This document discusses the rise of "docpreneurs", or young physician entrepreneurs who are using their medical training and technology skills to launch startups aimed at improving healthcare. It profiles several physician entrepreneurs in the Boston area who have started companies like Twiage, an app that sends patient data from ambulances to hospitals, and Symcat, a symptom checker app. These docpreneurs are being supported by Boston's strong academic institutions and growing entrepreneurial ecosystem. While these physicians still practice clinically, they are also pursuing entrepreneurship to have a bigger impact on healthcare and drive innovation. Hackathons and accelerators are helping generate and develop their ideas into new companies.
hunter Whitney The Journal of Precision MedicineHunter Whitney
This document discusses the need for improved data visualization tools for precision medicine. It notes that while collecting large amounts of health data, not enough focus has been placed on designing tools to clearly display and make this data digestible and actionable for medical professionals and patients. The article interviews one expert who believes that more funding needs to go towards designing these visualization systems so that the full potential of precision medicine can be realized.
Healthcare & Insurance: Health Professionals Prepare Amidst The UncertaintyGary W. Stanton
Gary Stanton and other area healthcare and insurance leaders meet to discuss the present and future of healthcare in the Kansas City area. This healthcare industry outlook was orchestrated by Ingram's Magazine and sponsored by BlueCross BlueShield KC and Lockton Insurance. The event took place in May 2012.
Nuance Guide to Advancing the mHealth ecosystem3GDR
This document discusses the potential for mobile technology to advance the healthcare ecosystem by addressing the needs of patients, providers, and payers. It features perspectives from industry experts on how mobile technology is currently being used in healthcare and its future applications. Experts discuss how mobility can help humanize healthcare by improving workflow efficiency for physicians, increasing access to health information and services for patients, and empowering consumers to better manage their health. The document outlines both successes and challenges in adopting mobile technologies and emphasizes the importance of collaboration across the healthcare system to leverage innovations and advance the mobile health ecosystem.
This document includes three blog posts recently featured in PharmaVOICE.
The blogs focus on how enhanced access to in-depth health data is impacting an understanding of personhood, the environment around us, and the pharma operating model.
BLOG 1 (Pages 2-7)
Waves of Real Life Data Are Inundating Pharma...Can They Keep Up?
BLOG 2 (Pages 8-13)
Better understanding where and how we live will vastly improve remote patient
monitoring approaches
BLOG 3 (Pages 14-18)
5 Ways Pharma Can Be More Patient-Centered & Usher in Digital Transformation
Send me a note with your comments and feedback. Thanks for reading!
The Large Data Demonstration Project aims to create a timely and workable national health data network design through a test project. It seeks to concurrently address governance issues and demonstrate improvements in care. The project intends to validate the temporal and cost efficiencies of such a network system. Overall, the demonstration project explores building the foundation for a national Learning Health System to improve American healthcare through increased data sharing and analysis.
This document discusses challenges facing Canada's healthcare system and potential solutions to address these challenges. It notes that Canada's system is unprepared for an aging population with complex chronic conditions. It argues that patients should be engaged to help manage their own care through technologies that facilitate communication and remote monitoring. Public-private partnerships are also proposed to help preserve the sustainability of the healthcare system for future generations.
The document summarizes key sources related to the impacts and effects of the Affordable Care Act across two disciplines: medicine and economics. For medicine, sources discuss how the ACA's regulations have caused physicians to leave independent practice for hospitals to avoid accountability under new organizations like ACOs. In economics, sources estimate the ACA could reduce the federal deficit by insuring 34 million more people, but that costs are hard to predict and small businesses may struggle with higher premiums. Overall, the resources present different views on the ACA's actual and projected impacts on health care and the economy.
hunter Whitney The Journal of Precision MedicineHunter Whitney
This document discusses the need for improved data visualization tools for precision medicine. It notes that while collecting large amounts of health data, not enough focus has been placed on designing tools to clearly display and make this data digestible and actionable for medical professionals and patients. The article interviews one expert who believes that more funding needs to go towards designing these visualization systems so that the full potential of precision medicine can be realized.
Healthcare & Insurance: Health Professionals Prepare Amidst The UncertaintyGary W. Stanton
Gary Stanton and other area healthcare and insurance leaders meet to discuss the present and future of healthcare in the Kansas City area. This healthcare industry outlook was orchestrated by Ingram's Magazine and sponsored by BlueCross BlueShield KC and Lockton Insurance. The event took place in May 2012.
Nuance Guide to Advancing the mHealth ecosystem3GDR
This document discusses the potential for mobile technology to advance the healthcare ecosystem by addressing the needs of patients, providers, and payers. It features perspectives from industry experts on how mobile technology is currently being used in healthcare and its future applications. Experts discuss how mobility can help humanize healthcare by improving workflow efficiency for physicians, increasing access to health information and services for patients, and empowering consumers to better manage their health. The document outlines both successes and challenges in adopting mobile technologies and emphasizes the importance of collaboration across the healthcare system to leverage innovations and advance the mobile health ecosystem.
This document includes three blog posts recently featured in PharmaVOICE.
The blogs focus on how enhanced access to in-depth health data is impacting an understanding of personhood, the environment around us, and the pharma operating model.
BLOG 1 (Pages 2-7)
Waves of Real Life Data Are Inundating Pharma...Can They Keep Up?
BLOG 2 (Pages 8-13)
Better understanding where and how we live will vastly improve remote patient
monitoring approaches
BLOG 3 (Pages 14-18)
5 Ways Pharma Can Be More Patient-Centered & Usher in Digital Transformation
Send me a note with your comments and feedback. Thanks for reading!
The Large Data Demonstration Project aims to create a timely and workable national health data network design through a test project. It seeks to concurrently address governance issues and demonstrate improvements in care. The project intends to validate the temporal and cost efficiencies of such a network system. Overall, the demonstration project explores building the foundation for a national Learning Health System to improve American healthcare through increased data sharing and analysis.
This document discusses challenges facing Canada's healthcare system and potential solutions to address these challenges. It notes that Canada's system is unprepared for an aging population with complex chronic conditions. It argues that patients should be engaged to help manage their own care through technologies that facilitate communication and remote monitoring. Public-private partnerships are also proposed to help preserve the sustainability of the healthcare system for future generations.
The document summarizes key sources related to the impacts and effects of the Affordable Care Act across two disciplines: medicine and economics. For medicine, sources discuss how the ACA's regulations have caused physicians to leave independent practice for hospitals to avoid accountability under new organizations like ACOs. In economics, sources estimate the ACA could reduce the federal deficit by insuring 34 million more people, but that costs are hard to predict and small businesses may struggle with higher premiums. Overall, the resources present different views on the ACA's actual and projected impacts on health care and the economy.
The document discusses quality management in anesthesia practices. It introduces the Anesthesia Incident Reporting System (AIRS), which allows providers to anonymously report unintended events or "near misses" that did not harm patients but had potential to. Near misses provide teaching opportunities at morbidity and mortality conferences. Mature practices encourage self-reporting of near misses through online forms or other methods. Reported cases are reviewed to identify those with educational value for discussing key decision points with the goal of improving patient safety.
The document is a business memorandum for Houston MRI & Diagnostic Imaging that discusses considerations for the company's diagnostic imaging services in Texas over the next five years. It notes that accidents are a leading cause of death in Texas. It also discusses the quality, costs and insurance acceptance of the company's current services. The memorandum recommends strategies like integrating services, pursuing medical tourism, and adapting to changing demographics and health reforms to help the company thrive amid increasing competition in diagnostic imaging in Texas.
Jennifer M. Joe is a physician entrepreneur and founder of Medstro, a social network for physicians. She has a background in nephrology and emergency medicine. In addition to founding Medstro, she is the founder and editor-in-chief of MedTechBoston, a medical technology news site. She speaks nationally on issues related to technology in medicine and innovation in healthcare.
A publication dedicated to bringing articles and advice, specific to the anesthesia and pain management community, that are practical and tangible.
