In less than a week, a few of us will be in San Francisco for the Health 2.0 conference as well as attending the HealthCamp SF Bay. We are excited to be part of such an innovative group of folks trying to make changes in the healthcare world. You may be asking… what is this HealthCamp thing?

What is HealthCamp

HealthCamp is about putting social media, open source and the best of the Internet, Mobile Web and process innovation to work for better health care and health technology. HealthCamp is a user-organized “un–conference” movement that brings consumers, health providers, health industry experts and technology professionals together for a one day event to exchange ideas informally, locally, openly. Participants themselves provide the content, with break-out sessions they develop themselves and plug into a schedule grid on the day of the event. Anyone can present and host a session in nearly any format.

#HCSFBay is our hashtag on Twitter, please use it and spread the word!

How to Find Us

Well, if you don’t know who we are or what we do, you can take a peek at our sexy personal detiails to see pictures and bios for us (Christopher Parks, Robert Hendrick and Chris McIntyre). If you are wondering what we do, head on over to http://www.changehealthcare.com and see how we can help you save money on your health related expenses.

Make sure you follow us on Twitter, that is the best way to keep up with us when we are on the road!

• Christopher Parks – @caparks
• Robert Hendrick – @jrh3
• Chris McIntyre – @theferf
• change:healthcare – @askch

See you there!

HMS (Healthcare Managements Systems Inc.) announced August 7th (I know, I am a little behind) that they have an online bill payment tool available for hospitals.  This would allow them to send bills and statements electronically, as well as recieve online payments from patients.

Excepts from their announcement: “Our online bill pay product creates a particular advantage for the facility by allowing patient payments entered through a hospital’s web portal to be automatically updated in their HMS Patient Accounting solution.”

“The new HMS online offerings are a vast improvement over our previous solution,” said Michael Pracheil, Thayer’s chief financial officer. “Now our patients can click a link on our hospital website and see past bills, set up recurring payments or make a one-time ACH transfer or credit card payment. Our hospital staff has access to the same information so they can work with patients to set up electronic payments over the phone.”

Though there will be slow uptake and some patient resistance to use new online technologies relating to their medical care…  This a step in the right direction!  Reducing paper flow and processing will save the system both time and money, hopefully cutting some administrative overhead. If given the option to participate in electronic billing with your medical provider… at least take a moment to ask questions and consider the option!

By: Kat Sanders (more info on the author below)

There was a time when you had to choose between engineering and medicine even though you were equally inclined to both. The situation has undergone a vast change today, and you have common ground between technology and medicine in the form of healthcare IT. Although it is a relatively fledgling field, it is beginning to become popular by the day even though there are still various hurdles that need to be crossed. If we’re gunning for the success of healthcare IT and EMR systems across the entire healthcare spectrum, we need to ensure that:

• The doctors are as much a part of it as the tech guys: When a system is designed, it goes without saying that the end user must be the most important person to be considered. It is their use and comfort that must be put above everything else. So a system must be designed to suit doctors’ needs rather than be the most sophisticated of its kind.

• The system is easy enough for even the older doctors to understand: The younger crowd of medicos is more tech-savvy and able to relate to the meeting point between technology and medicine and harness their iPods and iPhones to provide them with the information they need to treat their patients much more efficiently. It’s the older ones who are skeptical about the new-fangled technology and reluctant to use it. They must be targeted, trained and convinced if EMR systems and other IT innovations related to healthcare are to be a universal success.

• The doctors with more experience are roped in for their expertise: One way to involve the older doctors and specialists is to enlist their help in preparing knowledge bases that are then interpreted and translated into IT systems using the correct logic. They are there to give the tech personnel their expertise so that it can be used to provide accurate information when treating patients.

• The medical personnel are given enough training: A system is only as good as the person using it, so unless a doctor is given training in using the system, it could turn out to be a damp squib. There will be an initial resistance period, but with persistence, doctors who welcome positive changes are able to understand that this is the future of medicine and patient care.

• Any change is consensual and cooperative: And finally, any new changes or additions to the system must be made only with the consent and cooperation of the people who are using them. Only when there is a mutual understanding between the people who write the systems and those who use it will be possible for these healthcare IT systems to become a routine entity in every hospital and healthcare facility across the world.

This article is written by Kat Sanders, who regularly blogs on the topic of surgical tech schools at her blog iScrub. She welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: katsanders25@gmail.com