7 Characteristics of Highly Successful ACO’s

rends toward providers joining Accountable Care Organizations have continued to rise, but not all ACO’s are created equal. It’s become clear that some ACOs out there aren’t achieving the kind of success that was originally hoped for by their creators. Why is it that some organizations are making a difference and others aren’t? We’ve identified some of the characteristics of highly successful ACO’s, so you can determine which organizations are making real progress and which ones are just doing it for publicity. Remember to value substance over style!

-       Are providers willing to take capitation risks? If so, it shows that they’re dedicated to the overall cause of making health costs and medical bills less of a challenge for their patients.

-       Do they have providers with a deep understanding of the organizations financials? If they do not, then it will be challenging to make a true shift to value-based care.

-       Is there a physician willing to tackle the disruption associated with potential financial cannibalization until new centers are built? It’s important to have someone step up who is willing to take risks.

-       Is there an active clinical leader dedicated to cultural evolution? It’s important not to play it safe, but to make a name for yourself in the evolving medical community.

-       Is physician compensation focused on value? The goal should be to improve overall care quality and create personalized experiences for every patient while rewarding physicians for adopting the value-based model.

-       Are there benefits designed to keep members within the ACO? Patients care about the quality of their care and working with the best physicians possible, but to truly create the best patient-ACO relationship, a benefits system being set in place will strengthen their brand-loyalty.

-       Are the value-models commercialized to build volume and improve brand recognition? The marketing team for an ACO needs to make sure they make it easy for patients to understand what makes your organization so great and ensuring that when they think about their ACO options, they remember your name.

Ultimately, ACOs can be great in theory, but without a strong physician leader and a team dedicated to igniting change in the industry and local medical community, the efforts could fall flat. Everyone can get behind the cause for lowering health care costs, but is your organization doing everything they can? 

Radiology in 2015

In the spirit of the New Year, we checked out Diagnostic Imaging's predictions for 2015. We thought their guesses were quite spot on, check them out below:

Lung Cancer Low Dose CT

• Resolution of details of LDCT coverage between CMS and payers, for example upper end of age limit (CMS says 74, USPSTF says 80).
• ACR will work to ensure implementation of a high quality LDCT program and that service is reimbursed at a level that will optimize access for patients

Imaging 3.0

• Continue to guide radiologists through a time of transition in health care and inform patients, other health care providers, payers and policy makers about the value that radiologists deliver
•  More non-radiology stakeholders (patients, hospital administrators, health systems) will expect radiologists to provide non-interpretive services

Decision Support

• The Medicare Demonstration project yielded fairly tepid support for the notion that decision support help referring clinicians order more appropriate imaging procedures, with the 2017 start date for required radiology order entry decision support, 2015-2016 may produce some new studies to measure the impact
• The ascendancy of imaging informatics: A big part of radiology’s foreseeable future will be about software, not hardware. Across the board – business analytics, visualization, reporting, decision support, imaging sharing – informatics will be key to achieving value, improving quality and advancing our patients’ interests.

Reimbursement:

• Continued cuts in radiology reimbursement, but rate of change will slow in the short term. Practices should use that relative reprieve as an opportunity to focus on how they will be compensated under emerging payment models.
• Declining reimbursement will result in an inappropriate emphasis on productivity, more significant turf battles, and a growing tendency to commoditize the specialty.
• Radiology advocacy will play an extremely important role in combating harsh cuts to reimbursement.

Dose:

• Decreased interest in dose reduction. The topic, which has been popular for the last several years, may have run its course. Radiologists are more interested in diagnostic quality rather than dose reduction.
• Radiologists will push for 3D mammography and dual energy CT techniques, despite the larger radiation doses.

Training and Jobs:

• The first crop of board-eligible radiology fellows will venture into the working world. It will be interesting to see how the new graduates, payors and practices adapt to the change, whether new hires will be given adequate time to prepare for the second part of their examination and how practices will adapt if the new hire doesn’t pass the exam.
• Anecdotally, it seems that the job market is picking up. This provides an opportunity for those who accepted less-than-ideal jobs to seek new employment. Because these hires will already be board-certified, it will be interesting to see if there is a lot of turnover of this particular group.
• The number of applicants for radiology residency is down again this year, which may mean that programs need to start considering cutting down on their class sizes.

