Physician Portal

Provider organizations have the opportunity and responsibility to act today to improve care, according to James G. Lee, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Adventist Healthcare, Rockville, Md. In 2009, the health system started a primary care medical home pilot system for its employees.

The Department of Veterns of Affairs (VA) has awarded a contract to the Chadds Ford, Penn.-based Decision Simulation, a vendor that creates patient simulation solutions, to license the technology across an enterprise level. Already having used the Decision Simulation’s DecisionSim software for 43,000 VHA employees, the new license extends the technology to more than 300,000 employees from all VA agencies, including the VHA and the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA).

When it comes to patient engagement, one developer has realized many of the current platforms lack an essential element: physician involvement. Steven D. Freedman, M.D. and and Camilla Martin, M.D., from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who are working on their own patient engagement platform, says input from the actual physicians can be a critical missing element in the care-coordination process.

As physicians’ role changes in the evolving healthcare landscape, their added complex administrative roles has been increasingly reflective in their compensation according to a recent study from the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA). The study, “Medical Directorship and On-Call Compensation Survey: 2012 Report Based on 2011 Data,” provides benchmark information that is reflective of the primary compensation drivers for directorship activities.

One of the biggest signs of how important social media is to the nation’s social (and business) fabric can be found in today’s headlines: Facebook Inc.’s filing of an initial public offering that could raise as much as $10 billon when it begins selling shares this spring, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Journal article says the IPO could raise the value of the social network between $75 billion and $100 billion. Also noteworthy is the social network’s membership, with 845 million users globally, up 39 percent from the year before. “In just eight years, Facebook has the world’s social bazaar, where friends gossip, play games and swap 250 million photos per day,” the Journal article says. It might also have added that that Facebook, and social networks in general, is changing the way many patients are becoming engaged with their own healthcare.