OnPulse is looking for a healthcare administrator with clinical nursing experience and an emphasis on care coordination to develop and implement our customer service experience. This person will create and lead the customer service process for our online platform. The ideal person will be a self-starter who can work within a close-knit team in a rapidly changing environment. Additionally the person will have experience in project management and worked as a consultant within healthcare. A passion for improving communication in the healthcare industry is also an essential key for this position.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:
•Create and implement launch process and structure for new and existing clients
•Work with providers in various healthcare roles to successfully implement and manage OnPulse within their practice and referral network.
•Develop and maintain effective relationships with customers. Consult with customers regularly to identify needs and develop action plans to eliminate issues. Responsible for handling escalated customer issues
•Provide strong leadership and ongoing coaching to team members; foster an environment of open learning and continuous improvement.
•Develop and implement appropriate measurements and dashboards to measure the performance of the team and gauge the success of programs.
•Identify opportunities to eliminate customer issues, and waste within the support processes
•Consistently improve processes and focus to the customer support team through routine training and mentoring

Additional Skills

Work requires 5 years of clinical experience and completion of an accredited Bachelor’s degree in nursing. Masters Degree in a clinical area, health administration or Doctorate of Nursing Practice degree preferred. Some travel required.

To Apply:
Please send resume to Jean Cormier jcormier@onpulse.com

Having worked in health care for 27 years, I have always been a firm believer in taking advantage of preventive health services. Wellness check-ups for my babies and myself, preventive screenings, blood pressure and cholesterol checks, twice-annual teeth cleanings—if it’s covered by insurance or recommended as part of a preventive health plan—I’m there. So, it doesn’t surprise me that my daughters, now new moms themselves, take the same approach.

My daughters have been champions of primary care with their friends—often helping them find a primary care physician and encouraging them to get an annual physical. They take advantage of the nurse hotline at their pediatrician’s office to ask questions about their infants little cough or perpetual running nose. But their preventive plan has an added dimension that I did not have when they were little. My girl’s wellness check-ups begin online. That’s where they go to research symptoms, look up information and draw some conclusions before making the decision if it’s time to call a doctor. And, increasingly, it’s becoming a channel where conversation with the physician occurs.

Nearly all doctors are using some type of social media for personal uses, such as Facebook and Twitter. According to the online physician learning collaborative QuantiaMD, nearly 90 percent of physicians reported that they used at least one social media site personally. Gradually, more physicians are also using social media professionally. A study published in The Journal of Medical Internet Research found that a growing number of physicians are using social media to share medical information with each other and to stay up to date. In addition, although in fewer numbers, there are some physicians like Wendy Sue Swanson, a pediatrician and author of the Seattle Mama Doc blog, who see social media as a useful tool for sharing trusted health information with their patients. Dr. Swanson feels that physicians have a responsibility to be online to provide credible health information and to counter some of the misinformation found online. Another pediatrician Natasha Burgert, M.D. from Kansas City, Mo., uses social media to communicate with her adolescent patients. With permission from their parents, Dr. Burgert sends text messages to patients to check up on how they are feeling and she sends them links to relevant information they can find online.

Drs. Burgert and Swanson both understand a key fundamental of communication—you need to use the channels your audience uses in order to reach them. They also know that when you make the process of communication easy and accessible; patients are more willing to use it. Even for my wellness oriented daughters, when they encounter barriers to reaching their doctors, like being put on hold or waiting for an hour in the waiting room for an appointment, they become frustrated and more likely to want to avoid the doctor altogether. But, they are encouraged with the introduction of electronic medical records and the ability to email questions to their doctors and make appointments online. (OnPulse provides the perfect mix of online accessibility and security to allow providers and their patients communicate with ease.)

With the health care industry moving toward a model of population health management and needing to keep people healthy and out of the hospital, patient-doctor communication takes on a whole new level of importance. Physicians who are willing to go where patients are and establish easy avenues for engagement will be the kind of physicians that truly make an impact on the wellness of their patients.

This blog post originally appeared The Buzz Bin, published by CRT/tanaka.

It’s reported that in all, about 4 million Americans are expected to visit the country’s 1,200 free health clinics this year. The avenues for communication are basic and are often not secure. Some clinics have Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) systems; many have nothing more than file folders, computers, fax machines and printouts. Most clinics depend on volunteer providers who are often running on different EMRs that don’t connect with others. This leads to a fragmented system of communication that does not lend itself to streamlined communication for patients and providers. It often increases costs and frustration.

