According to the Manhattan Research firm, there are approximately 1,500 apps for health care professionals alone. In 2009 doctors owning smart phones surge 64% from the year before. That same year the number of physicians owning iPhones doubled. It estimates that by 2012, 81% of doctors will have smart phones with medical apps installed. This market continues to flourish with many useful medical mobile apps flying off the virtual iTunes shelf every day. The creative and invaluable apps offered leave the health industry and even health insurance brokers in perpetual awe. Worth noting is that most of these health apps are not regulated by the FDA, but this may soon change. Below is a list of the top mobile applications for physicians and medical professionals.

Epocrates Rx is a clinical reference application that provides information on drug, disease, lab, and drug safety for physicians at the point of care. The mobile app displays drug images that feature a multitude of information including directions, side effects, etc… alongside the image. A unique feature is the multicheck whereby the software is able to give information on the adverse effects of the interactions of a patient’s drug cocktail. Another feature is the ability for the medical mobile app to identify the drug given the doctor’s description of the medication (i.e. color, pill shape, and etc.). Epocrates also offers a CME credits program on the medical iPhone app where everything from studying to taking the exams are done at the doctor’s finger tips without any traveling hassle, not to mention that all work is saved and tracked via the web app.
Compatibility: iPhone, Palm, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Android
Price: Four versions offered ranging from the free Epocrates Rx to Epocrates Essentials Deluxe, which costs $199 on a one year contract and $299 on the two year contract. Group discounts are available.

Medscape, which is part of WebMD, is similar in features to Epocrates Rx, except Medscape touts an extensive library of clinical and drug references and it offers video to its portfolio of offerings.
Compatibility: iPhone only for now but Blackberry coming soon
Price: Free!

Medcalc is, you guessed it, a medical calculator. The mobile app supports US and SI units. The iPhone app is able to compute medical formulas. The physician or medical staff can search for formulas based on name or keyword. They can look up a list of recently viewed formulas and they can archive favorite equations.
Compatibility: iPhone
Price: Free!

Medical Lab Tests provides a quick reference to normal lab values of common clinical lab tests. It offers a concise reference to over 100 blood tests. Both search and recently viewed features are accessible. The reference values are in US and SI units.
Compatibility: iPhone
Price: $5.99

Dr. Rounds is a health mobile app that allows doctors to keep patient records all in a pocket size piece of hardware. This tool keeps track of visits, diagnosis, procedures, service rendered, as well as helps physicians stay on top of their billing so that no patient is left unaccounted for. The purpose of the iPhone app is to remove the paperwork from the doctor’s daily rounds and support patients more effectively and efficiently with many advance capabilities such as search, archiving, emailing, and even data sharing.
Compatibility: iPhone
Price: $24.99

Drug Trials gives doctors and health professionals information about clinical trials around a disease or illness. It even brings up Google Map to provide them with locations of where these clinical trials are taking place and also offers bookmarking capabilities. Additionally, it provides eligibility criteria and even emailing capabilities.
Compatibility: iPhone
Price: Free!

Blausen Human Atlas provides 3D animation in video and imagery form to help physicians communicate effectively with patients at the point of care. It is easier to show someone something, rather than tell them and this does just that. This mobile application offers several features: 3D animation (360 rotation) that physicians can zoom in and out of, video, still images, and a searchable medical glossary that they can cross reference to related animation and images. Unfortunately, an internet connection is required to view the videos, medical glossary, and still images. This app is offered in 10 different languages.
Compatibility: iPhone
Price: $19.99

Xprompt Multilingual Assistance is a translation tool to enable physicians and medical staff to communicate with their patients in situations where a translator is not present or a family member is unable to translate. The mobile app comes pre-installed in German, English, and Spanish. Features offered include gestures, supporting communication, a general dictionary, and more. Health professionals can favorite phrases. Translations are shown and spoken through the iPhone audio. Two sign languages in German and British are offered in video format.
Compatibility: iPhone
Price: $3.99 with three languages pre-installed. Additional $2.99 per language (22 languages available, 50 more languages in the works)

For the OB-GYN

Airstrip OB is essentially a mobile health monitoring system. More specifically it is a portable ICU monitor that tracks the mother-to-be and fetus’s waveform data which includes heart rate, temperature, blood pressure, maternal contraction patterns, and any other vital signs all in real time during a woman’s labor. Information is transferred from the hospital monitoring system to the obstetrician and gynecologist’s and nurse’s mobile phones. This allows the OB-GYN and nurses to remotely keep an eye on the mother-to-be anywhere and anytime. Other information that’s provided in the medical mobile app includes the woman’s documentation like current medication, allergies, lab work, and notes. Personal information is not stored so the patient’s identity is safe. This mobile app is FDA-approved and compliant with HIPAA standards.
Compatible: iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile Smart Phones
Price: Free, but the hospital at which the doctor is employed must purchase the Airstrip OB System

We’ve seen questions go through our que quite a bit, so we decided to do a monthly Q&A to get these questions answered. Feel free to ask follow up questions or even new questions, in the comments.