This edition covers the following topics:
• Using Big Data for Big Research: MPOG, NACOR and other Anesthesia Registries
• Another Year of Changes Lies Ahead for Anesthesiologists
• Disruptive Change, Anesthesiologists, and ASCs
• Performing High Acuity Cases in ASCs: The Anesthesiologist’s Role
• Endoscopy: Revisited
• Reporting Postoperative Pain Management in 2014
• 2014 CPT Coding and Key Reimbursement Changes
The document discusses the need for an ethical framework to address the use of wearable devices in healthcare as their capabilities increase. It notes that currently no standards exist to guide practitioners and addresses questions around implications for different types of patients and devices. Experts argue an ethical framework needs to focus on patient benefit, do no harm, consider more than just medical impacts like privacy and anxiety, and take into account patient capacity and consent. Security of data collected is also a crucial issue to address.
Communiqué features articles focusing on the latest hot topics for anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, pain management specialists and anesthesia practice administrators.
Communique is created by Anesthesia Business Consultants (ABC), the largest physician billing and practice management company specializing exclusively in the practice of anesthesia and pain management.
ABC serves several thousand anesthesiologists and CRNAs nationwide with anesthesia billing software solutions.
Please send your email address to info [at] anesthesiallc [dot] com if you would like to join the Communique mailing list!
Visit www.anesthesiallc.com for more information!
The document discusses how connected digital tools and data can help augment human capacity in healthcare by providing deep support for patients and populations. It provides examples of how electronic health records, personalized outreach, and remote monitoring have helped improve outcomes for cancer screening, smoking cessation, and symptom management. However, fully realizing the benefits of these technologies will require addressing issues around data integration, communication gaps, and adapting clinical workflows. The goal is to use digital tools to inform and support patients and providers, not replace human relationships and judgment.
The document discusses how St. Elizabeth's Hospital turned around their organization by building a bench of informal leaders, weeding out underperformers, and strategically sequencing improvement efforts such as initially focusing on quality, then engagement, and finally patient satisfaction to build an improvement-driven culture led by CEO Maryann Reese.
Exposome & Expotype - Exploring new challenges for Health Informatics Researc...Fernando Martin-Sanchez
This document discusses the opportunities and challenges presented by precision medicine and digital health technologies. It begins with an introduction to precision medicine and how it relies on integrating diverse data sources, such as genomics, the exposome, and patient-generated data. It then explores several specific areas in more depth, including exposome informatics, participatory health informatics, and self-quantification. The document argues that digital technologies are important for enabling precision medicine approaches and that new models of participatory health are emerging through technologies like social media and self-tracking tools.
This thesis analyzes data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to identify which quality measurement parameters have the greatest impact on hospitals' overall performance scores and ratings. The author sorted CMS data into categories for mortality, readmissions, safety, and patient experience. Correlation coefficients were calculated between each measurement and hospitals' total performance scores. It was found that hospital-wide readmission rates, acute myocardial infarction 30-day readmission rates, and patient experience measures of doctor communication and responsiveness of hospital staff had the strongest correlations with overall performance scores. Therefore, hospitals looking to improve their ratings may want to focus most on improving these specific factors.
Running head leading organisational change 1 leading organisatiSHIVA101531
This document discusses organizational change at Ventre Medical as it relates to adopting new electronic health record technology. It outlines some of the challenges of implementing change, such as employee resistance, and recommends a bottom-up approach where all employees are educated and involved in the change process. Adopting new technology is viewed as a multi-step process according to diffusion of innovation theory. Ensuring the technology is compatible, not too complex, and can be tested prior to adoption can facilitate its uptake. Overall, change is seen as important for organizations to achieve their goals, but requires training employees and gaining their participation.
Apa format…450 words each. please include biblical integration. a AASTHA76
The document discusses the roles and functions of health informatics (HI) professionals. It covers several key points:
1. HI professionals are responsible for collecting, storing, organizing, and managing health data to improve healthcare services. Their roles require technical skills with health information systems, clinical knowledge of medical processes, and administrative skills.
2. Proper education and training are needed to build the clinical competence required for various HI roles. Experience and graduate-level education are important for advancing to higher positions.
3. HI professionals play critical roles on healthcare teams by ensuring standardized data, analyzing collected information, and supporting quality patient care through the use of technology.
Medical Informatics Update 2013 Programpaulgoldfarb
Event program for the Medical Informatics Update 2013 held October 16, 2013 and sponsored by the Center for Advanced Information Management at Columbia University and IBM Healthcare.
2 why did you decide to pursue a baccalaureate degree in nursinAASTHA76
This survey asked 65 nurses about their reasons for pursuing a baccalaureate degree in nursing. It identified six main themes in their responses: desire to help others, lifelong dream of being a nurse, ability to advance their career, availability of jobs, earning potential, and loss of a previous job. However, the summary does not provide details about the level of measurement used in the study or how frequently each theme was reported. This information is important for determining what descriptive statistics are most appropriate.
Meeting healthcare challenges: what are the challenges and what is the role o...Mohammad Al-Ubaydli
The document discusses the challenges facing healthcare systems and the role that e-health can play in addressing these challenges. The major challenges are quality and safety, access, responsiveness, and affordability. E-health can help by providing access to electronic patient records, reducing complexity, optimizing information processing, and increasing efficiency. It can also help with navigation through the healthcare system and engaging patients in their own health. The document advocates for free access to research information and using data to identify at-risk patients in need of care.
Mentoring in Digital Health Care FORUM October 2015 author Kerry SpaedyKerry Spaedy
The document discusses the benefits of reverse mentoring programs in healthcare, where younger digital native physicians mentor more experienced physicians who are not as technologically proficient. Reverse mentoring programs pair experienced physicians with younger physicians to help the former transition their practices to digital formats and electronic health records. These programs benefit both parties by allowing experienced physicians to learn new digital skills and allowing younger physicians to gain experience communicating with colleagues and understanding patient care. The keys to successful reverse mentoring are clear expectations, agreed rules of participation, a willingness to learn from each other, trust, and transparency between the parties.
The document discusses Marshall McLuhan's view that new technologies constitute "collective surgery" on society with little regard for consequences, and that while the area of direct impact may be numb, it is the entire social system that changes. It provides context on how email, patient portals, and other digital media are used differently in medicine today, with patients now producing their own medical records, participating in decisions, and researching information. Factors driving this change include government financial incentives for adoption of digital health records.
The document discusses the challenges and limitations of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which requires drug and medical device companies to report payments and gifts provided to physicians. While intended to increase transparency, it faces issues in fully capturing all financial relationships and providing proper context. The data has had limited impact on physicians and patients, but is being utilized by other groups like researchers and lawyers. Overall, the Act faces obstacles in communicating complex financial data in a clear and meaningful way to different audiences.
The document analyzes flaws in the U.S. healthcare system prior to the Affordable Care Act and assesses how aspects of the Obama Health Plan address some of these issues. It identifies key problems as a lack of education, inefficient use of information technology, and a misaligned infrastructure. The plan aims to improve these areas through the health insurance exchange to standardize information, innovation centers within CMS to incentivize quality over quantity, and investments in data reporting and disease prevention infrastructure. While the plan may not solve all issues, it establishes reforms that could help shift the culture towards a more sustainable, collaborative model of healthcare delivery.
Using technology-enabled social prescriptions to disrupt healthcareDr Sven Jungmann
As chronic diseases are increasingly straining healthcare systems, social factors are gaining importance. Since the birth of social medicine (19th century), we saw many failed attempts to beat the dominance of the biomedical model. Social prescriptions have come, raising hopes that non-biomedical solutions will improve outcomes and optimise resource use. Social Prescriptions connect citizens to support to address social determinants of health and encourage self-care for physical and mental health. Social prescriptions can make us healthier cheaper and with fewer side effects than most drugs. Social prescriptions can become a disruptive force as they can be personalised, improve lifestyle-related diseases, and support non-biomedical issues affected by social determinants of health.
This document provides a foreword for "The Advanced Business of Medical Practice" book. It discusses the challenges facing physicians today and how information technology and creativity can help address these challenges. Several examples are provided of physicians innovatively using tools like Microsoft Access, Word, and PowerPoint to create electronic medical record systems and other solutions to problems in their practices. The foreword emphasizes that while pressures on doctors are high, so are their problem-solving abilities and willingness to find new ways of using technology to better serve patients.
