Psychiatric Times has a recent article on using the Internet to connect with patients.
The authors bring up a whole group of points that I agree with:
Email is already verging on obsolescence for people under 30
The patients under 30 don’t understand why anyone providing a service wouldn’t answer text messages
Psychiatrists tend to be late-adopters of technology
Email [...]
There were nice posts this weekend on Steve Daviss’s blog and ShrinkRap regarding the new regulations in Maryland for doing telepsychiatry with patients in the public mental health system. (The state calls this “Telemental Health,” which seems like an odd word to use given that I think “Telepsychiatry” is used by most other people.)
We’ve [...]
Over the past few months, I’ve been doing more and more rating scales with patients. When people first come in, they download and fill out an initial form which asks the usual demographic information like addresses and phone numbers but also includes a patient health questionnaire (PHQ) . The PHQ screens for somatization disorder, panic [...]
Also tagged ASRS, BPRS, disadvantages, HAMA, HAMD, MMSE, PHQ, SPMSQ, YBOCS, YMRSIt’s surprising how few technical difficulties my patients have had with Skype, but there have been a few.
With one exception, all the technical troubles any of my patients have encountered have been the very first time that they’ve set up Skype. Although I tell everyone to test it out before they try it for their [...]
A recent post on the Skype site is pretty interesting:
With the right gear, you’ll soon be able to make Skype video calls in 720p HD. The latest beta version of Skype for Windows now supports HD-quality video (1280 x 720 resolution at up to 30 frames per second), giving you an even smoother and richer [...]
I’m not exactly sure when the State of Maryland is going to enact regulations for telepsychiatry, but I’ve finally put together a basic informed consent form for telepsychiatry for my practice.
I tried to write it in fairly plain English, unlike my HIPAA form , which is so complicated that I don’t really understand half of [...]
The office for my practice and my office at home both get a little cluttered at time. I try to keep my practice office relatively organized because I think most patients feel better that way, and I try to keep my office at home less cluttered because I feel better that way.
At work, I’ve been [...]
Over the weekend, I decided to switch to Google Voice. I put messages on all my phones (my cell, my practice office and my office at Hopkins) directing people to call me on my Google Voice number and have started the process of letting everyone like my bank and others know that my number has [...]
Also tagged email, Google Voice, Skype hours, voicemailI mentioned in my last post that I wasn’t recording any of my Skype sessions with patients. The reason is not the simple knee-jerk reaction of “protecting the patient’s privacy” but something else.
The fact is, the privacy issue isn’t that hard to address. Lots of medical information is encrypted and encryption is the key enabling [...]
Many years ago, I was attending an administrative meeting for clinical matters. As was the norm for these meetings, the leader of the meeting was going through new requirements for yet more senseless documentation. The intent was good, but everyone in the room (including the leader) knew that the need for increased record keeping wasn’t [...]
Also tagged consent form, digital records, documentation, informed consent, medical records, privacy, recording
ADHD advantages AES AFAT American Telemedicine Association atoms bits blizzard Clayton Christensen countertransference digital records disadvantages disruptive innnovation dokuwiki EBM emergencies EMR encryption ER evidence based medicine eye contact face-to-face google wave HIPAA HIPPA informed consent logitech Maryland Board of Physicians medical records office space password PHI prescriptions privacy recording security skype standard of care technophobia telephone teletransference transference ubuntu weather webcam
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