Medical assistants are an important part of a clinic or a doctor’s office. Their primary role is to ensure that the office of doctors or the medical centers where they are employed runs without any glitches or hindrance. Their role can keep on changing depending on the place where they are employed or the need of the situation prevailing at that point in time.

In small offices or clinics, a usually performs a variety of duties both clinical and administrative. In a larger set-up however, where there are many medical assistants at work, they may be assigned specialized tasks. Generally, the job of a medical assistant can be classified as Clerical, Administrative, Clinical and Specialists.

Duties that are repetitive but crucial for the smooth running of a hospital or clinic are often performed by a clerical. Their job involves answering or making phone calls, scheduling appointments, checking mails and type memos and letters as dictated by the doctors.

An administrative usually handles tasks that pertain specifically to medical therapy and administrative part of it. They handle medical claim forms, manage and update patients’ files, schedule appointments and tests, arrange for admission to the clinic or hospitals and also look after the billing and book-keeping of the clinic.

Clinical work according to the laws of the specific state. Their role is more medical related than that of an administrative or clerical. Their work includes preparing the patients for diagnosis, taking the medical history of the patient and assisting the physician during the examination. Their role includes explaining the medical procedures to the patient, call pharmacies for prescription, collect samples for lab testing and ensure that all clinical equipments are sterilized properly. Experienced can also draw blood, remove sutures and take readings on the electrocardiograms if needed.

Specialized are those who have gained expertise in a particular field. Their role in the hospital or clinic signifies their expertise. For instance, a medical lab assistant is expected to perform duties that are lab specific such as testing and documenting species. Those who have expertise in the field of ophthalmology will work in close coordination with optometrists in testing the eyes of the patient, instruction on various aspects of eye care and proper use of eye lens.

Job opportunities for are immense and growing every year. With health care facilities expanding rapidly and the enormous growth of outpatient treatment facilities, more jobs are being created for medical assistants every year.

The link between body, mind, and spirit is fast being accepted by many who would just in recent years have thought this to be a luxury at best and a scam at worst. In Roaring Fork Valley, they’re ahead of the curve in realizing that this is the only way that true healing can ever really happen.

You don’t want to just go to the doctor’s and be handed a quick diagnosis that involves some serious medication with unknown side effects or some major surgery. Nor do you want to be automatically subjected to a battry of tests that the medical community deems necessary mostly to save itself from any possible lawsuits that might arise from a test not ordered.

It seems as if even the most conservative people nowadays are familiar with things like yoga classes, tai chi practices, and acupuncture. They’re even offered in local gyms and health centers. So a naturalistic doctor may order the tests if they seem necessary, but he or she will also prescribe things like one of the above practices or a vitamin or herbal supplement regime.

That’s the difference. Instead of calling it alternative medicine, it might more correctly be called complementary medicine. Eastern and western medicine are best used together. After all, the medicine we call mainstream and traditional is really only mainstream and traditional here in the western hemisphere. There are many other places in the world where eastern and other practices would just as likely be the norm.

Sure, there can be abuses and charlatans as some claim. But there are many who offer valid methodologies and don’t overcharge for providing them. They let you make your own decisions after they provide you with information.

That’s the kind of complimentary medicine you want to take part in. Energy healing that’s done with acupuncture, reiki, or therapeutic touch may seem very esoteric and strange, but really a lot of the world understands the body to be an energy system that can be affected by touch or hands held above that part of the body where the energy flow is blocked.

This can be a great addition to any kind of medicine or surgery you might have to have because it fosters healing. Even the most conservative members of the medical community realize that a positive outlook affects the ability to heal.

So in that respect, there’s an awareness that complementary practices such as relaxation techniques and deep breathing as well as positive imagery and self-talk is a great way to assist in fostering health and well being. So don’t pick just one or the other. Let these two systems of medicine work together in your life, either to maintain your health or to heal from a serious problem you may be having.

An assessment program is an essential tool that would help improve and organization. It is designed to identify the areas that need special attention. An expert or a professional in the field of assessment is employed to do the job. Call Center Assessment providers provide experts who have call center leadership background and understand fully the operation of the industry. He is expected to identify the specific areas that need attention and provide the organization with an expert solution.

