It’s rare to mark the passing of an individual who substantially alters the course of human existence. But that’s just what we’re doing this week as we bid goodbye to Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs. Perhaps his inventions don’t quite stack up against penicillin or the wheel, but they nevertheless have significantly changed the way we live, work and communicate.

It’s those last two—working and communicating—that I’d like to focus on for a moment. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I remember life before there was a computer parked in every living room and another one on every office desk. Back then you couldn’t compare any product you wanted, from widgets to EHRs, simply by performing a key word search.

It wasn’t that long ago. Yet it’s almost impossible now to imagine life without the instantaneous and ubiquitous communication enabled by the PC, iPhone^® and iPad^®. It begs the question: Why should corporate messages be immune to this rapidly changing communication landscape? The answer, of course, is that they aren’t.
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William Shakespeare wrote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But healthcare PR and marketing experts know better.

Take, for example, two current healthcare trends: the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) and concierge medicine. Their monikers help contribute to vastly different levels of appeal.

The “patient-centered medical home” sounds great, doesn’t it? Invokes images of homemade chicken soup, mom and Marcus Welby all working to soothe your ills away. Who wouldn’t want that? (more…)

Lots of folks talk about mapping ICD-9 codes to ICD-10 codes and vice versa. That’s a very important, very practical need. After all, once the 250.xx series goes away, for example, clinicians must know how to code for their diabetic patients.  

But focus too intently on code crosswalks and you could be missing the forest for the trees. I’d suggest that everyone look beyond just the code update; ICD-10 presents a unique opportunity to identify ways to improve so many aspects of medicine—both clinically and financially. Healthcare organizations should be encouraged to take that “next step”: don’t merely identify the places where ICD-10 codes must be substituted for ICD-9 codes; identify the ways ICD-10 can do a better job than ICD-9.

I can hear the groans already. “What an ivory tower idea! Do you have any idea how much work it will take simply to switch the codes, let alone look at ‘process improvement’ at the same time?”

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