As COVID-19 continues to impact the country, providers across the continuum face new challenges delivering care and ensuring safety for their patients and themselves. During this period, sharing real-time information about patients’ care encounters across provider types and care settings matter more than ever. In particular, hospitals sharing admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) events with COVID-19 patients’ community-based providers is critical to ensure the best treatment course and
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Cybersecurity: Managing Risk in the COVID-19 Era
Healthcare IT consultants’ work involving health records may expose them – and their provider and payer clients – to regulatory, legal, financial, and reputational risk. These risks are potentially higher in the COVID-19 era, with many of their employees working from home and accessing sensitive records and networks from remote locations. According to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), there is a heightened risk of phishing, SMS phishing and other attacks using COVID-19 themes, and
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Call to Action: Restrictions Around Virtual Health Can’t Go Back to “Normal”
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government has passed several stimulus packages with the goal of helping employers keep their business in operation while office volume is down and, in some cases, practices are physically closed. The CARES Act, which included the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Provider Relief Fund, for example, has provided some relief to eligible healthcare providers, including low-interest rate loans to help providers pay staff salaries, rent, and other
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Virtually or In-Person, Automation Improves The Healthcare Experience
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented shift in the way consumers view and access a variety of goods and services—and healthcare is no exception. Recent studies show that many patients, including vulnerable populations like those living with cancer, are delaying recommended care and procedures—and will continue to do so for at least several months amid fears over the safety of in-person visits. In response, reports of providers adapting to offer care virtually are all the more
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Telehealth’s Time Has Come. And It’s Here to Stay.
“The numbers don’t lie,” is a famous old adage and quite appropriate with regard to the rapid rise and deployment of telehealth solutions in the medical community. It may have taken a global pandemic for society to recognize and investigate the rewards of its adoption, but statistics reveal that telehealth’s moment has indeed come. And it certainly seems like it’s here to stay.
How did we come so far, so fast? By undertaking forward-thinking policies and bold action, the health care industry
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COVID-19: 4 Essential Patient Payment Strategy Components to Accelerate Cash Flow
In the past few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has shaken societies, economies, and human wellbeing to the core. While protecting public health and welfare are top priorities for hospitals, the harsh reality is that it takes cash to keep the doors open and serve patients effectively. Revenue is down significantly as a result of canceled elective surgeries, while the costs of medical supplies and in-demand personal protective equipment for workers have skyrocketed. Hospitals’ operating challenges
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COVID-19 Infects Patient & Practitioner Demands, Unsettling the Future of Hospital Operations
Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, the healthcare industry in the United States was in the midst of an intense refocusing on patient-centered care. This evolution was defined by a number of innovations, policies, and even federal reimbursement programs that prioritized emphasis on and impact on the patient experience. It led to changes in everything from the quality of hospital food, valet parking, and room amenities to fundamentally reimagined standards of care for even mundane procedures like
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How to Implement HIPAA-Compliant Video Conferencing for Healthcare Providers
Video-conferencing software like Zoom has been getting a lot of attention of late as more and more people turn to digital tools to communicate remotely, whether to stay connected with loved ones, keep work flowing, or communicate with clients.
Healthcare is certainly no exception. A global FICO study found that around 80% of people want to use their mobile phones to interact with doctors and other healthcare providers.
Digital healthcare solutions were already on the rise
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4 Ways Healthcare Organizations Can Establish Partnerships to Drive Innovation
With public and private healthcare spending significantly outpacing that of other countries, U.S. hospitals face intense pressure to find new ways to capture greater value. More and more, organizations are finding that partnerships with existing vendors can help unlock next-level performance gains in a transformative environment.
Take Nebraska Medicine, for example. In the early 2000s, the health system created multidisciplinary committees to boost revenue integrity and adopted new revenue
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Socialized Medicine Shows its Strengths During COVID-19 – But Only When Paired with Tech
What the US and other
countries can learn from the “Taiwan Example”
Italy has a single-payer medical system, yet it didn’t spare the country from COVID-19. On the contrary, Italy was among the hardest hit and is still struggling. That’s a common talking point one might hear from certain US-based pundits who are critical of so-called “socialized medicine.”
According to international healthcare insurance provider Allianz
Care, “The healthcare system in Italy is a regionally based
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