Concerns about who qualifies under the 340B Program, how drugs can be dispensed to patients, and how much entities will be reimbursed may significantly impact the operation of the 340B Program as Congress intended. This evolving landscape poses challenges to all stakeholders.
In the current market where inflation and the costs of healthcare continue to rise, there’s […]
The shift to digitally streamlined workflows is long overdue, and organizations that fall behind risk higher costs, lower patient satisfaction, and higher staff member burnout and put the facility at risk for a patient safety event.
Value-based pricing could have shown us with more certainty the real level of effectiveness of Aduhelm. Maybe it is worth paying something for; and value-based contracts are the only way to figure that out.
By placing the power to detect atrial fibrillation into the hands of 6 billion global smartphone users, validation of further physiological parameters will be expedited and the subsequent adoption of this technology into DTx will enable the low-cost tools required to remove barriers to care and improve heart health across the globe.
At the beginning of the pandemic, we were celebrated as heroes. Now the heroes are asking for help in addressing this new phenomenon of empathy fatigue. If we fail to ignore this crisis of compassion, patients and clinicians will continue to suffer.
The trifecta of increasing consumerism, staff burnout, and deferred care is a fundamental and new challenge that every healthcare provider in the country must overcome. The solution needs to start at the very start of the care journey when patients are still formulating an opinion of their provider and the care they are likely to …
Getting the healthcare first impression right through smart pre-care engagement Read More »
With cyber attacks on a steady incline, something needs to be done so that similar fates can be avoided and patient trust can be prioritized. There are four key best practices that, with the right data access technology in place, can protect healthcare companies from hacks and attacks
Payers, providers, financial institutions and tech innovators – often known as “frenemies” – need to set aside their old competitive spirit and come together as one team for the healthcare industry to be truly interoperable.
Nonhuman primates will be critical to our efforts to understand the long-term effects of Covid-19. Yet scientists conducting critical research have faced harassment and threats.
The need for precision medicine in the reproductive health care sphere has never been greater: for much of the country, the risks of unwanted pregnancy are exacerbated by abortion legislation and unscientific political rhetoric around birth control.
Complementary and integrative healthcare providers, including chiropractic physicians, acupuncturists, and massage therapists, provide effective and safe treatments for pain. Yet, they are too often overlooked by Congress and a healthcare system that tends to default to pharmacological treatments as the first step in pain reduction.
Helping your employees quit vaping increases workplace productivity and reduces the overall impact on your business’s bottom line. The sooner you implement an effective vaping cessation program, the better it will be for your employees and organization.
By applying a more comprehensive maternity journey, we are able to address social determinants of health that vary by population, geography, and community – and are estimated to impact 80% of an individual’s overall, long-term health.
For most companies and medtech, in particular, good business practices (GBP) happens on multiple levels. On the micro level, it’s more prescriptive (i.e., regulatory best practices or good manufacturing practices). On the macro level, it’s expressed as a set of ethics and principles that govern a company’s conduct.
Recognizing the symbiotic relationship between chronic diseases and mental wellbeing highlights a need for common sense solutions that embrace a holistic, more balanced-oriented approach that has proven successful in nature for hundreds of thousands of years
Obtaining an understanding of how specific SDOH factors affect individuals is extremely difficult because SDOH data is not methodically collected by clinicians. Natural Language Processing (NLP), a key discipline of AI that uses computers to understand the written word, can overcome this challenge,
In a world where care delivery and patient-to-provider interactions are increasingly facilitated by digital tools, and the makers of those tools count hundreds—even thousands—of healthcare organizations as customers, technology should be a central part of the healthequity discussion.
Billions—to trillions—of dollars are wasted in healthcare spend and although progress has been made toward closing the gap, opportunity remains in often overlooked places. Redundant care is frequently the cost culprit that is being overlooked.
Many potential participants are tired and stressed. Research studies need to prioritize simplicity, authenticity, and practicality to earn patient trust for better enrollment and retention.
These two health care settings provided invaluable lessons: get ahead of the curve through collaboration with other doctors, better monitoring, early referrals, and education.
Without reimbursement policies that can meet the opportunity of this new innovative era, patients and their providers will be denied access to the most cutting-edge, care.
Adding CDS Hooks — the HL7 published specification for clinical decision support — to the technology mix will streamline clinical workflows, particularly as the sources and quantities of data continue to expand at a rapid pace.
Pregnant women and others able to give birth are severely underrepresented in clinical research globally. But real-world data – when relevant, reliable, and fit for the purpose of answering a given research question – can be used to generate evidence on how health interventions perform in those who are pregnant.
While 2022 will likely be a reset from the tremendous growth in digital health funding of 2021, this is a healthy correction and an opportunity to realign on core metrics.
Kidney disease patients need access to innovative therapies to expand treatment choices and improve quality of life. The FDA should closely examine whether it is applying the appropriate benefit/risk assessment for new drugs intended for this population.
Telepsychiatry addresses provider shortages and social stigmas – often more prevalent in rural areas – head-on by building a bridge between people and the care gaps they encounter when seeking mental healthcare.
There’s a lot of open water between recognizing the potential for an app and launching one that actually makes people’s lives better. The key to getting it right is defining how the app will impact business-level goals. Here are five steps to defining business goals for a mobile healthcare app.
Covid-19 exposed how unhealthy we are as a nation making the case for whole-person care even stronger. All we need now is to focus on redesigning our health care system to deliver this type of care—and muster the courage to do it.
