Porter Research Blog Porter Research RSS Feed http://porterresearch.com/ <![CDATA[Patient-Centered Transplant Care Platform – a Guiding Light for Accountable Care]]> http://www.porterresearch.com/Resource_Center/Blog_News/Blog/2012/January/Patient-Centered_Transplant_Care_Platform_x_a_Guiding_Light_for_Accountable_Care.html January 24, 2012
Computerized chronic disease solutions for transplant care eliminate the vast amount of paper charting necessary with transplant patients, who are tracked and monitored for life. The collaborative care of transplant patients includes multidisciplinary teams of specially trained physicians, coordinators, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, physical therapists, and psychologists who are experts in transplant care. 

Collaborative care solutions provide a patient-centered hub, connecting in-hospital and ambulatory electronic health records (EHRs) in conjunction with health information exchange (HIE) systems both locally and across the nation. The patient-centered care platform integrates inpatient care and outpatient clinic visits, supports physician order entry, physician documentation, nursing notes, etc., and connects with multiple other laboratory systems in conjunction with the solution specific to the organ transplant. The system should be designed to capture back-office documentation and workflow management, manage patients and populations, drive workflow follow-up on patients independent of scheduled clinic visits, and capture patient data. This data can then report on the multiple, strict regulatory requirements for transplant patients. 

Typical integration points include bidirectional interfaces from the hospital's EHR or regional HIE, including clinical data, medication reconciliation, problem lists, and clinical context object workgroup (CCOW) visual integration.  Population analytics and reporting are one of the crucial components of collaborative organ transplant care. This data is used daily, for example, to determine appropriate patients that are eligible to receive organ transplants based on clinical guidelines, as well as location of patients. Beyond research queries, population data informs and improves clinical outcomes. 

One example of a collaborative care platform for organ transplant is The Shands Transplant Center at the University of Florida. The Shands Transplant Center is ranked nationally for overall transplants performed. The center features multidisciplinary teams of specially trained physicians, coordinators, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, physical therapists and psychologists who are experts in transplant care. The program draws transplant patients from throughout the United States, and has been performing transplants since 1966.

Over the years, Shands has expanded its transplant program to a total of six specialties:  liver, kidney, pancreas, heart, lung, and heart-lung.  However, among the programs, there were six databases for tracking patient information - everything from height and weight to blood type and lab results. It was becoming very difficult to manage and maintain six disparate applications running on different operating systems and utilizing different software. Although the data was available, it was proving difficult to manage. 

With more than 300 transplants being performed every year, the need for a single collaborative care solution became increasingly apparent. The center's priority for a solution was data integrity, strong demographics, transplant phases, patient management and diagnostic testing. It implemented a collaborative care organ transplant platform with modules for its six. Shands now has converted 36 years worth of data in six transplant programs to a collaborative care organ transplant platform solution.

"After the data is entered by a transplant assistant, it is reviewed by a transplant coordinator, then reviewed by an information specialist, then reviewed by a senior information specialist, and ultimately reviewed by the physician," said Ian Jamieson, transplant manager at Shands. "We feel we have a strong system of checks and balances in place to satisfy the data needs of Dr. Richard Howard, medical director, Shands Transplant Center at UF, and our transplant staff."

The complexity of clinical, financial and administrative care needs of a transplant patient are staggering and therefore best served by a coordinated effort from all caregivers across the care continuum.

HKSlogoPaul Markham is the COO of HKS Medical Information Systems, a developer of software products that improve the quality of patient care and workflow management, and provide operational efficiencies for the healthcare industry.







]]> <![CDATA[Herding Cats: Controlling the Privacy Breach Epidemic in Healthcare]]> http://www.porterresearch.com/Resource_Center/Blog_News/Blog/2012/January/Herding_Catsx_Controlling_the_Privacy_Breach_Epidemic_in_Healthcare.html January 5, 2012
Historically, HIPAA has been based on "voluntary" compliance. This era is ending as HHS and OCR have stepped up their enforcement. The costs and other downsides of breaches are more onerous (see Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative President and CEO Micky Tripathi's compelling " First-Hand Experience with a Patient Data Security Breach at HISTalkPractice.com), and HIPAA security audits will soon begin. In other words, HIPAA now has teeth - a bite to back up its bark.    

It has gotten to the point that the costs of prevention are far less than the costs of a breach, especially a massive one. And healthcare executives are paying attention. More organizations now have security officers and a security budget. Allocating already-scarce financial resources and human capital to the breach problem shows a change in thinking in the industry.

