Another major hurdle in the Obama Administration's attempt to overhaul the U.S. healthcare system was cleared on Christmas Eve when the U.S. Senate passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
This move inched the United States closer to healthcare reform, but there remains a lot of work to be done. When the Senate and U.S. House return to session later this month, they must begin the lengthy process of merging the bills they passed.
Supporters of reform consider these steps not only a milestone in history, but a life-changing event considering final approval is expected to guarantee access to quality, affordable healthcare to every American.
With big news like this, George W. Smith, senior vice president/partner with Hayward, California-based Tully Wihr Company, gives a distributor's perspective on the latest and greatest things happening in healthcare related to the printing industry.
Print Professional (PP): Why did you start serving the healthcare sector?
George W. Smith (GS): When Don Knoll, CFC, Charlie Miller, CFC, and Gene Gallagher, CFC, purchased the Tully-Wihr Company (TW) back in the early '70s, one of Don's larger accounts was the Palo Alto Medical Clinic (still our client today). They started looking at healthcare and how we could improve on the services we provided to them. "Just In Time'" was the big thing back then, so we looked at how we could provide better service and separate TW from the competition and the OCC Program (On-site Cycle Count) was created. OCC is a partnership with the clients' major departments, usually nursing floors, admitting, ER, data processing, etc. [The] forms they use are counted weekly, delivered and put away with copies of the delivery receipts [which are sent] to accounting. Today, of course, with the changes in technology, TW has added many other services.
PP: What is your company's best-selling product?
GS: TW doesn't sell a specific product, we sell solutions streamlining processes, culminating in a reduction in the cost of doing business. TW's online solutions, Web.ec and TWeb solution are the newest offerings we have to achieve these goals. Depending on the need of the client, either Web.ec or TWeb solution will streamline their ordering, printing, tracking and billing processes.
PP: Do you have any new products in the works—if so, please explain.
GS: TW's current owners, Gerry Knoll-president, Doug Dunn, CDC-COO, George W. Smith, CDC- senior vice president, Jim Knoll-vice president and Donny Dunn, CDC-president/manufacturing are positioning TW for the future. We've created alliances to provide physicians with electronic healthcare records software to convert from paper-based to electronic environments plus providing connectivity from their office to the healthcare facility they're affiliated with. TW has become a Value Added Reseller (VAR) for a software company that provides connectivity for legacy databases so they can all work together and disseminate information as needed via one platform. The software can be used in any industry, including healthcare. We also have a VAR for a software company that converts paper forms to electronic forms with bi-directional database connectivity.
PP: What do you think is the single biggest problem in the healthcare sector and how does your company help fight these issues?
GS: The biggest issue I see with the healthcare industry is the lack of standardization—they all do the same thing, but have their own way of documenting it. Whenever we can, we work with hospital groups to standardize, streamline and reduce the cost of doing business. This may be by converting a hospital group to the same physician's order, making sure they're compliant with JCHO regulations, redesigning forms for scanning or converting from paper to electronic.
PP: What do you see as the next big thing in the healthcare industry as we move into the next decade?
GS: The next decade will bring a lot of changes in the healthcare industry, the transition from paper-based systems to electronic systems should be completed or near completion. Our job is to assist the industry in making that transition utilizing open database architecture, I can't stress this enough, the use of open database architecture. No one knows exactly where the future will take us and the need to be able to change without starting over is essential. Healthcare is [in the shape it is in] today due to proprietary systems. Change is mandated and the system originator has either gone out of business, is no longer supporting the software or is simply outdated and can't make the necessary changes.
- Companies:
- Tully-Wihr