The following is an excerpt from an article originally published on Medical Practice Insider. It was written by Madelyn Kearns. There is a recognized difference between saviors and savers — one being a rescuer of people, while the other salvages bank accounts. But leave it to accountable care organizations to throw distinctions to the wayside. According to Software Advice's recent ACO survival guide, the ACO model not only operates on delivering high quality care to patients — it also aims to provide the utmost in cost-efficiency to participating providers. It’s not the model for everyone, though, and there are numerous requirements and investments a practice must appease for the arrangement to be beneficial.

A simple software solution may be right under your nose, ready to help you make life easier for every member of your medical organization as well as each patient. The patient portal that you can activate with your electronic health record software will save everyone time and effort.

Big changes are coming to how we provide healthcare services in the United States. In a bid to improve efficiencies and treat more patients more quickly with less waste, we are going to be transitioning from the older model based on fees for services to a new one that is dedicated more to value-based reimbursements.

Anyone who has endured spending too much time in a crowded waiting room waiting for a doctor can appreciate the benefits of an early and much-missed aspect of our healthcare system: the humble house call. And if you’ve ever felt so sick that you would much more prefer having a doctor see you at home than endure spending even a minute in a waiting room with other coughing individuals, a house call would be ideal. It helps conserve your strength as well as keep you from infecting others in public.

Of course, your healthcare organization is set up as a business and you have to maintain good financial practices and standards to achieve your targeted range of revenue flow. But the work your team does is not designed primarily to make a profit as much as it is devoted to diagnosing, healing, and helping to maintain the health of each patient that passes through your doors.

The following is an excerpt from an article originally published on Healthcare IT News. It was written by Bill Siwicki. Nearly 8 in 10 physicians in a new survey said they prefer fee-for-service over risk-bearing, value-based care under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015.

Telemedicine Program Reinventing Traditional Medicine With Twenty-first Century Technology If your organization is considering implementing a telemedicine program but you currently have limited experience with telehealth systems, it’s prudent to become familiar with industry best practices before you begin.

The following excerpt is from an article found on www.healthitoutcomes.com. It was written by Christine Kern. -------------------------- Population health initiatives are growing in number and popularity across the nation as one way to reduce overall healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes. Recently, PwC's Health Research Institute (HRI) released Population health: Scaling up in which they interviewed executives in leading healthcare, research and academic institutions on how organizations can better scale their efforts.

As the manager or owner of a thriving medical practice, you know that it is prudent to routinely take time to look at the entire business and see how its processes are integrated. To that end, increasingly sophisticated software offerings are now available to medical practices to help ensure things really are humming along, and you don’t want to miss out on any potentially helpful solutions. Two “off the bat” solutions are systems are electronic health records (EHR) and practice management (PM). Many practices opt for an all-in-one EHR-PM system. Once set up, you have essentially deployed an in-house capability for revenue cycle management (RCM). Adding a patient portal will do wonders for increasing patient engagement and connectivity between practice and patient, and vice versa. With these thoughts in mind, here are four technology trends that indicate a healthy practice.

The following excerpt is from an article found on Medical Economics. It was written by Joseph Burns. --------------------------- Beginning in 2019, the new Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), which is part of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), will raise the focus on physician performance measurement to a new level. Robert A. Berenson, MD, a fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, recently authored an article in JAMA Forum critical of the legislation’s focus on doctors’ performance on what he calls a few, random, unreliable measures that he says give a misleading view of a physician’s work. A board-certified internist who practiced for 20 years before pursuing a health policy career, Berenson is one of the nation’s best-known health policy experts. He has served on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, has headed up Medicare payment policy and private health plan contracting in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and served as an assistant director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff under President Carter.