Steps to Take Now   
However, like most things in healthcare, the change is fairly glacial and will take time to spread. Until privacy and security become second nature to healthcare executives and providers, a few important and practical steps should be taken.

The human error aspect of breaches is solvable only through education and then more education. The time of cursory HIPAA training, and policy and procedure manuals sitting on a shelf collecting dust is over. Continuing education, access to legal counsel, encryption and risk assessments are practical steps that every healthcare provider should be taking ... now!   

Training is a living process that requires updates and constant attention. It should involve a curriculum of courses building on each other, which provide continual reinforcement of the HIPAA principles and workflow requirements needed to minimize risk. Using or employing legal counsel and purchasing cyber liability insurance are becoming commonplace.    

Encryption is best practice and is likely to become mandated in the near future. If encrypted data is lost, it is not considered a breach and is not reportable to the government or media. But beware, breaches that are deliberate may be inside jobs resulting in breached decryption codes and accessible information. Technologies are emerging that can even help with this issue by wiping clean information on a laptop if it is seen to be at risk.   

Perhaps the most important practice a provider can undertake is regular risk assessments, as mandated by HIPAA. Not only must regular risk assessments be done, but recommendations stemming from the assessment must be followed up on. Risk assessments are best if they combine internal assessments with external assessments. External auditors bring a wider knowledge base and are likely to see things that providers may inadvertently overlook.   

Unfortunately, breaches are inevitable. There is simply too much patient information moving about to eliminate all the risk. Not only must providers have a strong commitment to prevention, but they must also establish a detailed program that determines who does what and when after the inevitable breach occurs.


HealthPort Rita Bowen, MA RHIA, CHPS, SSGB, is Senior Vice President and Privacy Officer at HealthPort, a provider of release of information services and technology, audit management technology and health information technology.







]]> <![CDATA[ACO Administration: the Devil is in the Details]]> http://www.porterresearch.com/Resource_Center/Blog_News/Blog/2011/December/ACO_Administrationx_the_Devil_is_in_the_Details.html December 12, 2011
Let's not get into ethereal change management discussions, but rather stay with the concrete details - those that are separate from the clinical uses of data. There are key administrative tasks that arise from this expanded data flow and "accountability." For example, there are several basic reconciliations, such as assigned patients against paid claims. What happens with those patients whose activities trigger assignment only in the last few months of the year, but whose contracts are for a full year? How does an organization measure revenue, risk and the quality numerators and denominators?

Everyone is presumably familiar with IBNR (Incurred But Not Reported). What about the equivalent for patient assignment, or "Future Retroactively Assigned Patient Transactions?" One could certainly have fun playing with that acronym.

In the commercial world, where everything is negotiable, what level of risk/financial participation is appropriate for catastrophic events - in-area versus out-of-area, in-network versus out-of-network, or regarding such things as subcapitation, bulk payments, national contracts ... The list goes on. And all of these flex on size and sophistication of the organization.

Regarding Medicare ACOs, most commercial carriers brag about a 98-percent accuracy of their claims payment systems. CMS, in its 2011 performance budget, indicates that the error rate for CMS Fiscal Intermediaries is as high as 12.4 percent. Establishing a second, independent adjudication process at 98-percent accuracy could save roughly 10 percent. Even if CMS is fully successful, then an ACO could count on a savings approaching 6 percent just from the second adjudication. As these files are completely electronic by the time they get to an ACO, the cost of this adjudication should be minimal - perhaps 1 percent?

Lastly and extremely importantly, current reinsurance models simply do not fit the risk and financing structures of ACOs and savings/gain-sharing programs. Depending on the size and sophistication of the effort, this ranks right up there as a top five make or break decision.

Mike Barrett is CEO of Ascendent Care, a consulting firm that specializes in recognizing how existing, emerging and proven technololy, processes and knowledge can be adapted, adopted and deployed in various healthcare markets and settings.







]]> <![CDATA[ICD-10: The Evil Twin of the Metric System?]]> http://www.porterresearch.com/Resource_Center/Blog_News/Blog/2011/December/ICD-10x_The_Evil_Twin_of_the_Metric_Systemx.html December 9, 2011
The perceived benefits of ICD-10 are in fact difficult for physicians and patients to glean in the short term. The sidebar of benefits below emphasizes that the value comes further down the road, in a long-term manner. When the 'whys and why nots' of ICD-10 implementation are analyzed, it's important to consider the bigger picture. ICD-10 goes beyond physician usage and looks to trending and reporting for the CDC.