Call center assessment could be likened to an executive medical checkup where early detection of any sign of health problem could be addressed and further problems could be prevented. So call centers health is assessed so that early detection of minor inefficiencies could be addressed and corrected. To effectively assess the call center’s performance, each area in the operation is specified and reviewed and these are the following:

- Review the call center structure if and whether it supports the vision and mission of the company

- Customer Relations. The customer satisfaction is assessed through survey forms or customer feedbacks.

- Job Owner relationship with his employee. Satisfied customers are result of good service and good service are result of satisfied employee. The satisfaction levels of employees are gauged.

- Quality assurance and performance. Quality assurance forms and reports are analyzed and study how quality data is applied. The assessment is conducted to take your call center performance to next level.

- Effective coaching and supervision. Observe if coaching sessions are effective.

- Training. Analyze and identify the ways to improve the efficiency of the training program.

- Hiring and Staffing. Analyze how hiring are conducted and identify the areas which needed improvement.

- Staff Utilization. It should answer the question of having the right person on the right position all the time.

- Work Order Management. These would lead to the study of workforce management processes such as:

1. Forecasting methodology

2. Staffing and scheduling

3. Real time management practices

4. Effective workforce management team.

- Process and Information Management. Observe and analyze call ‘ handling.
Service Level Agreements and Key Performance Indicators. Key Service Indicators of KPI’s shows that the SLM is properly functioning. The weak areas must be improved.

- Call Management. The call routing is observed in the following stages Site by site routing rules Menu choices Prioritization of queue Transfer volumes and protocols Skills-based routing rules Technology

- Security Management. Assess the scope of security and disaster recovery (or business continuity) plan and the ability to meet objectives during a crisis.

- Interaction Management. Analyze how effective customer interaction is managed

- Web Self Service. Assess how effective this e- support.

- Contact Center Management. It is the central point of contact with customers. Call Center software and applications are software and tools help improve the initial customer experience and impression. Customers should be given access options and alternatives, streamlining customer transactions and creating a system that would facilitate easy follow ups.

- Analysis And Reporting. How good are our reporting tools and applications? Is the system providing the needed data for analysis?

- Technical. Is the system current and up to date? Are we getting the best out of our systems, and high efficiency on their performance?

The final presentation includes recommendations and risks and input on suggested action plan. All of these is a result of several days of assessment work which is done with in the work area. Assessment identifies and at the same time recommends solution to the problems found.

Risk Management

Alternate Risk Transfer is a fancy way of saying alternate methods of insurance and risk management, of which there are many. From the most basic alternative of going without insurance (self-insuring) to so-called “program business captives”, there are a wide variety of strategies from which to choose.

To understand why ART strategies are so popular it is important to understand a few facts about insurance pricing.

?Insurance Premiums are related primarily to economic cycles NOT primarily to claims.

“The claims that recent increases in medical malpractice liability insurance premiums in Connecticut are attributable to overly generous jury verdicts are unfounded. The more likely explanation for the sudden rise in rates is the decrease in investment earnings of the medical malpractice insurers…” Professor Tom Baker, Director, Insurance Law Center, University of Connecticut School of Law

Every time insurance industry profits decline sharply, the industry declares an “insurance crisis” – rates go up sharply, deductibles rise and underwriting guidelines tighten.

?Insurance Premiums have risen much faster than claims.

Median medical malpractice payments rose 35 Percent from 1997 to 2001 (an average of 8.5% a year).
Average premiums for single health insurance coverage increased 39 percent over that time period (9.5% per year). (Source: National Practitioner Database)

?A small number of insured may be responsible for a large percentage of losses.

National Practitioners Database:

For example, in Florida, 6% of the doctors were found to be responsible for 51% of the malpractice claims. 2,674 out of 44,747 doctors have paid two or more malpractice payments. These doctors are responsible for 51% of total malpractice payments.

24 Florida physicians have paid 10 or more malpractice settlements since 1990.

Needless to say, the 94% pay for the poor claims experience of the 6%.
ART Strategies

Conventional insurance markets are one-year indemnity contracts designed to transfer specific hazard risks. Typical features of an ART strategy are:

?Multi-year, multi-line coverage

?Coverage tailored to special need of insured

?Provides coverage not generally available in the marketplace

?Risk retention by insured

There is a multifarious trade-off between risk retention, complexity and cost among the various different ART strategies. Not surprisingly, the plans with the least risk, complexity and expense generally provide the least benefit. As more risk is retained, the greater and greater benefits can be obtained. Of course, complexity and administrative expenses grow as well. Windward Harbor can help you find, execute and manage the right strategy for you. We have listed the basic ART strategies below.

