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5 Reasons to Be A Health IT Blogger

Allison sent out the nice tweet above which links to a blog post talking about 5 reasons to blog:

  • You’re Creating a Personal Brand
  • Become A Keyword Search
  • Networking Made Easy
  • Demonstrate Your Skills
  • Learn While You Blog

All of these are great reasons to blog. Allison is also mostly talking about blogging as a way to find a new job. This is really valuable. I know since I’ve gotten a lot of job offers thanks to my blog. In fact, I can attribute every job I’ve had since college to the websites that I’ve created. Having created something and shown some entrepreneurial spirit was what set me apart from other candidates in the interview process. In one case it also helped me overcome the challenge of having no healthcare experience.

For me, the two most important things on the list is to connect with people and learn. Blogs have an amazing way of opening up doors of opportunity to meet new people. I’ve met hundreds of people virtually and in person because of my blogs. It’s my favorite part of blogging.

When you blog, you can learn so much. First, if you want to write a blog post about something, you better be educated on the topic. Second, if you write about a topic you’re not as familiar with, then readers of your blog will be happy to educate you in the comments. Yes, sometimes the education comes with a stiff price (some people are just brutal in the comments), but sometimes that’s part of the learning as well.

I know that blogging isn’t for everyone. Some people just don’t have the discipline to be able to do it. Doing it consistently definitely takes discipline. However, everyone could benefit from sharing their experiences and knowledge on a blog.

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April 16, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and Google Plus.

Filed Under: Health IT Jobs  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare Social Media
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Health Data Hacking, Population Health Help, and Childhood Obesity — Around Healthcare Scene

EMR and HIPAA

Health Data Hacking Likely To Increase

One aspect of EMRs and medical technology many people — physicians and patients alike — are nervous about, are security breeches. Unfortunately, it seems as if this fear is justified, and will continue to be for the time being. Redspin, an IT security firm, gathered data about security and data incidents since 2009, and it has only increased since then. Some of the other findings are rather frightening as well.

Can The Benefits of Hospitals Acquiring Practices Be Achieved By Other Means?

There is a current trend of hospitals acquiring practices. Is there any way for groups of physicians to achieve these results other ways? This post goes into the details of this situation, and different loopholes involved.

Hospital EMR and EHR

Mostashari Asks EHR Vendors to Do What’s “Moral and Right”

Farzad Mostashari, ONC National Coordinator, recently made comments at the Health IT Policy Committee. He didn’t cut any corners when it came to talking about what he is seeing in the EMR world, and encouraged EHR vendors to do the moral and right thing. This post highlights some of his statements.

ACOs Need Population Health Help From EMRs

EMRs, in large part, don’t assist with ACOs and population health help. This is unfortunate, because they definitely need the help. In the future, EMR vendors need to be aware of this, and tweek their EMRs to offer tools to help.

Meaningful Health IT News

My HIMSS Will Be All About Quality And Patient Safety

Because of his experiences in 2012, Neil Versel has a new focus for 2013. He is now dedicated to “bringing news about efforts to improve patient safety and reduce medical errors.” Read this post for more about his goals, and how you can get involved.

Smart Phone HC

Health IT Positively Affects Childhood Obesity

Childhood obesity is on the rise, and the big question is — how can we prevent it? While many experts may be quick to weigh in on the situation, a recent study published in Pediatrics has suggested that Health IT may prove to have a positive affect on the problem. There are many companies and websites working to create ways for children to get involved and proactive about their health, and this post highlights a few of them.

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February 17, 2013 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Market  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Health IT Jobs  Healthcare
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Advanced Analytics, Big Data, and IBM Watson: #HITsm Chat Highlights

Topic One: @janicemccallum defines #BigData broadly as: “Advanced analytics for complex problem solving.” Do you agree?

 

Topic Two: Is the current base of evidence strong enough to support #BigData models? What additional data sources do we need?

Topic Three: IBM Watson was recently deployed at Memorial Sloan-Kettering for CDS. Will IBM dominate healthcare #BigData?

Topic Four: What will help advance & what will delay the use of #BigData models in healthcare?

Topic Five: Is the current hype surrounding #BigData good or bad for the future of evidence-based medicine?

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February 16, 2013 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  Health IT Jobs  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Market  mHealth  Outcomes
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The Patient Medical Record, Usable Health IT, and Return of Blackberry — Around Healthcare Scene

EMR, EHR, and HIPAA

EHR Benefit — Space Savings

This is the next installment of EHR Benefits. Some clinics claim that the space saving that comes with having an EHR is definitely a benefit. It’s usually more of a benefit for smaller practices, but can also benefit larger ones. One way is that the elimination of a document room could make room for another office.

Redesigning The Patient Medical Record, the Healthcare Challenge’s Results

This is a guest post by Carl Bergman from EHR Selector. The post dicusses the results of the Healthcare Design Challenge put on by by the VA and the ONC. First place went to Nightingale and second place StudioTACK. There were also a few other rewards given out. Bergman also talks about several problems with this challenge.