OnPulse had the wonderful opportunity to be a sponsor at the NAFC Annual Summit in San Antonio from October 22 to 24. During the Summit, OnPulse representative Kelly Ross talked with hundreds of attendees who had stories of need, hope and creative solutions. After sharing the capabilities of OnPulse, many said that the possibility of connecting providers and patients in a secure network was very appealing. Furthermore, the reaction was overwhelmingly in support of communicating more efficiently with donors and volunteers. Excited to hear about a secure communication platform that allows them to better coordinate care, many signed up for a free OnPulse demo and account.

The OnPulse network provides health care delivery organizations, such as free clinics, with a secure online network to communicate and connect communities of care. OnPulse helps health clinics ensure that information is delivered to the person intended quickly and securely and provides staff, volunteers and patients with a critical component – peace of mind. OnPulse is a cost effective solution for health clinics and provides hands-on customer service to ensure it meets the needs of the organization.

OnPulse enjoyed the opportunity to connect with medical directors, clinical and pharmacy personnel, management level staff and volunteers from America’s free and charitable clinics.

If you attended the conference but did not have a chance to speak with Kelly, contact us today to set up a live demo of OnPulse. When you do, you’ll be entered into a fantastic drawing for an iPad3.

Don’t wait; start today!

As a patient, you assume that your ER providers are coordinating your care, especially with your primary care physician; however, a study released by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) indicates that care coordination is not only lacking, but is common and problematic. Match this issue with a busy ER and no one walks out feeling confident about the care received.

The effects of miscommunication appear in the form of inappropriate or duplicate treatments, unnecessary medications, expensive tests and sometimes even lethal errors. In a technology-driven world, you might wonder how this can happen. After all, you’re likely thinking, isn’t there an electronic system that’s used?

Many providers use electronic medical records systems, yet only two in 10 doctors and one in 10 hospitals use even a basic electric records system, according to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Additionally, the electronic systems used in one hospital typically do not communicate with other systems. What’s left is a disjointed system of limited communication. Not what you want to experience on any day, let alone on Halloween!

A secure online network, such as OnPulse, can streamline care, allowing real-time views of patient cases, clinical decisions, forms and questions and reduce the need for providers to connect via fax, text or phone. The time and cost savings make OnPulse a must-have. And, a visit to the ER on Halloween, might not take as long. A quick, efficient visit will get you back out with friends and sharing in the ghoulish fun of Halloween!

Be safe tonight! If you find yourself unexpectedly in an ER, ask them about OnPulse and encourage them to get connected. Better Care. Shared. is a good place to be, especially on Halloween!

Does Health Care Need Big Data or Big Insights?

I’m thinking of starting my own medical condition: Big Data Fatigue Syndrome (BDFS) – a cognitive disorder characterized by feelings of frustration, disbelief, and growing apathy caused by repeated exposure to over-hyped technology concepts. Occasionally accompanied by recurring fantasies of slapping publishers.

In the midst of our mad rush to amass yottabytes of “big data” as the cure-all for health care, I wonder if it might be possible to pause briefly and ask one question:

What exactly are you going to do with the data?

Don’t get me wrong: I am a huge advocate of the opportunity in big data (I actually believe it could be revolutionary). But it strikes me that health and life sciences has not really mastered “small data,” yet everyone seems excited to discuss big data. I suppose it is no different in other industries — the hype is rolling along, with Gartner estimating 2013 spending of $34B. That’s more than ice cream money.

Yet there are a few things we’ve learned in other industries and data experiences that might be applicable to health care:

1. If you don’t know what you are going to do with data, there is no way you will collect it properly. Hint: EMR implementers, you might want to look into this.

2. “More” and “Better” are two different and often unrelated concepts.

3. “More” increases costs regardless of how it is used (i.e., storage, cleaning, administration, integration architectures, software licenses, etc.).

4. “Better”, when used properly, increases return on investment (i.e., increased efficacy, productivity, cost containment and avoidance, revenue maximization)

5. If the “more” is not already inherently “better”, it can only become “better” by incurring additional costs.

“More” is a quantitative assessment – one petabyte is more than 500 terabytes. “Better” is a qualitative assessment – it requires context in order to assess. In the world of analytics, that context is directly related to the question you are trying to answer. Without that context, “more” can only ever be “more.”

