Health plans are on a constant quest to learn what they can do to help their member populations. Unfortunately, there is a scarcity of practical information for health plans to act upon when scanning media coverage and internet sites that purport to provide helpful guidance.
For example, the World Health Organization actually describes social determinants of health, or SDoH, as “non-medical factors that influence health outcomes.” This simple designation complicates matters, as non-medical
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Why Medicaid Programs Need to Update Their Information Systems
You don’t have to be a news junkie or political aficionado to know that state unemployment information systems massively failed during the COVID-19 pandemic at a time when they were most desperately needed.
Overwhelmed by a rush of newly laid-off workers, websites crashed and timed out while phone lines were tied up for hours, leading to frustration and delays in benefits payments – harming local economies and imperiling American families.
In Ohio, unemployment overpayments reached
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Crisis in the U.S. Healthcare Workforce: Why It’s Time to introduce AI
One of the many acute challenges during the pandemic has been the departure of approximately 18% of the U.S. healthcare workforce,4 resulting in staffing shortages in hospitals. This has impacted the well-being of the remaining healthcare practitioners 5 as well as their patients – many of whom are deferring care that is vital to disease management and overall maintenance of health,6,7 or who do not have access to timely emergency care.1 Though such challenges may be perceived as insurmountable
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Ventilator Consumables Market Analysis: COVID-19 Pandemic Repercussions
Consumables are often associated with low-cost, standardized products. This has often been the case with breathing system solutions used in ventilation. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of sufficient infection control in the hospital environment, subsequently uplifting demand for solutions that reduce infection risk. Vendors of all calibers grabbed this opportunity to expand market share, but questions remain on whether they will keep up in a crowded and
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Healthcare Is A Cyber Criminal’s Dream, But It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way
Healthcare is a cyber criminal’s dream. It presents the intersection of a data treasure trove, weak security posture, limited resources, complicated supply chain, and patient care delivery. When faced with having to pick a priority to optimize for, healthcare will, of course, always pick delivering healthcare. This means that when tradeoffs must be made and resources are limited immediate patient care is prioritized over anything else.
A great example of this is looking at how
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Why The Future of Healthcare Interfaces is Fluid
Tools we use to do our daily work have rapidly evolved following deep human-computer interaction (HCI) research. However, when it comes to healthcare, the HCI research has not found its way to healthcare practice. Most healthcare professionals still rely on memory, experience, pen & paper and difficult-to-use healthcare software. The future of medical tools needs to be catalytic as opposed to a hindrance. In this piece, we attempt to untangle the set of tools used in healthcare today
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Connecting the Dots – Building Data Bridges for a Better Healthcare Future
Healthcare data is increasing at an exponential rate. Approximately one-third of the world’s data volume is being generated by the healthcare industry. By 2025, the compound annual growth rate of healthcare data will reach 36% – that’s 6% faster than manufacturing, 10% faster than financial services, and 11% faster than media and entertainment.
In addition to information captured during visits with healthcare professionals, personal health information is being created by an increasingly
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Helping Clinical Trial Sites Improve Study Recruitment and Retention
The clinical trial industry is, once again, at an uncertain crossroads. And while it might be assumed that the outsized impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the inability to recruit patients for trials, it is instead, a challenge generated, over time, by the industry itself. Thankfully, there is an opportunity to change course.
It’s no secret that research studies and clinical trial sites struggle with recruitment. In fact, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) states
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Unlock Healthcare Data to Improve Patient Care and Operational Efficiency
The ease in which protected health information (PHI) is shared, accessed, and analyzed has a direct impact on clinical productivity, patient care coordination, and health outcomes. Today, clinicians still spend a considerable amount of time typing in, clicking through, and editing electronic health records (EHR). Manually keying-in patient data into fields is not only time-consuming and inefficient, but it can also lead to medical errors if any of the information is typed incorrectly.
This
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Fighting Front-End Staff Burnout Without Compromising Care
Research tells us that self-advocacy in healthcare is important, for both patients and providers. But self-advocacy is hard for patients today. Patients must navigate the complex, fragmented healthcare ecosystem to advocate for personal needs and have their voices heard.
Unfortunately, patients now face a new challenge: the clinical support staff that plays a crucial role in guiding patients through their healthcare experience are increasingly burned out.
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