Hospital EMR and EHR

Patients Question Clinical Decision Support Use

A new study published in Medical Decision Making found that patients aren’t as thrilled about computer-assisted decision making. The study revealed some interesting findings, like patients don’t trust physicians who use CDS. For those that use this, the study may be a bit unnerving, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

One Vendor’s Take On Building Usable Health IT

This post contains the views of Joe Condurso, president of CEO of health IT vendor PatientSafe, on building usable health IT. He offers several recommendations. They include responding to context, being mobile, and starting from a mobile design.

Smart Phone Healthcare

BlackBerry’s “Hail Mary” Pass for mHealth

Although BlackBerry used to be the device of choice among physicians, it has been crowded out with the introduction of newer devices. However, BlackBerry is trying to get back in the game with the release of some new devices which they believe offer something unique. Will doctors switch back, or is BlackBerry grasping at straws?

Track Infants Growth With BeCuddle iPhone App

A new iPhone app has been released to help parents keep track of their infants growth. BeCuddle has a variety of features, including the ability to track medication, record milestones, and just help a parent make sure their child’s health is right on track.

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February 3, 2013 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Market  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Technology  Health IT Jobs  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Market  Hospitals  Medical Devices  mHealth  PHR
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EMR, EHR, and Health IT Jobs

In our current economic client, it’s been quite interesting for me to keep an eye on the EMR, EHR and Health IT job market. While many in the country are out of work, those with healthcare and IT experience are usually in very high demand across the country.

I recently heard this quote from Michael Dell (founder of Dell):

“If we set up a new site to hire 100 software or storage or networking engineers, we have to go find them one at a time and seek them out and convince them and cajole them to come work for us. If we set up a warehouse or distribution center and we have 100 jobs there, we will have a line of 10,000 people waiting outside to try to get those jobs.”

I think we’re seeing something similar in healthcare IT. As long time readers will probably know, we have our own EMR, EHR and Health IT job board. Here are two of the jobs that were recently posted on the job board:

Senior Healthcare IT Project Manager
Senior IT Systems Analyst

Watching that job board and also seeing the jobs that are submitted on the Healthcare Scene LinkedIn group is interesting. You definitely see the trend that Michael Dell mentions. There are a lot of skilled jobs available, and not enough skilled people to fill those jobs.

I’ll be interested to see how this evolves in a post-HITECH era. Right now if you have EHR experience and expertise, there are a wide variety of jobs available to you. I’m sure there are pockets and communities where this isn’t the case, but across the country there are people looking for people who know and understand EHR. Many of the top EHR consulting firms can’t get enough people on board to support their projects. Plus, we’re only at about 50% adoption (depending on whose numbers you prefer).

I expect the above trend to continue at least through the end of meaningful use and likely well beyond that. As I often tell people, healthcare is going to be around forever and using technology to improve healthcare isn’t going anywhere either.

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January 31, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and Google Plus.

Filed Under: EHR Recruiting  Health IT Jobs  Healthcare IT
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#HITsm and #hcsm Highlights Around Twitter – Healthcare and Social Media

If you are avid follower of the #HITsm Chats, you probably noticed it was MIA this week, and also will be next week. So, instead, here are a few interesting tweets I found from doing a search for #HITsm and #hcsm on Twitter. I highly recommend doing that every once in awhile…there’s some pretty interesting information to be found. With that, here are some of the highlights I found from those searches (it was hard to pick just a couple!) I saw a lot about social media, so I thought I’d focus on that today.

This is a really fascinating article. Did you know that 90 percent of people ages 18-24 trust health information found on social media? Kind of scary in some ways, since, well, there’s definitely some incorrect information out there. It also puts a lot of weight on the shoulders of those that do provide the information, to make sure it’s accurate, up-to-date, and informative. To be honest, I sometimes trust sites like WebMD more than my own doctor! Social media and mobile devices are here to stay in the healthcare world, that’s for sure. I think this article gives some good information on the pros and cons, as well as how healthcare providers can benefit, which brings me to the next post…

Well, this is the opposite of what I read (and preach) a lot. A waste of time? The previous article talked about how it can be very beneficial for healthcare providers. The main arguments are that there is no return on investment (ROI), it can be dangerous when it adds to the likelihood of a doctor being burnt out, and it’s just a fad that is going to blow over and isn’t worth investing time, unless you have a lot of time and want it to be a hobby, or your company has products and services the customer pays for. I don’t agree with these statements, and believe that it is worth putting the time and effort into…but I suppose only time will tell which side of the fence is correct.

Aren’t patients the most crucial aspect to any healthcare provider? So empowering them is so important, and this article talks about how social media is doing just that. It has five ways it empowers patience, which, in a nut shell, are:

  1. Connecting people suffering from a disease or ailment with others…so basically, helping people not feel so alone in their health struggles, and get support from others that “get it.”
  2. Patients can learn about different treatment options and about medical devices more easily. When a person just relies on their doctor for information, some of these options can be overlooked (and often are.)
  3. Patient’s who like being self-advocates are likely to become community advocates as well
  4. Patient’s are given a “voice” to talk about their experiences and thoughts
  5. There are social networks dedicated to certain diseases or conditions.