In a conference I spoke at in July, I posed this question to the audience: do we really want “big data,” or should we be focused on “big insights?” Based on the reaction in the room, I think the question resonated with a lot of health executives. If we raised the caliber of questions we are asking, we would undoubtedly find big data has a dramatic role to play. For example, I’ve written before that big data presents a new opportunity in the science we practice. What sorts of clinical questions could we answer using this analytics-oriented approach…investigations that could potentially offer immediate benefits to patients and physicians? Could we, for example, model a 3-factor relationship between disease prevalence, socio-economic status, and geography in order to better optimize the design of clinical trials? Could we mine behavioral propensities to look for non-genomic indicators of treatment efficacy? Could we predict (not just detect) epidemiological progressions based on real-time consumer data feeds?

For each of these, the question itself opens up a more meaningful dialogue. How exactly could we analyze that? What data could we potentially use? How much data would we likely need? What would be the limitations of the data, and how might we address those limitations? What other questions would we need to answer in order to feel confident in our findings? These questions put us on the road to delivering real value from our data assets, regardless of their size or source.

The discussions we need to be having should be around the insights that could provide the biggest impacts across health and life sciences. Let’s define “better” before we decide how much “bigger.”

Tweets (#wiredhealth) and other social messages are flying out of the Wired Health Conference at record speed this week with most touching on its theme, Living By Numbers.

The conference, attended by doctors, researchers, hospitals and other interested parties, has been a forum for ideas, connections and opportunities to better understand the connectivity of healthcare.

One article that addresses big data and its transformation of the healthcare industry, posted by Daniela Hernandez with Wired, offers a great glimpse into the health information landscape and it’s direction toward the future. OnPulse is an active participant in this environment and is excited about the future of health communication and collaboration.

Read the article, Big Data is Transforming Healthcare, below.

NEW YORK CITY — Big Data is all around us. It’s in the way we shop, do our finances, and tweet. What does Big Data even mean, you ask? To some, it’s more information than your laptop can handle. Others define it as melding data from different sources and seeing what patterns emerge.

“I’m a photographer, so that [explanation] didn’t mean much to me,” said Rick Smolan Oct. 15 here at the inaugural Wired Health Conference in New York. Then the Against All Odds Productions CEO ran into Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer. She described Big Data, he said, as “watching the planet develop a nervous system.”

Continue reading at Wired.com.

At OnPulse, we want patients and their care providers to communicate effectively and expect ample information about their treatment in language they can understand and in a format that is easy-to-access. And, we want them to expect that when they go home, they feel prepared and confident to manage their health care needs and achieve personal wellness goals.

Engaging patients in their care is not only the right thing to do; health care reform demands it. This month gives us and countless other health care organizations the opportunity to emphasize its importance.

OnPulse helps patients and families’ build their confidence by providing a secure online network that can be accessed anywhere, on any device. A unique center of care, OnPulse provides a platform for communication with ALL care providers, regardless of practice, and helps individuals effectively manage their health. We see it as our joint responsibility to maximize opportunities for choices through Better Care. Shared.

To learn more about Patient-Centered Care Awareness Month, click here.

To learn more about how patients can create a free OnPulse account, click here.

How do you plan to celebrate Patient-Centered Care Awareness Month?

After watching this video, take a minute to watch our live OnPulse demo and learn more about how OnPulse innovates your communication, collaboration and relationships with colleagues and patients. OnPulse – Better Care. Shared.

OnPulse bridges the current health care technology gap by bringing providers, their colleagues and patients together in one network with the capability to communicate, share and store information and collaborate in the care of patients.

OnPulse, a health care communication and care coordination network, is now inviting providers and health care consumers to create a free OnPulse account at www.onpulse.com. For an individual patient with multiple health care providers, it’s essential to ensure everyone in charge of care is communicating. For example, individuals managing an acute or chronic condition, caring for an aging adult or parenting young children who interact with multiple doctors frequently. Seeing all providers on the same page is priceless.

OnPulse compliments current health care technology (electronic medical records, personalized health records and patient portals) by bridging the gap between information and communication. As such, OnPulse brings providers, colleagues and patients together in a single, easy-to-use online environment. It also connects health care consumers and their providers – on any device, at any time – and allows users to exchange personalized resources, create connected health teams and share referral lists.

