As the holiday weekend wraps up, we jump back into work, and back into the never-ending barrage of records, labs, and patients. Jumping into caring for patients is often satisfying for healthcare providers who love their job.

But there is always a flip side to the busy, demanding work of 12-minutes-per-patient. And the flip side is that there is no time to think.

When I read the New York Times article that came out about Obama's quiet evening hours, I nodded a bit in recognition.

After President Obama has dinner with his wife and daughters, he goes to the Treaty Room and shuts the door. There, he goes over speeches and briefings. He edits documents. He hashes out ideas with colleagues. He circles back to things he didn't have time for during the day and moves forward with key decisions.

“Everybody carves out their time to get their thoughts together. There is no doubt that window is his window,” the article quotes Rahm Emanuel as saying (Mr. Obama’s first chief of staff.) “You can’t block out a half-hour and try to do it during the day. It’s too much incoming. That’s the place where it can all be put aside and you can focus.”

Sometimes we're asked why we don't focu

s more on videoconferencing with iClickCare. (While it's a feature of our healthcare collaboration tool, it's not the primary focus.) The reason is that we value healthcare providers' time more than any other single resource. And the last thing that healthcare providers need is more incoming. Healthcare providers don't need more interruptions, more tasks, or more interactions that don't let them process and envision really innovative ways of caring for patients.

It's precisely this kind of time that we try to protect using hybrid store-and-forward telemedicine. It's a fancy term for a simple concept: that you should be able to collaborate on your terms, at a time that works for you.

We believe that those moments of reflection are the source of good patient care -- not in conflict with it. And as we return from our Independence Day break, we encourage you to embrace that time to "get your thoughts together", whether it's 60 seconds or 6 hours.

We put together a quick guide on what makes Hybrid Store-and-Forward Telemedicine different from other healthcare collaboration tools. Get it here: