american academy of private physicians conference

i just went to a conference conducted by the AAPP, formerly known as the Society of Innovative Medical Design [ SIMPD ] .

it was the first regional summit on Concierge Medicine for the year.

the morning was filled with several lectures by the co-founder & principal of SpecialDocs consultants.  SpecialDocs is a company specializing in transitioning already established practices and therefore their lectures were geared towards that.  the two speakers noted the following features as important in determining how viable your practice would be if you are considering to transition your practice :

• demographics
• patient panel size
• your longevity in the community
• patient’s insurance breakdowns
• patient loyalty
• age concentrations
• professional name considerations

they also stressed that to change to a concierge practice required a change in your practice’s culture and to change your patient’s perceptions stating that the change to concierge is actually a change for the patient’s better health.

other key things from SpecialDocs

• your staff is your “face” with the patient.  therefore make sure they have excellent interpersonal skills
• deliver exceptional care throughout the medical experience
• traditional medicine is REactive care whereas personalized medicine is PROactive care

one of the physicians in the audience asked for advice on how to field a common tough question, “what do i get with this annual fee?  tell me what i’m paying for.”  experienced concierge docs chimed in and said, it’s your job to find out what each patient wants and accomodate their needs.  he said that 80% of his patients want the access that a concierge medicine physician provides and only 20% wanted longer office visits.  another person said to talk to the patient that, “this isn’t about me, it’s about you and you’re health”

right before lunch, dr. randy baggesen took the stage.  he is a concierge medicine physician in richmond, virginia who specializes in executive health.  all of his clients are top executives within the richmond, va area.  he talked about 3 technologies that he uses in his office to attract and retain patients every year.  one of which is VitalKey.  VitalKey is an interesting company he co-founded.  either the patient or the physician can mail or fax medical documents to this company and the employees will scan the docs and file them in their program.  the program is accessible via the web or via the patient’s usb flash drive that they carry in their pocket.  it comes in handy when the patient has to go to the emergency room and the ER docs can view the patient’s complete medical record immediately.  another technology he uses is Fotofinder, a total body mole mapping program.  by taking serial images of a patient’s skin, the program can accurately detect any new, or any changing moles!  this seriously aids in the detection of melanomas.  too bad the machine costs 25k.  thats not something i can afford right out of residency.  the third device dr. baggesen uses is an ultrasound to screen for many kinds of disorders.  a cool thing that he also does is to do a battery of lab tests including common labs plus cancer markers.  it costs 500 dollars for all the tests but it gives his patients peace of mind.

it was finally lunch time.  instead of taking the time to eat, or try my hand at the ultrasound machine, i headed over to the Hello Health table.  i got to meet one of my heroes, dr. Gordon Moore, whom i’ve written about here.  we had a nice long informative talk about opening my own practice in rochester, ny.  if you didn’t know, the IMP practice model was born in rochester, ny.  i also got to meet Jean Pichette, Vice President of Onboarding, former Olympian and Nick, an HH representative who took me thru a very thorough demonstration of the Hello Health platform.  and i’ve got to say, it’s everything i thought it was going to be, meaning, it was AWESOME.

i had a ton of questions and Nick handled them easily with finesse.  here are the notes about the platform that i jotted down :

• diagnoses can be entered via free text [ letters ] or via ICD code numbers
• there is a section within the SOAP note called Private Notes that would not be visible by the patient or any consultant accessing the record
• the word ‘consultation’ refers to the doctor’s visit and not a doc to doc consultation.  this is because HH felt that the phrase ‘doctor’s visit’ did not accurately encompass the other methods of communication such as instant messaging, video chat, house calls, or office visits.
• the message inbox is similar to GMail in that you can add labels to each email and archive it appropriately.  you can also link an email to a patient’s medical record if you deem it medically relevant
• patients request to be your patients, and you accept them or not after you review their medical record.  the interface looks like Facebook!
• a patient can create their appointment with you which has default visit length settings.  but you can change this before or after they visit giving you ultimate flexibility and ability to bill the patient fairly.
• docs and patients get automatic email reminders for their appointments
• patients can export their PHR [ public health record ] into a PDF file to print or link their PHR with Google Health
• doctors can offer promotional [ discount ] codes to any patients they wish after calling Nick at HH to set it up.  the patient will then be able to see any promo codes they may have each time they make an appointment and can choose to use the promo code or save it for another time.
• future developments in the platform are e-prescribing, e-pharmacy, a section for labs, a LinkedIN style connection capability with other docs

i spent my entire lunch exploring the HH demo and signing up for more information.  i also got some cool stuff from them.  see the photos.

after lunch, we got to hear from Navigenics, a company that specializes in genetics testing.  what you do is you take a saliva sample from a patient and mail it to Navigenics who will run the tests that you select and send you results.  you can test for all kinds of things such as a patients risk for heart attacks, cholesterol, cancers, or whether the patient will be likely or not likely to receive help from a specific medication.  very cool!

afterwards, a panel of physicians experienced in personalized medicine took the stage to field questions.  i don’t know the names of all the docs, but there was dr. baggesen, dr. gordon moore, dr. zwelling [ president of AAPP ], dr. jordan?, dr. susan who is an exec from ChoiceMD [ another consulting firm for transitioning ] and an exec from SignatureMD [ another consulting firm to transition your practice ] .  two of the doctors created their practices from scratch and that made me feel better about my endeavors.  the other docs transitioned their practices.

i wish there was more information about how to start a practice not just transition your practice.  all in all, i had a great time at the conference.  it was well worth the whirlwind trip.

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Tags: gordon moore, hello health, jean pichette

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 6:00 am and is filed under modern practice management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.