Developed by North Carolina Maternal Fetal Medicine physician Corey Booker, M.D., the OnPulse network helps providers and their employees reduce the flow of faxes, unsecured emails, texts and phone calls. Exceeding HIPAA standards and verified by a third party, OnPulse is secure and easy to navigate. OnPulse launched in July and is working to significantly build its network to showcase its benefit to all providers and patients nationwide.

OnPulse is working toward the goal of improving the quality of care and reducing health care costs through better efficiency. The network’s capabilities speak directly to the needs outlined in the recently published Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, titled, “Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America.” As part of the report, IOM highlights important next steps for the nation and encourages strategies to improve communication, collaboration, quality of care and costs. Furthermore, improved communication and collaboration has been shown to increase healthy outcomes and is a cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act. OnPulse complements and extends technologies currently in use by practices and health systems by providing a secure online environment for all communication.

To create a FREE account, visit our homepage. Sign up takes less than five minutes. Once in the network, connect with others securely with just an email address.

Have questions or interested in a demo of the OnPulse network? Contact Louise Bannon at lbannon@onpulse.com.

BY LAURA OLENIACZ
loleniacz@heraldsun.com; 919-419-6636

DURHAM – Entrepreneur and physician Corey Booker is trying to build up a business around an online social networking tool that he believes will help improve communication between patients and multiple doctors.

Booker started framing the idea for the business early last year. Starting out working at night from home, he initially hired a team of developers in Australia to start building a website that would allow doctors to communicate with each other, and with patients, about a patients’ individual health problems.

In July, his company, known as OnPulse, launched its first product: a website that allows doctors and patients to sign up, create profiles, and invite their physicians to join in order to share images, messages, or other information. The company has a goal of reaching 1,000 users by Sept. 30.

Booker said he believes the product stands out in the crowd because it’s a social networking tool, it allows patients to directly communicate with doctors, and it also allows doctors to form online health teams.

He also added that it allows doctors from different practices or hospitals to connect and share information about a single patient, who might be seeing a doctor outside of his or her normal doctor’s office and for whom medical records and information might be otherwise shared ore exchanged by phone or fax, he said.

“OnPulse really breaks outside of the silos of communication that exist in today’s current technology solutions,” Booker said. “It allows you, as a doctor, to communicate securely with other health care professionals, taking care of the same patient via electronic, or via the OnPulse as a communication platform.”

Booker is a physician himself. He got his medical degree at the Creighton University School of Medicine, he said he recently completed a fellowship in maternal fetal medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and said he’s expected to start working as a physician at Duke University Hospital.

It was an experience he had with one particular patient who made him feel he was the “face of care” during his residency training in obstetrics and gynecology at the Penn State College of Medicine, as well as a personal experience following surgery, that urged him want to try to respond to communication issues in the health care system.

In addition, he also said that his father, a plumber, taught him to do something about the problems he sees – and not to “sit around and complain about it.”

“It bothered me for two months before I really did anything,” Booker said. “I said, you know, what the only thing you can do is, starting taking those steps forward and see if the doors open. And they just remained open, and I kept walking through them.”

The company now employs 10 people from an office in the building off Duke Street that also houses Parker and Otis, as well as Bull City Co-working. Booker said the company is backed by a single, private angel investor.

The business model works so that patients are free to sign up, while providers can have a can have a free account, or a choice between two paid options.

The company isn’t releasing current user information, but Booker did say that their number of users is significant enough that they want to hire one to two sales people.

Louise Bannon, communications specialist with OnPulse, said in an email that the company’s online product is not meant to replace medical systems’ electronic medical record systems, or the patient portals that allow patients to access their information electronically.

Federal legislation passed in 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, or the HITECH Act, that was created to increase the use of electronic records by physicians and hospitals.

Created as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the legislation included funding to encourage the increased use of electronic health records.

In July, Duke Medicine News and Communications announced the implementation of the first phase of an electronic medical records project that’s expected to link all of the system’s doctors’ offices, clinics and hospitals using a single integrated electronic record technology.

The system made a $500 million investment, according to the release from Duke, in the project that’s expected to allow system doctors to share test results, lab reports, and other information.

“No, OnPulse is not meant to replace an (electronic medical record), patient portal or (personal health record),” Bannon said in an email. “OnPulse compliments by bridging the gap between the healthcare technology that currently exists by bringing providers, their colleagues and patients together in one network with the capability to communicate, share and store information and collaborate in the care of patients.”

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