Could your practice's waiting area become obsolete?
Could a web-based “virtual queue management system” that allows patients to use their cell phones to hold their spot in line eventually replace waiting areas in physicians’ practices? Alex Bäcker, PhD (no relation of mine), the founder and CEO of abInventio, which makes QLess, believes it could. (Bäcker’s mission is actually far more ambitious: to wipe waiting lines off the face of the Earth.)
This type of system is different than those you might have encountered in some restaurants. There’s no electronic device to distribute and no need to stay on the premises. Patients could check into a line by sending a text message or making a phone call. When their turn in line has come up, they would simply receive a text message or phone call.
It’s probably too soon to begin thinking about remodeling your waiting area into another exam room – the idea has yet to take hold in health care. But it’s worth thinking about. Imagine how a system like this one could help some practices compete with retail health clinics that enable patients to shop while they wait to be seen. Imagine being able to offer patients an alternative to rubbing elbows with sick patients in your potentially crowded waiting room – one that would allow them to use their waiting time more productively. Having recently experienced a lengthy wait at a doctor’s office (not my family physician’s), I must say that eliminating the “waiting problem,” as Bäcker describes it, would give new meaning to patient-centered care and service.
Posted at 03:39PM Jul 10, 2009 by Leigh Ann Backer | Comments[0]
CMS makes e-prescribing simple
When was the last time the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) made anything simple? Good question. Well, now they have published a document called "2009 Electronic Prescribing (E-Prescribing) Incentive Program Made Simple." It's just four pages, three questions, two tables and three steps, two of which you have to repeat a few hundred times. Simple, huh?
All you have to do is bill one of 33 CPT and G codes plus one of another set of three G codes for at least 50 percent of your patients, hope that CMS corrects the problems associated with the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) last year and rake in the incentive payments.
OK. I recognize that, even as simple as that sounds, it may not tempt you. But that doesn't make e-prescribing a bad deal in itself, as Kenneth Adler's article in our current issue argues. If you're not already doing e-prescribing, it's at least worth a look. And once you're up and running with it, you can decide whether you want to simplify your life by going for the Medicare incentive.
Posted at 04:46PM Jan 29, 2009 by Bob Edsall | Comments[5]
