Weekly Byte: Patients Always Come First, Except When They Don’t
“We absolutely cannot afford to miss seeing a patient in the hospital, and we need a better way to communicate that across all of our care team.”
One of our administrators and head physicians passionately proclaimed this message to our team prior to a recent implementation of pMD charge capture and secure messaging. Many times patients in the hospital wonder if a doctor will ever come check on them - this may have happened to you or a family member. Alternatively, if you’re reading this blog, you’re likely connected to the health care industry and know that coordinating the daily care of patients can be very challenging across many different caretakers.
Working with specialists all across the country, I’ve seen firsthand the challenges associated with managing a patient’s care while in the hospital. As consultants, the majority of the time specialists do not admit the patient directly into the hospital, but they are being consulted upon and treating the patient for symptoms that fall under their specialty or focus of expertise as a physician. Thus, they may not necessarily need to see that patient each and every day throughout that patient’s entire hospitalization. In fact, they often sign-off on seeing the patient when their specialized care and input is no longer needed and request to see the patient again in the office upon discharge. This creates another unique challenge that my colleague Adam wrote about in a previous post.
However, from time to time, these consulting physicians do admit patients themselves into the hospital. This creates a need to be 100% sure that the patient admitted under their name is seen and monitored each day by that specialist or group of specialists. Otherwise, the patient’s care is at risk and the physician and practice are at risk of being severely penalized by the hospital. In the busyness of physician call rotations and large numbers of patients in the hospital, this is not easy to indicate across the group. Groups need a real-time update across all of their hospitals to know at a glance which patients have been seen by their group that day and also identifying which patients were direct admits versus hospital consults.
pMD was founded on the principle of making sure patients are provided the best care possible by facilitating communication in real-time amongst caretakers and providers. In my recent conversation with this administrator and physician at a large, busy specialty practice, we worked collaboratively with the group to help design tools within pMD to better identify which patients were their own admitted patients and which were being consulted upon. In the process of fine-tuning their communication workflow, we also came across a new billable service that the providers didn’t realize they were able to be reimbursed for. When we can help have an impact on improving patient care while also improving the health of a practice, I always leave feeling thankful to work for a company that’s making a difference in health care!
One of our administrators and head physicians passionately proclaimed this message to our team prior to a recent implementation of pMD charge capture and secure messaging. Many times patients in the hospital wonder if a doctor will ever come check on them - this may have happened to you or a family member. Alternatively, if you’re reading this blog, you’re likely connected to the health care industry and know that coordinating the daily care of patients can be very challenging across many different caretakers.
Working with specialists all across the country, I’ve seen firsthand the challenges associated with managing a patient’s care while in the hospital. As consultants, the majority of the time specialists do not admit the patient directly into the hospital, but they are being consulted upon and treating the patient for symptoms that fall under their specialty or focus of expertise as a physician. Thus, they may not necessarily need to see that patient each and every day throughout that patient’s entire hospitalization. In fact, they often sign-off on seeing the patient when their specialized care and input is no longer needed and request to see the patient again in the office upon discharge. This creates another unique challenge that my colleague Adam wrote about in a previous post.
However, from time to time, these consulting physicians do admit patients themselves into the hospital. This creates a need to be 100% sure that the patient admitted under their name is seen and monitored each day by that specialist or group of specialists. Otherwise, the patient’s care is at risk and the physician and practice are at risk of being severely penalized by the hospital. In the busyness of physician call rotations and large numbers of patients in the hospital, this is not easy to indicate across the group. Groups need a real-time update across all of their hospitals to know at a glance which patients have been seen by their group that day and also identifying which patients were direct admits versus hospital consults.
pMD was founded on the principle of making sure patients are provided the best care possible by facilitating communication in real-time amongst caretakers and providers. In my recent conversation with this administrator and physician at a large, busy specialty practice, we worked collaboratively with the group to help design tools within pMD to better identify which patients were their own admitted patients and which were being consulted upon. In the process of fine-tuning their communication workflow, we also came across a new billable service that the providers didn’t realize they were able to be reimbursed for. When we can help have an impact on improving patient care while also improving the health of a practice, I always leave feeling thankful to work for a company that’s making a difference in health care!
