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“Apple Could Lead In Healthcare. Here’s Why It Won’t.”

In his Forbes article, Dan is very clear – Apple will NOT lead in Healthcare.

The choice of words is important. He uses ‘healthcare’, not ‘health’ as in hundreds of health, fitness, and wellness apps such as Fitbit. Real healthcare is in the realm of health monitoring such as blood glucose.

Once we understand this distinction, the implication becomes apparent. Healthcare is highly regulated. Just ask traditional healthcare players how difficult is the environment when it comes to providing products and/or services.

I think Apple is getting heady by trying to control and ‘own’ an entire ecosystem rather than being a part of it and facilitating the system.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine. He is (was) a solo practitioner in New York. He is a Pulmonologist / Internist. 5 years ago he started his own practice, getting away from a group practice. I have to mention, that he’s my family doctor too. He was skeptical but entrepreneurial.

Suddenly he decided to go and work for a hospital. What happened?

He was very successful in his practice. Successful in the sense that patients loved him, he had no problem attracting patients and he was busy. So what was the problem?

He was plagued by problems with rising co-pays, co-insurance, and deductibles, he was not collecting enough money. His insurance payments were fine though. With rising patient responsibility, he saw declining revenues. Just at that point, a local hospital he was affiliated with called him and made an offer.
Should he accept this offer or continue to enjoy his freedom with a good practice where not only his revenues were declining but more importantly, his wife was going nuts trying to get patients to pay their outstanding balances?

He found out that the hospital had come to him bypassing other providers in his neighborhood because they knew he was a good doctor who had a great asset – happy patients who referred others to him.

He did his homework of course. He was part of the ‘second wave of recruits’ to the hospital. A few years ago, the hospital approached and hired some good doctors away from their practice. 80% of them were still working there. So, he felt the odds were good. Hospital administration (which he knew) can’t be that bad as goes popular wisdom. So his chances of success would be at least 80%.

Here’s the most important thing – the hospital made a very good competitive offer that was close to what he was netting at his practice.
So, he took the offer. I’m sure his wife had a role to play – she wanted peace and more time to themselves.

Is this the trend? Are we losing independent practitioners? Are we losing our family doctors to the ‘Walmarts’ of medicine?

When someone – a potential referring physician – asks “What is your address?” your immediate response is perhaps a street address, name of town, or general area. Rarely do you blurt out a .com address. You are not alone. You may think digital address does not matter. But you must make that mind shift, paradigm shift now.

Make the Shift – Be a Leader

This way of thinking will work in your favor. Your practice may be in a prime desirable location in your city or town. Of course, you are not an ‘online business’ and patients have to physically come to your practice, and yet, so many more existing and prospective patients will visit you online every day. If you are not present online, the same patients will visit the next specialist that is just ‘one click away’.

It is this new-age thinking that matters; it is the virtual web address that counts. This is where your efforts to ‘market’ your practice must begin – with your website.

How do you create a website that is primed to inform, and educate both patients and referring providers?

You have to begin by spending some time defining, refining, and differentiating your ‘Brand’ as a Specialist. Your Brand building begins by translating your strength as a caring Physician who is ahead of the curve in treating patients.

• Define your Practice in 160 characters or less, leaving medical terminology behind, and speak in layman’s terms.
• Identify your practice’s three greatest strengths.
• List the keywords that patients are most likely going to use when searching for the types of services you provide, focusing on the symptoms and ailments they encounter.
• Describe how you will portray various symptoms and diagnoses in words, images, and videos.
• Get your patients to describe their experiences on your website.
• Identify why your patients love you.

What is your Special Sauce?

What makes your practice unique? What makes you unique? Why do patients prefer you versus another Specialist in town? You and your team of clinicians must hash out what makes your practice special. Involve your entire team including the front desk that speaks and connects with patients at a personal level every day. Factors can include:

• Providers’ deep experience and special education
• Awards and accolades
• Staff that builds close, interpersonal relationships with patients
• References and testimonials from patients as well as referring physicians.
• Affiliations with Universities, Hospitals, research institutions
• Media coverage

Videos

Practice Videos and provider videos that show a ‘personal’ and human face to your Clinic are vital in building long-lasting trust and relationships.

You should also put together a plan to get as many patient testimonials as possible – get them on a video if possible.

Finally – don’t ignore Social Media

Social media is sometimes considered a taboo in the healthcare industry. There are reasons for that, and we won’t go into the pros and cons in this blog (I’ll cover that in a future blog), but suffice it to say, executed properly, it becomes a powerful connector with your patients – existing and future.

Patient outstanding balances are on the rise. Patient A/R is at its highest ever. I am not talking about self-pay patients. Sometimes self-pay patients can be good at paying.
One of the main reasons why patients owe you money is because of healthcare plans in force.

There are two main reasons why this situation arises. Both have to do with insurance plans that may be provided by employers.

1. Increasing deductibles and
2. Increasing ‘per-visit’ co-pay amounts

You would think practices have a collection plan in place, but you will be surprised. I have seen established practices that just ‘wing’ it and leave it to the whims of staff and providers to tackle patient balance receivables.

In a recent conversation with a provider whose patient A/R over 90 days was 46% of all outstanding, he was afraid of pursuing ‘collections’ for the fear of losing patients.

It does not have to be an all-or-nothing approach. You need a well-thought-out and effective collections plan and process in place that involves your entire staff.

Here are 5 effective steps you can consider.

1. At the time of scheduling appointments for patients on the phone, make it a practice to check that patient’s outstanding balance. Of course, this task becomes easy if your integrated EHR/Billing systems allow you to quickly look it up. If patients owe money, they should be politely reminded to pay at that time with a credit card or bring payment at the time of the visit.
2. When patients check in, check for outstanding balances again and try to collect past balances along with the co-pay for that visit.
3. If available, take advantage of an automated system of sending patient statements. Good systems allow you to set up ‘rules’ for sending statements. For example, send statements to patients with a balance of $25 or more. Send statements on a monthly basis automatically and monitor how many statements have been sent.
4. If you have a very large over 90-day A/R, set up a plan including making phone calls to collect the money. This can be a short-term focused campaign to bring down the aging.
5. Send patients to external collections. This is one of the toughest decisions for a provider. One reason why it is difficult is because there is no plan and system in place. A well-thought-out plan removes subjectivity.

A good internal process coupled with an integrated EHR / Practice Management system can make it seamless to pursue patient collections and reduce A/R.