Benefits of ICD-10 *
  1. Measuring the quality, safety and efficacy of care
  2. Designing payment systems and processing claims for reimbursement
  3. Conducting research, epidemiological studies, and clinical trials
  4. Setting health policy
  5. Operational and strategic planning and designing healthcare delivery systems
  6. Monitoring resource utilization
  7. Improving clinical, financial, and administrative performance
  8. Preventing and detecting healthcare fraud and abuse
  9. Tracking public concerns and assessing risks of adverse public health events
  10. * As reported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)

Providing the top reason for hospitalization to a state newspaper was done first by grouping discharges by MDC, which were not specific enough; the next step was DRG codes, which were also not telling of diagnoses. Finally, the data had to be grouped by ICD-9 diagnosis codes. It was surprising to see how many "unspecified" codes were being reported. It became weren't providing the data and statistics necessary to paint the entire patient picture were not being provided.

The pushback from physicians is understandable because ICD-10 undoubtedly creates more time and more documentation. However, ICD-10 will finally allow for an overall of the National Coverage Determination and Local Coverage Determination. This may result in the refinement and expansion of allowable codes to justify medical necessity. For example, many physicians still use an ICD-9 "cheat sheet," but many of the codes are non-specific and may not even warrant medical necessity. Under ICD-10, more defined codes will allow for more descript reporting of the patient's condition, and should assist in decreasing denials due to lack of medical necessity.

Beyond the documentation argument and rebuttal, there is the issue of cost to physicians. There is no denying the money that must be invested in new systems, people and processes. But then again, investment in time and money is always required to change a severely outdated system or process.

To hold off on the rollout of ICD-10 would be a potential catastrophe and a huge mistake. On the subject of investment, there are currently countless budgets across the nation devoted to ICD-10 implementation programs. To set the date back further would strip the urgency of the matter and in the long run (no pun intended), no one would take the initiative seriously.

Almost every major country except the United States has made the move to ICD-10. It's time to push forward, look ahead and focus on the future of patient care and reporting. After all, the point has already been proven with resisting the metric system, so perhaps let's enable the US to join other industrialized nations and adopt ICD-10 on time and in good fashion. Agreed?

himlogo Joseph J. Gurrieri, RHIA, CHP, is Vice President and COO
of H.I.M. On Call, which provides technology-enabled coding, audit, revenue and documentation services for hospitals.







]]> <![CDATA[The Future of Physician Workflow: How Mobile Technology Improves Physician Productivity]]> http://www.porterresearch.com/Resource_Center/Blog_News/Blog/2011/November/The_Future_of_Physician_Workflowx_How_Mobile_Technology_is_Improving_Physician_Productivity.html November 21, 2011
In healthcare today, rapid change is not merely an industry desire, but rather a mandated inevitability. Although many resist such change as an unwelcome burden for their practice or hospital, others see the advances in mobile technology as a solution to many of the disruptions in physician workflow, one that could ensure a subsequently painless transition to electronic health records (EHRs) while maintaining or even improving current productivity levels.

As physicians now provide patient care across multiple facilities and settings, they have begun to desire a higher degree of mobility and flexibility in their workflows and processes. While successes in cloud computing have steadily improved care coordination - albeit at a snail's pace - nothing since the advent of the computer has transformed the way physicians access and edit patient information, document clinical notes, and interact with their patient population like the introduction of smartphone and tablet devices.

Whereas practice management tools and EHRs are currently built for the PC environment, software built for smartphones and tablets has enabled doctors to be truly mobile, giving physicians the freedom to escape the workstation and complete many of their daily workflow tasks on the go. Although healthcare adoption of mobile technology is still in its infancy, it was recently reported that 75 percent of U.S. physicians own some form of Apple device, a trend that most experts agree will persist as the now fertile mobile app industry continues to grow and mature. Even though such devices have only been on the market for a handful of years, physicians can now dictate clinical notes with their iPhone, review MRIs from their iPad, and approve and sign documentation from anywhere in the world with an array of cloud-based software.

Furthermore, compared to many of the legacy systems that require healthcare providers to purchase and maintain a large and often expensive hardware infrastructure, deploying mobile solutions - many of which can run on the same smartphones and tablets physicians already carry - can reduce the financial burden of regular hardware upgrades, and substantial maintenance and IT support costs.