By adding adherence and connectivity capabilities to home-based solutions, clinicians can maintain open lines of communication with patients, helping patients better care for themselves from the comfort of their homes.
Incorporating behavior science enables you to better understand your consumers’ unique needs — and the personalized consumer engagements best suited to solve them. With a little less friction and a bit more fuel, you empower your end-users to make positive behavior changes and take control of their own health.
Aside from rallying for more patient-oriented reimbursement and removing the red tape involved so that providers can provide home-based dialysis care, medical device manufacturers must also offer a turnkey solution for home-based therapy that includes servicing the device in a door-to-door model.
Our nation is severely lacking in its approach to chronic pain. Nobody should ever resign themselves to forever experiencing pain and end their life or the lives of others.
Physicians and advanced practice providers are expected to commit to memory nearly limitless data. With time and properly developed and vetted software, we could move away from a memory-based system where we create general statements for people to memorize, to a new world where we augment our thinking based on population datasets.
It is time to shift the conversation, incentives, and policy solutions to help people improve their health and get off of medications—not just make them cheaper.
Serving more patients at home makes efficiency a greater priority for home health care workers and rugged mobile technology is a key differentiator, empowering them to digitize manual workflows.
The current structure of health plan provider searches does not have to be the standard. Rapid consumerization in other industries has given health plans a model for leveraging today’s technology to personalize the patient experience.
With promises of more efficient and reliable diagnoses, future breakthroughs in personalized medicine and targeted therapeutics, and an expedited R&D lifecycle, industry leaders must be prepared to invest in quantum technologies to deliver better outcomes for their organizations and patients.
Ambient scribing solutions are technical marvels, but in the end, don’t address the root problem of physician documentation. The fundamental goal is to provide an easier way for physicians to take the mental model in their head and put it into the patient’s digital file.
Whether they are acting as a therapeutic or preventive treatment, monoclonal antibodies can allow us to help contain the virus, where we might see the light at the end of the tunnel.
When thinking about gratitude for nurses who have carried our nation over the last two-plus years, it’s going to take a lot more than a pizza party during Nurses Month to show them we care.
In addition to helping providers meet consumer expectations, remote therapeutic monitoring can serve to augment and de-load overburdened practices while also opening new revenue streams.
Since we know the fundamental causes of the opioid epidemic, why are we still here? It all centers around stigma.
With a window into human body in real-time, next generation of ultrasound devices thwarts challenges of economic efficiency, geographic limits to care and ineffective training.
With proactive outreach by highly trained community health navigators guided by data and leveraging easy-to-use technology, we could get ahead of an individual’s needs, design and execute a care plan, and – hopefully – keep them out of the hospital.
While there is a heightened awareness about closing the gaps in the system and creating equality, one of the influential groups that suffer from this injustice is the LGBTQ community.
The Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Dobbs will create a big mess around what data will be revealed and the repercussions that will come when data are obtained. Individuals will bear the brunt of the burden while it all gets figured out.
Seniors’ demand for Medicare Advantage plans shows no signs of slowing down any time soon, and that means CMS is likely to continue accelerating its FWA audits of MA plans, particularly given the prevalence of Covid-19-related fraud.
A new set of 5 CMS codes introduced for 2022, RTM allows physical therapists and other qualified healthcare professionals to bill for monitoring and managing a patient’s MSK care plan remotely
Consolidated healthcare systems – even cross market systems – don’t have to raise their prices to have anticompetitive effects. They can leverage their size by using the volume of their purchases to extract discounts and other concessions from payers, national suppliers, and from labor pools.
With emerging biotech needing help with a little bit of everything, these preferred partnerships can deliver a type of one-stop shopping leveraging an agency’s best practices, current trends, and data.
For small biotech companies that are always raising money, business development is a critical next step. Joining with a credible partner goes a long way in validating technology and platforms and gives small biotech companies the runway needed to grow.
The Clarifying Remanufacturing to Protect Patient Safety Act was introduced by Reps. Scott Peters (D-CA), Kim Schrier (D-WA), and John Joyce (R- PA) to clarify the meaning of medical device remanufacturing and empower the FDA to educate company technicians so they know if they’ve crossed the line into a regulated activity.
Collecting SDOH, adding this data to patient profiles, enabling health data analytics, and taking data-based actions has proven to help significantly.
The ability of healthcare providers to leverage accurate, sophisticated and timely diagnostic testing for infertility patients is a crucial part of the patient journey.
The fact that a majority of denied claims are preventable is only one aspect of a much deeper problem. Reworking claims take time, money, and resources. But here’s how resource-strapped providers can leverage artificial intelligence to reimagine claims management.
As a VC, if you start thinking about commercialization until after you’ve made the investment, then you’ll need a lot more than just good luck to make these investments generate a good return.
May’s Mental Health Awareness Month provided an important reminder of how critical it is to reflect on the mental health crisis facing our armed forces, and how a collaborative approach that combines personal counseling services, strong clinical interventions, and innovative self-service digital solutions can make a difference.
Rapid and effective research is the only way to stave off massive loss of human life over the next 50 years. Fortunately, there are three things we can do right now to give researchers the tools and support they’ll need in the near future.
While AI has significant transformative potential and fully autonomous surgery is something our industry can aspire to, there is a lot we can accomplish in the conversation around AI in the meantime. This means technologists need to collaborate with healthcare providers to align in our approach to embracing AI.
