Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 - (Page 69)

is available only to patients who have received a personal password. It gives patients the capability to schedule, reschedule, and cancel appointments; view and download lab results from current and previous visits; and exchange secure e-mail messages with their physicians. Bill Moshofsky, a family physician with PHMG, particularly appreciates his practice’s secure e-mail service. “Whenever I have two minutes between patients, I can just sit down and send off a couple of responses, and I couldn’t place a phone call in such a short time,” he says. “One of the things that’s kind of nice about e-mail is, you just send out the information and you’re done.” PHMG also hosts a site for the general public. Potential patients can search its Healthwise database for information about speciﬁc symptoms. Visitors can also use the site’s “ask-an-expert” function to submit their healthcare-related questions and view previously posted responses. PHMG has found this community service to be an effective way to attract new patients. Within the next year, PHMG is expanding its Web site to enable it to send personalized reminders to patients, telling them when it’s time to schedule a physical exam, a mammogram, or similar preventive LOOKS DO MATTER Your Web site’s appearance will make a deﬁnite impression on its viewers. Think about the personal message and ﬂavor that you want your site to convey to your existing and potential patients. If you want a basic Web site without the bells and whistles, it’s certainly possible to create it yourself, and there are many software tools available to help you. Someone on your staff may already have expertise in this area. If not, plenty of IT companies can provide this service. Many practices that shared their stories with Physicians Practice emphasized the importance of good design. When creating their sites, they looked for experienced people with a good sense of design as well as the requisite technical skills. “Previously, our Web site colors were drab and dreary and didn’t particularly make you want to go to the doctor,” says Latisha Harrison, marketing director of the Ofﬁce of Orthopaedic Medicine and Surgery in Washington, D.C. “Now the Web site is more open and welcoming, and it truly reﬂects the family-oriented feeling of our ofﬁce.” When gastroenterologist Patricia Raymond was about to develop her solo practice’s Web site, she spent a good deal of time surﬁng the Internet to view other practice sites, and she didn’t like most of them. “They were boring and dull,” she recalls. “I wanted mine to convey a friendly, interactive feeling. I wanted it to be more about you, the person visiting the Web site, than about me.” Researching existing Web sites created by practices that share your specialty is a good place to start when searching for ideas for your own site. When you ﬁnd one you particularly like, look for a link to the Web designer, often cited in the lower right corner of the home page. If you don’t see it there, examine the code underlying the site. Often it will include a short banner with the name of the site’s creator. Thomas Piwowar, president of an electronic publishing and consulting ﬁrm in Washington, D.C., recommends using a Web designer to create a “stub” — the basic structure and graphic design that supports a site. After that, Piwowar suggests recruiting a staff member from your practice to use a software program called “Contribute,” which can ﬁll in speciﬁc details such as location, hours, services, etc. When circumstances change, the practice can easily update these details without having to call in a Web designer. Of course, before you settle on a Web site vendor to help you create your site, ask for references. Talk to a couple of their clients, and ask whether they’ve encountered any problems and how those problems were resolved. services. The group is also planning to send personalized electronic newsletters to targeted patients with an interest in specific conditions; these newsletters will be available to nonpatient community members as well as established patients. In the future, PHMG hopes to link data from their patients’ home monitoring systems directly into their electronic medical records so that staff can keep a close eye on variables such as blood pressure and glucose levels for the chronically ill. The practice is also considering giving patients Web access to their personal health records. “For example, if a patient wanted to report that WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM they’re cutting pills in half, or taking them every other day, this would give them an avenue for those comments,” says Chuck Broch, PeaceHealth’s systems analyst. Part of the reason PHMG can do all this is because it participates in a three-state healthcare IT collaboration. But smaller practices can also develop Web sites with similarly, advanced features, using sophisticated software and Web designers who specialize in helping physician practices. For example, one physician at Village Health Partners with a special interest in information technology supervises the practice’s Web site, while the others chime in with suggestions 69 TECHNOLOGY GUIDE | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 TG Cover Story: Protect Your Practice and Sleep Better Operations: Paperless? Not Quite The Internet: You've Got Mail...Or Do You? Patient Relations: Attention Grabbers The Tech Doctor: All About Blogs Lessons Learned: 'My EMR Nightmare...And Why I'd Do It Again' Scheduling: No More No-Shows The Marketplace: Who's Got Your Back IT Enhancement: Time, at Last, for an Upgrade? Online: 'Yup, I'm a Junkie. And Proud of It.' In the Office: New Technologies in the Workplace: Blessing or Curse? Web Surfing: If You Build It...

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

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