OUTCOME IMPROVEMENT

Ideas, Insight and Innovations To Make Life Better

INTERIM SOLUTIONS, ROADMAPS AND MIGRATION STRATEGIES

WHITE PAPERS

For other White Papers and Information Resources, please visit Rockwood Management Services.

GENERAL

What is Outcome Improvement? 

A frame of mind?  An approach?  A model for success?  A guide for continuous improvement (progress)?  A success builder?  A collaboration and team-builder?  An idea generator?  An inspiration?

Outcome Improvement programs are all of these things.  They facilitate the right temperament, climate and atmosphere for success and progress.  They build awareness of the realities around us.  They promote an understanding of the direction and impact of progress and change.  They help to identify those things of greatest personal value.  They help individuals to find others who complement their own roles, interests and capabilities.  Overall, Outcome Improvement enhances and magnifies value, improves results and addresses what is important as it makes things better, but not necessarily perfect.  It automates complexity to reduce overload.  READ MORE . . . . . .

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Personal Life Management and Business Management Complement Each Other - They Work Together to Bring Outcome Improvement

People usually have some knowledge of business management.  They don’t always think about it, but they either have been managed or they have done the managing.  Along the way, they may have been indoctrinated with principles, “best practices,” that are designed to provide successful outcomes when applied properly.  But, what about their personal lives?  What is being done to make lives better, more productive, more fulfilling and to use time and resources more effectively and efficiently overall?  Can we really manage business efforts separately from personal ones?   READ MORE . . . . . .

HEALTHCARE

Getting your Personal Health Record (PHR) started

This paper is designed to set expectations about Personal Health Records and provide insight and ideas for getting started and creating an effective one.  This includes use of specialized software for organizing and managing PHR data.  Lifelong, it will bring greater utility and benefits from the time and effort expended.    READ MORE . . . . . .

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Why everyone should have a Personal Health Record - Here are some sound bites to consider.

Responsible individuals are getting more and more involved in the management of their healthcare.  With today’s healthcare uncertainties, this is becoming important for everyone.  No one else has the same perspective and vested interest that the patient has.  If we abuse our bodies, we suffer the consequences.  By playing an active role in the management of our healthcare, we are more likely to enjoy the rewards of longer, healthier, more productive lives.  Personal Health Records (PHRs) are tools that help us to do this job better.   READ MORE . . . . . .

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Personal Health Records Satisfy Many Needs

We are all different.  Whether it is where we are in our lives, or there are different things wrong with us, or there is something else that is important, having built-in flexibility is important when creating and maintaining a Personal Health Record (PHR).  This is particularly true when we are parents addressing needs of small children or acting on behalf of our own parents when they have lost the ability to care for themselves.  There are things that we each can do to bring additional value and extend the capabilities of the PHR software that we use.  READ MORE . . . . . .

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Outcome Improvement – Healthcare Initiatives

People who are better informed are more able to contribute to medical decisions that will be in their best interest, reflect their needs, hold providers accountable and improve their quality of life and longevity.  Now is not the time to leave anyone’s future completely in the hands of others no matter how competent and qualified they may seem.  It takes a team effort for health and wellness, but the individual must ultimately take ownership and responsibility.  Outcome Improvement has developed a program and the tools to help make anyone’s results more successful.  READ MORE . . . . . .

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The Personal Health Record, an important tool for Monitoring Health, Anticipating Problems and Directing Treatment

Someone has an accident and while being treated for injuries, learns that they have a serious disease and need immediate treatment or they will die.  Stories like this are reported all the time.  How many people find out too late and miss out on a lifesaving cure?  What can be done to prevent or at least reduce this problem?

During routine health checkups, some things are looked at by doctors that are not important to patients while other things that are more important receive a lower priority and less emphasis.

Supplementing what medical practitioners do and focusing their efforts helps to provide patients with better healthcare results.  This enables everyone to receive the greatest possible value from their health care dollar and the extra chance for a long and fruitful life. 