And finally, this doesn’t have anything to do with the other tweets I’ve mentioned, but it made me laugh. The sledding blogger on the far left looks familiar, doesn’t he?

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December 22, 2012 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EMR  Health IT Jobs  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare IT Market  Healthcare Social Media  mHealth  Outcomes  Personal Musings
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Top Health IT Accomplishments, Lessons Learned, and Social Media: #HITsm Chat Highlights

This weeks topics were suggested by @OchoTex. It was a rather reflective chat, focusing on different topics from 2012, and reflecting on the future.

Topic One: What were the top #healthIT accomplishments in 2012?

Topic Two: In what areas did health IT fall short this year? What could have been accomplished?

Topic Three: Lessons learned- What do you predict will be achieved in #health IT in 2013?

 

Topic Four: How can social media do more to shift the balance of power in healthcare to the patient?

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December 8, 2012 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  Health IT Jobs  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Medical Devices  mHealth
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Meaningful Use and Big Data, Payment Reform, and Evidence-Generated Medicine – #HITsm Highlights

Topic One: Is Meaningful Use enabling big data in health care? Why or Why Not? #bigdata

Topic Two: Will payment reform make data sharing a strategic imperative? Why or Why Not?

T3: What are the most underutilized sources of data in health care? #bigdata

Topic Four: What data might be used for evidence-generated medicine?

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October 27, 2012 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Technology  Health IT Jobs  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Meaningful Use  mHealth  Outcomes
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Wireless Health, HIPAA, and Patient Engagement – Around Healthcare Scene

EMR and HIPAA

Wireless Health Data Collection Innovations Getting Hot

Some of the newest health data innovations are wireless. From a chip that can test blood sugar levels to an ECG that connects to a cell phone through blue tooth. The possibilities are endless when it comes to wireless devices.

HIPAA Infographic

HIPAA violations happen frequently. Some are criminal, others civil. This infographic explains some of the most common reason for HIPAA violations, and the penalties associated with them. Last year, over 12,000 companies have either been investigated or had issues resolved concerning HIPAA violations. Definitely an interesting infographic to look over.

Hospital EMR and EHR

FCC Says Wireless Health Should Be “Routine” Within Five Years

An announcement from the FCC pushes for mHealth to be a standard practice in the medical world by 2017. Some doctors are hesitant to implement mobile devices, so this may be difficult for some to grasp. The FCC is working to make this easier, by doing things like working with the FDA to help with creating and introducing devices into the market.

Happy EMR Doctor

Patient Engagement: Who are the Real Targets?

While creators of health technology claim they are trying to reach patients most, what does that mean? Many people who would benefit from these types of technology are lower class, however, upper class people are probably more likely to embrace it. Should companies invest more time in discovering who target markets are?

Smart Phone Health Care

Traqs: One Tool to Rule Them All

Having trouble keeping track of all the health apps and devices that are being created? Traqs, a new device, does it for you. This innovation can track multiple devices and create graphs about activity on them. It makes it much easier to take control of your health and exercise devices.

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September 30, 2012 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  EHR Market  EHR Recruiting  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Adoption  EMR Doctor's Blog  EMR Technology  Health IT Jobs  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare Social Media  HIE  Hospitals  Medical Devices  mHealth  PHR
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Upcoding, Presidential Debates, and MU Incentives– #HITsm Chat Highlights

Every week, HL7 Standards, hosts a #HITsm Tweet Chat and poses four questions “on current topics that are influencing healthcare technology, health IT, and the use of social media in healthcare.” It’s always a great discussion and also a great chance to meet a wide variety of people that are passionate about healthcare IT.

In case you missed it, or are curious about what went on this week, we’ve put together the list of topics with some of the best responses for each topic. There were some interesting topics this week, as well as some great responses. If you have any opinions on any of these topics, feel free to continue the discussion in the comments. This chats take place every Friday at 11AM CST. You’ll find members of Healthcare Scene regularly participating in the chat under some of the following Twitter accounts: @techguy, @ehrandhit, @hospitalEHR, and @smyrnagirl.

Topic One: Big debate now about EHRs sparking upcoding if not fraud. What’s your take? Will inverse be true with digitized health system?

 

 

 

Topics Two: 59% of IT execs say staff shortages harm earning of MU incentives. What is long-term impact if feds HIT education lag demand?

 

 

 

 

Topic Three: What would you ask Obama or Romney about HealthIT, reform law, or healthcare in general during the Oct. 3 debate? 

 

 

 

 

Topic Four: Health IT projects: Which ones are you postponing until after the election? 

 

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September 29, 2012 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  Electronic Health Record  Electronic Medical Record  EMR  EMR Technology  ePrescribing  Health IT Jobs  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare Social Media  Meaningful Use  mHealth  PHR
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