Quitting isn’t easy. Finding a caring and kind-hearted coach to guide a person’s quit journey forms a genuine bond that only strengthens over time as trust develops.
Increasingly, health organizations are turning to technology to solve some of the complex challenges related to moving care from traditional acute settings and into homes and communities. For many, the investment in key tools and technologies can increase efficiencies and improve capacity of current staff.
If multicloud is on the rise in other industries and desired by healthcare IT professionals, what’s holding them back from deploying it? The answer isn’t quite simple, but there are a few significant challenges healthcare organizations are up against. While there may be a challenging road ahead, the payoff of multicloud will be worth it.
Whether you’re a physician, a member of a digital health organization, or a potential end-user, here are five things you should know about at-home diagnostic testing.
The maternal health crisis remains unsolved across most of the U.S. Our nation reports the […]
Operational efficiency and visibility brought on by digital transformation can help improve how pharmaceutical manufacturers do their critical part in improving equitable access and availability of medicine around the world.
“Unwinding,” which refers to the process by which states will resume annual Medicaid eligibility reviews after the public health emergency ends, could begin as soon as Aug. 1, so it’s important that providers develop plans now to assist patients who may be affected.
Clinical drug testing gives physicians the ability to uncover potentially problematic drug use and preempt devastating outcomes. Physicians value these tests, but they also want clearer guidelines to optimize their use.
With stretched resources and burnout rates reaching historic proportions, there are practical ways for leaders to invest in their most strategic asset: the workforce.
Taking steps to eliminate health disparities among people of color and ensuring diversity throughout the development cycle should be a strategic goal for all. Medical Affairs can be the change agents within their organizations to help with this push.
Just as with clinical interoperability, greater administrative interoperability could help eliminate many of the costs related to billing and insurance, freeing up much-needed investment resources.
One of the most effective methods to reduce the attack surface is segmentation. But, what type of segmentation should be used — network-centric or identity-centric?
The critical, pragmatic steps involved in developing patient-centric and equitable care for the nursing home patients came only very recently when medically advanced home hemodialysis therapies were repurposed and modified for use in the elderly frail nursing home dialysis patient populations
Food is one of the fundamental blocks for our survival and has a significant impact on our mental and physical health. An alarming 38 million Americans live in food-insecure households.
Our people are not the problem, our unsustainable systems are, including our activation around workforce development.
The PFL model can serve clinicians as a conceptual and clinical tool for the development of therapeutic interventions aimed at changing the accepted trajectory of aging and chronic disease.
The intersection of human connection and technology through voice AI holds the power to revolutionize how patients interact with their healthcare providers and payers.
As telehealth has become a bigger part of the healthcare system, focusing on access is important, but quality of care matters, too. When digital health platforms are thoughtful, innovative, and focused on delivering quality care, they can offer a more inspiring vision for the future of healthcare.
In December, the FDA published a draft guidance providing its recommendations on the use of digital health data acquisition in clinical investigations, signaling that regulatory acceptance of digital endpoints in support of drug approval may occur in the short-term.
Since it measures the total amount of circulating DNA (ctDNA) in a patient’s bloodstream using a simple blood draw, ctDNA liquid biopsy tests offers oncologists with an accurate, molecular, real-time cancer detection tool. It also helps to determine cancer staging and can help assess how aggressive the treatment regimen should be.
By improving billing and payment systems, healthcare providers can help ease what is a common, anxiety-inducing burden for many patients.
It’s time for the industry to invest more in software-based solutions, providing healthcare professionals the resources they need to thrive in an increasingly digitized field. Otherwise, they will be behind the curve of medical advances, playing catch-up with their future-minded peers.
Telehealth utilization has dropped as the pandemic emergency has waned. For telehealth utilization to meet the higher expectations set during the pandemic, the technology must be wielded for more than just episodic or urgent care.
Confocal laser endomicroscopy is an imaging technology that delivers visibility into cellular activity that enables physicians to assess areas of concern in cases where conventional disease screening returns ambiguous results.
To achieve diversity goals in research requires a multifaceted approach that makes clinical trial participation easier and uses analytics to help identify the right patients to recruit for a clinical trial.
Creating health narratives focused on patients and using this data as a learning curve would better help us reframe our thought process and reimagine how we approach healthcare from a technology and service perspective.
By leveraging aligned interoperability partners, health systems can alleviate the inevitable pressures of IT personnel shortages and the strains that labor fluctuation puts on organizational technology transformation and growth.
As an industry, we must do everything we can to help ensure the health and well-being of the people we serve. Driving benefit utilization to higher levels isn’t just good business, it’s also the right thing to do.
The paradigm shift to more patient-centric, technology-enabled decentralized clinical trials during the pandemic has created an opportunity to strengthen patient care in research.
The road to value-based care is evolving as technology advances. An important tool for this journey is artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Mechanical thrombectomy is a minimally invasive procedure that offers positive benefits to ischemic stroke patients – which account for 85 percent of all strokes – in the first few hours after stroke onset.
We believe that healthcare leadership’s ingrained culture of exceptionalism drives today’s profound problem whereby patient satisfaction is low, inefficiency is high, and patient outcomes are poor.
Pharma companies already rely heavily on data and predictive analytics to assess new drugs. In the same way, analytics can be used to enhance legal advice and improve litigation strategies.
The onus is on providers, payers and their technology partners to use the new laws and market dynamics as a catalyst to fully achieve digital transformation in healthcare and improve the patient experience.