Even many of the traditional PC-Based EHR vendors are turning to mobile apps to increase physician adoption. By capitalizing on the intuitive and easy-to-use tap-and-go interfaces that are becoming a prerequisite for mobile devices, these vendors seek to streamline the core functionality of their software for physicians and other end users. As deeper integration with legacy systems occur, and concerns over data security and HIPAA compliance are alleviated, many predict the mobile device could take over the primary place in a physician's daily toolkit.

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Chase Pattison is Marketing Director at Entrada Health, which provides clinical documentation and information sharing technology.







]]> <![CDATA[Slowly But Surely, CPOE Gets Its Legs]]> http://www.porterresearch.com/Resource_Center/Blog_News/Blog/2011/November/Slowly_But_Surelyx_CPOE_Gets_Its_Legs.html November 4, 2011
Understandably, physicians are concerned that automating this process-commonly known as Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE)-will add time to what can be an already harried patient encounter. However, there are efficiencies and cost savings that can be gained downstream-such as preventing handwriting and transcription errors, decreased time for staff follow up and integration with the patient record.

CPOE was thrust into the spotlight by the Obama administration's economic recovery efforts, which promised incentives to healthcare providers who implemented healthcare IT, provided they used the technology in a meaningful way. This "Meaningful Use" clause outlined specific technical objectives that a provider organization must incorporate, including CPOE for medication ordering. Unfortunately, adoption and use of this technology has been slower than expected. Despite that, Meaningful Use is driving significant discussion about how CPOE will impact future care delivery.

To foster greater acceptance, physicians likely need to witness CPOE's additional workflow advantages first-hand, including its ability to reduce or eliminate transcription errors that have both monetary and care-quality implications. Providers may also be encouraged by the technology's many inherent business and clinical rules being developed by leading software vendors. If a physician were to write an electronic prescription, for example, an application should have the ability to warn the provider when information appears to be inaccurate, or prompt them when more data is needed to complete the order. And, in many cases, these features can be modified to fit provider preference. Many vendors are also designing CPOE technologies to be more flexible within clinical and administrative workflows. Developers understand that if a solution cannot to a certain degree be formulated to fit a hospital's existing processes, clinicians will be less likely to use it.

Especially in light of stage two Meaningful Use requirements, physicians are realizing that discrete data-information with finite, comparable values-is vital to the integrity of an electronically driven healthcare system. Providers will not be able to share these data elements across complex care teams if they are not directly entered in the electronic health record (EHR) at the point of care.

Digital healthcare is here to stay. Meaningful Use and other government incentives have helped the healthcare IT movement gain momentum. However, many believe that long-term benefits beyond incentive payments and penalties are showing their promise to providers. There are holdouts, of course, but physicians are steadily jumping onto the technology bandwagon with the understanding that, while it may alter clinical workflow to a degree, healthcare IT can facilitate and streamline the entire care process. From the moment a patient calls to schedule an appointment until payment is made on a claim, healthcare IT can enhance both clinical and revenue cycle performance. Visionaries see a future in which every facet of EHRs, including CPOE, is so tightly integrated into a physician's workflow they won't hesitate to use it to their advantage.

Think of CPOE, along with other enabling applications, as a vital link in a chain of care-giving events that will assist providers in delivering the highest quality, most coordinated care possible.

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Eric Reynolds is Vice President of Clinical Services at Emdeon, a a leading provider of revenue and payment cycle management and clinical information exchange solutions, connecting payers, providers and patients in the U.S. healthcare system.







]]> <![CDATA[Customer Retention Key to Continued Success]]> http://www.porterresearch.com/Resource_Center/Blog_News/Blog/2011/October/The_Art_of_Customer_Retention.html October 21, 2011
Some have said recently that public companies may feel more beholden to shareholders than their client base, while private companies feel no such burden. No matter how companies - public or private - define their success, all successful companies should realize that nearly just as much attention should be paid to fostering the relationship with their current customers as that placed on seeking new ones.

"We believe that if our customers are successful, then we're going to be successful," says Eric Grunden, Vice President of Client Services at Greenway Medical Technologies, an EHR vendor based in Carrollton, Georgia.

Greenway has for a number of years stuck with the tagline "What's Your Experience?," a reflection of the company's number-one core value - service. Greenway conducts up to 80 'What's Your Experience?' customer site visits each year to ensure that the entire process - from sales to post-implementation - has gone smoothly and all questions and concerns have been attended to. "Our executive team is required to do at least four apiece throughout the year - on site, face to face," Grunden adds.

The company's annual PrimeLeader customer conference is a greater extension of these visits, offering users from across the country the opportunity to come together and give their candid feedback.

