As a physician, time is your most valuable asset.

Patients are more invested than ever before in their healthcare. That’s good news, but here’s the fine print: the growing trend towards high deductible plans means that patients who use such plans bear more of the financial burden. And for the downright bad news? It’s up to you, dear clinician, to collect patient financial responsibility. That’s when things get awkward.

Late last week significant healthcare institutions - along with telecommunications, government, and education - were crippled by a rapidly spreading ransomware attack. 

Unlike more well known data breaches, ransomware attacks are not based on the value of compromised data to those who should not have access to it - for example, selling a list of usernames and passwords, or stolen credit card data. Ransomware attacks exploit the value of the compromised data to those who should have access to it. In some cases last week, holding medical records hostage, demanding a ransom from medical institutions.

After gaining access to a vulnerable system, malicious software is able to encrypt the data on the physical machine, as well as network shares, while at the same time attempting to infect other systems on the same network. Once encrypted the files are only accessible to those that have the encryption key. It’s that key these data kidnappers offer to provide - for a price.

The truth is that last week’s ransomware shouldn’t have affected anything.

So much of what we do revolves around communication. That topic is a focus of this blog, largely because we at the company are building a communications tool. Which got us thinking about the importance of good communication when things go wrong. That, in turn, led us to thinking about crises in general - how people respond and how crises can be managed. As we looked around the web and crisis management articles, we pulled some common themes and suggestions, and compiled them here. You’re running a medical practice, so of course we’re not going to tell you and your team how to handle acute medical situations. And any crisis tends to require a similar process as in a medical emergency, so nothing here will be too new. Even so, and even though we’re not a PR firm, we hope that this will be a useful reminder that other situations may come up and help you prepare for them.

We are excited to announce brand new updates to the BeckonCall message logs!

As you know, all of your practice’s communications using the BeckonCall app are documented and accessible, should you ever need to recreate a situation for legal purposes or otherwise. But now, your message logs are simpler to use and more actionable than ever!

We love mobile technology here at BeckonCall. It’s what we do, it’s all we think about. Sometimes, though, we spend so much time working on our mobile platform that we don’t come for air to give props to other people out there making cool apps. So, knowing that we’re all working to make your job as a practice administrator easier and more efficient, here are a few apps we think are worth checking out for you and your providers.

Good medical care can’t be a one-way street. Patients must engage in their own care, being proactive in minimizing the risk of problems where possible and adhering to prescribed therapies when things do go wrong. In addition to the primary goal of improving health, good patient engagement has the added benefit of building the relationship between your practice and the people coming to you for care. This has the potential to boost retention and referrals, making patient engagement programs a good business decision, as well. Furthermore, in the age of value-based care, improving outcomes is a critical piece of reimbursement. And when patients take control of their health, outcomes improve.

Now it’s even easier to create and update your call schedules using BeckonCall!