The document discusses quality management in anesthesia practices. It introduces the Anesthesia Incident Reporting System (AIRS), which allows providers to anonymously report unintended events or "near misses" that did not harm patients but had potential to. Near misses provide teaching opportunities at morbidity and mortality conferences. Mature practices encourage self-reporting of near misses through online forms or other methods. Reported cases are reviewed to identify those with educational value for discussing key decision points with the goal of improving patient safety.
The document is a business memorandum for Houston MRI & Diagnostic Imaging that discusses considerations for the company's diagnostic imaging services in Texas over the next five years. It notes that accidents are a leading cause of death in Texas. It also discusses the quality, costs and insurance acceptance of the company's current services. The memorandum recommends strategies like integrating services, pursuing medical tourism, and adapting to changing demographics and health reforms to help the company thrive amid increasing competition in diagnostic imaging in Texas.
Jennifer M. Joe is a physician entrepreneur and founder of Medstro, a social network for physicians. She has a background in nephrology and emergency medicine. In addition to founding Medstro, she is the founder and editor-in-chief of MedTechBoston, a medical technology news site. She speaks nationally on issues related to technology in medicine and innovation in healthcare.
A publication dedicated to bringing articles and advice, specific to the anesthesia and pain management community, that are practical and tangible.
This edition covers the following topics:
• Using Big Data for Big Research: MPOG, NACOR and other Anesthesia Registries
• Another Year of Changes Lies Ahead for Anesthesiologists
• Disruptive Change, Anesthesiologists, and ASCs
• Performing High Acuity Cases in ASCs: The Anesthesiologist’s Role
• Endoscopy: Revisited
• Reporting Postoperative Pain Management in 2014
• 2014 CPT Coding and Key Reimbursement Changes
The document discusses the need for an ethical framework to address the use of wearable devices in healthcare as their capabilities increase. It notes that currently no standards exist to guide practitioners and addresses questions around implications for different types of patients and devices. Experts argue an ethical framework needs to focus on patient benefit, do no harm, consider more than just medical impacts like privacy and anxiety, and take into account patient capacity and consent. Security of data collected is also a crucial issue to address.
Communiqué features articles focusing on the latest hot topics for anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, pain management specialists and anesthesia practice administrators.
Communique is created by Anesthesia Business Consultants (ABC), the largest physician billing and practice management company specializing exclusively in the practice of anesthesia and pain management.
ABC serves several thousand anesthesiologists and CRNAs nationwide with anesthesia billing software solutions.
Please send your email address to info [at] anesthesiallc [dot] com if you would like to join the Communique mailing list!
Visit www.anesthesiallc.com for more information!
The document discusses how connected digital tools and data can help augment human capacity in healthcare by providing deep support for patients and populations. It provides examples of how electronic health records, personalized outreach, and remote monitoring have helped improve outcomes for cancer screening, smoking cessation, and symptom management. However, fully realizing the benefits of these technologies will require addressing issues around data integration, communication gaps, and adapting clinical workflows. The goal is to use digital tools to inform and support patients and providers, not replace human relationships and judgment.
The document discusses how St. Elizabeth's Hospital turned around their organization by building a bench of informal leaders, weeding out underperformers, and strategically sequencing improvement efforts such as initially focusing on quality, then engagement, and finally patient satisfaction to build an improvement-driven culture led by CEO Maryann Reese.
Exposome & Expotype - Exploring new challenges for Health Informatics Researc...Fernando Martin-Sanchez
This document discusses the opportunities and challenges presented by precision medicine and digital health technologies. It begins with an introduction to precision medicine and how it relies on integrating diverse data sources, such as genomics, the exposome, and patient-generated data. It then explores several specific areas in more depth, including exposome informatics, participatory health informatics, and self-quantification. The document argues that digital technologies are important for enabling precision medicine approaches and that new models of participatory health are emerging through technologies like social media and self-tracking tools.
This thesis analyzes data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to identify which quality measurement parameters have the greatest impact on hospitals' overall performance scores and ratings. The author sorted CMS data into categories for mortality, readmissions, safety, and patient experience. Correlation coefficients were calculated between each measurement and hospitals' total performance scores. It was found that hospital-wide readmission rates, acute myocardial infarction 30-day readmission rates, and patient experience measures of doctor communication and responsiveness of hospital staff had the strongest correlations with overall performance scores. Therefore, hospitals looking to improve their ratings may want to focus most on improving these specific factors.
Running head leading organisational change 1 leading organisatiSHIVA101531
This document discusses organizational change at Ventre Medical as it relates to adopting new electronic health record technology. It outlines some of the challenges of implementing change, such as employee resistance, and recommends a bottom-up approach where all employees are educated and involved in the change process. Adopting new technology is viewed as a multi-step process according to diffusion of innovation theory. Ensuring the technology is compatible, not too complex, and can be tested prior to adoption can facilitate its uptake. Overall, change is seen as important for organizations to achieve their goals, but requires training employees and gaining their participation.
Apa format…450 words each. please include biblical integration. a AASTHA76
The document discusses the roles and functions of health informatics (HI) professionals. It covers several key points:
1. HI professionals are responsible for collecting, storing, organizing, and managing health data to improve healthcare services. Their roles require technical skills with health information systems, clinical knowledge of medical processes, and administrative skills.
2. Proper education and training are needed to build the clinical competence required for various HI roles. Experience and graduate-level education are important for advancing to higher positions.
3. HI professionals play critical roles on healthcare teams by ensuring standardized data, analyzing collected information, and supporting quality patient care through the use of technology.
Medical Informatics Update 2013 Programpaulgoldfarb
Event program for the Medical Informatics Update 2013 held October 16, 2013 and sponsored by the Center for Advanced Information Management at Columbia University and IBM Healthcare.
2 why did you decide to pursue a baccalaureate degree in nursinAASTHA76
This survey asked 65 nurses about their reasons for pursuing a baccalaureate degree in nursing. It identified six main themes in their responses: desire to help others, lifelong dream of being a nurse, ability to advance their career, availability of jobs, earning potential, and loss of a previous job. However, the summary does not provide details about the level of measurement used in the study or how frequently each theme was reported. This information is important for determining what descriptive statistics are most appropriate.
Meeting healthcare challenges: what are the challenges and what is the role o...Mohammad Al-Ubaydli
The document discusses the challenges facing healthcare systems and the role that e-health can play in addressing these challenges. The major challenges are quality and safety, access, responsiveness, and affordability. E-health can help by providing access to electronic patient records, reducing complexity, optimizing information processing, and increasing efficiency. It can also help with navigation through the healthcare system and engaging patients in their own health. The document advocates for free access to research information and using data to identify at-risk patients in need of care.
Mentoring in Digital Health Care FORUM October 2015 author Kerry SpaedyKerry Spaedy
The document discusses the benefits of reverse mentoring programs in healthcare, where younger digital native physicians mentor more experienced physicians who are not as technologically proficient. Reverse mentoring programs pair experienced physicians with younger physicians to help the former transition their practices to digital formats and electronic health records. These programs benefit both parties by allowing experienced physicians to learn new digital skills and allowing younger physicians to gain experience communicating with colleagues and understanding patient care. The keys to successful reverse mentoring are clear expectations, agreed rules of participation, a willingness to learn from each other, trust, and transparency between the parties.
The document discusses Marshall McLuhan's view that new technologies constitute "collective surgery" on society with little regard for consequences, and that while the area of direct impact may be numb, it is the entire social system that changes. It provides context on how email, patient portals, and other digital media are used differently in medicine today, with patients now producing their own medical records, participating in decisions, and researching information. Factors driving this change include government financial incentives for adoption of digital health records.
The document discusses the challenges and limitations of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which requires drug and medical device companies to report payments and gifts provided to physicians. While intended to increase transparency, it faces issues in fully capturing all financial relationships and providing proper context. The data has had limited impact on physicians and patients, but is being utilized by other groups like researchers and lawyers. Overall, the Act faces obstacles in communicating complex financial data in a clear and meaningful way to different audiences.
