For most Americans, getting to the doctor is a fairly routine activity. We may not like taking the time to book and keep an appointment, but most of us do not worry that the services will be there when we need them.
Remember the oat bran craze of the late 1980s? How about the low-carb Atkins Diet? And how, once upon a time, all cholesterol was considered bad? And how people used to count calories?
OK, people still count calories. But is that the best way to lose weight and keep it off? Is losing weight the only point, or should the real goal be better nutrition, better health, and a more fulfilling life?
How does an established practice improve?
Imagine for a moment that you run a small family health practice. You’ve been a part of the community for more than 50 years, and deliver quality care to thousands of patients, young and old. You’ve kept up with developments in healthcare, expanded the services you offer your patients, and even made the transition to Electronic Health Records without much trouble.
Doctors become doctors for lots of reasons, mostly having to do with helping others remain healthy, overcome illness, and live fuller, more meaningful lives. But along the way a lot can happen. Your practice grows larger and more complex. Financial headaches abound. Insurance rules change. Government mandates are added.
You know all those Norman Rockwell painting showing a kindly, white-haired doctor coming to the house to give a child his or her checkup? Once upon a time in America, that was the norm. In fact, as recently as 1930 — well within the memory of many Americans — 40% of all patient encounters in the U.S. were house calls, according to a 2011 study in American Family Physician.
Does a minute make any difference in your life? How about two minutes? Or three?
At CityMD, every minute counts.
Perhaps that’s because the network of walk-in medical clinics covers much of metropolitan New York City and northern New Jersey, where life is so fast-paced that Americans everywhere are familiar with the expression a “New York minute.”
The fact that America is aging is no secret. According to the Population Reference Bureau, the number of Americans age 65 or older is expected to double by 2060 — to nearly 100 million. Nor is such information new. The trends have been apparent for years, and even if the estimates vary here and there, there’s no doubt that the nation’s average age is rising — bringing a lot of healthcare challenges.
Today, approximately 15% of Americans, some 46 million of us, are age 65 or older. Fast forward 40 years and the ranks of those eligible for Chronic Care Management are projected to reach nearly 100 million, about a quarter of the U.S. population. The exact numbers are anyone’s guess, but the trends are clear: Americans are living longer than ever. Medicine continues to make remarkable advances in the prevention and treatment of disease.
Do you live in a busy urban area? Do you work in healthcare? Do you multitask?
If you said yes to the first two, we can guarantee you said yes to the third.
Riverdale Family Practice (RFP) knows firsthand what busy is. Marking their 30th year in the Kingsbridge/Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, New York, RFP serves more than 35,000 people — young and old, rich and poor, from every corner of their neighborhood — which in the Bronx means from every corner of the globe.
In an ideal world, every medical encounter would begin with the provider having the patient’s complete medical history. Every diagnosis. Every medication. Every allergy.
For now, we live in a real world, where information is often scattered throughout medical systems.
In healthcare IT, the problem isn’t too much data — providers want to know everything they can about individual patients and patient populations — but how to make sense of it all. For many years, medical professionals have devoted countless hours and legions of people to sorting and sifting medical records.
Take a close look at the health profile of the state of Arkansas, and by almost any measure there’s cause for concern, with one of the nation’s highest rates of obesity and related conditions, including diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.
If there’s anything more difficult than developing healthcare IT, it’s implementing it. And we’re not talking here about the developers and trainers at companies such as eClinicalWorks whose job it is to teach the software to clients. We mean how clients themselves adapt to rapidly changing technology.
eClinicalWorks focuses a lot of time and attention on training. But the best trainer in the world cannot be certain that clients understand the tools they use every day until they demonstrate confidence in the use of new technologies, and show that they are thinking differently about processes and workflows.