From Virginia Harris
Founder and Executive Publisher

My career in the field of patient and physician education has equipped me to work with a talented team of dedicated professionals to create a unique patient information delivery system that gives physicians an easy way to provide follow-up support to all of their patients, and continue the counseling that begins in their exam rooms.

As a mother, I believe it is extremely important to obtain medical information for my family from a trusted source and I, like most patients, consider my own physician to be the best source. My goal is to help your practice stand out even more in your community by helping you deliver enhanced patient support to your practice’s patients from you – the source that your patients trust most – in a way that does not add minutes to your already busy days.

Please feel free to e-mail me to share your thoughts and any suggestions on how we might improve our services to your practice and patients. Thank you for your interest in ProActive for Patients.

Click headers to scroll to FAQ sections

How can ProActive help our practice?

1. How can ProActive help our staff and physicians save time?
2. Who pays for free ProActive follow-up to our practice’s patients?
3. Does ProActive promote new medications to our physicians?
4. Does ProActive work with EMRs?
5. Can ProActive help us meet ‘meaningful use’ criteria?
6. How can ProActive help if a patient files a malpractice claim?

How can ProActive help our patients?

1. How does ProActive help us deliver financial resource information?
2. How does ProActive help us deliver medication information?
3. What else do enrolled patients get?
4. Why does ProActive include information on weight management?
5. Will patients get e-mails from other companies?
6. How is patient privacy protected?

How does the ProActive Physician Dashboard work?

1. Why must physicians preview messages that are sent to patients?
2. Why must physicians dictate a voice-message greeting?
   
3. What does the physician voice-message greeting for patients say?
   
4. Do physician voice-messages provide information about a patient’s prescribed medications?
   

How do you help us with patient enrollment?

1. How does ProActive make enrolling patients easy?
   
2. What do you tell patients on the Patient Invitation form?
3. What if a patient does not have an e-mail address?
   
4. What if a patient does not want to get telephone messages?
5. How do Patient Invitation enrollment forms get processed?
   
6. What information is provided to patients who call the ProActive Care Center?

About the ProActive team

1. What are the credentials of the ProActive Medical Director?
   
2. How are we indemnified for actions of ProActive employees?

 

How can ProActive help our practice?

1. We’re very busy. How can ProActive help our staff and physicians save time?
   Busy practices like yours need a system like ProActive that can actually save your staff and physicians time, while increasing patient satisfaction. ProActive works seamlessly within your practice’s existing front-desk check-in process to instantly enhance patient services and satisfaction without adding minutes to your busy days.
   
   Delivering written follow-up can reduce question calls from patients. In addition, ProActive follow-up e-mails always include your practice’s office hours and insurance plans accepted, making it easier for patients to work with your practice.
   
   
2. Who pays for free ProActive follow-up to our practice’s patients?
   ProActive provides a unique opportunity for pharmaceutical and other healthcare companies to help patients who have been prescribed their products by supporting the free delivery of complete, accurate financial assistance and medication information to patients.
   
   
3. Does ProActive promote new medications to our physicians or patients?
   Never. ProActive supports your physician’s prescribing decisions. Medications are not introduced or promoted to physicians or patients through the ProActive system.
   
   
4. Does ProActive work with EMRs?
   Most EMRs do a good job of processing patient information, but they are not designed or equipped to automatically deliver high-quality patient-friendly office-visit follow-up to patients at home. Our team works with your team to make our easy automated system work with your system at no charge to your practice.
   
   
5. Can ProActive help us meet ‘meaningful use’ criteria?
   Using the automated ProActive office-visit follow-up system along with your EMR is a great way to help your practice qualify for government subsidies for the cost of your EMR, because delivering written follow-up to patients is among the key criteria for meaningful use.
   
   
6. How can ProActive help if a patient files a malpractice claim?
   In the event of a claim by an enrolled patient, ProActive can provide documentation of its delivery of complete written FDA-approved patient information to the patient. According to a report published in The New England Journal of Medicine, approximately 1 in 450 paid malpractice claims reported to the National Practitioner Database involve failures to communicate, warn, or obtain informed consent regarding prescribed medications.
   

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How can ProActive help our patients?

1. How does ProActive help us deliver financial resource information to patients?
   Providing contact information on the wide range of financial assistance programs available to help patients and explaining the services to patients can be very time-consuming for practices. The ProActive system automatically delivers the help your practice’s patients need:
   
   1)The Partnership for Prescription Assistance is a nationwide clearinghouse that connects patients to local, state and federal government assistance programs, as well as pharmaceutical ‘free medication’ programs and charitable organizations that may be able to help your patients afford their prescribed medications.
   
