HJAR Jan/Feb 2020

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS I  JAN / FEB 2020 49 Dr. Tim Langford has been with Arkansas Urol- ogy since 1993. Prior to joining Arkansas Urology, he served as chief urology resident at UAMS. Dr. Langford received a medical degree from UAMS, and graduated magna cum laude from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro with a bachelor’s degree in zoology. Dr. Langford is certified by the American Board of Urology. He is a member of the American Medical Association, American Urological Association, Arkansas Medical Soci- ety, and Pulaski County Medical Society. Scot Davis joined Arkansas Urology as CEO in May 2013. With more than 20 years in physician practice management, serving in a variety of executive roles, he has developed an expertise in physician recruitment, joint-venture arrange- ments, compensation modeling, and operational efficiency. Before moving to Little Rock, Davis was CFO at Baptist Medical Group in Memphis. Prior to that, he was CFO at Northeast Arkan- sas Clinic in Jonesboro, also serving in an interim COO capacity. tools for completing forms before an office visit, and they are great for scheduling appointments because they can sync with common consumer calendar minders (iCal and Google Calendar). The front lines of health literacy meet patients where they are, but that doesn’t always mean patients jump aboard. In 2017, the Government Accountability Office reported that about nine in 10 providers had implemented portals, but only about 20 percent used them. That’s improving, and in the near future experts tell us portals will move beyond simple medical record functionality and become an interface for a patient’s entire health profile, even serving as a kind of browser window for telemedicine. Among other important beneficiaries are us, the doctors, administrators, and staff who deploy both care and the institutional system patients must enter. Integrating patient health records (PHR) with other continuity of care data can point us to better long-term health care and outcomes, as well as operational efficiencies. Portals offer innumerable benefits, including administrative efficiencies like reduced call volume and paperwork, never mind higher customer satisfaction. A recent report from Kaiser Permanente highlighted a surprising benefit for yet another constituency, those nearest and dearest to us. A survey of about 1,400 members of their portal found 27 percent accessed it to address an urgent health need of a family member. More than half of these did it for a spouse, and one-third for a child or grandchild. Portals give patients agency, and what they do with that, it appears, is make others’ health a concern of their own. A 2015 qualitative study titled, “Why do people avoid medical care?”, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that a primary reasonwas unfavorable evaluations of doctors and doctors’ offices, and among the chief secondary reasons, time. Portals and electronic communication can be deployed to mitigate these concerns. We are eager to wed wholesome face-to- face care with convenient electronic com- munications like patient portals. We see this as a natural and welcomed evolution, and we look forward to what the next two de- cades will bring. n Scot Davis CEO Arkansas Urology