"As with any national conference, we roll out new services and software, and have a lot of events to where our customers can be a part of focus panels and advisory committees around not just the product, but with regard our presence in Washington as well," he says. "We really want to hear what our customers are concerned about, and whether or not we're on the right track. Are we representing them the right way? Because they don't have a presence in Washington, so we need to. More than that is finding out what are the services that we need to offer today that we didn't five years ago."

The balancing act at Greenway of devoting time and resources to attracting new customers and maintaining current ones is delicate. "At the end of the day, if we take care of our current customers, the new customers automatically come," Grunden says. "I think if you look at how we're regarded within this industry, what our customers are saying and the fact that our best reference is our existing customer base - that's our best marketing. That goes farther than anything a magazine ad can do or any booth at MGMA.

"We know our number-one referral source is our customers. It's something we pride ourselves on. I think it's a culture here. I guess it's a Southern thing - you dance with the one that brung ya."







]]> <![CDATA[Seven Goals for Business Intelligence Implementation in Healthcare]]> http://www.porterresearch.com/Resource_Center/Blog_News/Blog/2011/October/Seven_Goals_for_Business_Intelligence_Implementation_in_Healthcare.html October 10, 2011
Porter Research profiled this industry trend in the recent article " Business Intelligence: Key to a Hospital's Sustained Success," which looked at how providers like Alegent Health  - a faith-based health ministry that operates 11 facilities in Nebraska and southwestern Iowa - are using business intelligence to gain a "critical understanding of their performance in both cost and quality at both the individual encounter and episodes of care levels."

Providers are paying attention, that's certain. Kirk Mahlen, a healthcare IT executive from the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area, commented on the ideas above in a recent LinkedIn discussion based on the aforementioned article. "BI potentially unlocks the true value associated with significant investments in clinical and financial systems across the continuum," he wrote. He suggested that providers use available information to:

1. Improve clinical, financial and operational performance
2. Target investments in business and clinical intelligence solutions
3. Improve data availability and completeness
4. Transform data into useable information
5. Gain actionable insights by grouping populations and entities
6. Improve access to and utilization of existing tools and technologies
7. Apply insights through feedback loops to business and clinical processes.

Mahlen ends his comment with a thought-provoking question: Where do organizations start on this journey - particularly those that have not already developed these capabilities, including a strategy supporting a build versus buy decision? Perhaps another question to add would be: How should providers determine whether they strive for an enterprise (single solution) business intelligence strategy or one that incorporates multiple programs and is decentralized?

Providers are facing some especially tough decisions with regard to adopting enterprise-wide business intelligence solutions, a big focus for many as the availability of clinical data has become more prevalent with the push to adopt electronic medical records. Many currently have different business intelligence tools for different departments such as clinical and financial, so the question becomes not only, 'do we build or buy,' but once it's implemented, 'how is this new tool managed? Who defines the standards around the data, and who then owns the data?' Internal technological and organizational changes will have to be made to accommodate these types of tools.

Porter Research will expand upon this topic at next month's Healthcare IT Summit in Palm Springs, Calif., when the team presents sessions on "Breaking Down the Buzz of Business Intelligence" and "Moving Forward with Coordinated Care" to provider attendees.

How is the provider community currently handling these challenges? Weigh in with your observations via the discussion going on right now at HITR.com - the healthcare IT benchmarking and social networking site for healthcare providers and vendors.







]]> <![CDATA[HIE Pathways to Success]]> http://www.porterresearch.com/Resource_Center/Blog_News/Blog/2011/September/HIE_Pathways_to_Success.html September 21, 2011
Lead or Be Led
A recent report, " Health Information Exchanges: Rapid Growth in an Evolving Market," looks at the state of the HIE market, and highlights the challenges public HIEs face. These include how to engage competing healthcare organizations, ease physician adoption, ensure data integrity, cost-effectively handle interoperability and develop a sustainable model.

The most successful public HIEs are figuring out how to overcome these barriers and deliver value to participating providers through flexible connectivity services. For their part, provider organizations can do much to ensure the success of public HIE endeavors. In fact, healthcare enterprises that have already plotted their own HIE course can proactively contribute to the direction of a public HIE rather than following a prescribed direction - thus addressing their unique business needs while simultaneously helping the public HIE serve the needs of the extended community.