   2) The Patient Advocate Foundation is a nationwide clearinghouse that assists patients with health insurance-related issues, which can relieve your practice of much of the burden of helping patients resolve problems with pre-authorizations and other reimbursement obstacles.
   
   3) Co-pay Discounts and Free Medication coupons are provided to practices like yours by pharmaceutical representatives from many different companies, but it is very difficult for a busy practice to deliver these savings opportunities to patients during office visits. ProActive works directly with pharmaceutical companies to help your patients gain access to co-pay discounts and free supplies of medications and automatically delivers these offers in follow-up e-mails to your practice’s patients.
   
   
2. How does ProActive help us deliver up-to-date medication information to patients?
   Keeping a supply of up-to-date patient hand-outs can be difficult and very time-consuming for practices. And unfortunately, according to an eye-opening report on a recent nationwide study that was published in The Archives of Internal Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical journal, pharmacy-provided information is often incomplete and is usually presented in tiny-type and confusing language.
   
   ProActive clearly informs patients about side effect symptoms they should report to the doctor. Pharmacies are not legally required to provide this information and most don’t -- even for medications with serious potential side effects.
   
   There are many additional benefits of delivering medication information to your patients using the ProActive system:
   
   1) Our unique ProActive Medication Overview is a patient-friendly format that uses large type and presents information in a logical order that is very easy for patients to understand. It is specially designed to increase patient satisfaction and extend the patient counseling that begins in your exam rooms to patients at home.
   
   2) E-mail delivery means that your patients can easily locate and review medication information whenever they have a question. And it is easy for patients to forward the e-mail to a caregiver or family member who may be helping the patient manage their medications.
   
   3) Our central processing facility always keeps the information up-to-date with current FDA guidance, so unlike printed information that patients can misplace and which does not include new FDA information, every time a patient revisits a ProActive Medication Overview by clicking on the link in the e-mail from your practice, it is up-to-date with the latest FDA guidance.
   
   4) And, very importantly, ProActive helps your practice quickly communicate to enrolled patients to inform them of FDA drug safety updates. This can reduce the high level of patient anxiety created by alarming news headlines, and by quickly reaching out to your patients to provide specific instructions on steps patients should take in response to the new development, it can reduce the number of question calls your practice receives in the wake of major announcements.
   
   
3. What else do enrolled patients get?
   The ProActive Welcome E-Mail conveys support from your physicians to their patients, and provides a wealth of valuable information that makes it much easier for patients to work with your practice and achieve health-related goals. You may view an example of a personalized ‘Welcome E-Mail’ that is delivered to all enrolled patients.
   
   
4. Why does ProActive include information on weight management in its e-mails?
   Weight management issues affect a large percentage of patients, and providing guidance to patients on weight management resources can be very time-consuming for practices. ProActive includes information on medically-tested solutions, and makes it easy for patients to learn more and/or order products and services that can help patients achieve and maintain healthy weight goals.
   
   
5. Will patients get e-mails from other companies?
   No, patients will only receive e-mails from ProActive that are authorized for delivery by participating physicians, with the exception that ProActive may auto-enroll patients into patient education support programs that are provided by the makers of medications for which a patient has requested information. Patients are informed of this free service on the Patient Invitation enrollment form and generally find the support programs that are provided helpful, but may stop messages from a patient support program at any time by simply calling our ProActive Care Center toll-free.
   
   
6. How is patient privacy protected?
   ProActive follows all HIPAA procedures to protect patient privacy, and processes patient information from its central processing facility, a dedicated medical communications center that is an experienced provider of communications services to government agencies, including the FDA, as well as pharmaceutical and medical device companies.

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How does the ProActive Physician Dashboard work?

1. Why must physicians preview messages that are sent to patients?
   The ProActive system delivers only standardized follow-up messages that are authorized by each enrolled patient’s own physician. The ProActive system is designed to make it fast and easy for physicians to become familiar with our quality and content, and authorize delivery of our standardized written ProActive follow-up messages to their patients.
   
   
2. Why must physicians dictate a voice-message greeting for patients?
   The ProActive telephone voice message greeting personalizes and adds credibility to follow-up messages delivered to patients. It clearly conveys the physician’s dedication to his or her patient’s well-being and increases patient satisfaction. ProActive uses an advanced system that makes dictating a ProActive voice-message greeting as fast and easy for physicians as leaving a message on an answering machine.
   
