| Pay for Performance, (or P4P) is the new buzzword in Medical Economics,
Government, and the Medical Insurance Industry. This is understandable
given the rapid rise in the cost of medicine and simultaneous reduction in
Nurse/Patient ratios, Hospital services and other
Quality Indicators.
Physicians too, are struggling
to provide high quality care.
They have been forced to
provide more for less.
Payments have decrease, office
overhead has risen, the cost
of living increases, and
Malpractice Insurance Premiums
spiral out of control.
Clearly, the solution needs
to be multifaceted, but
requires reduction in costs,
which include streamlining and
efficient care.
Electronic Medical Records
(EMR), and Data Convergence
between Care Providers are
important to reduce costs, but
these are very difficult to
achieve. This will not
realistically be a means of
cost control for many years.
Most Physicians still do not
use an EMR. Those that do are
unable to communicate with one
another. If the federal
government is unable to
maintain communication between
its own security agencies, how
can physicians who work in a
"Village Community" hope to
connect and seamlessly share
data in a Secure fashion?
"Pay
for Performance Measures"
are often envisioned by
Insurers and government as the
strict adherence to practice
guidelines of medical care.
Guidelines will likely reduce
costs nominally and improve
care, but the most important
factor in improving care and
reducing costs, is
understanding what is
effective and what is not, and
applying the results to improving
Medical care. Only
patient derived data may be
used to effectively alter and
improve patient care.
The connection between Medical
care and
Validated Patient Outcomes
is only possible through
Physician initiatives which
work towards collaborative
data collection and analysis.
This has the potential to
rapidly feedback information
to improve care and reduce
costs, while preserving the
Patient Physician
relationship. Our
projects as outlined in this
site and
EKiosk© provide
viable inexpensive solutions
to securely collect and
analyze Validated Patient
Outcomes data using minimal
personnel or cost. In
addition, we have included
many "value added" features
which allow Patient
Demographics, Allergies,
Medications, Hospitalizations
etc, to be collected directly
from the Patient and directly
input this data into any ODBC
compliant EMR. We have built a
generic "Importer" which
allows offices to maintain
their current billing system
and constantly convert patient
demographic data into an ODBC
compliant EMR. The
ultimate result is that
Demographic data needs to be
entered only once, and may be
seen seamlessly by EMR,
Outcomes, Xray PACS or other
databases. EKiosk©
can also be used to help
educate patients using your
own content with pictures,
multimedia files, or printed
educational material utilizing
direct patient navigation.
Content can be developed for
you and by you using our
Form Designer©
which allows you to build
content with a simple WYSIWYG
(what you see is what you get)
interface. |
