Month: July 2018

Hospice Consult

What PCPs Should Know About Asking for a Hospice Consult as a PCP

Posted on by VettersEnt

Once you’ve determined that hospice care might be the best course of treatment for one of your patients, it’s time to formulate a plan to discuss hospice care and arrange for a hospice consult. Making that recommendation can be easier said than done, especially since hospice care has many connotations that go along with it. What do you need to know about hospice care for your patients?

What Is Hospice Care?

Whenever someone is facing a life-limiting illness, the goal of their medical care should be a team-oriented approach to care, pain management, emotional support and spiritual support that is customized to the patient. In surveys, many caregivers and families of terminally ill patients indicate that they would have liked information about hospice care when the diagnosis was labeled as terminal, not later in the process. While communicating this might not be comfortable, you should keep this in mind.

Delivering Bad News

One of the best methods for delivering bad news in the medical field is SPIKES. SPIKES represents a 6-stage process: set up, perception, invitation, knowledge, emotion and summary.

  • Set Up: Choose the right environment for the discussion and ensure medical consensus beforehand.
  • Perception: Ask the patient what they know about the illness and any information they already know. Ask the patient what matters most to them and what their wishes are. You should also ask if the patient has heard of hospice care and what they know about it.
  • Invitation: Ask the patient if it’s okay if you share information about hospice care with them.
  • Knowledge: Provide the patient with information before the hospice consult. Let the patient know that hospice can help them meet their goals of staying at home instead of going to the hospital, pain management and emotional support. Also, let the patient know what hospice care provides.
  • Emotion: Express sympathy for the patient. For example, “I know this isn’t good news to hear,” or “I’m sorry that I have to be the one to tell you this.”
  • Summary: When patients get a lot of information at once, it can be hard for them to process things. At the end of the conversation, ask the patient what they understood. You should also state clearly your recommendation that the patient have a hospice consult so they understand what the next step should be.

Recommending a Hospice Consult

You should determine whether or not a patient is eligible for hospice care. Medicare mandates that patients have a life expectancy of 6 months or less if the illness runs the expected course. You must be able to certify the terminal diagnosis and prognosis or re-certify them. To obtain a hospice consult, you must request it from a hospice service provider. The provider will evaluate the patient, determine eligibility and establish a care plan.

Practice Guidance for Your Practice from Vetters Enterprises

Vetters Enterprises specializes in practice management, private practice business support and revenue cycle optimization. We can perform in-depth assessments of your practice or facility and identify potential issues. Let us keep your business as healthy as you keep your patients! Give us a call at (443) 352-0088.

GDPR Compliance with Vetters Enterprises

Breaking Down GDPR and What It Could Mean for US Physicians

Posted on by VettersEnt

There’s a high chance that if you subscribe to 200 mailing lists, you’ve received what feels like 1,000 emails informing you about privacy policy changes. All of these emails are coming in the wake of the European privacy laws called the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). What do you need to know about these laws, even if you’re only treating patients in the United States?

Who Is Affected by GDPR?

Any business that is established in the European Union and any business that handles the personal information of “data subjects” in the European Union, regardless of where they live and their citizenship, is subject. If a doctor works or is based in the EU and has a website that collects any personal data, like a name, email address, phone number of IP address (even through Google Analytics), they are required to comply. Doctors in the UK must follow these new regulations, but US doctors are exempt…for now. There’s a good chance that over the course of the next few years, the United States will put similar regulations into place.

What Happens if Doctors Don’t Comply?

Anyone who doesn’t comply with these new laws can be subject to fines up to 20 million pounds or 4% of the worldwide turnover for the past 12 months depending on which is greater. These steep fines probably won’t be levied against small practices, but instead against any businesses that receive the most complaints. It’s a good idea to practice keeping patient data safe now, instead of running into nasty surprises in the future.

What Should You Do for GDPR?

If GDPR-type regulations go into place in the United States, here’s what you need to know!

  • Personal data includes names, phone numbers, emails, questions, comments, IP addresses and digital data. Even if you do nothing with personal data but store it, you must still comply.
  • You should audit the personal data that you’ve already collected and note where it is from and who it is shared with. Once you do that, you should document the legal basis for the processing of data and send an email to all existing list members to notify them of your privacy policy.
  • When collecting personal data in the future, you must add opt-in wording to all of your forms. It should include the affirmation of “explicit, affirmative and granular consent.” Patients should have no doubt that they are granting their consent and not simply have an automatically-selected box. You should also make your privacy policy so that it is written in plain, easy-to-understand English.
  • Update your cookie policy or add one.
  • Make sure that all of your data processors are GDPR-compliant.

Protect Patient Information with Vetters Enterprises

Vetters Enterprises specializes in practice management, private practice business support and revenue cycle optimization. We can perform in-depth assessments of your practice or facility and identify potential issues. Let us keep your business as healthy as you keep your patients! Give us a call at (443) 352-0088.