MResult Healthcare Insights

This week the New York Times carried an article with an in-depth, and at times critical look at long term acute care hospitals. In some ways the article paints unfair comparisons between LTCs and “normal” acute care – for example LTCs have higher complication rates than acute care, but after all they do see sicker patients!

Overall though the article does provide an excellent view into the necessary business drivers behind LTACs as well as some of the unique issues they address.

Long-Term Care Hospitals Face Little Scrutiny by way of NYtimes.com

From Business Week, Steve McKee writes that Social Media Marketing is nothing new, just a digital form of “word of mouth marketing”. I particularly appreciate his likening Twitter to “a giant online cocktail party”, with the attendant rules of engagement.

Social Media Is Nothing New – by way of BusinessWeek.com.

Having a domain name that lines up with your online campaigns can be a major factor in increasing your campaign’s success, according to this article from the MediaPost. Many users use URLs almost like search engines – so called “direct navigation”, where people open a browser, type in a name and expect to find the correct Web site and content, remains the No. 1 Web navigation technique.

We’ve talked about the importance of key word research to aid in pay per click and search engine optimization. Add domain-name selection to the list. At the end of the day you need to know what words your customers use when they are looking for your services.

How Much Are Domain Names For Campaigns Worth?

Here’s an interesting interview with Steve Garske – vice president and CIO Children’s Hospital Los Angeles – on Social Media. His hospital has seen a positive return on investment with the social media work they’ve done, particularly in fund raising and recruiting.

Establishing a social media presence enabled one CIO to expand his organization’s reach and realize a healthy ROI, from healthcare-informatics.com.

As part of our involvement with HIMSS I’ve been participating in that organization’s review and comment on the proposed HIT certification criteria. In last week’s panel review the topic of “Site” vs. “Product” certification came up.  A “Site” certification would certify that a provider or hospital site is able to demonstrate all of the  required criteria – not necessarily through a single product but potentially through a set of individual modules or standalone applications. This would give them the flexibility to assemble systems based on individual “best of breed” components, or leverage technology investments they’ve already made, rather than invest in a single vendor’s product.

I was surprised by how much push back there was to this on the call. And the push back did not come from the vendors, who you would think would be vested in pushing their “all in one” solutions. The push back came from the physicians who complained that a lack of interoperability between components would make any kind of “hybrid” solution like that completely unworkable. One doctor called it a “consultant’s dream”.

He’s right about the difficulties, though I do think that requiring a single product solution is the wrong way to go. We recommend our clients engage in a discovery phase before spending any money on a HIT solution. Before beginning you need to have your arms around your specific business and clinical goals as well as the ongoing “hidden” costs of training and support. For institutions considering a “best of breed” approach, mapping requirements against systems and identifying all of the potential data exchanges can help guard against unpleasant surprises.

- Chris Shafer