RHetoric

I’ve walked a pretty straight line most of my life.  Aside from a lead foot that has resulted in a couple of speeding tickets and a few stern warnings, I’ve managed to avoid the long arm of the law.

So, I must admit to a perverse excitement when I found out I’d get to visit the West Valley Detention Center in San Bernardino County California.  My first trip to jail!

Our client Talyst has equipped all seven of San Bernardino County’s corrections facilities with InSite remote medication dispensers.

Terry Fillman, the health services supervisor for San Bernardino Corrections, was kind enough to show me around-proving that the best salesman is indeed a happy customer.

Terry had to have all of my security information in advance-name, birth date, drivers license number-they run a pretty tight ship at the corrections facilities-nothing is left to chance.

As Terry walked and talked us through the halls and various security checks, I was admittedly a tiny bit disappointed by the lack of drama.  Where were the bars? The inmates clanging?  This isn’t like the movies!

But, when we got to the healthcare wing I was sated by the, well, coolness of it all.

Before Talyst came along, nurses had to pop out each inmate’s medication from a blister pack of 30 pills, a process that took hours to complete and was riddled with opportunity for medication waste and errors.

Now, the medication is churned out of the InSite for Corrections remote dispenser, each dose in an individual packet, bar-coded and identifying the patient.  The video below shows a medication run, which is divided by unit numbers for easy sorting.

What used to take four nurses four hours EACH to complete, now only takes 45 minutes with InSite!

Here is a look at the inside of the machine and the canisters that house individual medications.

Medication inventory is kept neatly organized inside the carousel.

Clearly Terry Fillman is an excellent press reference!  Stay tuned for upcoming articles featuring Terry and his role in implementing InSite for San Bernardino Corrections.

Who is your most loyal, diehard customer? You know, the one who can’t say enough good things about your products and your team; the one who renews every year without question; the one who feels like they owe some measure of their success to you; the one who would sell the socks off your sales team if he spent a week making sales calls for you.

You know who I’m talking about. So is he working for you?

If you are selling into the healthcare or government markets, you definitely want this diehard customer on your sales team. That is because his word is gold in these markets. Prospects tend to be hesitant or cautious of vendors. But when they hear of someone (your diehard customer) like themselves has already taken the leap and reaped the rewards, they are going to be much more willing to take the leap, too.

As a PR professional, I love my clients’ most loyal customers. I can take a single case study and turn it into a feature article in an influential trade publication; I can use it for speaking submissions and award nominations; I can use it to pitch bloggers and analysts; and I can include them in press kits at trade shows.

I’m really proud of the fact that our team at RH Strategic just won a Communicator of the Year Award for this kind of work. We also just finished off a white paper on how to capture and maximize your customers’ best stories. Feel free to send me an e-mail and I’ll send it along.

The message is simple: you would ask your waiter a few questions about the menu; so why wouldn’t you ask your doctor a few questions about your care?

I was talking health reform with my primary care physician last week, and she made an interesting comment:  “One of my biggest frustrations with healthcare is that most of my patients just expect me to tell them what to do.”

Whoa - this was not a criticism of Medicare, or Obama, or insurers, or anyone else in the supply chain - it was directed at the patients themselves!

As patients, we tend to think of our primary care physicians as the managers of our care.  But in truth, they are simply contributors.  Our insurance companies, specialists, and even friends and family are all contributors.  This can be frustrating and even vexing, but it is a golden opportunity for health reformers, and for IT.

If IT can make medical information more accessible, portable, and personalized, perhaps we patients can be empowered to ask informed questions and contribute to decision-making about our care.  We have a long way to go.  But some of the emerging tools within Google Health and HealthVault are encouraging.

Even if a patient never maintains a personal health record, asking a few questions at the doctor’s office could vastly improve the quality of one’s care.