For years, hypertension has dominated the healthcare field, afflicting 45 percent of all adult Americans, inducing a number of lethal complications in patients across the country. Another disease that has gained renown in the world of healthcare is diabetes, afflicting 10.5 percent of the U.S. population with its own complications.
Healthcare professionals have allocated untold assets in the form of time, money, and personnel to minimize the impact such diseases pose yet the relative
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Data Reveals Institutional Racism in Healthcare Still Exist, But Providers/Payers Can Change That
The vaccine rollout is following patterns that are all too familiar -- but we can change that
Newscasters sounded surprised when they announced for the first time that COVID-19 was disproportionately affecting Black, Indigenous, and people of color. As they presented graphs that showed higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and death, their tone was one of mild shock.
Similar surprise-- and similar graphs-- returned when they reported on the slowed, uneven vaccine rollout in poorer
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KLAS: Growth of Drug Diversion Monitoring Market
Often when we talk about the opioid epidemic, the focus is rightly on the suffering that the situation has caused. However, it’s important not to miss the surrounding context of this crisis, and what various health systems have started to uncover.
Currently, health systems face a huge challenge in tracking and managing their controlled substances. One of the technology-based solutions to the problem is drug diversion monitoring systems, which KLAS reported on in a recent report. While
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The Role of Digital Mental Health in the Healthcare Journey
With more than 20,000 apps available to address myriad mental health challenges with varying degrees of support, it’s clear that digital mental health is experiencing a boom. But there seems to be little consensus regarding the true role that digital therapeutics can and should play within the greater context of a patient’s mental health care journey. In order to better articulate this role, we need to take a person-centered view and understand how digital therapeutics can help people not just
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Why Provider-Payer Collaboration is the Secret to Value-Based Success
Just before the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, 48% of healthcare providers surveyed said three-quarters of their organization’s payments were grounded in fee-for-service models of care. Fast forward a year and the financial aftershocks of the pandemic have highlighted some of the benefits of value-based models for providers as well as health plans and consumers.
Despite the benefits of incentive-based payment models in healthcare, including indications that it may reduce readmissions and
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Applying A Hedge Fund Mentality for Investing in Social Determinants of Health
While I am a practicing clinician, I am a firm believer that improvements in healthcare most often come from borrowing the best ideas from other business models. For example, I have sometimes borrowed from software company and payer colleague insights to describe value-based care (VBC) reimbursement as a subscription model. This model would provide more consistent revenue and allow organizations to better weather challenging times like a pandemic. For providers, this would allow freedom from the
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4 Common Pitfalls of Remote Patient Monitoring to Avoid
COVID-19 created a colossal opportunity for health plans and providers to reimagine how they engage with patients. With patients apprehensive about going to the doctor during the pandemic, it became even more vital to keep track of their health in between visits. This is where remote patient monitoring (RPM) becomes critical to every payer and provider’s virtual health strategy. RPM uses digital technologies to collect data about symptoms, medications, treatment, and biometrics from individuals
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The Crucial Role of SDOH Data in Value-Based Care
Roughly $4 trillion is spent on healthcare annually in the U.S. Despite this massive expenditure, roughly 80% of health outcomes are attributed to social, behavioral and environmental factors, known as social determinants of health (SDOH).
What has been far less clear is how providers and payers can fully harness SDOH data to proactively manage the health of patients and members. Technological and cultural barriers have made it difficult for disparate parties such as
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What Population Health Management Providers Need to Know About HITRUST CSF Certification
Healthcare companies continue to implement value-based care and population health management initiatives to coordinate healthcare delivery and improve the quality and value of patient care. These initiatives depend on the ability to access, aggregate, and analyze massive amounts of patient data, often coming from hundreds of source systems. Critical system interoperability and data-sharing agreements enable healthcare organizations to aggregate data and build massive data assets to support their
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Finetuning Quality Measure Reporting to Perform Like Professional Athletes
Healthcare organizations deal with a seemingly endless list of demands, including expanding access to care, financial sustainability, staffing shortages, rigorous data security, government regulations and quality improvement initiatives. Many organizations can operate at full speed and still find they cannot keep up with all the demands.
Quality programs facilitated by CMS and commercial health plans provide critical funding to support healthcare operations. They require diligent data
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