The average heart beats about 1.5 million times over two weeks, and physicians might have to identify a six-second time period, which can determine a clinical outcome. Finding what’s clinically meaningful can be a needle in the haystack type of problem, and AI ensures higher accuracy at scale.
Prevention and cyber resiliency—an organization’s ability to bounce back and operate in the event of a cyber attack—have become all the more important as cyber threats have increased during the pandemic.
The intent of Interoperability and Patient Access regulations is not to wash your hands off them. A more empowering viewpoint is that they give organizations a chance to champion the patient and make healthcare better.
The goal of implementing artificial intelligence and machine learning in clinical research is not to replace humans with digital tools but to increase their productivity.
Covid changed things for medical affairs teams at pharmaceutical companies, causing was a fundamental shift in the way they worked and functioned. The role of the medical science liaison—a key member of the medical affairs team—has also evolved.
An analytics-driven A/R strategy can significantly improve collections in today’s healthcare environment. This article goes over the pillars of this approach as well as what metrics should be focused on in implementing such a strategy.
Government-funded initiatives such as the Cancer Moonshot support not only the primary science that often serves as a foundation for medical advances, but also ensure that patients with rare cancers are not overlooked.
Working behind the scenes to examine what motivates us and what we respond to best, behavioral science applied to AI-powered technologies can create personalized success companions that aid people in making small but important steps along difficult health journeys.
Although some short-term problems—like a lack of ICU beds to treat Covid-19 patients—have abated, deeper issues have emerged that represent long-term challenges for U.S. health systems.
Patients deserve high-quality care and better outcomes, as well as equitable, consistent and transparent billing experiences. So how do we get there?
Climate change poses a huge threat to the chemical industry, as many facilities are located in low‐lying coastal areas such as the U.S. Gulf Coast, and vulnerable to damage from hurricanes and flooding. These natural disasters are becoming more common with climate change.
While many leading health systems are working to hire and train aggressively, there will be a point when money will no longer matter and all the incentives in the world won’t be enough to attract or retain talent. That’s why most clinicians, IT leaders and administrators are dedicating more time, money, and effort in adopting …
The state of the healthcare workforce is both a catalyst for change and a hindrance Read More »
The most effective way for healthcare leaders to support providers is to relieve operational and administrative burdens, and this should begin with the onboarding process.
Leaders should be proactive about investing in IT to avoid costly issues in the future. Examine existing technology for potential risks and redundancies, assess system performance, and establish forward-looking goals and benchmarks.
Companies in every industry are now hiring a chief medical officer—an executive once found only in healthcare organizations—to implement and oversee programs that optimize employee well-being.
Some of the challenges patient advocacy organizations face include engaging diverse, hard-to-reach communities, reaching patients at the point of diagnosis, and providing meaningful resources, value and consistent engagement.
Discovering that a well-supported, evidence-based virtual physical therapy program produces the same functional and patient-reported outcomes as outpatient physical therapy—even for ambulatory TKA procedures—is a game-changer.
Young people ages 15 to 24 account for half of all new sexually transmitted infections, but widespread testing may be hindered by confidentiality concerns. At-home, mail-in testing offers a convenient, safe and private option to screen for STIs.
The model of investing huge amounts of money into one drug to try to recoup it later is problematic at best and unsustainable at worst. Platform technology provides a better, more cost-effective way forward.
Artificial intelligence can help drug study teams solve operational, scientific and ethical challenges. For example, AI can be used to flag real-time trends emerging in drug trials that might otherwise not be obvious until the end of a study when all the data is analyzed.
An intelligent authorization platform relies on AI and machine learning to extract patient-specific data from a number of sources including the EHR. This helps health plans better anticipate, manage and optimize member outcomes.
Hospitals already have a tool at their disposal that addresses affordability for their patients. Financial assistance programs can prevent many patients from having accounts sent to collections in the first place.
There are key strategies that can be leveraged by state, federal and local officials to assuage concerns of vaccine mistrust in BIPOC communities in a way that gives them the respect they currently lack and expand access to these life-saving drugs.
The most powerful drivers for digital home hospital adoption are advances in telehealth, remote monitoring and emerging digital technologies that facilitate high quality, cost-effective care beyond hospital walls.
Depopulation places an unsustainable burden on a diminishing workforce, as fewer workers are available to support an increasing number of seniors. But technological improvements in egg freezing have resulted in vastly improved pregnancy rates and could help slow the decline in births.
Congress must thoroughly investigate the anti-competitive behaviors of these conglomerates and act accordingly. Doing so will provide better outcomes both for patients and a more competitive marketplace for unaffiliated pharmacies.
Cloud resources are now incredibly varied and accessible, with a large ecosystem of industry-specific cloud-based managed services specializing in these complexities. Which means the average healthcare organization can, indeed, afford to tap into supercloud power — they just get it as a service.
To stay competitive and differentiate themselves, hospitals, physicians and practices must use technology to enhance the patient experience while simultaneously improving outcomes.
HITRUST is a framework for systematically managing digital security far above what HIPAA requires. Its stringency explains both why it can be daunting to implement and why no healthcare company should go without this certification.
Healthcare, like much of the rest of the economy, is facing a labor shortage. Artificial intelligence can lighten the load for overworked providers through everything from automation to triaging patients.
Staffing shortages can slow down trial timelines and negatively affect patients, who have less time with the physicians and nurses providing their care. But a few flexible, integrated systems that work for both clinical research sites and sponsors could help alleviate these issues and speed up research.
