What maximizes the effectiveness and implementation of technology-based interventions to support healthcare professional practice? A systematic literature review.

BACKGROUND: Technological support may be crucial in optimizing healthcare professional practice and improving patient outcomes. A focus on electronic health records has left other technological supports relatively neglected. Additionally, there has been no comparison between different types of technology-based interventions, and the importance of delivery setting on the implementation of technology-based interventions to change professional practice. Consequently, there is a need to synthesise and examine intervention characteristics using a methodology suited to identifying important features of effective interventions, and the barriers and facilitators to implementation. Three aims were addressed: to identify interventions with a technological component that are successful at changing professional practice, to determine if and how such interventions are theory-based, and to examine barriers and facilitators to successful implementation. METHODS: A literature review informed by realist review methods was conducted involving a systematic search of studies reporting either: (1) behavior change interventions that included technology to support professional practice change; or (2) barriers and facilitators to implementation of technological interventions. Extracted data was quantitative and qualitative, and included setting, target professionals, and use of Behaviour Change Techniques (BCTs). The primary outcome was a change in professional practice. A thematic analysis was conducted on studies reporting barriers and facilitators of implementation. RESULTS: Sixty-nine studies met the inclusion criteria; 48 (27 randomized controlled trials) reported behavior change interventions and 21 reported practicalities of implementation. The most successful technological intervention was decision support providing healthcare professionals with knowledge and/or person-specific information to assist with patient management. Successful technologies were more likely to operationalise BCTs, particularly "instruction on how to perform the behavior". Facilitators of implementation included aligning studies with organisational initiatives, ensuring senior peer endorsement, and integration into clinical workload. Barriers included organisational challenges, and design, content and technical issues of technology-based interventions. CONCLUSIONS: Technological interventions must focus on providing decision support for clinical practice using recognized behavior change techniques. Interventions must consider organizational context, clinical workload, and have clearly defined benefits for improving practice and patient outcomes.

Making doctors manage but how? Recent developments in the Italian NHS.

BACKGROUND: Involving doctors in management has been intended as one of the strategies to spread organizational principles in healthcare settings. However, professionals often resist taking on relevant managerial responsibility, and the question concerning by which means to engage doctors in management in a manner that best fit the challenges encountered by different health systems remains open to debate. METHODS: This paper analyzes the different forms of medical management experienced over time in the Italian NHS, a relevant "lab" to study the evolution of the involvement of doctors in management, and provides a framework for disentangling different dimensions of medical management. RESULTS: We show how new means to engage frontline professionals in management spread, without deliberate planning, as a consequence of the innovations in service provision that are introduced to respond to the changes in the healthcare sector. CONCLUSIONS: This trend is promising because such means of performing medical management appear to be more easily compatible with professional logics; therefore, this could facilitate the engagement of a large proportion of professionals rather than the currently limited number of doctors who are "forced" or willing to take formal management roles.

Physician Challenges in 2015.

While the influx of new patients resulting from the ACA will increase the number of people receiving healthcare, the regulations associated with it will add to physicians' administrative duties, as will government regulations associated with HIPAA and Meaningful Use. Further stress will come from the demands of both payers and patients, requiring doctors to walk a fine line to protect themselves from litigation. Technology also will play an increasing role. The continuing move toward EHRs and the new ICD-10 coding standard will require investments in software, testing, and training staff, and may also require an investment in new computer hardware. Physicians and staff will have to teach patients how to use EHR portals and how to follow the record-keeping requirements of their insurance providers. The regulatory changes and increased costs of time and money associated with them may drive many physicians out of private practice and into hospital system-based team practices, which will face a greater challenge in recruiting and retaining top talent. Other physicians, in contrast, may continue to seek the independence of private practice; some of them may decide to stop accepting insurance because of their need for autonomy in their practices. Regardless of what decisions doctors choose to make within the changing nature of healthcare, it is important to keep abreast of the changes and develop a plan for dealing with them, in 2015 and beyond.

Business Entity Selection: Why It Matters to Healthcare Practitioners. Part II--Corporations, Limited Liability Companies, and Professional Entities.