?Guaranteed Cost Insurance Plans

Traditional insurance coverage.

?Loss Sensitive Insurance Plans

Insurance coverage for a specific insured where the final premium is based on the insured’s losses.

?Risk Purchasing Groups (RP’s)

Risk Purchasing Groups were created by the Liability Risk Retention Act of 1986. The purpose of the act was to break through the myriad of state insurance regulation in the hopes of making it easier for groups to purchase liability insurance. The act allows groups of individuals combine to purchase liability insurance while prohibiting states (regulators) or insurance companies from discriminating against them.

?Self-Insured Retention Plans (SIRS)

The primary difference between a deductible and a self-insured retention is that a deductible amount counts against the total limits of the policy, reducing total coverage, whereas a self-insured retention plan provides limits of coverage in excess of the self-insured retention so that the amount payable under the policy is not reduced by the amount of the retention.

?Protected Cell Captives (Segregated Portfolio Companies)

PCCs (SPC’s in certain domiciles) are essentially rent-a-captive companies that ensure complete separation among program participants. According to the laws of specific domiciles, PCCs or SPC’s generally guarantee complete separation of each cell’s assets, capital, and surplus from each other. Because they can achieve economies of scale, rent-a-captives make captive insurance affordable for companies that would not otherwise be large enough to profitably own and operate their own captive.
Windward Harbor LLC owns a BVI licensed Segregated Portfolio Company – Windward Harbor SPC Ltd, which provides rent-a-captive services for selected clients on an annual fee basis. Each segregated portfolio has its own economic ownership, tax Id number and files a separate tax return.

?Self-Insured Groups & Pools (SIG’s)

While the concept differs slightly from state to state, SIGs work similarly in the nearly 40 states in which they are legal. A group of employers form a nonprofit corporation or trust and hire a professional to manage it. This new entity then purchases the insurance, meaning the SIG members essentially “own” their own workers’ comp company.

The group pools the money it otherwise would pay an insurer, earning investment income on funds held in reserve. If a SIG program cuts down on workplace injuries and claim costs, the surplus, or “dividend,” from premiums is returned to members.

Of course, if a company or the group as a whole has catastrophic losses, members pay the difference, up to a limit. Above that point, the group buys excess insurance to offset a single large loss or a combination of losses.

?Captives (See Captive Services)

A captive insurance company is an insurance company that is owned and controlled by its insureds. According to Captive Insurance Companies Association (CICA), the first captive ever formed was in the late 1800s, and was designed to write more cost effective fire insurance policies for New England textile manufacturers that were hit hard by increasing market rates.

Captives gained popularity in the 1980s as a result of the US liability crisis, particularly in the medical arena.

As captives have continued to grow over time, employers are considering employee benefits as a new or expanded coverage. The more recent hard market and changing economy is expected to spur even more and rapid industry growth yet this year.

Single Parent (Pure) Captive: A single parent captive is owned and controlled by one owner, typically the parent organization, and is formed as a subsidiary company. The captive subsidiary underwrites policies for the parent, and solely bears the risks of the parent.

?Group Captive: A group captive is owned and controlled by multiple insureds. They may or may not be related entities or a part of a homogeneous group like industry or trade groups. Typically, companies of similar size pool their risks in an industry captive with customized insurance plans. Similarly, companies of similar size in different industries can also form group captives to enjoy the benefits of a captive model. More recently, associations have been forming association captive insurance companies to offer captive services as part of their membership benefits.

?Agency Captive: Agency captives are companies typically owned by groups of brokers or other insurance intermediaries and are typically structured like rent-a-captives.

?Risk Retention Groups

Risk Retention Groups were also created by the Liability Risk Retention Act of 1986, which provides for streamlined regulation. A RRG is an insurance company in every regard but has one very important regulatory distinction. Every RRG chooses a single state in which to be domiciled and regulated. The act provides that the RRG is then eligible to do business in all states.

?Program Business Captives

Associations, regional producers and corporations who desire to assume some selected third-party exposure.

Prague, the modern capital of Czech Republic enjoys its position on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s list of properties internationally deemed to have “outstanding universal value”. The list of nine hundred eleven properties includes sites with either cultural or natural value. Prague would fall into the first category as it is a cultural and historical relic as the former capital of the Holy Roman Empire. As a result, the city is a popular tourist destination and it has a large number of hospitals that provide high levels of medical care with a generally multilingual staff.

