The Early Days of Ebola vs. HIV: Similarities and Differences

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In the early 1980’s a new disease entered the U.S. that had doctors scrambling to find answers. A number of gay men in both New York and California were experiencing treatment resistant diseases and cancers that were extremely uncommon. Luckily, doctors were able to relate the diverse presentations of the new disease fairly quickly. In the early days, this disease didn’t have a name. Today, we know it as Human Immunodeficiency Virus or HIV. To put U.S. cases of HIV in perspective, currently the CDC  estimates that “1,144,500 persons aged 13 years and older are living with HIV infection, including 180,900 (15.8%) who are unaware of their infection1.”

Lab technician examining lab work. From the Avidity Medical Design Blog.With new cases of Ebola presenting in the U.S., it is important to compare our handling of patients to that of the early days of the HIV outbreak. When we look at Ebola vs. HIV: similarities and differences, we can find ways to improve our initial response thereby gaining better control of the spread of diseases with no currently known cure and high death rates.

Misinformation in the early days of HIV caused many to believe that only gay men need fear the infection. Since then, we have learned differently. Many of the early cases of HIV could have been prevented had we known about the danger to our blood supply and had a more complete understanding of how HIV spreads. Currently Ebola is on the tipping point between those who want to believe it is “someone else’s disease” and those who fear contracting it from any stranger they meet. This combination of fear and denial is the perfect atmosphere to create larger spread of the infection. Although Ebola does not hide in a person’s system creating the risk of invisible carriers, its early symptoms are flu-like. We live in a country that is very used to going to work when they are ill. Ebola becomes contagious once symptoms present so denial is a dangerous attitude. Until real, truthful information on prevention is widely understood, diseases are far harder to contain.

bunch of white oval medication tablets and white medication capsules

Early treatment is also very important. Luckily, we have known options for the treatment of Ebola. We have been developing medications to battle the outbreak in Africa for some time and feel that we understand how to fight the illness. Advances in these treatments are already in development. This differs greatly from early treatment of HIV where doctors were forced to try options based on best guesses pulled from incomplete evidence. Had we been studying the HIV virus for as long as we have been studying Ebola, we would have had much better chances to minimize its effects on our population.

For more information on healthcare, follow the Avidity Medical Design Blog. To learn more about our online healthcare courses, visit Avidity Medical Design Academy. To purchase scented soaps and candles inspired by healthcare, visit Avidity Medical Scentations.

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Why Medical Terminology Is So Important To Learn

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Medical terminology is important if you work in the healthcare field. It is the basis for all that you will do. It is used to describe symptoms, diagnoses, tests that need to be ordered and ran, and special medical equipment. The terminology is spoken and written in charts so you must learn to say, spell, and read medical terms.

medical terminology

Medical terminology is important for many reasons:

  • It allows all healthcare workers to communicate in one language.
  • You will use it every day when you work in the healthcare field.
  • If you have to get your medical dictionary out every time you get asked to do something, you will be wasting valuable time. Nurses, doctors, and other health care professionals do not have time to waste, especially in an emergency situation.
  • One small mistake can make a big difference. You could give the wrong medication or just give the right medication the wrong way. It can be the difference between ordering the right test or the wrong one! You need to understand medical terms.
  • Common abbreviations are used in patient records. This helps doctors and nurses write quickly and efficiently in the records so that they can be onto the next patient. It also allows you to read and understand the records quickly.

If you want to do a great job in the health care field, you need to learn medical terminology and understand it! You do not want to have to reach for a medical dictionary every time you are told to do something. If you are unsure, it is better to check your dictionary than get something wrong. However, with a basic understanding of medical terminology, you will be able to communicate quickly and efficiently with other healthcare professionals.

how to learn basic medical terminology online course offered by Avidity Medical Design Academy

If you are interested in learning more about medical terminology, enroll in the course entitled, “How to Learn Basic Medical Terminology (in 5 EASY Steps!) (and USE IT in EVERYDAY Living!)” offered by Avidity Medical Design Academy.