Seen here: What Will Radiology Look Like in 2015?

Transforming The Radiologist’s Role In Health Care

With 2014 coming to a close, many practices, hospitals and physician groups will be discussing what they can do to improve patient satisfaction and grow their businesses in 2015. They will be discussing the allocation of dollars in their marketing budget, launching new campaigns, making administration changes even focusing on company culture in order to see improvement. One Ohio hospital and their radiology group had a different idea.  These two groups recognized that bringing specialists, like radiologists, on as members of a hospital’s team could help improve patient satisfaction and care coordination, ultimately growing the hospital’s business.

Aultman Hospital in Canton, Ohio’s CEO Christopher Remark commented on their decision saying, “We really felt that we had an opportunity to do something different because it was right in the heat of health care reform.” The reality of that statement is that radiologists have the opportunity to truly transform their role in the care process. Radiologists can become a part of this new healthcare landscape, something they will need to do to combat decreased reimbursement and utilization.

In hospitals like Aultman Hospital, an agreement to co-mange the radiology service line helped both parties to achieve their goals, grow their market presence and improve service-lines.

In other independent settings, radiologists have the opportunity to step up to the plate in other ways. One huge opportunity for radiologists is in the marketing of their centers. Finding an opportunity for the radiologist to go out with the physician relations representative to communicate with the referring community could make a huge difference in referrals. Additionally, there is a chance for radiologists to come out of the dark and be the faces of their practices without having to meet with the community face-to-face with video marketing.  Social Media marketing also gives physicians the opportunity to get more involved in the industry as thought-leaders. Participating in tweet chats or webinars for instance, is a great way for radiologists to make a name for themselves in their industry but also in their community.

So challenge your radiologists in 2015, to transform their role in the care your organization delivers. You might just be surprised by what they can help you achieve!

What Are Healthcare Practices Thankful For?

This week marks the kickoff of the season of giving. On Thursday, we’ll be celebrating the season of giving THANKS, thanks for our loved ones, whoever invented deep fried turkey, the NFL network and four-day weekends with our friends and family.  Thinking about what we are thankful for in our personal lives got us thinking about what we are thankful for at our practices across the country and we realized that there so, so many.  Hopefully as you read through our list you’ll realize how thankful you are for the same things at your practice. Maybe you’ll even add some of your own to the list in our comment section!

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1.     Our practices wouldn’t be anything without our patients, so as always they are our #1. We know they can go anywhere for their care, so when they choose us, it’s an honor.

2.     We are thankful for our referring physician offices that entrust their patients’ care to our hands. We value your trust and are proud to work as an extension of your practice.

3.     Our staff members are dedicated, coming in early or staying late, just so we can fit a patient into the schedule during a time that works for them. They don’t complain about coming in after hours, because they know it will help the practice in the long run.

4.     It’s funny to think of your equipment vendors as a part of your practice, but sometimes we require their support and we are thankful that they are able to be there for us when we need them.

5.     We are thankful for the owners of our independent centers. In our industry there is a lot of pressure to get bought out by hospital systems due to decreasing reimbursement, but our centers’ owners understand the value of remaining independent and have chosen to take the path less traveled.

6.     The life of a marketing representative can be flat out exhausting. They are constantly on the road, out in the community showing what is so great about our centers. Additionally, they are always looking for ways to help make their referring offices’ staff happy, which means they are always bending over backwards to help.

7.     We’re thankful for Yelp because it helps us gather reviews for our centers. It allows patients to hear from other patients about their positive experiences at our centers. On the flip side, if a patient doesn’t have a perfect experience for any reason, it gives them a way to let us know so that we can fix it.

8.     Salesforce is our marketing savior on a daily basis. The CRM helps us track referring offices, keep track of meetings and grow our centers’ success, so we’re pretty thankful that we have access to this awesome platform.