Cost is a primary reason people avoid or delay care, even when they are insured. But increasingly consumers are talking with providers, shopping around and taking advantage of cost transparency tools to access the care they need.
To truly move the needle on healthcare costs and outcomes, we need a more integrated care delivery model. This should fill in the gaps between scheduled appointments and foster more regular connections between healthcare consumers and their providers.
Offloading menial tasks to digital assistants isn’t just about a reduction in workload; it allows physicians to refocus their time on what they entered the profession to do—treating patients.
Studies have shown that men are less likely to use preventive healthcare services than women, and do not seek immediate treatment for many of their unique health problems.
Dental payers can no longer rely on the processes, methodologies and technologies of the past. They must adopt new technologies, like automation, that deliver the level of performance required to compete in today’s digital world.
Underrepresented groups traditionally were thought to have limited access to technology. But internet access is on the rise and researchers can take steps to increase participant diversity and be more inclusive.
We have witnessed several people die alone during the pandemic without their family members or loved ones being beside them due to hospital regulations. Can VR and holograms reduce the emotional burden for families, patients and clinicians in future crises when patients can’t be with their loved ones?
It’s common for health systems, which feel pressured to innovate but are unsure how to implement change, to choose flawed approaches. Having a thoughtful strategy for success can make all the difference.
Patients with behavioral and mental health conditions boarding in the ED is far from a new challenge facing the healthcare system. While no digital health solution alone can alleviate the shortage of available mental and behavioral health facilities and professionals, it can certainly help load balance across the various organizations.
Chief medical officers (CMO) and chief information officers (CIO) believe that the medical industry in on the cusp of transformative change and this partnership will be a key driver of innovation. This collaboration will usher in an era of technological advances in healthcare, which we refer to as Future Care.
Drugs that work for one patient may not work for another, even if both patients have the same diagnosis. This is why each patient should be tested to select the most effective and least toxic drug regimen for that individual before initiating treatment.
To maximize productivity, hospitals must connect with community providers to transmit electronic orders and results back and forth. An integrated laboratory testing platform can support this and improve the patient experience.
While no single approach is right for every hospital, there are a few fundamental tenets that all healthcare organizations should keep in mind as they design a quality improvement program.
Speech analytics technology can be leveraged to help better understand friction in the customer journey and improve customer retention. Examples of speech analytics include word clouds, transcription, and sentiment analysis.
The healthcare industry is responsible for 4.4% of global net emissions, or over 2 gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2). The need to address this fact is so pressing that the World Health Organization (WHO) recently put out a comprehensive set of climate guidelines for healthcare facilities across the world.
Now is the time for Congress to answer President Biden’s call to action and pass meaningful drug pricing reform that addresses the artificially inflated cost of drugs by manufacturers, PBMs, and payer formulary relationships.
To follow in the footsteps of the European Renaissance, healthcare leaders and clinicians need to drive the creation of a revitalized delivery model that works for all patients, not just those with greater means.
Providers, health systems and patient groups who want to see telehealth survive beyond the federal public health emergency need to engage their lawmakers and associations now to demonstrate the need and utility for continued telemedicine.
No one said it’s easy to do construction renovation in healthcare facilities, but it is vitally important to ensure that medical facilities can deliver the best care possible.
Hospitals needs to make changes not only to retain clinicians but to stem financial losses. Healthcare leaders are committed to rising to the challenge, and investing in new processes and technologies to alleviate administrative pressures is a key way they’re leading the charge.
A typical health system either loses money or just breaks even on its Labor & Delivery services. As a result, there is little incentive or budget to invest in innovating around or improving the experience. yet despite the poor economics, health systems consistently point to Women’s Health as a top strategic priority.
For both providers and patients, digital wallets offer greater convenience, ease of use, efficiency and security than traditional methods of medical bill payment.
Here’s a review of some challenges that chronic disease presents us with and a discussion of what kind of approach makes people healthier, happier, more productive and ultimately reduces their healthcare premiums, too.
The traditional fee-for-service arrangements have caused misaligned incentives across the board for patients, physicians, and payers – and proved a huge obstacle to improving care. Recognizing this gap, CMS began to facilitate a shift towards outcome-based care by focusing on outpatient monitoring and disease management. This has led to progress in adopting new reimbursement models.
Scaling too soon or too fast can kill your growing business. That’s why you need to understand the industry dynamics, have the right core team, and put a plan in place to take your company to the next level.
Telepsychiatry has allowed providers to supplement their behavioral health workforces to address growing patient volumes while also expanding the geographic reach of services.
Figuring out what’s wrong means putting together all the pieces of the puzzle—the physical, mental, social and spiritual needs and preferences of the person being cared for, and the caregiver.
We’re past the point of technology being a Band-Aid to get practices through a pandemic. Investing in the right digital tools can help practices attract new business, get them paid faster and provide better patient care.
With the information contained in a simple 30-second voice sample, providers can help patients get ahead of future health issues and prescribe or adjust treatment plans as needed.
New technologies for quantifying behavioral information and tracking neurological patterns have the potential to change treatment—but we must connect the data.
Some patients recognize no words at all 12 months after surgery, while others essentially have normal hearing in our analysis. This wide range of speech perception outcomes, we conclude, translates into considerable uncertainty for patients.
While many healthcare companies have used artificial intelligence for some time now for features like machine learning interpretability required by the healthcare industry for compliance purposes, AI-based healthcare solutions also have the potential to make healthcare more affordable and more accessible, thus helping to improve equity in healthcare.