Watch sample lectures from the Medical Terminology course below:

Lecture 6 from “How to Learn Basic Medical Terminology (in 5 EASY Steps!) (and USE IT in EVERYDAY Living!)”
Lecture 7 from “How to Learn Basic Medical Terminology (in 5 EASY Steps!) (and USE IT in EVERYDAY Living!)”
Lecture 8 from “How to Learn Basic Medical Terminology (in 5 EASY Steps!) (and USE IT in EVERYDAY Living!)”

Click Here to Take the Full Medical Terminology Course for Only $29.99!

Contact us whether you need a full course or a refresher course on medical terminology!

How To Improve Employee Workplace Performance

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An article recently published in the Journal of Organizational Psychology states that research found that employees do, in fact, draw support from their subordinates, and each employee can play an important role in the supportive environment of the workplace. The study also revealed a positive relationship between support and job performance, meaning the more supported employees felt in the workplace, the better they were at their job. The following are a few tips on ways in which you can improve employee workplace performance within your organization.

employee workplace performanceEncourage communication

In this regard, you need to be open-minded and encourage expression of ideas and suggestions without criticizing any part of it. Hold frequent staff meetings, provide suggestion boxes, or conduct surveys. Communicate clear goals and objectives to your employees, while maintaining an open-door policy.

Positive work environment

Keep the workplace setting clean and nice looking to promote a cheerful attitude. Little things such as natural light and personal space for each employee will help in creating a positive work environment. And don’t forget to keep things fun. For example, acknowledge an employee’s birthday by having the team sing happy birthday or putting up a sign in the office.

one man and three women wearing blue scrubs standing in a line with arms crossed and smiling

Show appreciation

Acknowledge achievements and offer words of encouragement, such as ‘nice job.’ This will make an employee feel as if they matter in a way that gives their work a sense of purpose. When things go well at your organization, always extend credit to your staff.

Provide effective training

Employees can be helped to improve their skills through in-house development and on-the-job training. Allow your employees to attend seminars and workshops, or enroll in an online eLearning course. Also, keep in mind that training is not a one time event, but rather a continuous activity.

Job performance and the employees’ level of happiness impact the potential of success for an organization. With both an appropriate performance management system and a positive approach to influencing people that increases happiness, an organization’s key results can more likely be achieved and sustained. Be sure to keep the above tips in mind when working towards improving employee performance in the workplace.

To request a quote for employee curriculum development or instructional design services, visit Avidity Medical Design today.

What is the Impact of ObamaCare on Physician Reimbursement?

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Healthcare in the United States is still being developed around private insurers and public providers. ObamaCare was signed into law to make affordable healthcare services accessible to patients all over the country. ObamaCare required insurance companies, hospitals, clinics, and private practices to make many changes to accommodate patients without prejudice. Some of these changes have affected how physicians and private practices are reimbursed by insurance companies covering a patient under ObamaCare. This article discusses the impact of ObamaCare on physician reimbursement.

impact of obamacare on physician reimbursement

ObamaCare

ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act, has made health insurance a requirement for all Americans. ObamaCare was signed into law on March 23, 2010. Under the terms of ObamaCare, insurance providers cannot deny coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions. ObamaCare also regulates the prices of healthcare plans in accordance with a market of free commerce, so that all patients are eligible for affordable healthcare coverage. Although the free market principle has resulted in low cost insurance, it has also resulted in lower coverage.

Physician Reimbursement

Many physicians and private practices have noticed a decrease in reimbursement from ObamaCare plans. As these plans are provided by private insurers, many doctors felt that their businesses would still receive the same kind of operating revenue as they had been.

According to an article from the New American, one doctor has noticed a substantial decrease in reimbursement.