The document analyzes flaws in the U.S. healthcare system prior to the Affordable Care Act and assesses how aspects of the Obama Health Plan address some of these issues. It identifies key problems as a lack of education, inefficient use of information technology, and a misaligned infrastructure. The plan aims to improve these areas through the health insurance exchange to standardize information, innovation centers within CMS to incentivize quality over quantity, and investments in data reporting and disease prevention infrastructure. While the plan may not solve all issues, it establishes reforms that could help shift the culture towards a more sustainable, collaborative model of healthcare delivery.
Using technology-enabled social prescriptions to disrupt healthcareDr Sven Jungmann
As chronic diseases are increasingly straining healthcare systems, social factors are gaining importance. Since the birth of social medicine (19th century), we saw many failed attempts to beat the dominance of the biomedical model. Social prescriptions have come, raising hopes that non-biomedical solutions will improve outcomes and optimise resource use. Social Prescriptions connect citizens to support to address social determinants of health and encourage self-care for physical and mental health. Social prescriptions can make us healthier cheaper and with fewer side effects than most drugs. Social prescriptions can become a disruptive force as they can be personalised, improve lifestyle-related diseases, and support non-biomedical issues affected by social determinants of health.
This document provides a foreword for "The Advanced Business of Medical Practice" book. It discusses the challenges facing physicians today and how information technology and creativity can help address these challenges. Several examples are provided of physicians innovatively using tools like Microsoft Access, Word, and PowerPoint to create electronic medical record systems and other solutions to problems in their practices. The foreword emphasizes that while pressures on doctors are high, so are their problem-solving abilities and willingness to find new ways of using technology to better serve patients.
Digital Health: Medicine at the CroosroadsSteven Peskin
This document discusses the implications of mobile health and social media in clinical practice. It describes the three components of digital health as applications, devices, and infrastructure. Mobile technologies and social media have tremendous potential to improve care delivery, patient safety, information dissemination, and chronic disease management. The document outlines how physician communities on social media can facilitate knowledge sharing and discusses the growth of medical apps. It predicts that mobile health and social media will become integrated into everyday healthcare through digital tools and communities.
This document discusses opportunities and challenges for medical device companies in the connected health and wearable technology markets. It notes that while wearables and data from patients could help advance personalized medicine and lower healthcare costs, medical device companies are hesitant to enter this space due to unclear business models. Wearables have primarily been consumer products so far, while medical-grade devices require FDA approval and ways to encourage long-term patient use. As healthcare shifts to value-based payment, new technologies must prove clinical value and cost savings to providers to gain adoption.
The document summarizes a panel discussion on digital health held by the INSEAD Healthcare Club of Switzerland. It discusses how digital health has the potential to transform life sciences through technologies like sensors, data collection, and precision medicine. However, significant regulatory hurdles around data sharing and privacy still exist. While companies like Bristol-Myers Squibb and Novartis are pursuing digital health projects, it is unclear which players like pharmaceutical companies, technology giants, insurers, or patients will ultimately lead the transformation. The panelists debated these issues and shared lessons learned from their experiences in digital health.
5 Ways Machine Learning Is Revolutionizing the Healthcare IndustryDashTechnologiesInc
Machine learning is changing the way we live, impacting everything from the tech industry to agriculture, insurance, banking, and even marketing. However, the domain where ML is having the most important impact is healthcare.
ML applications in healthcare combine the processing power of millions of human minds to accelerate and revamp such fields as diagnostics and medicine, changing the way we live and working to increase longevity.
Private Social Networks - D Healthcare 03-05-2013Len Chermack
A Dallas-based start-up called Private Social Networks provides a HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based social media platform called Connect2Health that allows secure communication between healthcare providers, patients, and caregivers. The company founders include healthcare entrepreneurs and a former pediatric department chair who began developing the product in 2010. The platform aims to improve patient outcomes by facilitating communication after discharge to reduce readmissions and increase engagement with family members. It also supports collaboration between accountable care organizations. The familiar interface is designed to be easily used by patients and providers, and can be implemented within 30-90 days at a setup cost of $25,000-$50,000 and average annual subscription of $180,000.
This document provides an overview and summary of the book "The Art of Healthcare Innovation" by Christina D. Warner. The book is based on over 200 interviews with healthcare pioneers, leaders, and innovators. It aims to help readers understand the future healthcare landscape and identify opportunities. The summary highlights key sections of the book, including the patient journey, insights from industry leaders, the evolving healthcare environment, and a conclusion on the importance of anticipating disruption. The author's background and qualifications are also summarized.
EB-Spok Building-Enterprise-CommunicationsCliff Frank
1) Healthcare organizations are increasingly adopting enterprise communication solutions to improve care coordination across departments and eliminate information silos.
2) Historically, hospitals have used individual point solutions for each department, but new reimbursement models require greater collaboration across the entire care team.
3) An enterprise solution connects all staff, including clinicians, administrators, facilities workers and patients, allowing critical information to reach the right people quickly through a variety of devices.
The document discusses 10 megatrends shaping healthcare and healthcare IT over the next 5-10 years based on a meta-analysis of several leading sources. The megatrends are organized into three groups: medicine, politics and society, and technology. Some of the key megatrends discussed include the rise of telemonitoring of patients, personalised medicine enabled by electronic health records, aging populations in western countries, increasing healthcare costs requiring value-based approaches, medical tourism and globalization, the growth of cloud computing and mobile technologies, and emerging fields like robotics and nanotechnology.
Private social networks d healthcare 03-05-2013MikeShort726
A Dallas-based start-up called Private Social Networks provides a HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based platform called Connect2Health that allows secure communication between healthcare providers, patients, and caregivers. The founders saw a need for improved post-discharge communication to reduce readmissions and increase patient engagement. The private social network platform aims to enhance patient care through convenient messaging that feels familiar to users and supports many languages. Hospitals can implement the software quickly for an average annual subscription of $180,000.
Leveraging the Internet of Things to Improve Patient OutcomesAlex Taser
This public thought leader dialogue reinforced that we are in midst of a technology-enabled revolution in healthcare. A world of IoT sensors and the Big Data it enables has the power to personalize and improve care, predict conditions, and enable access and affordable service to previously under-reached communities.
Rather than a sci-fi fantasty, the future of IoT healthcare is already here. While fractured, the technology exists and its capabilities are growing exponentially. The success in ensuring patient health and empowerment hinges on our ability to shift the culture of care, rethink incentives, collaborate across systems, and put the patient voice at the center of it all.
The document discusses how an Internet of Things think tank explored how IoT solutions can improve patient outcomes. Key findings included that connected devices have the potential to benefit patients and providers through predictive analytics, personalized care, improved efficiency and speed of care, and remote patient monitoring. Participants noted big data is important but also raises security and data ownership issues. Ensuring positive outcomes requires collaboration across healthcare stakeholders, putting patients' needs and preferences first, and focusing on ongoing health rather than just care when sick.
Social media and computing technologies are becoming increasingly important tools for healthcare organizations and consumers. They allow for information sharing, online support groups, and new ways of engaging patients. As patients become more active researchers, the relationship with providers will shift from authoritative to a partnership model. New sites also use crowdsourcing techniques to diagnose patients by collecting opinions from medical experts and laypeople. While not a replacement for doctors, these methods could potentially identify new diagnosis options more cheaply than specialist visits alone.
CIO Bulletin-10 Best Inspiring Leaders of the Year 2021CIOBulletin1
Sean James Miller is the CEO and CSO of Pluripotent Diagnostics Corp, which is developing novel technologies to enable early detection of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Miller overcame obstacles like poverty in his youth and lack of funding for research to establish Pluripotent Diagnostics with the mission of eliminating genetic diseases. As a leader, he views himself as a "fearless guardian" who takes the hardest hits to weaken challenges for his team while ensuring their success.
This document discusses the use of deep learning and machine learning techniques in medicine. It begins with an abstract that outlines how advances in computing power and large medical datasets are enabling complex machine learning approaches to be applied to healthcare problems. The document then reviews several examples of early expert systems and machine learning applications in medicine from the 1970s onward. It discusses how machine learning can help with medical tasks like diagnosis, predicting disease risk, and analyzing medical images. However, it also notes that few machine learning systems have meaningfully impacted clinical care. The document explores challenges to adopting these approaches in healthcare and ways to overcome obstacles to changing medical practice through machine learning.
