re easy to use, easy to setup, and affordable for most doctors.

Here’s the other interesting thing about this presentation: I suspect I will be able to give this same presentation 2 years from now in 2010. That’s depressing, but true. Actually, I think I’ll be able to give this same presentation, but I think there will be another group of so-called “Early Adopters” who will listen to a different presentation that goes something like this:

• Being Connected To Your Colleagues
• If you’re not making electronic referrals, you’re not cometitive
• Save time and money by getting online with a Health Record Exchange
• The Power of the Network
• No matter how smart you are, the network is smarter
• How this worked for AthenaHealth
• How this worked for Omedix
• Why patients LOVE this
• How the Network grows revenue and reduces costs while taking less of your time
• How Patients Choose Doctors Today
• The Big Three: Google, WebMD, Find-A-Doctor Sites
• How to Manage Your Online Reputation and Why It’s So Important
• Building your “brand name” as a doctor
• Information Therapy (aka Patient Education)
• Your website does all of this for you
• You should never have to explain the same concept multiple times again
• All informed consent should be documented systematically
• Your clinical outcomes will actually improve (finally, we have data for this)

I’ll be honest. I’m being a little cryptic about some of the above things. If you’re really curious about what I’m talking about just contact me to chat; I love this stuff and would be more than happy to share my thoughts.

But the real takeaway here is how incredibly far we have to go before the “Healthcare IT” industry is even close to reaching its potential.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil authored a controversial essay in 2001 called “The Law of Accelerating Returns”. He basically argues that…

“An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate). The ‘returns,’ such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially.”

For our industry, that means to me that we are spending a HUGE amount of time laying groundwork right now — interoperable electronic health records, quality data to help consumers make an informed decision when choosing their doctor or hospital, patient portals to give practices an “online front’ to patients, social networks for patients, social networks for providers, developing “The Network” for each niche in the industry, I could go on forever. But once those pieces are in place, they will all start to fold in on each other and create some AMAZING things.

Of course, that kind of stuff is 5 - 15 years out, and in the meantime we all have everyday needs like paying the bills and enjoying our lives that dictate what services will actually sell today.

In the short term at Omedix, we’ll continue selling “web solutions for medical practice”.  We’ve set up an awesome system for consistently delivering high quality websites and it’s a good business. But the really fun stuff is in the pipeline.  It’s an exciting time to be in the industry, but we have so far to go.

I was recently cc’d on an email sent by one of our cardiologist clients (an 8-doc group) sent to the entire practice. I thought it was a really cool example of how they’re using their website. Here’s the email verbatim (I added the bullets format, though)

Subject: Our Website

Has been significantly updated and we should put our website address on all our handouts, perhaps with a sticker or stamp.

• It has animation and great descriptions of everything we do.
• It has an information prescription button that mirrors a prescription that anyone can give the patient to help them find it on our website.
• All the patients should get discharge instructions for whatever procedure they are getting with the admission instructions. These intructions are also retrievable from our web site if a doctor or nurse needs them on the floor or if a patient or family needs from their home.
• We have a complete medical library now as well under patient information that anyone can use if you have a medical question in any medical field. Encourage the patient to go the web site if they need information on what is wrong with them or if they have questions about their test and that you will be happy to answer any questions afterward if they need that.

Pretty cool stuff!

I am pleased to report that we have *finally* launched our own new website at omedix.com. We’ve built hundreds of websites and yet there’s something incredibly difficult about building your own. It’s sort of like the website equivalent of a doctor who does surgery on himself: he has all the skills but there’s just a weird psychological element to it all.

The other thing I discovered is how hard it is to write content. For most projects, our clients are responsible for generating their own content (with considerable guidance and input from us), but now I can really appreciate just how hard it is to come up with an official-sounding statement on every aspect of your business.  It actually forces you to have a “compelling position” on pretty much every aspect of what you do since now you have to write about what it is and why you do it!

I’d also like to give a major shout out to pretty much everyone in our company (and even some not in our company) for helping out.  This was a total team effort and a lot of people worked very hard to make it happen.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be continuing to add additional content — admittedly, we have a lot of “Coming Soon!”, which is a nice way of saying “We haven’t had the time to write this content and format it yet.”  We’ll also be adding additional case studies, helpful information, and even some special surprises! We’ll be sure to post news of the significant enhancements here to our company blog.

Okay, time to get back to normal. If you have thoughts about our site and how we can improve it, feel free to contact me directly at josh.padnick@omedix.com. Enjoy the new site!

We recently launched a website for a Phoenix-based podiatry group, the Arizona Institute of Footcare Physicians. There were a few interesting things about this project so I figured I’d share!

Patients Can Now Request Appointments Online

It used to be that when you wanted to make an appointment with the AIFP, you had to pick up the phone and call. For a lot of people and a lot of situations, this is still preferable. After all, if you’re not even sure if you need to see a podiatrist or just need some human interaction, a phone conversation is a good thing.

But there’s a growing number of patients who want to make their appointments online for any number of reasons:

• They’re at work and are embarrassed to make a “personal phonecall”
• They don’t have time to make an appointment until it’s after hours, when the practice is closed
• They’re embarrassed to tell someone their foot is “deformed” and would rather just request an appointment quietly and anonymously, where the computer’s the one interviewing them.

That last point may sound a bit fanciful, but at the last conference I went to, one of the speakers explained that patients were more likely to accurately fill out a medical history when done online than done in person. The computer could care less about the “Erectile Dysfunction” you’re reporting, but maybe you feel a little anxious when you’re talking to a human being.

This is a really fundamental thing, though. AIFP just launched their online appointment requests. I mean, this practice has taken appointments by phone only for over 35 years, and now they’re introducing a new way. That’s a big deal! It also tells me that if a practice who’s been doing something one way for 35 years is now ready to add a new way, the winds of change are starting to show themselves.

Focusing on the Practice’s Unique Needs

The other thing that was interesting about this project is that, unlike cardiologists, orthopods, or some other specialists, podiatrists are mostly targetting the general public, so their site should have a bit of a different feel to it. Instead of showcasing the docs upfront (who are pretty impressive, by the way), this site was all about getting patients the information they needed fast:

• Here’s our phone number
• Here’s our address
• Here’s how to get to us
• Same day appointments available

Any questions? It’s short, sweet, and to the point, and I think that’s exactly what they needed. For a cardiology practice, this would just seem awkward…and the cardiology practice website for the podiatry practice would be, well, ineffective.

Helping Patients Be Choosy

The final insight I got from this project was that the days of “pick a name from a list” are coming to a thunderous end. When people are curious about a practice or a doctor now guess what they do: they look them up online.

This client has some of the most impressive credentials of anyone we’ve worked with. But how are patients supposed to actually discover that? I mean, really, think about it. Before the Internet, what could you do to research a doctor or a practice other than “ask around.” And what if you don’t have anyone to ask around with? Well, it was just a roll of the dice.

But now patients are becoming choosy consumers, and it’s up to the practice to showcase themselves online so patients are excited about what they’re getting.

Summary

I don’t think I’d like my job very much if our projects were just about going through the motions. I like my job because each project is a mini learning experience and a harbinger of things to come. Props to AIFP for taking the first step toward maintaining their leadership as a great practice!