Have you ever gone to a medical appointment, knowing and feeling with certainty that something is wrong, only to have a doctor downplay and write off your symptoms?
Medical gaslighting, a relatively new, non-clinical term, refers to the practice of minimizing or dismissing a patient’s symptoms, concerns, or experiences. Often, symptoms are written off as psychological in nature, or patients are told that what they are experiencing isn’t serious or that it is normal.
The problem
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Why It’s Time for Healthcare Organizations to Start Treating Patients Like Consumers
When the pandemic disrupted routine procedures and primary care across healthcare, many care delivery organizations believed patients would eventually return to in-person care as they always have once the pandemic was over and restrictions were lifted. Pent-up patient demand for non-emergency, preventative services–everything from cancer screenings to mental health support to birth control to smoking cessation–would eventually draw patients back into the healthcare system. Patients with common
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Building a Healthier Future with Real Wireless Power
One of the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic has been that healthcare facilities need to scale up operations quickly to respond to a public health emergency and that doing so is a significant challenge. In the early days of the pandemic, hard-hit cities like New York and others had to set up mobile hospital units or access additional capacity through military hospital ships.
In an emergency like the pandemic, staffing shortages remain a persistent problem, but expanding facility
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4 Key Focus Areas to Measure Your Digital Health Strategy
The promise of digital healthcare is profound. Moving from today’s transactional encounters to a convenient and continuous connection between patients and clinicians can greatly improve both relationships and overall care. The responsible collection of data from a digital platform can also lay the foundation for better, more personalized care. Perhaps most importantly, consumers are no longer tethered to a physical location and are able to receive quality care regardless of where they live or
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Health IT for Emerging “Payviders”
Though doubts about the benefits of the “payvider” model certainly exist, the success of recent payer-provider partnerships showcases the potential of these programs to improve the patient and provider experience. A study of Aetna’s integrated program, for example, found that plan members could realize significant savings for high-cost chronic conditions and experience fewer hospital admissions. A similar report from Cigna echoed these conclusions, finding that integrated benefit plans resulted
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Digital Fax Solutions Alleviate Administrative Burden and Reduce Costs
At the LeadingAge Illinois 2022 Annual Meeting, Elizabeth McLaren, VP of Reimbursement and Community-Based Services, along with Steven Wermuth, MPA at Strategic Health Care, presented their analysis on the top billing mistakes. What did they find? Within long-term care providers, 8-10% of Medicare Advantage claims were denied. Shockingly, the 10% denial rate impacted revenue by $200 million! They also found that 80% of denied claims are due to missing or incorrect information used during intake
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The Botched COVID-19 Response and What We Can Learn from It
The COVID-19 pandemic has completely transformed the World Order and exposed striking realities of the global healthcare infrastructure by revealing the tendencies of various countries to deal with public healthcare emergencies. It has further raised the curtain on global hegemons like the U.S.A., which lacked the capacity and finances to counter this disaster. This has intensified the need for reforms and strong legislation to mitigate the pandemic’s devastation on healthcare facilities.
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Brain Health: The Next Frontier in the Fight Against Dementia
There are differing views on the value of cognitive screening of older adults in a primary care setting. Many providers point to the lack of disease-modifying treatments for Alzheimer’s Dementia and related dementias (ADRD) as a reason to not universally screen older adults for cognitive deficits. If I don’t have anything to give my patients to get better, what’s the point in revealing they might be at risk of dementia, or that they have early disease? Is dementia a ‘normal’ or ‘expected’ part
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The True Value of Human-Centered Research Within Medical Technology
With recent statistics suggesting that 70% of all projects fail, it’s vital that we do all we can to set ourselves up for success when we set out on a new design or development of a product. Every day, we are surrounded by products and services that don’t work as we expect them to. Whether it is a hard-to-follow set of instructions for a new medical device or a convoluted setup process, people are constantly forced to develop workarounds to compensate for poor design.The practice of
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Why Data is at the Heart of Value-Based Care Success
The saying “you cannot manage what you cannot measure” applies to all aspects of healthcare delivery, but it is especially true in value-based care. After all, payers, providers, and the patients they care for need to know what high-value care looks like at an individual level – and how it can be applied at the population level.
Delivery and technology infrastructure. All too often, data is captured in disparate systems, forcing administrative staff – or, worse, physicians and nurses – to
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