Transcription and Practice Management
Market Trends & Industry Highlights

1. Technology Update – IPhone as Medical Tool If you Goolge IPhone applications targeted for medical community, you will probably get a ton of material – definitely more than you would wish for a weekend! But there are some interesting developments (at least interesting for me!) that I think are worth sharing. Call them medical community milestones or popular applications, but certainly these are not the only ones. Nor is the IPhone only platform medical community will embrace. It is certain though that today medical community’s interest in IPhone applications is significantly more than other mobile devices. So, here we go.

I.   Partnering with Epocrates Epocrates Essentials became available in Apple’s AppStore for iPhone and iTouch users early this year. Epocrates, Inc. develops clinical information and decision support tools that enable healthcare professionals to find answers more quickly and confidently at the point of care.

     More than 800,000 healthcare professionals, including one in three U.S. physicians, use Epocrates’ innovative mobile and web-based products to help them reduce medical errors, improve patient care and increase productivity. Epocrates is a privately held company based in San Mateo, CA and was founded in 1998. Epocrate content is available on other Mobile platforms as well including Apple, Blackberry Palm. Read More http://www.epocrates.com/company/

II. AirStrip Technologies and AirStrip OB AirStrip announced that the FDA had granted the company’s iPhone application, AirStrip OB, clearance to market the app to physicians via Apple’s App Store. AirStrip OB enables obstetricians to use their iPhones to remotely access real-time and historical waveform data for both the mother and the baby. The data set includes heart tracings, contraction patterns, nursing notes and exam status. The application pulls the data from the hospitals’ labor and delivery units. AirStrip OB is already available on Windows Mobile powered PDAs and smartphones, but the company noted the iPhone app has a different feel because of the phone’s touchscreen. Read more: http://www.airstriptech.com/

     The “medical” category in Apple’s iPhone AppStore has become the third fastest growing category of applications for the first quarter of 2009, according to O’Reilly Radar. The number of medical applications for the iPhone grew almost 133 percent during the period. The “Books” and “Travel” categories took the first and second places for most new apps added during the past 12 weeks. The medical category now holds 1.1 percent of the iPhone’s applications marketshare!

III. Voalte This Sarasota (FL)-based start-up stole the show at the recent HIMSS event in Chicago with its iPhone-based voice, alarm, text service for physicians, nurses and other hospital workers. Developed on Apple's iPhone, Voalté is designed to be a unified communications solution enabling phone calls across the hospital VoIP system, text messaging via the user directory, and user-friendly alarm management. With Voalté, caregivers can receive and respond to alarms dispatched by over 200 hospital systems and devices - optimizing workflow and improving patient satisfaction and safety. The ability to add additional applications allows hospitals to customize the solution to the needs of individual departments and users.

Read more: http://www.voalte.com/solution.html

2.   Test Your TPM IQ (Transcription and Practice Management)

i.   Ambulatory care Any medical care delivered on an outpatient basis.

ii.   CCHI Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology, the recognized certification authority for electronic health records and their networks, and an independent, voluntary, private-sector initiative.

iii. Clearinghouse A company that provides clearing and settlement services for medical financial transactions. Some of the more popular clearinghouses include Emdeon/WebMD, McKesson and THIN.

iv. Computerized Patient Record (CPR) Also known as an EMR or EHR; a patient's past, present, and future clinical data stored on a server.

v. Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) A system used by physicians to electronically order lab tests, imaging and prescriptions

vi. CPT Code A nationally recognizable five-digit number used to represent a service provided by a healthcare provider.

vii. EDI Electronic Data Interchange. Electronic communication between two parties, generally for the filing of electronic claims to payers.

viii. Electronic Eligibility An EMR feature which gives a payer access to deliver up-to-date insurance benefits eligibility information on patients.

ix. Explanation of Benefits (EOB): A statement from the patient's insurance company that breaks down services rendered at time of doctor or hospital visit and amounts covered by insurance provider.

x. Fee Schedule A set maximum fee that an insurance company will pay a healthcare provider.

xi. Fee-for-service A health insurance plan that allows policyholders to pay for any provider service; submit a claim to the insurance company; and get reimbursed if the service is covered by the insurance provider.

xii. Fee Schedule A set maximum fee that an insurance company will pay a healthcare provider.

xiii. Growth Chart A feature designed for Primary Care or an EMR that can be used for pediatric patients. Age, height, weight, and head measurements can be entered over the patient's lifetime and charted on a line graph.

xiv. HL7 (Health Level 7) Part of the American National Standards Institute's accredited Standard Developing Organization (SDO);the Health Level 7 domain is the standard for electronic interchange of clinical, financial and administrative info among healthcare oriented computer systems. A not-for-profit volunteer organization, it develops specifications, the most widely used of which is the messaging standard that enables disparate health care applications to exchange key sets of clinical and administrative data. HL7 promotes the use of standards within and among healthcare organizations to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare delivery. HL7's international community of healthcare subject matter experts and information scientists are dedicated to the creation of a standard architecture for the exchange and transmission of clinical data.

xv. ICD-9 Internationally recognizable 3 to 5-digit code representing a medical diagnosis. Currently being replaced by the ICD-10 code. Clinical documentation nomenclature designed to provide E&M level coding assistance to providers through the use of a extensive database for documenting patient encounters.

xvi. National Provider Identifier (NPI) A unique number assigned to healthcare providers. Currently required for insurance billing. location which allows an EMR vendor to perform off-site system maintenance.

xvii. SNOMED (SNOMED CT) Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms. The medical language standard which details health care terminology, providing comprehensive coverage for procedures, diseases, and clinical data. SNOMED CT helps to structure and computerize the medical record while allowing for a consistent means of indexing, storing, retrieving and aggregating clinical data across sites of care (i.e. hospitals, doctors offices) and specialties. Snomed CT, in standardizing clinical vocabulary reduces the disparity resulting from the way data is captured, encoded and used for clinical care of patients and research. It allows for more accurate reporting of data and is currently available in English, Spanish and German.

xviii. UPIN (Unique Physician Identification Number) Unique Identification number given to each healthcare provider. Frequently used in insurance billing and is currently being replaced by the NPI number.

3.   Do We have 47 million People in the US who lack Health insurance –
      Factcheck!

      The short answer, no one really knows the exact number. But there are
      good enough approximations. . .

•  Twenty-one percent of the uninsured are immigrants, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). But that figure includes both those who are here legally and those who are not. Perhaps 6 million, are illegal immigrants (who don’t qualify for health insurance or will not receive coverage under any proposal now being considered)

•  Twenty-six percent of the uninsured are eligible for some form of public coverage but do not make use of it, according to The National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation. This is sometimes, but not always, a matter of choice.

•  Twenty percent of the uninsured have family incomes of greater than $75,000 per year, according to the Census Bureau. But this does not necessarily mean they have access to insurance. Some argue, they can easily afford it if they want! But, even higher-income jobs don’t always offer employer-sponsored insurance, and not everyone who wants private insurance is able to get it.

•  Forty percent of the uninsured are young, according to KFF. But speculation that they pass up insurance because of their good health is unjustified. KFF reports that many young people lack insurance because it’s not available to them, and people who turn down available insurance tend to be in worse health, not better, according to the Institute of Medicine.

If this makes it more confusing… read more at http://www.factcheck.org/2009/06/the-real-uninsured/