Personal Pediatrics Aligns with Consumer directed care

This article stresses the importance of IT for Physicians wahting to provide the healthcare of the future.


To help ease the financial and management burdens that will come from consumer-directed health (CDH), physician practices must invest in health care IT first, finds a new report from First Consulting Group. According to the report, EHRs are a must first step for physicians wanting to compete in a CDH environment. However, FCG cautions that not any EHR system will do. The consulting firm says it should be an ambulatory EHR system that has decision-support capabilities, e-prescribing, and the ability to report on performance as a result of documenting care. Physicians will also need to store and exchange information electronically, so they can give consumers the comparative quality and pricing information they want, the report adds.


The Personal Pediatrics administrative support solution for pediatricians takes healthcare IT to a never before seen level. We are the pediatricians of the future who talk to patients directly, contract with patients directly for their care, slash our malpractice risk and costs, dramatically cut wasteful office overhead by an amazingly simple practice method, the house call. Our company supports a seasoned network of pediatricians via a web based paperless platform that recreates the relationships that are lost in pediatric medicine. Get ready for the Pediatrician of the Past and Future...Today. Natalie Hodge MD

Cigna notes Consumer Directed Care Increases Prevention

Look at this:

CIGNA Finds Consumer-Directed Care Lowers Expenses, Increases Preventive Care

Reprinted from the Nov. 24, 2006, issue of INSIDE CONSUMER-DIRECTED CARE, a biweekly newsletter with timely news and insightful analysis of benefit design, contracts, market strategies and fina

The latest consumer-directed health study from a large health insurer confirms what previous studies have found: CDH enrollees tend to receive more preventive care and typically have lower utilization rates than do those enrolled in more traditional managed care plans.

This month, CIGNA Corp. released a study based on an analysis of 38,200 members (from 44 employer groups) who were enrolled in a CIGNA HMO or PPO in 2004 and migrated to a CDH plan in 2005. The vast majority (86%) were enrolled in an HRA-based plan, while 14% had an HSA-based plan. Trend comparisons were made to a "control" population of nearly 232,000 HMO and PPO enrollees from the same employer populations. Recent studies from Aetna, Inc. and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association have had similar findings. CIGNA released preliminary findings last February.


Funny how Sick care insurers are interested now in Prevention?? Having spent 10 years practicing pediatrics with denials for any preventive pediatric codes, I find this late in coming. What will cigna do when many users spend 4000 a year on health insurance rather than 13,500? When familes pay their Personal Pediatrics Affiliate Pediatrician directly for attentive preventive at home care and combine this with a high deductible plan, Pediatricians will begin to recoup some of those shareholder dollars that Blue cross, Aetna, and Cigna have been paying out all these years. Natalie Hodge MD
Personal Pediatrics Affiliate House call Pediatrician

Will Doctors be put out of Business by Google??

Here's a tidbit I found this morning off my AIS newsletter... Google's role in helping people diagnose their symptoms is compelling.




Take these, and Google your symptoms in the morning. An Australian study has found that Google correctly diagnosed uncommon medical conditions 58% of the time, after entering some symptoms from 26 cases into the search engine, reports London's Daily Express. According to the newspaper, researchers from the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, Australia "Googled" three to five symptoms from each of the 26 cases selected from the New England Journal of Medicine. Then the researchers documented three diagnoses and selected the one that seemed most probable for the relevant symptoms, adds Daily Express. What the researchers found was that Google's diagnoses were correct in 15 of the 26 cases. The researchers concluded that, as Internet access becomes more readily available in outpatient clinics and hospital wards, the Web is rapidly becoming an important clinical tool for doctors. The use of Web-based searching may even help doctors diagnose difficult cases, according to Daily Express.



The Personal Pediatrics Affiliate House Call portal will consider how Google may play a role in pediatric diagnosis. Natalie Hodge MD Personal Pediatrics affiliate St. Louis

Doctors are Outsourcing their Jobs to Nurse Practitioners and PA's

Speaking of outsourcing... Everyone is talking about China and India and the evolution of many highly technical fields as accounting, legal, finance. The medical profession is always included in these discussions. Doctors are slowly replacing themselves with midlevel providers over which they oversee. The midlevels can bill 100% of a pediatrician's fees if they have an MD in the building signing off on the chart. Pediatricians in business are moving towards overseeing midlevels rather than providing care. The Personal Pediatrics House call system is an innovative practice system that puts a seasoned pediatrician back in the driver's seat of medical practice. Our affiliates practice utilizing a scalable system of IT infrastructure, security, systems, and support that minimizes upfront hardware/software costs of the traditional in-network pediatrics practice. Natalie Hodge MD Personal Pediatrics House call affiliate pediatrician

Hardware for the Pediatrician of the Future

Lenovo has announced a commitment to small business rather than exclusive contracts with big pharma and the like... Could the computer of the future for the Pediatrician of the Future be the new x60 tablet?? I'm eagerly awaiting the new device which promises to get the SCREEN right, which has been my beef with this series...Personal Pediatrics Affiliate House call Pediatricians need total freedom and mobility to care for children in their natural environments and we are excited to bring Lenovo into the realm of small business as we move forward. Natalie Hodge MD Personal Pediatrics House Call Affiliate Pediatrician St. Louis