Automated empathy allows doctors to check on patients daily

By Barbara Feder Ostrov
Kaiser Health News
Originally posted February 10, 2016

Here is an excerpt:

"Automating empathy" is a new healthcare buzzword for helping doctors stay in touch with patients before and after medical procedures — cheaply and with minimal effort from already overextended physicians.

It may sound like an oxymoron, but it's a powerful draw for hospitals and other health care providers scrambling to adjust to sweeping changes in how they're paid for the care they provide. Whether the emails actually trigger an empathetic connection or not, the idea of tailoring regular electronic communications to patients counts as an innovation in health care with potential to save money and improve quality.

Startups like HealthLoop are promising that their technologies will help patients stick to their treatment and recovery regimens, avoid a repeat hospital stay, and be more satisfied with their care. Similar companies in the "patient engagement" industry include Wellframe, Curaspan, and Infield Health.

The article is here.

Ways to Build Strong Ethical Cultures

By Keith Darcy
Risk and Compliance Journal

Here is an excerpt:

Not surprisingly, the group found strong support for the idea that culture needs top-down support and bottom-up buy-in. Senior managers need to be confident that in addition to following the letter of the law, the people they manage “get” the larger aim of a compliance and ethics initiative. That makes them more responsive to the necessary coaching and training. As for top leaders, one compliance panelist shared, “I view sales as a big part of my job. I have to sell senior management on why this is important—why they have to do this. I don’t expect them to know every rule, policy and procedure, but if they can more easily identify values, and make decisions based upon those values, we have a better chance to avoid a disaster.” Another executive added the importance of the tone at the top, “You have to show people the way. If it’s not important to senior leadership, it’s not important to the third level down.”

The entire article is here.

Using Social Media to Boost Ethics and Compliance

By Pamela Babcock
Society for Human Resource Management
Originally published August 27, 2013

Organization leaders should take a cue from their employees and spend some time on social media, experts said.

Even though employees may misuse social media—and need to be trained on what is and is not acceptable—it is a powerful tool that companies can use to promote ethical practices and culture, a recent study found.

To more effectively engage employees, enhance ethics and compliance programs, and positively affect workplace culture, businesses should tap their employees’ expertise and encourage workers to use social media, according to a July 17, 2103, report from the Ethics Resource Center (ERC) in Arlington, Va. The key is seizing the opportunity of having tech-savvy employees who are invested in the company while mitigating the risk of inappropriate postings.

“If you can’t beat them, leverage them,” quipped ERC President Patricia J. Harned, Ph.D., adding that active social networkers “have a really strong interest in the culture of the workplace. They are more likely to be responsive if you’re making use of social networks to address company culture and employee concerns.”

The entire article is here.

Increase in Urine Testing Raises Ethical Questions

By BARRY MEIER
The New York Times
Published: August 1, 2013

As doctors try to ensure their patients do not abuse prescription drugs, they are relying more and more on sophisticated urine-screening tests to learn which drugs patients are taking and — just as important — which ones they’re not.

The result has been a boom in profits for diagnostic testing laboratories that offer the tests. In 2013, sales at such companies are expected to reach $2 billion, up from $800 million in 1990, according to the Frost & Sullivan consulting firm.

The growing use of urine tests has mirrored the rise in prescriptions for narcotic painkillers, or opioids. But the tests, like earlier efforts to monitor opioid prescribing, have led to a host of vexing questions about what doctors should do with the information they obtain, about the accuracy of urine screens and about whether some companies and doctors are financially exploiting the testing boom.

The entire story is here.

Online Patient Access to Records May Boost Visits

By John Gever, Senior Editor
MedPage Today
Published: November 20, 2012


Patients with access to their physicians' electronic health record systems had more office visits, hospital admissions, and emergency room encounters than those without such access, researchers said.

Participants in a Kaiser Permanente program giving them access to their electronic records, including a secure email system for communicating with clinicians, showed significant increases in nearly all measures of healthcare utilization, relative to the period before they joined the program, Ted E. Palen, MD, PhD, MSPH, of Kaiser Permanente Colorado in Denver, and colleagues reported in the Nov. 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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In an accompanying editorial, two researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston noted that the study findings stood in contrast to Kaiser investigations in other regions, which had found reductions in utilization associated with so-called patient portals to electronic health records.

The entire story is here.