Today's blog post comes from WebPT copywriters Charlotte Bohnett and Erica Cohen. 

Thanks to all the rehab therapists that attended Evolve 2012: Long Beach yesterday. We had an absolute blast, and we hope you did, too. If you weren’t able to make it to California, don’t worry, we’ll be throwing another bash in New York this fall. Stay tuned for more details!

We could use this opportunity to write a fluffy event recap, but instead, we thought we’d share a summary from an actual attendee. A summary that is empowering, intelligent, and badass to boot. Check out what Mike Taylor, PT, MBA, OCS, from Ortho-Sport PT posted on our Facebook wall.

Word. We can’t thank Mike enough for this well-written rally cry. This is the exact reason why we put Evolve together in the first place. Even more so, this is why we created WebPT. We believe in empowering the rehab community to achieve greatness in therapy practice. So tell us: what did Evolve mean to you? And if you couldn’t make it, what are you doing to evolve your clinic? How are you—as Mike so eloquently said—hopping aboard the PT Millennium Falcon?

As an amazing health care provider, of course you want the best relationship with every one of your patients. But as a solid business owner, you also want to maximize your profits and reduce your overhead. Often these goals conflict. The good news is they don’t have to. Have your cake and eat it, too. Or in this case, cultivate an excellent provider-patient relationship and streamline your practice’s processes—with the help of a patient portal.

What is a patient portal, you ask? According to Wikipedia, “patient portals are healthcare-related online applications that allow patients to interact and communicate with their healthcare providers.”

According to the 2010 HealthData Management article entitled “Will Patient Portals Open the Door to Better Care?,” providers report significant financial savings in addition to improved patient-provider relationships. Providers savings include:

• $0.63 every time they don't have to mail a lab result (HealthPartners)
• $17 every time they can handle a billing query online rather than by phone (Northshore University Health System)
• $7 for every appointment scheduled online (Northshore University Health System)

Here, we’ll discuss a few examples of interactive technology with patient portal features. As a note, these examples are for educational purposes only; they are not WebPT reviews or endorsements as we have not tested these products.  

Politics and party lines aside, it’s tough to debate the need for improvement in the current state of US healthcare. After all, the World Health Report 2000, Health Systems: Improving Performance, did rank the US health care system as 37th. In the world. Trending downward. 

According to “Ranking 37th — Measuring the Performance of the U.S. Health Care System,” published in The New England Journal of Medicine, “the conceptual framework underlying the rankings proposed that health systems should be assessed by comparing the extent to which investments in public health and medical care were contributing to critical social objectives: improving health, reducing health disparities, protecting households from impoverishment due to medical expenses, and providing responsive services that respect the dignity of patients.” 

In an effort to keep everything copasetic, I’ll avoid a deep discussion here about the recent Supreme Court decision on the Obama Administration’s Affordable Care Act. Instead, I’ll state something we can all agree on—the importance of creating electronic versions of all patient information and medical records, i.e., an electronic medical record (EMR). In fact, this was one of the few issues that both Republicans and Democrats agreed upon. In this case, health data = gold.

Today’s post comes from WebPT copywriters Charlotte Bohnett and Erica Cohen.

As you probably already figured out, we have two passions in life―well, maybe more, but for the purposes of this discussion let’s stick with top two―physical therapy and technology. That’s why we like to keep a close eye on everything that happens in the space where our two passions collide. We’re talkin’ #solvePT.

So, when we came across an article written by Amy-Lynn Engelbrecht about motion RC 23-12, Standards of Conduct in the use of Social Media, which regulates physical therapists’ online and social media use, we had to share.

In the article, Engelbrecht wonders what the point is of RC 23-12: “It’s a very simplistic and reactionary motion spurred by the perception of a shrinking portion of society that social media is only used to share celebrity gossip, pictures of cats, and inappropriate conversations. RC 23-12 unnecessarily repeats the points made in the Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct where a simple change of wording would have sufficed to cover interaction held online. As one PT put it during an online discussion, ‘Being a professional is being a professional.’ Specifying the venue shouldn’t be necessary.”

Engelbrecht isn’t alone in her frustrations. She links to a blog post by Kendra Gagnon, who attended an APTA’s House of Delegates session in June to learn more about RC 23-12. In that post, Gagnon outlines her takeaways:

1. RC 23-12 was totally unnecessary and―as written―doesn’t really DO anything
2. The APTA, as an organization, is pretty progressive when it comes to social media
3. APTA members (or at least those who are delegates) are very traditional, which results in a lot of hesitation, skepticism, and even fear of/about social media
4. Some issues just can’t be discussed in 140 characters or less (i.e., choose the right platform for debate)

Kendra Gagnon's view from the floor of the APTA House of Delegates