The Bureau of Labor statistics indicates only a 50% four-year survivability rate among businesses classified as "education and health services." Gaining knowledge of IRS business entities can result in cost savings, operational efficiency, reduced liability, and enhanced sustainability. Each entity has unique disadvantages, depending on size, diversity of ownership, desire to expand, and profitability. Business structures should be compatible with organizational mission or vision statements, services and products, and professional codes of ethics. Healthcare reform will require greater business acumen. We have an ethical duty to disseminate and acquire the knowledge to properly establish and manage healthcare practices to ensure sustainable services that protect and serve the community.

Losing a valued member of the medical practice team.

Losing a valued member of your staff can be disruptive, painful, and costly to your medical practice. And despite your best intentions and impeccable employee management policies and skills, things will happen beyond your control, and people move on. Being prepared for that possibility will help you minimize and contain the damage and move your practice forward. This article suggests 15 strategies that you can use to mitigate the effects of losing a valued employee. These include strategies to protect your practice's interests and several that will smooth the transition for your remaining staff. This article also describes 10 ways that losing a valued employee can impact a practice. It offers 10 additional strategies to help you cope with the death of an employee, one of the most difficult challenges a practice manager may ever face. This article further suggests several easy-to-implement practice management techniques that will help you soften the blow of employee turnover. It offers a sample farewell letter to announce an employee's departure from your practice and suggests six knowledge transfer questions to ask before the employee leaves. Finally, this article provides a comprehensive list of more than 30 thoughtful, eye-opening, and revealing questions that you can ask in an employee exit interview or exit survey.

Job descriptions made easy.

The act of writing a job description can be a daunting and difficult task for many managers. This article focuses on the key concepts of What, How, and Measureable Results as they relate to an employee's job duties. When the answers to these three elements are articulated, they define the core responsibilities of any job that form the basis for an effective job description.

Results of an initiative to charge for previously uncompensated care in an academic primary care practice.

Increasing clinical workload with dwindling compensation has challenged primary care medical practices over the past decade. This has led to more physicians leaving and fewer medical trainees entering primary care. In an effort to make primary care practices viable, many groups routinely charge for providing care that was uncompensated in the past. We initiated a program in our practice that charged for certain after-hour and electronic communications, completion of forms outside of office visits, and failure to show for appointments. We assessed the effect on workload, patient adherence to appointments, and financial outcomes. This initiative decreased our physicians' workload, increased physicians' satisfaction, and produced a modest increase in revenues.

Facilitating improvement in primary care: the promise of practice coaching.

Practice coaching, also called practice facilitation, assists physician practices with the desire to improve in such areas as patient access, chronic and preventive care, electronic medical record use, patient-centeredness, cultural competence, and team-building. This issue brief clarifies the essential features of practice coaching and offers guidance for health system leaders, public and private insurers, and federal and state policymakers on how best to structure and design these programs in primary care settings. Good-quality evidence demonstrates that practice coaching is effective. The authors argue that primary care delivery in the United States would benefit from a more systematic approach to the training and deployment of primary care practice coaches.

Using recruitment agreements effectively.

Physician recruitment agreements can be very beneficial to existing medical practice groups hoping to grow while keeping costs down. These agreements, which are exempt from anti-kickback regulations, allow for a hospital to guarantee the collections of a new physician for a limited amount of time in exchange for the physician staying within the hospital's service area for approximately three years after the guarantee ends. Additionally, the hospital can pay some of the incremental costs incurred by the practice group in hiring the physician. Practice groups should be careful when including a noncompetition provision or an anti-moonlighting provision in the context of a recruitment agreement, as it can have adverse consequences. Additionally, a practice group should avoid allowing the hospital to include an excess receipts clause in the agreement, as these clauses punish top performers.

Physician recruitment success: how to acquire top physician talent.

This article provides step-by-step instructions on how to complete the strategic planning needed to ensure success in physician recruitment efforts, outlines how to build a successful recruitment team, and provides helpful advice to avoid common recruiting mistakes that can sabotage the recruitment efforts of even the best practices. This article discusses the role of the in-house hospital recruiter in the recruitment process, how to evaluate independent search firms, how to make use of the physicians in your group to ensure success during a site visit, and how to ensure that your new hire will be able to successfully develop a practice. The article also discusses how to find and use benchmarking data to ensure that your compensation package is competitive, and provides advice on how to help your new physician hit the ground running.