Health Tech Interview with John Sung Kim of DoctorBase
I have a history of making products for consumers, so I wanted to get some insight into why hospitals aren’t meeting low-hanging government requirements to engage their patients online—why they seem not to be following the lessons of 20 years of successful web companies when they build their “patient portals”.
Fortunately John Sung Kim, General Manager of DoctorBase, a Kareo Company, wrote an article the other day for EMR & EHR that highlights an interesting perspective on why hospitals have struggled to reach the low requirements:
Yet, even the subsequently reduced goal [to get 5% of patients to use online hospital tools] was difficult to achieve for most organizations, especially smaller independent practices that were dealing with a confluence of changing competitive markets, new billing codes, and mandated technological updates. Any digital marketer with two years of experience running ad campaigns could have told us this would become the case.
In other words: if you want people to use your software you have to market it properly—and patient portals haven’t been marketed.
John was kind enough to answer a few follow up questions—thanks John!
Quick Aside: A Crash Course in US Health Tech Law
The federal government setup a series of incentives to help accelerate the pace of software tech adoption in hospitals.
These incentives are called “Meaningful Use” incentives, because they require hospital staff to meaningfully use their electronic medical record systems.
Stage Two of Meaningful Use just took effect and, among other things, requires providers get a percentage of their patients using the hospital’s online tools for health record management.
Q: It seems like hospitals should be able to solve the five reasons you outlined with a barebones marketing and design team on their website, is there a reason this hasn’t happened at practices?
John: Hospitals usually spend a lot of money on established marketing agency partnerships that go way back. There’s not much incentive for a mid to large agency to build a portal when they could be buying billboards and local tv spots. And you should see how much they spend on events.
Q: Do providers only care about portals as far as achieving MU2 incentives?
John: I think providers only care about Meaningful Use Stage II for now, because they see portals as creating more messages and more work – someone needs to show them portals can be time savers and money makers. Like someone needs to make the killer app for my Apple Watch.
Q: Is there a way to directly (or indirectly, but easy to explain to small practices) incentivize a portal that will help them prioritize better design?
John: Not really, but if you find one, lmk!
Okay, so that last question was somewhat leading, but considering John’s years of selling software to practices of every size, it seemed appropriate.
Thanks John for adding some more insight. I do expect we’ll get some Healthcare Horror Stories involving software soon, but it’s Friday so let’s stay positive…
How good of an experience have you had with your doctor’s patient portal? Did you message your doctor, easily find results? Let us know, join the discussion below!
John Sung Kim is the founder and founding CEO of Five9 (NASDAQ: FIVN), widely recognized as the leading company in the contact center industry. He’s acted as a consultant to numerous startups including LGC Wireless (acquired by ADC), Qualys (NASDAQ: QLYS), RingCentral (NYSE: RNG), Odesk (merger w/ Elance), 6connect (funded by Hummer Winblad) and M5 Networks (acquired by ShoreTel). Follow him @JohnSungKim.
