Thursday, May 23, 2013
In 1820 it took a man wielding a scythe three days to harvest one acre of grain. In 1860 that same man using a mechanical thresher could harvest twelve acres in a single day.
We easily understand that kind of mechanical automation and how it helps us do more with less. Now we are learning to use information automation, and even though the savings in time and money can be just as dramatic as we saw with the industrial revolution, people resist the change.
People resist change for the usual reasons; they think it will devalue their work, they think it will be too hard and expensive, but mostly they resist because they just don’t know what is possible. With online digital e-services it is possible to transfer much of the information work that a passel of paid staff members used to do in the office to software in the cloud.
We gather digital information about our patients simply as a byproduct of doing business. For example our computer knows the patient’s name, phone number, insurance coverage, birthday, employer and next scheduled appointment, plus a whole lot more. Once the data is in a digital form, a computer can be programmed to use it in a specific manner.
For example, the computer can see when a patient is scheduled for care and simply send a text message to the patient’s cell phone a day in advance. No additional data entry, no human writing messages or dialing phones is necessary. It is all done automatically with no humans involved.
As a general rule e-services have three characteristics; they use digital information, they are Internet based and they are automatic, meaning no human activity is required. As a user you do not buy and install the service on your computer, you simply sign up and pay a monthly fee. You rent the service rather than buying the software.
That means you do not need to train your staff on the use of the software or pay to have it updated on a regular basis.
E-services use data that is already in your computer system. Staff members do not need to re-enter data for the service. For example, the next appointment, you do not enter that data into a reminder application; the service just takes it from the already scheduled appointments in your electronic appointment book.
Another obvious e-service is insurance eligibility. Your computer knows the patient, the insurance plan and the scheduled treatment. With an e-service, the data is gathered in the cloud, and the service connects with the insurance company computer. The eligibility, deductible and benefit all can be determined by one machine communicating with another. Once the determination is complete it is transferred back to your machine and inserted in the patient chart or appointment.
Compare that to what we used to do; searching the appointment book, rummaging through a chart for the insurance information, calling and waiting on hold indefinitely then finally speaking with a person and writing notes in the chart.
Because there are no humans involved the service can run anytime 24/7. The machines can be hooked up checking eligibility at midnight while your team members are at home snug in bed.
E-services also can interact with patients 24/7. For example patients can log on to check when they are scheduled next or to make a payment. Research from Sesame Communications indicates more than half the payments patients make online occur after hours when the patient is home with time to devote to personal matters. Once again, the payment is taken by a machine gathering digital data with no human involved.
One of my favorite e-services is the reactivation system from ActionRun. Like all e-services it runs automatically in the cloud using digital data we already have in our systems. What makes it special is the way it uses the data. ActionRun analyses the data using a type of artificial intelligence to find inactive patients and assign a clinical reason for them to return for treatment. It then takes it a step further and using the digital data you generate as a byproduct of doing business tracks results. That is, did the contacted patient schedule and how much treatment did they receive?
In the future we will look back at people spending countless hours reading charts, typing notes and waiting on hold with the same quaint nostalgia we now have for men swinging scythes. The future is coming and it will be amazing!