As artificial intelligence becomes more focused and efficient, and the pharmaceutical and biotech industries consolidate to survive, it’s important to also reflect on what is working in the fight against Covid-19. This will help us to be more prepared for the next global health crisis.
The revenue cycle is incredibly complex due to shifting payer requirements, continuous regulatory compliance and coding updates, and emerging and evolving payment models. That complexity increases the administrative burden and drives up cost for providers.
Primary care providers will function as the hub in a personalized care ecosystem, with the patient at the center. To accomplish this, they’ll not only see patients in person but will engage them virtually as well, while also accessing more data to improve outcomes.
Congress must provide the Department of Health and Human Services the authority and flexibility to continue all federal telehealth waivers once the administration declares an end to the PHE.
Our analysis demonstrates that CMS’s coverage processes for breakthrough devices demonstrate product class and disease state disparities. These disparities contradict mental health parity statute, CMS Administrator Brooks-LaSure’s focus on equity, and President Biden’s charge to improve brain health.
Obesity is a disease, and America’s healthcare providers and hospital systems must be part of changing how we treat it. That means many of us in the health ecosystem must reexamine how we view patients with excess weight.
The PBM industry—a transaction-driven industry that highlights economic distribution, resting squarely on price, rebates, and discounts—has consistently let down employers and patients with models that behave like retail.
Insurers’ abuse of prior authorization is creating health risks for patients and contributing to higher downstream costs for both beneficiaries and the larger health care system.
Patients are comfortable with pharmacists being more involved, and physicians place a high level of trust in them as well. That mirrors pharmacists’ own confidence in their abilities to serve as a resource for everything from drug interactions to medication management.
The latest generation of health and wellness offerings enables employers to provide tailored solutions to their workforce. These apps and programs often leverage big data analytics and the human touch to both identify and connect with employees.
When designed effectively, digital payment and financial communications can have a substantial impact on a hospital or health system’s bottom line. But patients still commonly receive their bills by mail.
Surgery is not always the best answer for orthopedic problems. Often behavior modifications that help with losing weight and increasing mobility, such as exercise, stretching and making dietary improvements, can successfully address musculoskeletal issues while also reducing healthcare spending.
Informed consent isn’t as simple as getting verbal or written consent from a participant one time. Rather, it is the start of an ongoing relationship based on communication.
AI’s ability to quickly scan and synthesize huge volumes of information is being adopted for numerous healthcare initiatives, including use in pharmaceutical drug discovery and development.
Metagenomics offers advances for infectious disease diagnostics by providing the diagnostic technology to detect a potentially unlimited numbers of known and novel microbes from a single sample in one test.
API adoption will hinge on efforts from all angles — such as healthcare organizations, IT specialists and regulators – working together to support a standardized API solution and overhaul of systems in much need of transformation.
We don’t need to create a new way to care for sick patients at home. That’s available to us right now. We just need to fund it.
The health crisis in Black communities isn’t solely due to lack of access to care. Much of it also stems from well-documented racial disparities and biases, such as biases around pain perception and treatment recommendations.
This legislation has the potential to drastically reshape the economics of healthcare in America, but it remains unfamiliar to those it affects most—namely, patients, doctors and outpatient surgery centers.
Primary care has demonstrated remarkable resilience in spite of the intense pressures of the pandemic, and there is critical work to do to help our nation recover from the wide-ranging consequences of Covid-19.
What specialty providers and seniors need is a sustainable solution to preserve the federal health insurance program and properly reimburse providers.
There are some lessons in Haven’s failure, and the failure of other big-tech healthcare ventures such as Google Health and Apple Health Habit, that Amazon needs to learn to avoid getting burned a second time.
To get to the root of existing reimbursement problems, health plans should consider tackling genomic benefits management in a way that addresses test ordering and billing challenges.
Artificial intelligence in healthcare is only as good as the patient data that is collected. The information must be accurate, and precision management of patient data is critical for AI to succeed.
One of the most important lessons learned in Africa—and throughout the Covid-19 pandemic—is that data is your biggest ally. We need data to tell us what’s going wrong and why. But most importantly, we need this information in real time.
Social media is a powerful tool for health researchers, but it also has its pitfalls. To make social media an effective part of your study’s recruitment and engagement efforts, it’s important to avoid making certain mistakes.
Fixing the last mile may not be as sexy as sprinting toward the development of the mRNA vaccines or our first anti-viral treatments, but addressing it is the only way we can improve outcomes for people who need this the most.
The direct recording and analysis of voice ensures that a more diverse range of patients is represented in clinical trials. This is crucial for effective therapeutic outcomes.
In this complex and rapidly changing claims denial environment, providers must take a proactive approach to stay ahead of the game. Here’s what providers can do to successfully navigate the audit landscape.
To protect mothers, we must invest in a culturally relevant, community-based continuum of care. We must unite policymakers, advocates, physicians, health systems, payers, midwives, doulas, and community organizations in order to develop a standardized continuum of care.
Early indications show that remote patient monitoring holds promise in advancing value-based care. But healthcare providers and practice managers need to consider several factors before they begin to integrate RPM and wearables into their practices and decision-making processes.
Medicare’s Comprehensive Kidney Care Contracting model spotlights the importance of proactive, coordinated kidney care. It’s critical for nephrology practices to start incorporating this patient-centric approach and consider more than just immediate kidney concerns.