20 tendencias digitales en salud digital_ The Medical FuturistRichard Canabate
Resaltado de las tendencias que darán forma a la atención médica post COVID19.
No se trata de enumerar estas tendencias, sino de dar una valiosa visión de los factores de conducción detrás de ellas mientras que es muy específico. Se trata de mostrar cuáles son las áreas exactas que deben destacarse entre todas las áreas en el tema "IA en la atención médica", por ejemplo.
Mobile health (mHealth) holds great promise to address issues in healthcare provision by leveraging ubiquitous mobile technologies. However, experts caution that widespread adoption of mHealth will be challenging and take time due to entrenched interests in existing systems and the need for disruptive changes. While patients, doctors and payers see benefits and inevitability of mHealth, most in the industry expect a period of hype, disillusionment, and slow progress as behaviors change and viable business models emerge. Further, adoption faces greater barriers in developed countries' complex systems compared to emerging markets with fewer obstacles but high demand for improved access to care.
1. volume 21, issue 2, february 2016
Here Come the “Docpreneurs”
Young, Ambitious, and Determined to Improve Health Care
BY VICKI RITTERBAND
VITAL SIGNS STAFF WRITER
W
hen he was a medical
student rotating
through a local com-
munity hospital, Josh Mandel,
M.D., was struck by an inefficien-
cy he became determined to fix.
Every morning, another medical
student arrived at the ED at 5 a.m.
to copy the vital signs of patients
admitted overnight onto a piece
of paper. The process would take
an hour. Staff would then use
those notes to conduct rounds.
“It was error-prone, time-
consuming, and not a learning
opportunity,” said Dr. Mandel, 33.
“I ended up building a software
tool that automated the work
flow. I learned a little about how
systems work and a lot about how
to take medicine into my own
hands and build better tools.”
Dr. Mandel is part of a growing
cadre of young physicians doing
just that. Working at the intersec-
tion of technology and medicine,
these 30-something former whiz
kids with undergraduate engi-
neering or computer science de-
grees from top tier colleges view
technology as a way to shake up
health care business as usual —
its high costs and inefficiencies.
And they are being nurtured
by a local environment that in
the past several years has become
a hothouse for health care
entrepreneurship.
“Boston has the highest density
of physicians per capita along
with tremendous academic
institutions,” said Omar Amirana,
M.D., 51, senior vice president at
Allied Minds, a science and tech-
nology development and com-
mercialization company. “It has a
never ending source of new ideas
and forward thinking physicians
working in an ecosystem that
lends itself to entrepreneurship,
especially in the life sciences.”
That ecosystem includes top
notch universities and health
care organizations; hackathons
where ideas are spawned; busi-
ness accelerators and incubators
that take bright ideas one step
further; and lots of venture
capital hungry for promising
businesses to invest in. Even
institutions like Brigham and
Women’s Hospital, with its two-
year-old Innovation Hub, have
caught the entrepreneurial bug.
And the Massachusetts Biotech-
nology Council has seen such an
explosion of interest in physician-
led innovation that in 2013 it
launched a chapter of the Society
of Physician Entrepreneurs,
which Dr. Amirana co-chairs.
Seeking Greater Impact
Many physician-entrepreneurs
pursue medicine for the same
reason their colleagues do: to
forge healing connections with
patients and ease suffering. But
along the way they realize that
they can have a far greater im-
pact on medicine than that one-
to-one relationship.
“Entrepreneurship is a vehicle
for change, and I want to see
continued on page 2
Your EHR: Interoperability Is Key Trend
Interoperability is expected be a key
focus for EHR systems and the physi-
cians who use them this year. We
asked Micky Tripathi, founding presi-
dent and CEO of the Massachusetts
eHealth Collaborative, about the lat-
est important developments on EHR
interoperability and how they may
impact your practice.
MMS: Tell us what the recent “KLAS”
agreement means for physicians?
MT: The recent summit meeting
(hosted by KLAS, the indepen-
dent health information technol-
ogy review organization) was a
unique private sector initiative to
establish objective “Consumer
Reports” style measurements of
interoperability performance
across EHR systems. The summit
brought together 10 major EHR
vendors as well as 30 large provid-
er organizations from around the
country. Over an intensive two
days, the group achieved consen-
sus on a measurement approach
and process to be conducted by a
credible, neutral organization.
The measurement process will be
the first comprehensive measure-
ment of nationwide interopera-
bility capturing both provider
and vendor attributes. In other
industries, the private sector
comes together to hold itself
accountable by working collabo-
ratively on transparent measures
of progress. The KLAS agree-
ment represents a significant step
forward in the maturity of the
health IT industry.
MMS: How will we know when
interoperability is working?
MT: When people stop complain-
ing about it! Just joking. Interoper-
ability isn’t a single thing — it’s a
general term that describes dif-
ferent types of information ex-
change appropriate to a particu-
lar purpose. For example, email
is very good for certain types of
communication, but is a very
poor substitute for those times
when only a phone call will suf-
fice. Similarly, sometimes a pro-
vider wants to have a complete
medical summary sent to them,
in which case they would want to
receive a continuity-of-care docu-
ment, whereas at other times
they may just want to check on a
medication allergy, in which case
a “magic button” single-sign on
viewer would be most important.
Both types of exchange are im-
portant, each is appropriate to
the specific clinical need.
Interoperability is already
working very well in some
areas — as (the science fiction
continued on page 5
Josh Mandel, M.D. Craig Monsen, M.D.YiDingYu, M.D. Jennifer Joe, M.D.
3. WWW.MASSMED.ORG VITAL SIGNS FEBRUARY 2016 • 3
YOUR PRACTICE
The Future of ACOs: New Guide for Physicians and Practices
BY RYAN MARLING
PPRC STAFF
While numerous factors will de-
termine the long-term sustain-
ability of accountable care orga-
nizations, the model is here to
stay. New variations of ACO mod-
els are being tested across the
country and national accredita-
tion and certification standards
are being set by the Department
of Health and Human Services
and more locally by the Massa-
chusetts Health Policy Commis-
sion. A new guide authored by
Physician Practice Research
Center experts titled MMS Guide
to Accountable Care Organizations
Part 2: Exploring the Future of ACOs
joins our series of resources de-
signed to help practices navigate
the road to being part of an ACO
and features insights into how
ACOs are faring, strategy options
for prospective participants, and
discusses the regulations and
potential risks and benefits asso-
ciated with each model.
An exploration of challenges
and successes of the Pioneer and
Medicare Shared Savings Pro-
grams at state and national levels
aim to give physicians a head
start in preparing for the future
of ACO models. A few tips high-
lighted in the guide:
• Having a strategy for integra-
tion into an ACO is essential,
as multiple major components
of the practice need to change
simultaneously during the
transition.
• The utilization of population
health management capabili-
ties is not sustainable for a
practice unless the reimburse-
ment structure is modified so
that savings from such proce-
dures can be collected.
• It’s important to consider your
prior experience taking on fi-
nancial risk when considering
the different types of ACOs
(e.g., shared risk, shared sav-
ings, global risk), and consider
utilizing a phased approach
over the first three years, with
the percentage split of
surplus/deficit and level of risk
increasing over time.
• The ACO model is built upon
a philosophy of constant im-
provement with an eye to the
future, so our review of Next
Generation ACOs and Medi-
care value-based payment goals
will review what is on the hori-
zon for this dynamic delivery
model. The movement toward
alternative payment methods
can no longer be ignored, so
let us give you the information
you need to know about ACOs
to best align the future direc-
tion of your practice.
Learn more and get your free download
at www.massmed.org/acoguide.
LAW AND ETHICS
New National Practitioner Data Bank Reporting Rules Could Affect Your Practice
BY LIZ ROVER BAILEY, ESQ
MMS ASSOCIATE COUNSEL
In April of 2015, the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services
(CMS) issued an updated version
of its National Practitioner Data
Bank Guidebook, clarifying which
entities must report what actions
to the National Practitioner Data
Bank (NPDB). As most physi-
cians are aware, an entity such as
a state board of registration in
medicine, a professional liability
insurance company, or a hospital
is under certain obligations to
file reports with the NPDB.