‘I cannot accept a plan [in which] potentially commercial-type reimbursement rates were now going to be reimbursed at Medicare rates,’ Dr. [Doug] Gerard told NPR. ‘You have to maintain a certain mix in private practice between the low reimbursers and the high reimbursers to be able to keep the lights on.’

Dr. Gerard is describing how his practice is his business, and that his operating expenses are becoming prohibitive due to reduced payments from ObamaCare health plans.

ObamaCare has resulted in:

  • Reduced reimbursement rates from private insurers of $100 down to $80.
  • Reduced health care availability to consumers because physicians are changing their businesses to a cash only model.
  • Reduced quality of care for consumers as insurers adjust their health plans to match the costs of ObamaCare plans.

Many primary care physicians have felt that ObamaCare is stifling their business, so they are choosing early retirement. The problem is compounded by fewer medical students pursuing careers as a physician.

ObamaCare was provided as a means for Americans to receive healthcare at affordable rates. This required insurance companies to adjust their plans in order to accept lower rates. Many physicians have found that ObamaCare plans reimburse their practices at levels similar to Medicare and lower than private insurance. This has resulted in several unintended side effects within the American healthcare system, that manifest themselves as a reduction in healthcare quality.

Avidity Medical Design provides services for healthcare course development. Please contact us with any questions.

man couple love people

Why e-Learning Is So Important In The Healthcare Field

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student learning onlineEveryone is really busy these days, especially people who work in the healthcare field. However, as a professional, you may need to take classes for many reasons. You might want to advance in your career or simply keep up with continuing education so your knowledge stays up to date. Finding time to fit it all in can be extremely difficult. Because of this healthcare e-learning is becoming more popular and necessary for the following reasons.

one man and three women wearing blue scrubs standing in a line with arms crossed and smiling

Healthcare e-learning allows extremely busy individuals to fit classes into their busy schedule, whether they work late every night or not. You won’t have to miss any work or lose some of your family weekend time. One of the best parts of online learning is that you can fit the classes in wherever you have a computer and the internet. You can even do it while you are on call. For more information on learning online, visit Avidity Medical Design Academy.

Keys to Effective Training in the Healthcare e-Learning Environment

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Managing healthcare e-Learning doesn’t have to be difficult, but there are three requirements that you just can’t afford to skip.

  • First: Ensure the system you use is accurate. Misinformation about medicine in the outside world is a significant problem. Unfortunately that is sometimes a problem within the field of medicine and health information management. For this reason, it is important to make sure that whatever system you use is screened for accuracy before using it as a training medium. This ensures that the information given to patients is substantive, and that the education provided is technically accurate and beneficial to patients as well as other healthcare practitioners.
  • Second: Ensure that the e-Learning platform is easy to use. Even if you are proficient in computer navigation, it’s likely that you’ve found a piece of software or website that was simply a pain to navigate. When you are considering one or more healthcare e-Learning solutions, make sure that the learning management system (LMS) is easy to navigate and that the platform is user friendly. This reduces the amount of time spent training employees, and helps them learn how to navigate the LMS with a minimum amount of difficulty. Make sure when considering a healthcare e-Learning solution that the system is easy to navigate, explains itself well so that you aren’t wasting large amounts of time training your employees on how to use the system, and that someone who has little to no computer expertise can navigate the system easily.
  • Third: Ensure that your training program is constantly evolving. This is necessary to keep pace with constant changes in the healthcare industry, and to support the theory that knowledge evolves over time. The information that we use to train healthcare professionals needs to evolve in relation to the knowledge that we gain about new healthcare methods, practices, policies, and procedures. For this reason, it is important to keep training programs up to date as new medical discoveries are made. This also ensures that patients are getting the best possible care, and healthcare employees are given the most accurate medical data to work with, in order to optimize their performance as healthcare practitioners.

To talk more about this, or anything else, please Contact Us. Thanks.

What’s On The Horizon: 3 Important Trends In E-Learning

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The Internet has ushered in an era of prosperity that is unmatched in modern human history. There has never been a time when the common man has been endowed with so much power to change the world through hard work and imagination.