One way to reduce discrimination in medicine is for hospitals, clinics and other medical groups to cultivate the attributes of a high-reliability organization, or HRO, loosely defined as “organizations that operate in complex, high-hazard domains for extended periods without serious accidents or catastrophic failures.”
Little things truly matter. This is especially true in our fight to prevent colon cancer. Colon cancer almost always starts as tiny mushroom-looking, pre-cancerous growths called “polyps”. Over a five- to 10-year period, these little 1mm-10mm nothings may evolve into something…cancer. Fortunately, these can be easily removed during a colonoscopy.
With analytics, faster, more informed decision-making is possible. This provides opportunities for healthcare leaders and organizations to find greater alignment on priorities, resources and outcomes.
When the healthcare industry talks about data, the conversation usually focuses on interoperability and data standards. While these are certainly important, the most effective way to connect the dots and gain a complete view of a patient is through data normalization.
Many patients are discharged from the hospital only to be readmitted soon afterward. But recovery coaching programs bolstered by augmented intelligence can significantly reduce readmission rates, improve a patient’s overall health and enhance their experience.
As we work to engage underserved communities in proactive, value-based medical treatment, we need to find ways to provide more granular data that accurately and precisely reflects the communities we serve. There is no more pressing issue than the advancement of care equity in a country so rife with disparities.
Some patients reach a point where ongoing TKI therapy can cause more harm than good. New data can simplify the decision to discontinue treatment.
While the pandemic has disrupted demand for certain healthcare sectors, it has accelerated innovation and provided an opportunity for investment in other areas. In particular, there’s been rapid growth in virtual and home-based care delivery, along with the adoption of technology platforms.
Although there is a wide range of healthcare chatbot applications, such as providing medical information and mental health assistance, typical chatbot solutions are often inadequate, leaving both their users and owners frustrated.
Whether seeking to overcome ongoing hesitation of the Covid-19 vaccine or searching for moonshot cancer solutions, whatever the healthcare need demands, seeking results for diverse populations must be a priority.
The “Great Resignation” should spark a great transformation, where digital innovation is no longer a stop-gap but an integral part of any health care delivery strategy moving forward.
The key challenge for primary care is the current lack of means for population-wide screening as this significantly lowers our ability to catch the condition early in patients within this golden window.
To truly enhance the quality of care, healthcare organizations need more collaborative, less disruptive communication tools — mobile clinical technologies — that enable greater workflow efficiencies, faster response times, fewer errors, and higher levels of safety.
The mental health crisis is something that has burdened millions of Americans a year and shows no sign of stopping. Collaborative care is what the U.S. needs to support vulnerable patients seeking care.
We are at an exciting place and time and witnessing a paradigm shift in the rise of the connected hospital.
Recently, the ONC revealed its most ambitious healthcare interoperability effort to date with the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA). It outlines a common set of principles, terms, and conditions to support the overarching goal of establishing a universal floor for health data interoperability across the country.
While the healthcare industry’s digital transformation continues pushing forward — accelerated, in part, by growing adoption of telehealth — we’re also seeing the effects of a stronger digital foundation for the future of healthcare.
Throughout this pandemic, out of necessity, we changed the way we practice medicine. It is my belief that we can use these new practices to create a better system that provides more support and focus on nurse well-being, career development and collaboration, without sacrificing patient care.
New Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) regulations promote innovation, interoperability and the free flow of data. Americans have demanded more transparency in healthcare for decades, and finally, there are governing bodies in place to support it.
Since the pandemic began, health systems have faced severe medical supply shortages for everything from personal protective equipment and ventilators to testing kits. However, those issues pale in comparison to a growing workforce shortage that is touching nearly every aspect of the health ecosystem.
All the hype around precision medicine can make it seem intimidating and foreign. The good news is that it does not represent a departure from current clinical practice, and it can significantly improve patient care.
Supporting real-time care coordination will benefit the physical and behavioral health of every patient, resulting in better outcomes and make significant progress against the mental health and substance use crisis that has cut too many lives short and left family and friends grieving.
As we embrace breakthroughs in digital health, let’s not cut, paste and proliferate the health equity issues of the offline world. We can only claim success when we measure who’s engaging, who’s not and why.
Getting patients to quit and remain tobacco-free requires ongoing treatment that’s customized, flexible, easy to use, and free to the user. Primary care providers are well versed in the management of chronic, treatable conditions. It’s time for primary care doctors to light the way toward getting patients to quit tobacco.
By moving decisively to address waste, emissions and social inequality, organizations can turn sustainability into a competitive advantage. Here’s how.
Artificial intelligence could help with improving patient care, accelerating drug discovery and enabling the efficient operation and management of healthcare systems. But the focus should be on AI that can assist with human decision-making, not replace it.
With their ability to provide cost-effective care and statistically safer clinical outcomes than in-patient facilities, ambulatory surgery centers are a key to moving affordable healthcare forward.
More restrictive opioid prescribing guidelines were put in place in a rightful effort to stop a devastating crisis. But this sudden and dramatic change negatively impacted chronic pain patients who were managing their pain through prescription opioids given few other effective options.
To reduce time-consuming manual searches and improve their findings, many organizations are turning to artificial intelligence technologies such as natural language processing. Clinical and research institutions are adopting NLP to capture unstructured information from EHRs that helps with diagnosis.
Big technology companies have often been hailed as the saviors that could free the nation from the problems of our dysfunctional, inefficient and archaic healthcare system. The reality is that these organizations continue to fail in their initiatives, ultimately stifling true healthcare innovation.
