Is your in-box piled high with unread clinical journals, socioeconomic publications and financial and management magazines? If so, you are not alone. Given the variety of administrative burdens and managed care paperwork required of practicing neurosurgeons, most don’t have time to keep up with breaking news from multiple sources. At the same time, staying abreast of clinical and pharmaceutical news, as well as information about the changes e-healthcare and the Internet are bringing to physicians’ practices, are paramount. Why? Because patients have easy access to this information, and many are bringing it with them into the exam room in greater and greater numbers.
Let the Web Work For You
The Internet is an unsurpassed tool for accessing all kinds of clinical and business information. “Push” and other personalization technologies enable you to receive exactly the news you want to read. An understanding of major commercial health portals and search engine results also can enhance exam room conversations with Web-page-toting patients. To maximize the use of online tools and personalized news in your practice, put three or four of the following tips to work for you:
- Visit commercial health portals. It’s no secret that Americans have jumped on the Web in droves to search for health and wellness information. Of the approximately 110 million Americans online, CyberDialogue, an Internet customer relationship management company, estimates that 72 percent have searched for health and wellness information. Surgeons should be well informed about just where these consumers – many of whom are your patients – are going for information.
Begin by visiting some of the major commercial health portals and reviewing what they say about back pain, herniated disks, brain tumors, stroke, and other conditions you frequently treat. These commercial portals advertise heavily, both on television and the Net, and are driving millions of consumers and patients to their sites every month.
Gomez Advisors is an advisory firm that analyzes Web services, and the company recently evaluated commercial health portals. Go to www.gomez.com and start your review of commercial health portals by visiting those with the best overall scores (in order): OnHealth.com, WebMD.com, drkoop.com, and HealthCentral.com.
- Familiarize yourself with other places patients go for information on neurosurgical disorders. Anticipate that a patient who is searching for information about neurosurgery may go to several search engines and type in common keywords such as: brain surgeon, spine surgeon, neurosurgeon, or brain cancer. Further, it’s likely that those who do such searches will probably visit only the first 10-20 sites listed. Some patients may even skip the search engine and simply type in those words as a Web site address. To that end, surgeons must become familiar with the search engines, sites, and keywords that fuel patient searches. Information from these sites is very likely to arrive in patients’ hands when they come to see you. If you can help them ferret out the good from the bad, you will look very Web savvy.
Studies show that, of the patients who search for health and medical information online, more than 90 percent refrain from making treatment decisions until they consult a physician. Helping patients navigate through the information they find on the Web is simply a new facet of the physician-patient relationship.
- Customize a news portal. If you don’t have time to sit down with the morning newspaper, a customized news portal can be an extremely useful online tool. Portals such as MySchwab
Customizing a news portal is easy. For example, go to www.myschwab.com, click on “Content” in the Persoonalize MySchwab box, and select the type of news you want to have “pushed” each day: top stories, international, health, pharmaceutical, Internet, entertainment, etc. Then, click “Edit” on the “MyNews” section, and customize the industry and company news you want to see. Determine the layout you want for your personalized portal, make it your log-on page, and voila – you have a completely customized daily news source. Other companies offer similar services; review several before deciding which one you want to be your main news source.
- Sign up for clinical and management e-newsletters. An e-newsletter is a communication tool that you receive in your e-mail box instead of your postal mailbox. It typically contains brief summaries of stories, along with a hypertext link on which you can click to get more information. There are e-newsletters for nearly every interest you can imagine: clinical, health management, financial news, health and wellness, women’s interests, and more. Signing up for an e-newsletter is easy – simply enter your e-mail address and any other information the e-newsletter sender requests (name, address, etc.). A few e-newsletters of interest to neurosurgeons may include:
- AANS E-mail List
https://www.neurosurgery.org/listserv: Information and communication with other neurosurgeons; lists are segmented by subspecialty.
- Medscape’s Money & Medicine
moneymedicine.medscape.com: Bi-monthly breaking health news and information about protecting assets, managing risk, practice management, managed care and technology.
- KZAlert for Neurosurgery
www.karenzupko.com: Bi-monthly practice management, e-healthcare, and specialty-specific information.
- Access clinical information about neuroscience topics. Better than leafing through stacks of journals or performing online clinical searches, accessing professional neurosurgical portals can make the job of clinical research a snap. The AANS Web site www.neurosurgery.org/aans offers easy access to journals, search tools, and clinical meetings. Other clinical sites include NeuroGate www.neurogate.com, and Medscape’s Neurology & Neurosurgery page www.medscape.com/Home/Topics/neurology/neurology.html.
- Keep abreast of fraud and abuse and other regulatory issues. Understanding regulatory issues is an important component of managing your practice, and information and guidelines change regularly. Stay informed by asking your manager to visit key Web services that maintain federal statutes, HCFA guidelines, and downloadable data that’s important for your practice to stay compliant. The following sites offer credible and practical information:
- Medicare’s Fraud and Abuse Page
www.hcfa.gov/medicare/fraud/default3.htm: Everything you want to know from the agency that oversees and initiates the policies.
- OIG’s Compliance Page for Third Party Billing
www.hhs.gov/progorg/oig/modcomp/thirdparty.htm: This information is especially useful if you outsource billing to a service or to your hospital’s MSO.
- American Medical Association
www.ama-assn.org/physlegl/legal/doc1b.htm: The AMA’s practical overview of issues as they relate to business and management, the physician-patient relationship and compliance plans.
- McDermott, Will & Emory
www.mwe.com/news/indexhlu.htm: This national law firm offers safe harbor and compliance information. Sign up for the e-newsletter and receive regular tips and news.
- Stay informed about the e-healthcare revolution. The e-healthcare landscape changes daily. If you want to stay in the loop about the companies, venture capitalists, and partnerships that are leading the change, visit the various Web services and sign up for e-newsletters that offer the most information.
( For examples, Managed Care News Web www.managedcarenewsweb.com offers the e-newsletter E-Health News Today in E-Health Business. KarenZupko & Associates, Inc. www.karenzupko.com maintains a page within this site that has breaking e-healthcare news and links to companies that help physicians manage their practice.
- Monitor what’s in the pipeline. If you are a neurosurgeon who likes to know about the leading edge of technology and business, go directly to the news source that serves up breaking industry news and press releases each day. InternetWire www.internetwire.com posts company press releases for a variety of industries, including healthcare. BusinessWire www.businesswire.com posts both Internet and non-Internet news stories. Both services allow you to search its archives using keywords.
- Sign up for clinical and management e-newsletters. An e-newsletter is a communication tool that you receive in your e-mail box instead of your postal mailbox. It typically contains brief summaries of stories, along with a hypertext link on which you can click to get more information. There are e-newsletters for nearly every interest you can imagine: clinical, health management, financial news, health and wellness, women’s interests, and more. Signing up for an e-newsletter is easy – simply enter your e-mail address and any other information the e-newsletter sender requests (name, address, etc.). A few e-newsletters of interest to neurosurgeons may include:
What Does This Mean For You?
Stop feeling guilty about all those journals in your in-box, and use the Net as your main news tool. Visit the commercial portals and search engines that your patients have likely been to. Set up a customized news portal as your log-on page and subscribe to several clinical and business management e-newsletters. If you spend 15-20 minutes per day reading your personalized news on the Internet, you’ll become more informed about the clinical, practice management and regulatory news that is critical to running your practice.