Q: When filing a worker’s comp claim in California, when will the employer stop health coverage for an employee?
A:If the employee will not be actively at work or working full time, 30 hours a week in general, (please check your health insurance plan document), then the employer should put the employee on COBRA . Be aware that some workers comp insurers will advise you to keep the employee on health insurance for an indeterminate length of time. They advise this as a way to not anger the employee. This is very bad advice. If your health insurance states, which many plan descriptions do, that to be eligible for health insurance you have to be working a certain number of hours a week on a full time basis, it means it. Just because you choose to keep them on the plan and pay their premium does not mean they are covered.

Example: We heard of an employer who kept an employee on the plan while an employee was out for 6 months due to a work related back injury. The employee had a heart attack, while on his WC leave, and needed open heart surgery. In the physician’s notes, the patient told him he had been on WC leave. The health insurer denied the claim, since the employee was not eligible for health insurance. The employee sued the employer for the $150,000 hospital bill.

Q: What is HMO reinsurance?
A: It is insurance that an HMO would purchase from an insurance company who agrees to share in a defined part of risk for a defined premium. One of the most common types of HMO reinsurance is stop loss reinsurance. An HMO might feel that it can pay all claims for the first $200,000 of medical expenses for any one member, but it does not want to absorb expenses beyond this level. The HMO agrees to pay an outside reinsurer who will reinsure the HMO, and reimburse it for claims above $200,000. The HMO will pay that reinsurer a per-member, per-month premium (pmpm). The pm pm pricing is the basis for the premium. The other typical reinsurance option is quota share reinsurance.

Q: What coverage do I need for my medical malpractice?
A: In California the norm for medical malpractice insurance is $1 million per occurrence and $3 million per policy aggregate. Other states have higher or lower limits depending on the rules and regulations within the state. If a doctor has privileges, his/her hospital will dictate the limits, and the hospital will know of any laws relating to these limits. If you do not have hospital privileges, ask your medical malpractice broker what is typical. There are 2 kinds of medical malpractice claims made: medical malpractice insurance and occurrence medical malpractice. Most doctors purchase claims made since it is more affordable.

Q: Employee benefits rescinding broker of record, who gets commission?
A: Commissions are paid monthly by the insurance company as you pay your premiums. If you fire agent A on 2/28 and hire agent B, and 2 days later, on 3/2, you rescind the broker of record on Agent B and rehire Agent A, odds are Agent A will not lose any money and Agent B gets paid nothing. The norm is that the insurer will give the current broker, in our example, Agent A, 10 days to receive rescindment of the broker of record. After 10 days the commission for March will be paid to Agent B. After 10 days if you fire Agent B and rehire Agent A, then Agent B will have 10 days to rescind the broker of record.

Q: How can public entities save money?
A: Competition is the key to saving money on insurance. You want a few insurance brokers working on your insurance. It is a lot of work, but the best way is to get multiple bids from 2 or 3 brokers including the incumbent. However, you need to be available to give the non-incumbent brokers the information they need to quote. We find many public entity purchasing departments favor the incumbent broker since he/she has all the loss run information and applications necessary to shop the insurance. The outside broker has little chance of competing unless you have a very diligent purchasing department at the public entity, which gets you the necessary information and answers questions in a timely fashion. We have seen very good purchasing departments, and many who are unresponsive, so the insurance stays with the same broker forever because you cannot get the necessary information to give a competitive quote and the public entity is then left paying more. Other ideas include hiring an insurance consultant to review your RFP to make sure that every item necessary to shop the insurance is included. This includes typical Q & A’s, and have the brokers provide their #1 through #3 favorite insurers for your risk, along with the premium that they have with those insurers. If more than one broker picks the same #1 insurance company, allow the broker with the most premium to have the #1 choice. The more premiums that a broker has with the insurance company, the better their relationship will be.

Q: What is excess workers comp?
A: This is for large to medium sized employers who want to self insure their workers compensation. They can purchase excess or stop loss reinsurance. This protects the employer from large claims.
Example: The employer has very predictable experience, but he/she wants to buy excess workers compensation insurance with a $100K deductible. So for claims below $100K, the employer pays. For any claims that exceed $100,000, he/she submits for reimbursement to the excess workers comp carrier with whom he/she purchased the excess reinsurance policy.

NOTE THE ABOVE IS A GENERAL DISCUSSION ABOUT HOW COVERAGES MAY WORK. YOUR INSURANCE POLICY AND ALL ADDENDA ARE THE ONLY AUTHORITY OF HOW YOUR COVERAGE WORKS. DO NOT RELY ON THIS ARTICLE AS AN EXPLANATION OF YOUR COVERAGE. HAVE YOUR ATTORNEY REVIEW YOUR ENTIRE POLICY WITH YOU TO DETERMINE WHAT IS AND ISN’T COVERED.