The Internet has fundamentally changed the way we do things. This is especially true in the field of education. The traditional brick and mortar classrooms are slowing becoming extinct as digital structures take its place.

This transformation is still in its embryonic stage but is rapidly becoming the norm. More and more people are ready for changes in the way they learn and acquire knowledge.

There are lasting trends that are emerging as fundamental truths in the e-learning arena for the foreseeable future.

e-learning developments on the horizon

Online Learning Is Becoming More Social

We all learned as grade school students that humans are social creatures that thrive on social interaction.

We want to learn from each other’s experiences and gain perspective through other people’s points of view. This is the essence of learning in its most basic form. The fact that this natural function of human behavior has migrated to the digital world isn’t surprising.

What is surprising is that educators are finally catching on to this fact. E-learning courses that allow students to discover knowledge and insights and share it with their contemporaries have more successful students.

Fostering enhanced collaboration between educator and student is a trend that will continue to evolve.

Learning Isn’t Linear and Never Has Been

Conventional wisdom tells us the A+B=C and is so just because this is the way that it has always been taught. Rote learning techniques for thousands of years has been used as an efficient tool to educate millions of people around the world with great success.

While this is a testament to the enduring spirit of man to streamline the transmission of knowledge, the truth is learning has never been linear. Throughout human history knowledge has been gained and re-discovered in a non-linear fashion. This pattern holds true today in our hyper-connected world.

E-learners today spend time jumping from website to website looking for keywords, scanning articles and not even finishing a paragraph. In fact the average attention span of the average Internet user in 2014 was around 8 seconds!

E-learning courses that are data rich and easy digestible are becoming the norm in today e-learning environments. Incorporating content that is short and interesting is imperative to keeping students actively engaged in the course material.

Visuals Are On The Rise

Infographics, charts, photos and videos are quickly replacing text-based instructions. Visual presentation of information is easy to understand and is more appealing to students. Science lends credence to our predisposition towards visual information. Here are a few interesting facts about visual learning:

  • 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual
  • Visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text
  • Our eyes can register 36,000 visual messages per hour

Click here for more information on visual learning.

The Internet, learning and how we mesh the two together will continue to shift as student learning styles and preferences change. The one constant is that the people will never stop wanting to learn.

If you have any questions about these trends or need help with incorporating some of these trends into your courses, contact Avidity Medical Design Consultants, LLC today. We look forward to hearing from you.

What’s On The Horizon: 3 Important Trends In E-Learning For 2014

Posted on by

The Internet has ushered in an era of prosperity that is unmatched in modern human history. There has never been a time when the common man has been endowed with so much power to change the world through hard work and imagination.

The Internet has fundamentally changed the way we do things. This is especially true in the field of education. The traditional brick and mortar classrooms are slowing becoming extinct as digital structures take its place.

This transformation is still in its embryonic stage but is rapidly becoming the norm. More and more people are ready for changes in the way they learn and acquire knowledge.

There are lasting trends that are emerging as fundamental truths in the e-learning arena for the foreseeable future.

e-learning

Online Learning Is Becoming More Social

We all learned as grade school students that humans are social creatures that thrive on social interaction.

We want to learn from each other’s experiences and gain perspective through other people’s points of view. This is the essence of learning in its most basic form. The fact that this natural function of human behavior has migrated to the digital world isn’t surprising.

What is surprising is that educators are finally catching on to this fact. E-learning courses that allow students to discover knowledge and insights and share it with their contemporaries have more successful students.

Fostering enhanced collaboration between educator and student is a trend that will continue to evolve.

Learning Isn’t Linear and Never Has Been

Conventional wisdom tells us the A+B=C and is so just because this is the way that it has always been taught. Rote learning techniques for thousands of years has been used as an efficient tool to educate millions of people around the world with great success.

