business

Michael Cowan isn't a techie.

"I've never been on Facebook," says the Charlotte, N.C. neurosurgeon. "I don't tweet."

So he admits he was skeptical when Maplewood-based 3M Co. approached him about six months ago, asking he'd try out a new mobile technology geared specifically for doctors. 3M's market research had indicated that many physicians still rely heavily on paper to keep track of information on patients and professional fees.

Cowan said it's an inefficient system, especially for doctors like him whose daily schedule has him on the move seeing patients at multiple offices, clinics and hospitals.

He says it didn't take long for him to become a believer in 3M's new product, which recently moved out of the test phase and onto the market. The 3M Mobile Physician Solution is being marketed to health care professionals by the company's direct sales force and through medical industry social media websites.

The software, which can be used on an iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows mobile devices, has four main modules: Patient lists that can be sorted by location and appointment date; patient information on medications, allergies, test results and other critical data that can be used during hospital rounds, before a clinic visit, or when consulting with another physician; a dictation module allowing physicians to record and transmit dictated progress notes to the transcription service at their offices, and a charge capture feature where physicians can submit fees, have them paired with the correct billing codes and notifying them if information is missing or incomplete. That feature can help reduce claim denials and result in faster and more accurate reimbursement.

"It's an all-in-one tool that solves a lot of inefficiencies," said JaeLynn Williams, senior vice president for 3M's health information systems division. "It reduces the burden of administrative paperwork on doctors and allows them to focus on patient care."

Williams said the annual licensing fee for the software is $2,000 plus a one-time set up fee of $250. 3M estimates the financial benefit for a doctor is $15,000, resulting partly from improved revenue because of fewer lost charges and inaccurate charges that get denied and have to resubmitted.

Williams said feedback from physicians resulted in changes to steamline the use of the software. "The goal was to reduce the number of clicks." Other changes included adding icons for things like test results and medications to make the software more visual and user friendly, she said.

Cowan said his suggestions to 3M included one that could allow users to customize the software with bookmarks. In his case he was able to add one for commonly-performed procedures.

The new mobile software is an extension of 3M's existing health care information systems business that it established in 1983 when the company bought Code3 Corp., which had developed the health care industry's coding software to code patient diagnoses and medical procedures. These codes are grouped and classified for reimbursement. Today the 3M division offers a wide range of software and consulting services for hospitals, health systems, payers and physician practices.

Cowan said other doctors ask him questions about the mobile software when they see him using it, but he doesn't know if any have taken the next step and purchased it yet. "In general, physicians can be pretty conservative," he said. "Sometimes it's difficult to get us to change."

But he said he has noticed some new users among the 20 physicians' assistants at his practice who are eager to embrace new mobile technology because they are younger. The assistants mostly use the software for keeping up to date on which patients are at what hospitals. "There are times when you can have 60 patients at a number of different hospitals. This helps you keep tabs."

Susan Feyder • 612-673-1723