Unicare Medical Center is a private medical center that provides comprehensive services to the patients. It offers a complete range of medical facilities for both adults and children. The pediatric care especially, is known to be excellent. Most of the doctors at the hospital are multilingual and the hospital provides a separate emergency line in German. The hospital offers vaccinations, preventive check-ups and also provides treatment for chronic conditions. The hospital has a well equipped ultrasound department, X-ray, mammography, ECG and a full on-site laboratory.

National Polyclinic is a public hospital ranked among the most prestigious medical centers of the city. The center provides an array of general and specialized services and is staffed by doctors with high levels of expertise from various areas of specializations. Hospital staff is well versed in German, English, French and Russian. The building is located opposite the National Theatre and the hospital is on the third floor. The specializations of the hospital are gynecology, neurology, cardiac treatment, pulmonary surgery, internal medicine, orthopedics, dermatology and urolgoy. In addition to these specializations, the clinic provides diagnostic and ambulatory services.

Another medical centre in the city offering a wide range of medical services is Hospital Na Franti?ku. The address for the facility is Na Franti?ku 847/8, Prague. The hospital provides ambulance services, while the medical facilities are equipped for surgery, radiology, orthopedics, clinical biochemistry, neurosurgery, rehabilitation and treatment for long term disability. The ICU at the hospital is outfitted with the latest technology in order to deal with all kinds of medical exigencies.

With the latest technology for diagnostic and treatment purposes, Nemocnice na Homolce located at Roentgenova 2, Praha 5 can be accurately described as the best equipped hospital in Prague. The hospital frequently receives patients referred from smaller clinics within the country and from clinics in other countries. The hospital is mainly focused on treating cardiovascular issues, but it does offer treatment in other areas such as clinical immunology, psychiatry, urology, dialysis machines, hematology, general surgery, nuclear medicine, pathology and rehabilitation. The hospital is accredited by JCI (Joint Commission International) and is dedicated to taking care of the needs of its foreign patients

The American Medical Centre provides reliable healthcare facilities and employs American and Czech doctors to care for the patients. This Medical Centre has offices in Moscow, Kiev, Warsaw, St. Petersburg and Budapest. The medical branches for which they provide services are dermatology, gynecology acupuncture, cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery, pediatric care, orthopedics, radiology and rehabilitation. The hospital provides ambulance services also.

Canadian Medical Centre is one of the longest-operating international clinics in the city of Prague. The hospital is located at Veleslavínská 30, Prague 6. The clinic mostly provides primary care; however it also provides hospitalization assistance and an on-site pharmacy.

Making medical office automated is all the rage these days and why not; making things computerized can get you things done quite easily, error-free and on the time! Like any other office, medical office too requires careful attention in day-to-day activities; in fact, managing medical office could be more difficult and may require utter attention as there you do not deal with files and folders but patients!

Management of the health care center is not all beer and skittles. It is the business one should maintain a perfect rapport with customers failure to which can get the clinic/center all shot to hell. Therefore, more and more health care providers who own medical center prefer to go for medical answering system that has multiple functionalities. Let us see few of the most important features…

Medical Answering System (MAS) is all about answering the patients’ calls automatically. It is the software that deals with every call. The software is speech based and the voice used is very soft and friendly. The owner can tailor the answers and feed his/her own statements too. In addition, the medical answer service system can be set according to the health care provider’s expertise.

The system of medical answering is designed and developed using cutting edge technology. Such system is very useful for the health care providers who are as busy as bee. The software can tackle almost all medical management tasks including booking the patients’ appointments without involving medical staff (human) at front desk. Furthermore, a two-way Google Sync system can send the whole data of patients’ appointment to owner’s Blackberry that he or she can edit or reschedule.

Medical Answering System can have unique feature multilingualism. It can have option to set international languages such as French, Chinese and Spanish etc. This helps in communication with patients who are from countries with those mother tongues.

There are many health care providers who use medical answering tool as patient reminder. Such feature automatically calls the patients as scheduled by the health care provider. In this way, the reminder or notification can be sent to the patients in regard to due visit, blood test or even the regimen/dietary advice according to concerned health care provider.

MAS can help managing the medical office and can serve as virtual medical receptionist. It can perform multiple tasks required at the health care center that human medical front desk staff may find difficult to do.