About Social Media Today
April 19, 2014
Hospital Marketing Opportunity Revealed: Get a YouTube Channel, Get Ahead.
A video from Mayo Clinic's Youtube channel
Surprisingly few US hospitals have a YouTube Channel in their marketing lineup. Still fewer have the right content. Jumping on this opportunity is an open field competitive advantage. According to a recent report, “To attract traffic, hospitals could consider providing more videos that pertain to users’ interests.”[read more]
April 19, 2014
Best Practices for Proxy Data Access
proxy data access for patients / shutterstock
TOWER has helped clients understand patient needs and expectations around granting proxy access to family and friends who assume critical rolls in helping the patient manage care process, such as, paying bills, managing appointment details or monitoring prescription changes or test results.[read more]
April 19, 2014
Better Medical Marketing with the New (and Free) Medicare Data Set of 880,000 Providers
Medicare data set (photo: longislandwins)
The U.S. medical market has been in turmoil since the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a comprehensive data set including all of the $77 billion in Medicare payments paid to over 880,000 physicians in 2012. It identifies by name every physician or provider reimbursed by Medicare.[read more]
Recent Infographics
ICD-10 Delay: What It Means to You
ICD-10 delayed (image: Stuart Miles)
The 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems introduces a significant change to the coding system. That has some practitioners scrambling to accommodate the over 67,000 coding options in ICD-10.[read more]
HIPAA Privacy and Security Compliance: Should You Care?
security / shutterstock
The HIPAA/HITECH Omnibus Rule became effective just over one year ago. The compliance date was just over six months ago. Within about another six months (plus or minus), Federal regulators – at the Office for Civil Rights at the US Department of Health and Human Services – will begin a new round of HIPAA compliance audits.[read more]
Prescription Drugs in the United States [INFOGRAPHIC]
Prescription drugs (Source: Clarityway)
Here's a great infographic about prescription drugs in the United States. The information contained within it leads us to this conclusion: medication adherence must be optimized. This is possible with a medication adherence support system or a prescription drug monitoring program.[read more]
Increase SEO Backlinks with Current Events
current events
Building external links back to your website or blog is a great way to help with your organic search engine optimization (SEO) or increase rankings in search engines. One way to do this is with blogging about current events and posting that content on external websites including your social media channels.[read more]
Use "FAQs" to Produce Marketing Content for Your Medical Practice
FAQs for marketing / shutterstock
Frequently asked questions should be viewed as information that is in high demand. If patients are repeatedly asking the same questions, chances are good that this is information that will add value to your website and can even be used further as a marketing tool.[read more]
Healthcare: Get Ready to Shake, Rattle and Roll
healthcare innovation
Many other industries have already been transformed by the explosive intersection of consumerism and technology. So, like it or not, these changes are overdue in healthcare and they are coming at us faster than most of my medical colleagues who work in the industry can see.[read more]
How Suffering May Change You for the Better
Pat Killingsworth
One of my mentors in the cancer world is a man named Pat Killingsworth. He has multiple myeloma. He has devoted his life to helping others with the disease and writes a daily blog. Recently, I interviewed Pat and he talked about the future as he described living on “myeloma time.”[read more]
Healthcare Buzzwords: What Is Big Data?
healthcare big data
The term “Big Data” has only recently entered the healthcare and medicine verbiage. It used to be largely reserved for the larger-than-life scientific research that observed our universe. It’s no surprise that the concept of Big Data has translated nicely to the universe inside of us.[read more]
Lack of Listening Is the Core Problem in American Health Care
social listening
When doctors do not have enough time to really listen the result is that they do not listen. A study from 1984 of primary care physicians observed throughout patient visits revealed that the doctor interrupted the patient within 18 seconds on average. This lack of listening is the core care problem in American healthcare today.[read more]
Improving Clinical Outcomes by Addressing Social and Basic Needs
address social and basic needs
Our healthcare system is not designed to address social and basic needs. But reducing the cost of healthcare and improving clinical outcomes may be more about addressing the social and basic needs of super-utilizers (50% of all spending) than it is about clinical care.[read more]
How Much Is Your Website Hurting Your Business?
Is your medical website effective?
If your website hasn’t been updated in the past year, it’s almost certainly driving potential customers away – and those customers…they’re going straight to your competitors. So what exactly is your website doing wrong? Use the infographic below to find out.[read more]
The Aesthetics and Reconstructive Surgery Products Global Market
Aeshetics & reconstructive surgery products
Global medical aesthetic products are to achieve sales of more than $6.5 billion in 2013. Through 2018 the market is expected to reach a value of about $10.7 billion. Europe has been witnessing relatively a slower growth of 6.6% per year. The U.S. market still represents 45% of the global market.[read more]
Health IT Venture Capital Report: Consumer-Focused Tech Is Capturing More Early-Stage Deals
Healthcare IT VC Funding
Analysts are already saying that it will be a good year for healthcare IT companies looking for venture capital. Communications and consulting firm Mercom Capital is showing results from its first-quarter investment analysis that finds that healthcare IT companies raised more VC money last quarter than in any quarter before.[read more]
Zohydro Ban: Disagreeing with Governor Patrick
I agree with Governor Deval Patrick that opiate addiction is a huge problem in Massachusetts (and many other places). But the attempt to ban sales of Zohydro is a bad idea that’s likely to have a negligible impact on the addiction crisis, while potentially harming one of Massachusetts’ most important industries.[read more]
Bundled Payments: Rewarding Quality and Value
Transformation to bundled payments
The Medicare reimbursement system is in the process of transforming healthcare as we know it from a traditional fee-for-service model to a system that rewards based on quality, care coordination, accountability, and healthcare cost savings. Here's an outline of benefits and risks.[read more]
HealthWorks Collective Series
David Davidovic David built and led commercial functions in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries for 33 years and has been di More »
Barbara Ficarra Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA is an award-winning journalist, media broadcaster, health educator, speaker and consultant More »
David Harlow David Harlow is Prinicipal of the Harlow Group LLC, a healthcare law and consulting firm based in Boston, MA. More »
Stephen Schimpff Stephen C. Schimpff, MD is the retired CEO of the Univ. of MD Med. Center and the COO of the Univ of MD Medical System. More »
Andrew Schorr Andrew, a leukemia survivor and respected medical journalist is the founder of PatientPower, an excellent web resource. More »
John Sharp John Sharp has interests in social media in healthcare and clinical research informatics including secondary use of EMR More »
Christina Thielst Christina Thielst is a hospital administrator, consultant, educator and author with 30 years of healthcare experience. More »
“ Excellent article! I am Canadian and, unfortunately, we have exactly the same problem with our public healthcare system. Our medical practitioners are paid by government (that's why we pay ridiculously high taxes) and they have little motivation to spend more than allocated minimal time with their patients. Patients' feedback doesn't really matter as with shortage of doctors ...”
“Great post and reminder Stephanie. The exuberance we are seeing about technology in healthcare is deserved in some aspects but loses credibility when people put all of the emphasis on the technology and forget that, at the end of the day, healthcare is about people.”