The 2015 Guidebook contains
significant changes regarding re-
porting of hospital adverse ac-
tions. As a threshold matter, CMS
has always sought to prevent the
situation where a hospital starts
an investigation, and the physi-
cian, to avoid an adverse finding
and concomitant report to the
NPDB, agrees to surrender clini-
cal privileges. Thus, CMS re-
quires that any surrender of privi-
leges while a physician is subject
to an investigation be reported to
the NPDB.
The 2015 Guidebook, however,
has expanded the definition of
“surrender” to include non-
renewal of privileges or the tak-
ing of a leave of absence. Thus,
an obstetrician/gynecologist who
decides not to renew obstetrical
privileges while still continuing
to practice as a gynecologist has
“surrendered” privileges. If any
portion of that physician’s prac-
tice was part of an ongoing
investigation at the moment of
“surrender,” this decision not to
renew certain privileges — per-
haps simply to be able to work a
more reasonable schedule —
would be reportable to the NPDB.
Similarly, a surgeon who took a
three-month leave to travel the
world with family would be sub-
ject to reporting if there were any
ongoing investigations at the time.
The expansion of the meaning
of “surrender” would be difficult
enough to navigate by itself, but
CMS has gone further, and ex-
panded the definition of an “in-
vestigation.” According to the
Guidebook, any inquiry into a phy-
sician’s competence or conduct is
an investigation. In other words,
if a nurse wonders why a surgeon
appeared unsettled during a rou-
tine surgery and mentions it to a
medical staff leader, an “investi-
gation” would be deemed to have
begun.
Finally, there need not be any
nexus between the topic of the
investigation and the privileges
surrendered, or the leave taken,
in order for the surrender to be
reportable. Thus, in the case of
the OB/GYN mentioned above,
her decision to stop her obstetri-
cal practice would be reportable
if, coincidentally, there were an
inquiry about any of her work as
a gynecologist. If she had not
stopped practicing as an obstetri-
cian, there would have been no
report of the inquiry at least until
its outcome had been deter-
mined. And in the case of the
surgeon who had long planned a
three-month leave of absence?
The nurse’s questions about the
surgeon’s behavior during a sur-
gery would result in a report to
the NPDB if the surgeon took the
leave before the issue was resolved.
The take-away message here is
that a physician should always try
to determine if there has been
any inquiry into his competence
or conduct before relinquishing
any privileges or taking a leave of
absence. Additionally, physicians
should consult their medical staff
bylaws to ensure that the bylaws
(a) require that medical staff
members be notified when an in-
vestigation is begun, (b) require
that physicians receive written
notice of any investigation under-
way when they decide to take a
leave or to relinquish any privi-
leges (and the notice should de-
scribe the consequences will be if
there is an ongoing investigation
and the physician surrenders
privileges or takes the contem-
plated leave), and (c) clearly de-
scribe when investigations begin
and end.
The“Law and Ethics”column is provided
for educational purposes and should
not be construed as legal advice. Read-
ers with specific legal questions should
consult with a private attorney.
Save the Date
Integrating Telemedicine
into Practice
FEBRUARY 24, 2016
NOON–1 P.M.
MMS Guide to Accountable
Care Organizations
Part 2: Exploring the Future of ACOs
Alexis F. Bortniker, James Donohue,
Emma Mandell, and J. Mark Waxman
This guide will discuss how social media is used by both physicians and patients, describe the frequent concerns
physicians may have regarding social media use, and recommend actions physicians can take to maintain a
positive professional online presence.
5. WWW.MASSMED.ORG VITAL SIGNS FEBRUARY 2016 • 5
GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS
author) William Gibson report-
edly said, “the future is already
here, it’s just not very evenly
distributed.” Take electronic
prescribing, for ex-
ample — a huge suc-
cess across the coun-
try. Similarly, lab
results delivery is very
widely available in
most health care de-
livery areas across the
country. EHR-to-EHR
exchange has been
harder to accomplish
because it relies on
coordination of many
different vendors
as well as many differ-
ent providers. Even
here we’re seeing tre-
mendous progress
though. The Massa-
chusetts Health Infor-
mation Highway has
over 500 provider or-
ganizations connect-
ed and conducts over two million
secure health information ex-
change transactions per month.
However, interoperability will
never be “done.” As information
technology gets better and medi-
cal advances continue, our ex-
pectations will grow as well.
We’ve seen with computers and
smartphones that
the more they do,
the more we want.
The same is true for
interoperability as
well.
MMS: What timeline
do you expect in
terms of seeing wide-
spread improvements
in interoperability?
MT: We’re already
seeing them. It’s im-
portant for us to
have some perspec-
tive though. Just like
you can’t have a
good telephone net-
work until most
people have a tele-
phone, you can’t
have good interop-
erability until most
providers have an EHR. A short
five years ago, less than 10 percent
of physicians had an EHR. That
number is now over 75 percent,
and for hospitals it is now over
90 percent. So, why do we think
that we should have universal in-
teroperability already, when just a
couple of years ago most physi-
cians didn’t even have an EHR?
No other industry has achieved it
that fast, and yet, no other indus-
try is as complex as health care.
The biggest barrier to interop-
erability until now has been lack
of demand — physicians weren’t
asking for interoperability be-
cause they didn’t have EHRs and
because prevailing models of
care and payment didn’t require
interoperability. The world is dif-
ferent now, and physicians are
demanding interoperability from
each other and from their ven-
dors, and we’re seeing the mar-
ket respond. Within the next few
years I think we’ll see close to na-
tionwide ability to send clinical
documents to any provider in the
country, and we’ll see the matu-
ration of nationwide health infor-
mation networks that also enable
query and retrieve capabilities
as well.
These networks are already
emerging rapidly — like Epic’s
Care Everywhere, Surescripts,
CommonWell, the MA HIway,
etc. — and in the next few years
we’ll see the building of “bridg-
es” across these networks in the
same way that phone networks
and ATM networks are stitched
together to provide universal
coverage.
MMS: Do you think some regulation
or a government mandate is inevita-
ble down the road?
MT: I hope not. It would be a
terrible mistake, and I guarantee
that most physicians will be very
unhappy with any kind of govern-
ment mandate for interoperabili-
ty, whether at the state or federal
level. Health care and IT are too
complex to expect that the gov-
ernment can get it right or keep
up with it. The best prescription
for getting more interoperability is
to expand value-based purchasing
through Medicare and Medicaid
that pays for better care and im-
proved outcomes. That will cre-
ate more demand for interopera-
bility but will allow providers and
their vendors to come up with the
best ways to accomplish it.
Your EHR
continued from page 1
State Standards for PCMHs Continue to Evolve
BY BRENDAN ABEL
MMS ASSISTANT COUNSEL
Patient-centered medical homes
(PCMHs) have emerged over the
past several years as an impactful,
data-driven innovation in the de-
livery of primary care. Rooted in
team-based care, PCMHs empha-
size coordination of care and
communication between a care
team and the patient. Mounting
evidence indicates the PCMH
model supports high quality and
cost savings to practices that have
transformed and reorganized
practices to it.
In light of this evidence base,
the Massachusetts legislature
featured the promotion of
PCMHs in its comprehensive
health care cost containment bill,
Chapter 224. Specifically, Chap-
ter 224 charged the Health Poli-
cy Commission to create a PCMH
certification program. The bill
outlines two levels of PCMH
certification — a baseline model
and a best practice “Prime”
certification.
The Health Policy Commission
(HPC) had a tough task initial-
ly — the certification would be
voluntary and it would lack de-
fined incentives for providers
who achieved it. Also, there is al-
ready an existing, well-established
PCMH certification program
through the National Committee
for Quality Assurance (NCQA).
The HPC established from the
outset that it wanted to align its
own certification with the NCQA’s
but decided to add behavioral
health integration as a key factor
to its own certification.
The MMS engaged with the
HPC throughout this process to
advocate for and provide written
comment for a state certification
that was closely aligned with
NCQA and offered flexibility to
practices seeking this certification.
Any substantial additions to the
NCQA were suggested to be re-
served for the heightened
“Prime” certification.
