I had a very illuminating conversation with my son Abraham the other day. It happens a lot. It’s one of the reasons we went into business together – we illuminate each other!
Abe said “Googling is such an underrated skill.”
I thought about how easy Googling* is. Google Search boxes are in most browsers and mobile device home screens, plus products like Apple’s Siri enable fast and successful voice searches. The act of Googling itself is easier than ever. But how good are you are taking advantage of this access? If you need to know something quickly, do you know how to find it the fastest? What about something more arcane – a very specific document or file for a nice task? How about the number of milliliters in a cup, or the definition of “tomography”? How well can you “get the goods” from Google?
As managers, providers and employees, we always have to be looking ahead at how the technology on our horizon will affect how our organizations administer health care. In the spirit of looking forward to the future, we present “2.0 Tuesday”, a feature on Manage My Practice about how technology is impacting our practices, and our patient and population outcomes.
We hope you enjoy looking ahead with us, and share your ideas, reactions and comments below!
HealthCamp RDU and Health Innovation Week DC Bring Stakeholders Together for Conversations on the Future of Healthcare
Over the next two weeks two separate events will give stakeholders from all ends of the healthcare spectrum a chance to be a part of an open-ended conversation about the future of care. HealthCamp RDU on Wednesday May 23rd in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Health Innovation Week, beginning June 2nd in Washington D.C. will be fantastic gatherings for providers, patients, advocates, managers, and vendors to come together, engage in conversation, and share their own experiences and visions for the future. With the large-scale changes taking place in healthcare today, more than ever it is critical to share your point of view, and events that bring together such a wide range of attendees offer fantastic opportunities to do just that. Check out their sites for more information on these great events!
The death of Google’s Personal Health Record (PHR) should be a wake up call to everyone about electronic medical records (EMR) – it’s not a walk in the park!
Granted, the fact that EMR is very complex software is not the only reason Google Health couldn’t hack it. Many fine articles and blogs point to under-marketing, an unrealistic reliance on consumers to enter data to complete their own records, unusually slow adoption by consumers, and a possibly unrealistic revenue model (selling data.) I’m pretty sure the readers of Manage My Practice could have predicted most of that, especially the part where consumers are not incentivized to enter their own health information.
Here’s my advice to anyone who wants to capture the health data market:
Any personal health record must be connected to my primary care provider. I don’t want my PHR to be freestanding from my PCP’s (primary care physician/provider) EMR. Really wasteful.
I want someone I know and trust – maybe someone associated with my PCP – to show me how to use and understand the information in my PHR.
I want all my other physicians and test centers to automatically send my records to my PHR and for it to load without my participation.
I have been getting lots of questions lately about finding jobs in healthcare management. The healthcare field is very mobile right now and many managers inside the field and in other fields are looking for advice on the best way to make a move.
In addition to making sure they have the right skills and experience, job seekers also need to be sure that their digital reputations are sterling, and if not, need to make the move to correct them. In fact, every single person reading this post should check on their digital footprint and see what the web has to say. You never know when an employment change will suddenly be in your future.
What if you don’t show up on the web radar at all because you’re not on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google finds no matches for your name? That says you’re not in the know, not networking, not sharing and definitely not computer-savvy. Here’s an excellent SlideShare presentation by Susan P. Joyce of job-hunt.org that gives job seekers (and truly, each one of us in healthcare is a job seeker, whether we admit it to ourselves or not) a gold mine of information about creating or correcting your online presence.
BNET just posted a great video on Google Search tips. I use Google Search a lot, but had no idea how much faster I could search by using some of these ways to customize a search. You can watch the 7 minute video here, or I’ve collected some of tips below.
To match exact words, put the phrase inside of double quotes. You can also put dashes between each word in a phrase and it will search for the exact words. (Examples: “”physician compensation models”” or physician-compensation-models)
To search for a topic or phrase, but exclude something, use a minus sign before the exclusion. (Example: physician practice -hospital)
To tell the search engine not to correct your spelling, put a plus sign in front of your search. (Example: +HIPPA)
Type information straight into the browser, for instance: flight numbers, package tracking numbers, vehicle identification numbers (VINs), area codes, UPC codes, and patent numbers!
To get a definition enter “define: and the word”. (Example: define:physiatry)
Fill in the blank. Enter a sentence and use the * symbol for the information wanted. (Example: There are * family practice physicians in the United States.)
Use the search box as a calculator. (Try it!)
Use the search box to make a currency conversion.
Type in a movie and your zip code to see where the movie is playing and what times it is playing.
And for those readers who want to take Google to the next step, here’s the way to customize your Google: How to search Google Wiki
I had a very illuminating conversation with my son Abraham the other day. It happens a lot. It’s one of the reasons we went into business together – we illuminate each other!