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Personal Health Records - Things to think about

Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the importance for patients to have copies of their Personal Health Records (PHRs) when official records were destroyed.  Since then we have discovered that even the best records can miss essential details that only the patient knows.  They also have a dark side.  In the wrong hands, PHRs can facilitate identity theft and impersonation bringing fraudulent insurance claims and bills to unsuspecting victims.  This creates a legal nightmare and lasting damage.  Digital records make it easier for everyone except the criminals when appropriate measures are taken to safeguard private information.  READ MORE . . . . . .

SALES INITIATIVES

Is Complexity Holding Back Your Sales?

Understand what motivates customers by “walking in their shoes.”  Sell more by looking at things from their perspective.  Communicate recommendations that are simple, straightforward and easy to implement.

Lives are complicated, stressful and demanding.  Customers expect solutions that are cost-effective and affordable, but also that make things simpler, easier and less stressful for them personally.  They are overloaded and cannot afford the time to deal with anything that does not work the first time, every time, right out of the box.  Many of them also look for instant gratification.  They abhor startup issues that add complications and make matters worse.  They look for rapid changeovers that avoid maintaining old methods until a smooth transition can be made where everything works perfectly.  If their mission is to cut costs and make things simpler, the more obstacles they expect, the more difficult it will be for you to make sales.  READ MORE . . . . . .

TECHNOLOGY

Technology is Advancing Rapidly – Why Is This So and What Lies Ahead?

When people are children, things appear to be how they always have been.  It is only when someone gets older that they start to realize that things are changing and changing more and more rapidly.  Schools talk about inventors and inventions, but progress seems like a far away land that does not truly come to life until it is seen firsthand.  When science fiction starts to turn into reality, do you wonder what else lies ahead and how soon it will happen?  More importantly, what will prove important and how can greater personal benefits be realized?  Here are a few fundamental thoughts.

We are told to look to the past to predict the future.  Okay.  So, why then did cave men start using fire a million years ago and we were still using horses, had no personal computers, airplanes, automobiles, cell phones, radio, telephones, television, air conditioning, refrigeration, satellites, space travel, artificial body parts, nuclear energy, even electric power, until a few short years ago?  READ MORE . . . . . .

TIME MANAGEMENT

Overload and interruptions don’t need to kill people and productivity

Wonderful new products and technologies can have adverse side effects.  Outcome Improvement helps to accentuate the positives.  Progress involves evolutionary changes that bring improvements, but can also create temporary problems.  Improved solutions require continuous improvement .  READ MORE . . . . . .

VIDEO APPLICATIONS

Fulfilling (and exceeding) AT&T’s Dream for Picturephone - Visionary technologies take time to come together, but are well worth the wait.

Stop to think of the ways personal videos are improving our lives.  It started with one company and one product that was ahead of its time.  Now, there is much more to it than was demonstrated by the original Picturephone.  Avoid travel; experience more effective and more efficient messaging; provide greater security; and have the ability to see what others are doing first hand, to name a few.  How about accompanying your resume with a video email to set you apart from the masses or a virtual visit with a son or daughter in college, seeing grandchildren as they grow up, or see a relative in a nursing home across the country?  Time, cost savings and better experiences seem limitless as video applications grow for individuals as well as the organizations they work for.  READ MORE . . . . . .

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Personal Video Communications are Moving to Primetime

Videos enrich lives as they improve communications.  They turn bland, flat text into multi-media experiences that involve the senses more completely.  People share sights and sounds from their cell phones. E-mail becomes more compelling.  People have virtual visits and meetings using affordable, cost-effective video conferencing, and proceedings can be archived for rebroadcast on demand.  Smaller organizations can now benefit from production, management, distribution and assessment capabilities that previously were reserved for large companies.  Everyone should get involved, expand their creativity and set themselves apart.  Great for résumés.  READ MORE . . . . . .