After a lengthy development
process and a few changes in di-
rection, the HPC recently ap-
proved its plan for PCMH certifi-
cation. For now, any practice who
achieves NCQA Level II or Level
III or 2014 Recognition will be el-
igible for the base HPC PCMH
certification. Practices will be
able to apply for an elevated
Prime certification if they achieve
NCQA Level II or Level III or
2014 Recognition and they com-
plete an HPC/NCQA Assessment
of Behavioral Health Integration.
This behavioral health add-on in-
cludes factors such integration of
developmental, depression, anxi-
ety, and substance use disorder
screenings into clinical practice
using standardized screens and
the promotion of evidence-based
mental health and substance use
disorder decision support.
The state has allocated funding
to the HPC to be used to provide
technical assistance to practices
who are seeking to obtain the
Prime certification. Discussions
for the use of this funding in-
clude providing training on vari-
ous behavioral health diagnostic
tools, support or training for
medically assisted treatments of
substance use disorders, and di-
rectories for non-prescribing be-
havioral health directories.
Patient-centered medical home
certification can be a great way to
improve coordination of care, ul-
timately leading to high quality
and lower cost care. The MMS
will continue to provide addition-
al details about the HPC certifica-
tion process and the technical as-
sistance it plans to provide to
help facilitate behavioral health
integration.
“The world is different
now, and physicians
are demanding
interoperability from
each other and from
their vendors, and
we’re seeing the
market respond.”
– MickyTripathi, M.D.
6. 6 • FEBRUARY 2016 VITAL SIGNS WWW.MASSMED.ORG
PROFESSIONAL MATTERS
PHYSICIAN HEALTH MATTERS
Conflict in the Workplace: A New Urgency
Dr. Diana Dill is a professional coach and
psychologist with a background in both
consulting psychology and cognitive
behavioral therapy. She has more than
20 years of experience helping practicing
physicians address developmental goals
and overcome challenging occupational
problems. She is a core member of the
faculty of Managing Workplace Conflict:
Improving Leadership and Personal Ef-
fectiveness, a highly interactive, content
rich, risk management CME program, de-
signed to help all physicians explore and
contend with the complex and at times
contentious relationships that pervade
our high-pressure, contemporary work
environment. ThismonthinVital Signs,
Dr. Dill gives readers a taste of some of the
topics covered in this course.
— Steve Adelman, M.D.
BY DIANA DILL, ED.D.
Slammed doors, raised voices,
intractable arguments.
Frustrations getting help. Abra-
sive interactions. Problems that
escalate and don’t get fixed.
Non-compliance among staff
physicians. Less frequent interac-
tions among colleagues. Staff
attrition.
These are signs of conflict that
physician leaders and individual
physicians experience in the
workplace. Physicians may find
they don’t know what to do and
their strategies escalate the con-
flict instead of resolving it. A
highly regarded PHS/MMS
course, Managing Workplace Con-
flict, addresses this gap and shows
how to reframe conflict and man-
age it effectively.
Conflicts in the medical work-
place are inevitable. In any work
group we can expect to find peo-
ple’s agendas are sometimes at
odds, and conflict results. Con-
flict can feel threatening, so we
want to avoid or control it. Or we
can treat conflict as a sign that
there is something not working
right, which we can improve to
everyone’s benefit. Conflict can
be treated as an opportunity to
address differing agendas and,
ideally, resolve them so the sys-
tem can regain its balance.
It is becoming more urgent
than ever to address conflict well
in the medical workplace. Our
medical systems are increasingly
complex, with greater potential
for differing agendas. But we
need effective teamwork if we
want to deliver quality care. In
the past, we minimized conflict
by working independently. But
now, instead of the solo practi-
tioner, we need team players who
work well within an interconnect-
ed system.
A well-functioning intercon-
nected system of practice re-
quires us to work together under
stress to address technical, pro-
cess, and interpersonal problems,
and resolve them while keeping
relationships sound. We also need
to recognize differing agendas
and negotiate acceptable solu-
tions which maintain the good-
will of the organization.
Stress on our medical systems
is making conflict more likely. As
workloads increase and autono-
my diminishes, physician stress
has increased, with more than 40
percent of physicians nationally
reaching the breaking point we
call burnout. Burnout is physical,
emotional, and moral exhaus-
tion, and it impairs judgment
and social skill.
Burned-out physicians are less
motivated to address and resolve
conflict effectively. Disruptive be-
haviors can erupt, further damag-
ing teamwork, and put patient
safety at risk. Other physicians
may withdraw from active en-
gagement, detracting from a
well-functioning system. Many
feel isolated and confused by
what is happening. Building
effective conflict-management
skills can help them regain some
control.
To address these difficulties
and build conflict management
capacity, Physician Health Ser-
vices and the Massachusetts Med-
ical Society jointly sponsored the
program Managing Workplace
Conflict: Improving Leadership and
Personal Effectiveness, which was
supported by a grant from the
Physicians Foundation. Partici-
pants from across the state and
across specialties met for two days
in November to discuss — in a
confidential and supportive set-
ting — conflicts they found chal-
lenging, and to learn new frame-
works for thinking about them.
Through lectures, simulations,
role-playing, and discussion, par-
ticipants heard about and prac-
ticed attitudes and skills they
need to manage conflict well.
They left feeling less isolated and
more “normal” about conflicts,
equipped to think clearly and act
skillfully in addressing conflicts
in their workplaces.
Managing Workplace Conflict offers CME
credit and will be offered again March
24–25, 2016, and in October 2016. For
more information, visit our website at
www.physicianhealth.org.
MMS Committee Appointments 2016–2017
Deadline for Consideration: March 3, 2016
If you would like to become more
involved in the MMS, consider partici-
pating on a committee or the Member
InterestNetwork(MIN)ExecutiveCouncil.
Committee appointments are for spe-
cific terms, usually three-year renew-
able commitments. We have put in
place resources for distance participa-
tion including conference calls, online
meetings, and video conferencing at
regional offices. Those with limited
time who wish to participate can take
advantage of these means.
The listing below includes all MMS
committees and the MIN Executive
Council. For committee descriptions
and an application form to be consid-
ered for a committee, contact Sandra
Manchester at the MMS Executive
Office (800) 322-2303, ext. 7012, or
email smanchester@mms.org. If you
would like to join the MIN Executive
Council, contact Cathy Salas at theWest
Central Regional Office (800) 322-2303,
ext. 7715, or email csalas@mms.org.
Board ofTrustees Committees
Appointed by the Board
(Limited openings in accordance with bylaws)
– Administration and Management
– Finance
– Member Services
– Recognition Awards
– Strategic Planning
Standing Committees
Appointed by the President-elect
(Limited openings in accordance with bylaws)
– Bylaws
– Communications
– Ethics, Grievances, and
Professional Standards
– Interspecialty
– Judicial
– Medical Education
– Membership
– Professional Liability
– Public Health
– Publications
– Quality of Medical Practice
Special Committees Appointed by the
President-elect
– Accreditation Review
– Diversity in Medicine
– Environmental and Occupational Health
– Geriatric Medicine
– Global Health
– History
– Information Technology
– Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and
Transgender Matters
– Maternal and Perinatal Welfare
– Men’s Health
– Nutrition and Physical Activity
– Oral Health
– Preparedness
– Senior Physicians
– Senior Volunteer Physicians
– Sponsored Programs
– Sustainability of Private Practice
– Student Health and Sports Medicine
– Violence Intervention and Prevention
– Women in Medicine
– Young Physicians
District Appointed Committees
(Contact your district medical society for
more information)
– Legislation
– Nominations
Member Interest Network (MIN)
Executive Council
– Arts, History, Humanism, and
Culture
7. WWW.MASSMED.ORG VITAL SIGNS FEBRUARY 2016 • 7
INSIDE MMSINSIDE MMS
NEJM Group Launches NEJM Catalyst
for Health Care Executives and Clinicians
Health care delivery is undergo-
ing a major transformation.
NEJM Catalyst, a new online re-
source from NEJM Group, con-
nects health care executives, clin-
ical leaders, and clinicians to
share innovative ideas and practi-
cal applications for enhancing
the value of health care delivery.