In a time of incredible and rapid change, a provider's ability to forge his or her own destiny at their own pace is increasingly important. Perhaps that is why the number of live, private HIEs has catapulted to 161 from just 52 last year, according to figures cited in the report mentioned above. These private HIEs - led by hospital enterprises - succeed by addressing issues of sustainability, adoption and clinical integration specific to the needs of their organization.

Business Drivers for Private HIE
Utah-based Intermountain Healthcare, a nonprofit integrated healthcare delivery system, acted swiftly when a national reference laboratory competitor began to offer electronic delivery of lab results to physician practices, creating vocal dissatisfaction among some practices. Intermountain set out to address this and the interoperability challenges associated with diverse provider environments. The plug-and-play, data-driven, private HIE solution it came up with leveraged existing technologies and enabled Intermountain to bring on practices and add new functionality as needed, to meet the diverse needs of its community. The HIE has improved care coordination, increased physician satisfaction and strengthened its competitive position.

Private HIEs have also proven successful for competing healthcare systems. Michigan Health Connect (MHC), a multi-region private HIE, was formed through the collaboration of three competing health systems that had independently and unknowingly selected the same technology to automate distribution of clinical data and lab results to affiliated physicians. With shared business drivers, the HIE continues to grow and attract more health systems. Today, MHC is comprised of eight independent health systems.

MHC has also successfully engaged physicians in its HIE, targeting a prime physician pain point - the workflow bottleneck associated with coordinating referrals. Delivering operational value to practices paid off for MHC, spurring rapid, word-of-mouth adoption of its electronic referrals solution that continues to expand at an unprecedented pace.

Providers interested in the care collaboration and other workflow efficiencies gained through health information exchange have a number of paths to choose from. Those with the long-term vision, clearly defined goals and commitment to collaborating with their communities will control their own destiny and their ability to achieve successful outcomes.

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Brent Dover is President of Medicity, a developer of health information exchange solutions for physician practices, hospitals and health systems, and health information organizations.







]]> <![CDATA[Emotionally Connecting to Healthcare IT]]> http://www.porterresearch.com/Resource_Center/Blog_News/Blog/2011/September/Emotionally_Connecting_to_Healthcare_IT.html September 8, 2011
No matter the age of the company, the establishment of its most successful brands, or the extensive experience of its management, the most successful clients are those that take Porter Research's market findings and use them to establish a true connection between their products or brands and the people or healthcare organizations that buy them. Sure, a healthcare IT vendor can label its product one version greater than its competitor's, but leapfrogging will only take a brand so far. That doesn't convey to the hospital CIO just how beneficial a new healthcare IT implementation or upgrade will be to that facility's patients.

Every buyer, at some level, makes this sort of "emotional buy." They may use logic to evaluate, but emotion is what prompts the final sale. Daniel Klein, Vice President, Practice Leader - Technology Marketing Professional at Forrester Research, summed up nicely the necessity for the establishment of an emotional connection between product value and customer benefit in his blog earlier this year. He boiled it down to three bullet points:
   
* It's about the experience.
It's no longer about what the new IT system does, but about the experience it creates for the user and, ultimately, the positive outcome it helps to create for the patient.   

* Moving from a rational brand to an emotional brand.
Klein points out that "...the emotional side of performance has to do with not disrupting a user's work with an unexpected application crash, freeze, etc. Thus, technology marketers should instead think about the emotional connection to performance - such as no more annoying hourglasses when completing your expense report."

This school of thought seems especially applicable to healthcare IT right now, as there are still many providers out there who don't want the hassle of implementing and learning a new system just for the sake of Meaningful Use incentive dollars. They are afraid of workflow interruptions, which may potentially affect their ability to care for patients.   

* The "consumerization" of IT.
Electronic medical records, e-prescribing systems, business intelligence tools and the like are not used just by the individual that writes the check to purchase them. Healthcare IT marketers must keep in mind the need to connect with the numerous end users that will also interact with the product or brand on a daily basis. As Klein relates, "Technology marketers must find and engage these non-IT influencers if they are going to be relevant in this new world."

As Porter Research tells its clients, competitive and market analysis, and customer experience research can only take a brand so far. Vendors must also take the "emotional buy" into consideration, and tap into that part of the buying process by creating a "picture" of the results of the purchase decision. That image can range from increased patient quality outcomes to visualizing work done faster and with more accuracy. The buyer must also see a personal win, such as a positive career step or enhanced professional reputation.

How have you seen healthcare IT vendors use these techniques to create an added level of benefit for their customers? Join the discussion and share examples at the Healthcare Intelligence Hub group on LinkedIn.







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