   
3. What does the physician voice-message greeting for patients say?
   The voice-message greeting thanks patients for being proactive in managing their medical conditions and encourages patients to read their ProActive e-mail, keep the physician informed between office-visits and keep follow-up office visit appointments. We provide simple instructions and an example of a dictated greeting for physicians to listen to that make dictating a ProActive voice-message greeting as fast and easy for physicians as leaving a message on an answering machine.
   
   
4. Do physician voice-messages provide information about a patient’s prescribed medications?
   When ProActive physician-dictated greetings are delivered to your patients by our central processing facility, a short message about one of the medications for which follow-up was requested by the patient is automatically added after the physician's greeting.
   
   This message is created and dictated by ProActive staff, and includes the purpose of the medication, its dosing schedule, and if available, an announcement that an opportunity for eligible patients to save money on their next refill was included in their e-mail. The toll-free number for the ProActive Care Center, which is here to help your patient if they did not get their e-mail or would like to have it sent again, is also provided.
   
   
   

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How do you help us with patient enrollment and ongoing support?

1. How does ProActive make enrolling patients easy and time-efficient?
   ProActive provides a complete practice-friendly enrollment system that allows your front-desk staff to enroll patients during the check-in process, without adding minutes to your busy days.
   
   Your receptionist simply presents patients with our Patient Invitation Binder that includes the Patient Invitation enrollment form at check-in, and introduces patients to the free service:
   
   "Your doctor wants you to sign up today to get free home follow-up that can help you afford your medications and take them properly. Please fill-in the enrollment form and give it back to me before you go in to see the doctor."
   
   You may listen to an example recording of a receptionist introducing ProActive to a patient.
   
   
2. What do you tell patients about ProActive on the Patient Invitation Enrollment form?
   The form provides a detailed description of the free home follow-up service, informs patients that it is funded by the makers of medications and other health-related products and services and that they may stop messages from the system at any time by calling the ProActive Care Center toll-free. The information ProActive gathers on the form is used to personalize and deliver requested follow-up to patients. Patients must sign and date the form to enroll in the ProActive system.
   
   You may view the Patient Invitation enrollment form online.
   
   
3. What if a patient does not have an e-mail address? How can they get ProActive follow-up?
   Most patients have e-mail addresses, and many access their e-mail through their telephones. But for those who don’t have an e-mail address, the patient can designate a caregiver, family member or friend to receive follow-up for the patient by obtaining their permission and providing their e-mail address.
   
   
4. What if a patient does not want to get telephone messages through the ProActive system?
   If a patient does not want to get telephone messages from their physician through the ProActive system, patients may leave the telephone number field on their enrollment form blank.
   
   
5. How do Patient Invitation enrollment forms get processed?
   Your receptionist stores completed forms in a mailing envelope that we provide that is pre-stamped and addressed to the ProActive Care Center. Your receptionist simply seals the envelope and drops it in the mail every Friday at the end of the day. Forms can also be faxed or e-mailed. The ProActive Care Center processes the forms and delivers follow-up to your practice’s patients without any further effort from your staff or physicians.
   
   
6. What information is provided to patients who call the ProActive Care Center?
   The ProActive Patient Invitation Binder also includes Take-Home Flyers for patients that provide the toll-free number for our ProActive Care Center, which manages the delivery of standardized follow-up messages to patients. Patients can report that they did not receive an e-mail, change their contact information or request follow-up on other medications that are included in the ProActive Library.
   
   Before callers are connected to a trained ProActive representative, they must listen to a pre-recorded greeting that instructs them to call 911 if they are experiencing a medical emergency, or their physician with medication or treatment-related questions.
   
   You may view the Take-Home Flyer online.

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About the ProActive team

1. What are the credentials of the ProActive Medical Director?
   ProActive for Patients Medical Director William Condrell, MD works with our team of medical education professionals to guide the development and implementation of the ProActive system. His career includes leadership roles in physician networks formed to assist physicians to practice more efficiently, and he is a practicing internist in Washington DC. Dr. Condrell completed his medical education and residency at Georgetown Medical Center.
   
   
2. How are we indemnified for actions of ProActive employees?
   ProActive follows all HIPAA procedures to protect patient privacy, and processes follow-up to patients through a dedicated medical communications center that provides services to pharmaceutical manufacturers and government agencies, including the FDA. ProActive indemnifies participating practices from claims arising from the Company’s material breach of any of its obligations contained in the ProActive User Agreement.
   
   You may view the ProActive User Agreement online from our sign-up form.

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