NEJM Catalyst, in conjunction
with its founding advisor, Dr.
Thomas Lee, M.D., has carefully
selected a team of lead advisors
and thought leaders from across
a variety of disciplines. These ex-
perts share their perspectives and
offer solutions to meet your orga-
nization’s most urgent challenges.
NEJM Catalyst brings you in-
sightful articles, real-life examples,
and other resources from a net-
work of top thought leaders, ex-
perts, and advisors:
• Practical innovations in health
care delivery — Innovations in
your organization with action-
able ideas on important topics
affecting the rapidly changing
health care industry, including
care redesign and patient
engagement.
• Impeccable quality and
impact — Setting new stan-
dards via selective, relevant in-
sights, and information from
highly regarded experts.
• Active contributions from
renowned authorities, thought
leaders, and advisors — Promi-
nent experts and influential
opinion leaders from provider
organizations across the globe
come together to offer person-
al perspectives and experiences
on the transformation of
health care.
• Independent and impartial
curation — Unbiased, objective
content presents new thinking
and cutting-edge strategies
without the influence of out-
side interests.
• An exchange of ideas among
executives and clinicians —
Executives, leaders, and clini-
cians from across the health
care community share ideas and
perspectives on ways to advance
health care delivery in these
challenging but opportunity-
filled times.
• Live-streamed web events —
Showcasing constructive ideas
from experts, advisors, and
thought leaders on major top-
ics affecting health care today.
• NEJM Catalyst Insights
Council — A resource featuring
executives and clinicians from
organizations around the coun-
try who are surveyed on a regu-
lar basis. Their collective input
is analyzed and highlighted in
Insight reports.
• NEJM Catalyst Connect — a
weekly newsletter with the most
current actionable ideas and
practical solutions.
Explore NEJM Catalyst at
catalyst.nejm.org.
ACROSS THE COMMONWEALTH
District News and Events
NORTHEAST REGION
Charles River — Executive Committee Meeting. Tues., Feb. 16,
6:30 p.m. Location: MMS Headquarters, Waltham.
Middlesex Central — Executive/Delegates Meeting. Thurs., Feb. 18,
7:45 a.m. Location: Emerson Hospital, Concord.
Norfolk — Executive Committee Meeting. Wed., Feb. 10, 6:00 p.m.
Location: MMS Headquarters, Waltham.
For more information on these events, or if you have Northeast District news to con-
tribute, please contact Michele Jussaume or Linda Howard, Northeast Regional Of-
fice at (800) 944-5562 or mjussaume@mms.org or lhoward@mms.org.
WEST CENTRAL REGION
Berkshire — Legislative Breakfast. Fri., Feb. 12, 7:30 a.m. Location:
Berkshire Medical Center, PDR B, Pittsfield.
Franklin — Legislative Breakfast. Fri., Feb. 26, 7:30 a.m. Location:
Baystate Franklin Medical Center, Conference Room A, Franklin.
Hampshire — Executive Committee Meeting. Mon., Feb 8, 6:00 p.m.
Location: Spoletto’s, Northampton.
Worcester— 220th Annual Oration. Wed., Feb. 10, 5:30 p.m. Location:
Beechwood Hotel, Worcester. Symphony of the Brain. Orator: Joel
Popkin, M.D., director of Special Services at Saint Vincent Hospital.
Worcester North — Social Event. Mon., Feb. 22, 6:00 p.m. Location:
Doubletree, Leominster.
For more information, or if you haveWest Central news to contribute, please contact
Cathy Salas,West Central Regional Office at (800) 522-3112 or csalas@mms.org.
Themes
Care Redesign New Marketplace Patient Engagement
Practical innovations
in health care delivery
8. NONPROFIT U.S.
POSTAGE PAID
BOSTON, MA
PERMIT 59673
860 Winter Street, Waltham, MA 02451-1411
MMS AND JOINTLY PROVIDED CME ACTIVITIES
volume 21, issue 2, february 2016
MMS Guide to Accountable
Care Organizations
Part 2: Exploring the Future of ACOs
Alexis F. Bortniker, James Donohue,
Emma Mandell, and J. Mark Waxman
This guide will discuss how social media is used by both physicians and patients, describe the frequent concerns
physicians may have regarding social media use, and recommend actions physicians can take to maintain a
positive professional online presence.
CME CREDIT:These activities have been approved for AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™.
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION DETAILS GO TO
WWW.MASSMED.ORG/CMECENTER, OR CALL (800) 843-6356.
LIVE CME ACTIVITIES
Unlessotherwisenoted,eventlocationisMMS
Headquarters,Waltham.
Cutting-Edge Advances in Women’s Cardiovascular
Care
Sat., March 19, 2016
Managing Workplace Conflict
Thurs., March 24–Fri., March 25, 2016
ONLINE CME ACTIVITIES
Go to www.massmed.org/cme
Risk Management CME
Electronic Health Records Education (3 modules)
• Module 1 — EHR Best Practices, Checklists, and Pitfalls
• Module 2 — Making Meaningful Use Meaningful:
Stage 1
• Module 3 — Making Meaningful Use Meaningful:
Stage 2
End-of-Life Care
• End-of-Life Care (3 modules)
• The Importance of Discussing End-of-Life Care with
Patients
• Advance Directives (LegalAdvisor)
• Principles of Palliative Care and Persistent Pain
Management (3 modules)
Pain Management and Opioid Prescribing
• Managing PainWithout Overusing Opioids
• The Opioid Epidemic (6 modules) — MMS 11th
Annual Public Health Leadership Forum
• Principles of Palliative Care and Persistent Pain
Management (2 modules)
• Opioid Prescribing Series: (6 modules)
• Identifying Potential Drug Dependence and
Preventing Abuse (LegalAdvisor)
• Managing Risk when Prescribing Narcotic Painkillers
for Patients (LegalAdvisor)
Medical Marijuana (4 modules)
• Module 1 — Medical Marijuana: An Evidence-Based
Assessment of Efficacy and Harms
• Module 2 — Medical Marijuana in the
Commonwealth:What a Physician Needs to Know
• Module 3 — Medical Marijuana in Oncology
• Module 4 — Dazed and Confused: Medical Marijuana
and the Developing Adolescent Brain
Additional Risk Management CME Courses
• Intimate PartnerViolence
• Understanding Clinical Documentation Requirements
for ICD-10
• ICD-10: Beyond Implementation
• Prostate Cancer and Primary Care
• Cancer Screening Guidelines (3 modules)
• Preventing Falls in Older Patients: A ProviderToolkit
• HIPAA 2.0:What’s New in the New Rules?
• Impact of Effective Communication on Patients,
Colleagues, and Metrics (2 modules)
• Effective Chart Review for Quality Improvement
Additional CME Courses
• Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
• Genetically Modified Foods: Benefits and Risks
• Just a Spoonful of Medicine Helps the Sugar Go Down:
Improve Management ofType 2 Diabetes
• Weighing the Evidence on Obesity
• Aggregating the Evidence on Antiplatelet Drugs:
A Review of Recent ClinicalTrials
• Acid SuppressionTherapy: Neutralizing the Hype
• Preventing Overuse of Antipsychotic Drugs in Nursing
Home Care
• A Roadmap to Bring an End to HIV and STDs in
Massachusetts (3 modules)
• Finance 101 for Physicians and Practice Administrators
• Financial Management of Practices Case Studies
(3 Modules)
• Physician Employment Options in the Health Care
Environment
• Contracting with an ACO
• Using DataWisely
IN THIS ISSUE
1 > Here Come the “Docpreneurs”
Your EHR: Interoperability Is Key Trend
2 President’s Message: Supporting Our
Patients
3 The Future of ACOs: New Guide for Physicians
and Practices
New National Practitioner Data Bank
Reporting Rules
4 Curbing Firearm Violence: A QA with
Michael Hirsh, M.D.
MMS 12th Annual Public Leadership Forum
on April 5
5 State Standards for PCMHs Continue to Evolve
6 Conflict in the Workplace: A New Urgency
MMS Committee Appointments 2016–2017
7 Announcing NEJM Catalyst
Across the Commonwealth