While a great deal of attention has been given to streamlining supply chains – and ensuring vaccines reach healthcare providers and their patients around the world – one of the most critical components is also the most overlooked: the label.
Falls are the No. 1 cause of nonfatal emergency room visits, costing tens of billions annually, and one the top five Medicare expenditures. But many healthcare plans are performing poorly in fall prevention.
Simple-to-use integrated scheduling and two-way engagement are critical in equipping healthcare providers to deliver a better patient experience in the digital future.
Covid-19 has driven increases in mental health-related emergency room visits, suspected suicide attempts, and reported cases of depression and anxiety among all age groups, particularly children.
Prior to the pandemic, about half of U.S. states had given nurse practitioners full practice authority. Since then, even more states have issued executive orders to allow NPs to take on more responsibility during the pandemic – an emergency response put in place to help address new challenges.
Leveraging a precision prescribing platform with embedded genomic analysis will help physicians improve care and reduce costs by providing valuable information to inform mental health medication choices that can deliver treatment success for their patients from the start.
At a time of dramatically increasing consumer demand for convenience and digital self-service, hospitals and health systems have a significant opportunity to close the gap between expectations and reality for people trying to find care.
To avoid the “trends trap” of heightening the health tech disconnect in the wake of innovation, we must consider how best to proceed in investing and building new technologies that enable long-term transformation of care delivery, not just this year’s trends.
As we near two years since Covid-19 first struck the U.S., our healthcare system continues […]
There is a need for sophisticated and accurate forecasting software tools that incorporate precision cancer care. Technology and artificial intelligence, in particular, have the potential to improve clinical decision-making.
To combat challenges facing the industry, both policymakers and entrepreneurs have been working on complementary strategies to help primary care physicians, nephrologists and other care team members disrupt the status quo.
Many healthcare companies are examining ways to incorporate AI to improve safety, efficiency and the overall patient experience. However, as companies continue to prioritize this technology, it’s important to focus on finding the right applications, rather than just using it to replace humans.
Unfortunately, too many patients go without prescribed medication because healthcare professionals – a distinct minority but no small number – “divert” the drugs for other uses, often abusing the medication themselves.
With its ruling to maintain the status quo, the FTC has decided to take a back-seat and force independent pharmacies to fend for themselves in their on-going fight to secure access to fair prices that allow them to stay in business and continue to serve their local communities and the well-being of their patients.
Patient expectations are drastically changing due to the pandemic, access to technology and generational preferences. By actively listening to patients and drawing on data healthcare organizations already have, it’s possible to personalize experiences and improve care delivery.
Even with EHRs, notes are still written down on paper and some critical communication never happens between clinicians. To reduce medical errors, we need to keep improving our systems for collaboration.
While we can’t pretend that Direct Contracting is going to solve all of our problems, it does provide consideration for Direct Primary Care (DPC) practices, through which physicians can operate outside today’s insurance-based payment model.
For data to be truly valuable, it must take into consideration all the facets of the patient’s life. That will allow researchers to uncover new patterns in cancer prognosis, diagnosis and treatment.
Here are three tips for designing an omnichannel AI ecosystem that maximizes investments while remaining nimble in today’s dynamic and competitive market.
Hospital leaders must meet or exceed patients’ expectations for a pleasant, predictable registration experience to maintain a competitive advantage. Consumers don’t see how real-time patient tracking helps departments communicate better, but it has an outsized effect on their experience.
During my 36-year-old brother’s terminal stay in the ICU, I discovered a dire need for a more comprehensive approach to critical care. The more he relied on this large, corporate hospital system to keep him healthy and happy, the clearer it became that no matter how highly-ranked or well-funded it was, this hospital did not …
What I realized about hospitals as my brother lay dying of cystic fibrosis in the ICU Read More »
As older nurses retire and others leave the profession due to burnout, there’s a very real threat of a leadership void in nursing. But making changes related to nursing culture, staffing and paths to the top can prevent that.
For those without a companion or person they trust to provide assistance, technology can help with some of the tasks traditionally handled by a caregiver.
Expect more clinical trial sponsors to embrace these technologies as the industry sees wider adoption of decentralized clinical trials.
Telehealth has proven itself undeniably practical. However, ensuring its long-term survival will require ongoing work and revision, including broadband improvements, permanent Medicare reforms, Interstate Medical Licensure Compact participation and payment parity assurance.
Our survey of health system CIOs finds growing demand for platforms that not only solve big and urgent problems but deliver provable ROI and integrate with existing workflows. Despite this high bar, investors are deploying record amounts of capital to startups with big dreams and few proof points.
With footprints in local communities across the country, retailers have the food, the medicine, the pharmacist and now even the access to local and convenient care consumers need.
The life sciences industry is more quickly adapting to new methods, standards and requirements. The focus is now on how to drive greater data governance and quality through a unified framework. The challenge comes in instituting a framework that will meet regulatory and labeling requirements.
Integrating advanced technologies, including smart packaging and powerful data analytics, is driving a revolution in adherence monitoring that is accelerating drug development timelines, lowering clinical research costs and making trials safer for participants.
Unclean water is a major cause of disease transmission, causing an estimated five million deaths worldwide every year.
It’s time to reject reliance on the availability of human therapists and explore digitally driven, personalized care, so that each person receives exactly what they need when they need it, preserving our precious pool of trained human therapists for those that need them most.
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