The pressure to contain costs in the nation’s health care system is mounting. One area where the government is keenly interested in making changes is to promote the quality of care rather than the sheer volume of care being provided. To that end, there is a move to streamline the methods healthcare organizations use to report the level of quality they deliver to each patient. Of particular note is the fact that the Department of Health and Human Services is making changes in how Medicare payments will be paid for in connection with the quality and costs of the services. Modernizing how Medicare will pay doctors for quality is designed to save taxpayers money and help the entire system run more efficiently. In order to get up to speed on the legislative efforts involved, you’ll need to become familiar with the terms MACRA, MIPS and APM.

How satisfied and loyal do you think your patients are? In an era of increased competition, it’s of paramount importance that you nurture each patient and keep him or her satisfied with the services you provide. If you’re looking for one simple secret for boosting patient referrals, the ultimate answer is: make sure your existing patients stay happy and engaged.

It often seems that people are far busier today than they were in recent years, and this is reflected in part by their growing use of smartphones while on the go. Trying to stay constantly connected with friends, family and coworkers with a portable device that you keep with you at all times for research as well as entertainment can make for some frazzled nerves and increased frustration. It’s no wonder that patients may seem less engaged when they come to your medical organization, with so many distractions pulling at them and fighting for their attention. Getting them more involved in healthcare discussions and their treatment plans should be of paramount importance. It’s clear that now is the time for you to prioritize patient engagement.

The following excerpt is from an article found on PR Newswire. It was written by The Advisory Board. ----------------------------------------- While care transformation continues to lead the list of concerns for hospital and health system executives, this year two of the top four topics relate to patients' non-clinical needs, according to The Advisory Board Company's Annual Health Care CEO Survey. Specifically, meeting consumer expectations and patient engagement made notable moves up the list.

Medical practices have more options these days to work more efficiently and save costs, particularly when it comes to the crucial software that underpins their operations. Your medical practice can work more nimbly and save money by switching over to a cloud-based electronic health record and practice management solution.

Information is power. The more useful and actionable information you can provide to your patients, the better off they will be because when the details sink in, you’ll be able to improve how you care for them. These days, patients have access to more health-related information than ever before thanks to databases connected to the internet and various websites from government, academia and the medical industry. Access to this store of knowledge doesn’t guarantee that patients will take advantage of it, though. And when patients do research on their own, they may wind up inadvertently relying on bogus information that could steer them wrong about treatments, medications and the very nature of diseases, injuries and other ailments.

The work that goes on behind the scenes to keep your organization’s computational infrastructure humming along may not always get the recognition it deserves. However, for all the good things your information technology department does for the organization, there may be some errors that need correcting. With that in mind, are you making these top five healthcare IT mistakes?

Whether you are still in the midst of preparing your medical practice to implement a new electronic health record software solution or have already made the leap and an EHR has been put in place, it’s important to verify that you are using the application to its full potential. The EHR application your decided to bring online at your facility is designed to help doctors, nurses and other medical professionals access patient information and add new details quickly and conveniently. Installing the software and integrating it with other systems is just the first step, of course. You’ll want to check that you are doing what’s needed to get the most out of the EHR. Here are three steps to take to ensure that your EHR software is fully optimized.

You never want to push your key staff members too hard. While you might get some temporarily impressive results in terms of how many patients are seen, burning the candle at both ends will wind up being a prescription for disaster.

The more efficient healthcare providers become in the services they provide, especially to patients who are covered through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the more resources we will have at our disposal. To that end, CMS recently released some tips to help eligible professionals, hospitals and critical care hospitals as they attest to meaningful use this year. If you don’t comply with the meaningful use criteria, your organization won’t be eligible to get the financial incentives offered by the government for CMS patients. It’s in your best interest to do your part, so here are four tips for successful meaningful use attestation.