Handhelds or PDA's come in all shapes and sizes; some with camera, telephones and mp3 players. But the true value with a handheld is to allow instantaneous transmission of data for enhanced decision making. Many healthcare practices are utilizing this workfow technology for recording billable information, accurate HCFA code entries as well as e-Prescriptions. In fact, The Center for Information Technology Leadership, Partners Hospital, Boston, estimates that widespread adoption of e-prescribing could eliminate more than 2 million adverse drug events each year, more than 130,000 of which would be life-threatening. Yet, just over 10% of presciptions filled today, are generated with this approach.
Return on Investment studies on Children's Specialized Hospital of New Jersey indicate an increase in $10 million revenue over the past two years, since each caregiver, equipped with this specialized Palm Pilot can see one more patient per day. In addition, savings have been realized from reduced bill submission from the ususal ten to fifteen to less than 5 days as well as revenue loss from late billing as all data is captured at once.
With this technology used in heathcare for admittedly routine operations, how could a handheld application be used in property/casualty? Could agents be armed with handhelds to canvas neighborhoods to provide on-the-spot home insurance quotations? Part of the answer lies in how you outfit the device. The handheld could identify the property with GPS, capture pre-determined photos of the risk and work "hand-in-hand" with the agent who could visually assess and transcribe the data back to the carriers servers. Once that data is streamed with municipal and credit information, an accurate risk quote could be left for the homeowner... likely within minutes and with all information accurately and precisely documented.