While this is a testament to the enduring spirit of man to streamline the transmission of knowledge, the truth is learning has never been linear. Throughout human history knowledge has been gained and re-discovered in a non-linear fashion. This pattern holds true today in our hyper-connected world.

E-learners today spend time jumping from website to website looking for keywords, scanning articles and not even finishing a paragraph. In fact the average attention span of the average Internet user in 2014 was around 8 seconds!

E-learning courses that are data rich and easy digestible are becoming the norm in today e-learning environments. Incorporating content that is short and interesting is imperative to keeping students actively engaged in the course material.

Visuals Are On The Rise

Infographics, charts, photos and videos are quickly replacing text-based instructions. Visual presentation of information is easy to understand and is more appealing to students. Science lends credence to our predisposition towards visual information. Here are a few interesting facts about visual learning:

  • 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual
  • Visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text
  • Our eyes can register 36,000 visual messages per hour

Click here for more information on visual learning.

The Internet, learning and how we mesh the two together will continue to shift as student learning styles and preferences change. The one constant is that the people will never stop wanting to learn.

If you have any questions about these trends or need help with incorporating some of these trends into your courses please contact us today. We look forward to hearing from you.

Getting Continuing Education Credit with Healthcare e-Learning

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healthcare e-learningDoctors, EMTs, nurses, and other healthcare practitioners are constantly evolving from a professional standpoint, as medical procedures become more advanced. The value of continuing education cannot be denied; however, the busy professional lifestyle of individuals in the medical field sometimes makes continuing education classes difficult. To meet the demands of busy healthcare professionals, healthcare e-Learning has risen to the challenge. Healthcare e-Learning has become the most efficient way to provide continuing education to medical staff because online professional development training allows professionals to train in their spare time from the comfort of their own homes, rather than commuting back and forth to campus to adhere to an inflexible class schedule.

Avidity Medical Design designs courses for busy healthcare professionals. Courses include:

  • Medical Coding: Courses in medical coding include ICD-10 coding, CPT coding, and other health information management courses that directly pertain to medical coding.
  • Medical Transcription: Courses in medical transcription include practicum courses that help transcriptionists sharpen their skills in medical language interpretation and voice recognition editing.
  • Medical Claims Processing: Courses in medical claims processing train medical claims examiners to accurately apply Medicare and Medicaid guidelines, as well as guidelines for third-party administrators, to challenging claims processing situations.

Avidity Medical Design offers courses for busy medical professionals in the comfort of their homes and on their own timetable. Instructional and motivational design strategies solidify course content and keep doctors, nurses, EMTs, and other healthcare workers on the intellectual forefront of their fields.  Contact us to see how our unique e-Learning courses can help keep your healthcare professionals on track with continuing education and professional development.

Improve Employee Workplace Performance with Specialized Healthcare Courses

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Employees feel tension being available around-the-clock, according to a recent survey from Randstad. This research shows that employee morale and engagement are on the decline because of a lack of coping skills. The question is: how do you improve employee workplace performance?

employee workplace performance

Training and development form passion and purpose. It’s important that companies make sure employees have access to the proper training which will develop the skills needed to succeed in a competitive employment market.

Our healthcare management courses provide you with the tools you need to achieve a sense of balance. “If you can increase the average level of engagement in your organization, you will likely see the productivity of your entire workforce increase,” explains Michael C. Mankins in Three Ways to Actually Engage Employees.

Take advantage of the specialized healthcare curriculum development services offered by Avidity Medical Design. We design curriculum based on your personal needs, and also teach the courses that we develop.

Avidity Medical Design incorporates one or more instructional design strategies within each course to help students apply classroom knowledge to real-world situations. Sheila D. McCray, MS, CCS, CCS-P, is the principal of Avidity Medical Design. She has a M.S. in Instructional and Performance Technology from Boise State University, and certifications in Captivate, Dreamweaver, SharePoint, MS Office, and multiple healthcare-related areas.

Contact us to get started today. If you have any other questions or comments, we’re here to help you. Thanks!