9.     We’re extra thankful for our office Keurigs. Because coffee. Coffee. Coffee. Coffee. Need we say more?

10.  Lastly, we are thankful for Jean Fridays! We are lucky enough to basically wear pajamas (read: scrubs) every day, but there is just something about getting to wear jeans on Friday that screams “WEEKEND!”

Tell us what your practice is thankful for this Thanksgiving… 

10 Tricks for Small Healthcare Marketing Teams

For all those small marketing teams who have been forced to outsource a lot of their design work, social media or content marketing we are here to save the day… and a lot of money.  We know what it is like for small teams where your marketers have to wear a lot of hats and not everyone can afford to keep on a full time graphic designer, pay for expensive stock photography or spend thousands on a social media professional.  Try these tricks to see where you can cut corners without sacrificing quality work.

1.     Hubspot

We’ll get this one out of the way first, as it’s going to be your most expensive trick. Hubspot is an awesome content marketing program that helps analyze and adjust your website’s SEO content, helps you develop content, create lead nurturing campaigns, track and qualify leads you capture online and report on the success of your SEO, social media and email marketing efforts.  They do have some special pricing, but it’s a great tool to help you learn the ropes of SEO without outsourcing to an expensive SEO service provider.

Click For: Hubspot

2.     Canva

Canva is a free, online application that helps you design graphics like Facebook ads, documents, business cards, posters etc. with no graphic design knowledge necessary. The drag-and-drop style program makes it beyond simple with customizable templates. You can upload your own images or pay for their $1 per image options, then download your creations.

Click For: Canva

3.     Death to Stock Photo

This website sends you a zip-file of 10 creative “stock” photos each month that you can use free of charge.  The images are unique and fun and much better than those expensive photos you’ve purchased in the past with the models in scrubs you see plastered all over healthcare marketing materials.

Click For: Death To Stock Photo

4.     Squarespace

This is a great, inexpensive way to create an SEO and mobile optimized website. They have tons of customizable templates and they make designing your site super simple. The lowest level option only costs $16/month and you have 24-hour support if you ever have questions.  Want to add a Youtube video to your Home Page? Easy peasy.  Want to add an e-commerce section to your site? It’s a breeze. Think you need an appointment request form on your contact page? No sweat.

Click For: Squarespace

5.     Syplur’s Healthcare Hashtag Project

If you are interested in what your industry is tweeting about but don’t have access to a robust social media platform to run reports, just check out Symplur’s website. They share insights on social influencers, trending topics related to healthcare and upcoming events like tweet-chats.

Click For: Symplur's Healthcare Hashtag Project

6.     MailChimp

Gone are the days of paying too much for email marketing programs that require coded email templates. MailChimp is free, easy to use, easy to design and actually really fun to use too. Very cool company culture. Oh yeah, did we mention it’s free?

Click For: Mailchimp

7.     Snagit

Snagit is an application you can use to screenshot documents and websites then annotate and edit. You can do some minimal design work in the program too.  It’s free for the first 30 days then you have to pay a whopping $49.95 and it’s yours for.ev.er.  (Bonus: If you’re only snagging website images and annotating you can download the FREE Chrome extension Awesome Screenshot.)

Click For: SnagIt

8.     Intern Match

Looking to bring some fresh insight to your team but not sure where to start?  Your communities local universities or colleges are great resources, but if you also want to post online, don’t pay for a subscription on Monster.com. Create a free account with Intern Match and your first few job postings are FREE. Bonus: You’ll get some AWESOME applicants from far and wide.

Click For: InternMatch

9.     Tweetdeck

This is a free and very intuitive application provided to you by Twitter. You can schedule tweets to go out throughout the week, track keywords and lists of users all in one place. No expensive social media monitoring software necessary.

Click For: Tweetdeck

10.  Woobox

Some social media campaign programs can cost up to $150 for a simple, one month campaign, even if you only have 100 followers. Woobox makes it easy and cheap to create photo contests, caption contests and even Pin-It to Win-It campaigns starting at just $15 per month.

Click For: Woobox