Recently, as the world has watched the coronavirus crisis unfold, the power of big data to track, illustrate, and inform has taken center stage. A compelling example is the near real-time map created by Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) that shows all the cases as the disease spreads across the globe.
With far-reaching implications for healthcare, big data enables deep analysis of data from a myriad of sources – electronic medical records (EMRs), claims,
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The Impending Artificial Intelligence Revolution in Healthcare
For at least a decade, healthcare luminaries have been predicting the coming AI revolution. In other fields, AI has evolved beyond the hype and has begun to showcase real and transformative applications: autonomous vehicles, fraud detection, personalized shopping, virtual assistants, and so on. The list is long and impressive. But in healthcare, despite the expectations and the tremendous potential in improving the delivery of care, the AI revolution is just getting started. There have been
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Coding in Age of COVID-19: Deciphering Coding Nuances, Best Practices
Without much warning, the novel Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has taken over our healthcare system. It has taxed our healthcare workers, our national stockpiles of PPE, and affected millions of Americans nationwide. In addition to healthcare workers on the front lines, the pandemic has also impacted the healthcare revenue cycle, causing major confusion, questions, and inconsistencies as coding specialists learn the latest COVID-19 codes and guidelines at warp speed. With cases rising by the tens of
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Shoring Up the Healthcare Supply Chain: 4 Lessons From The COVID-19 Pandemic
In December 2019, the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response told a House committee that “supply chain issues were among the most significant challenges to preparing for an influenza pandemic as well as other infectious diseases.” A few months later, healthcare systems across the country and around the world are face-to-face with that harsh reality, as many of the largest healthcare suppliers are unable to fully meet the growing global demand for personal protective equipment
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How AR and MR Technology Can Reduce Medical Vulnerability to Improve the Patient Experience
Hospitals and health systems work hard every day to deliver patient-centered care. In fact, “the patient experience” is something now being measured, monitored and discussed throughout the healthcare continuum. Yet for most patients, moments of anxiety and medical vulnerability still abound, and the conversation rarely addresses this important fact.
Patients awaiting an X-ray, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT) scan, for instance, maybe fearful of the results.
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Fear of Changing EHRs? Here’s What You Should be Concerned About
Over the years, the EHR has developed a poor reputation as a time-waster, a source of frustration for staff and a significant contributor of burnout in the healthcare industry. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 59% of physicians said their EHR negatively impacted their time at work. This is because EHRs can be inflexible, hard to use and lack interoperability with other systems.
With so many problems surrounding the reputation of these tools, its
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Digital Health Contagion: How COVID-19 Accelerated The Positive Spread of Digital Solutions
Remember – just three short but world-changing months ago – when many of us were at the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. The date was January 13th, 2020. Coronavirus was a problem in China, of vague interest – perhaps like SARS, unlikely to have a big impact in the U.S. Our community of healthcare executives, investors, and entrepreneurs were once again gathering in San Francisco. And the adoption of digital health? Well, there was still more talk than action.
The arguments for
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How AI-Driven Insight Could Fuel Medicare Advantage Success
Medicare Advantage plans need more than consumer-centric design, payer/provider alignment, and strong connections across the continuum of care to drive value. The high-value performance also depends on their ability to use data to make a meaningful difference in members’ health.
With 11,000 people aging into Medicare daily, proficiency in managing Medicare Advantage populations is critical for demonstrating value in a competitive market. Enrollment in these plans is growing significantly,
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COVID-19 Outbreak: The Opportunity & Importance of Health Informatics
Never before has health informatics played a greater role in public health than during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the Health IT industry is certainly challenged due to the overall disruption to the healthcare system, the pandemic undoubtedly underscores the opportunity and importance of health informatics, such as telehealth, remote patient monitoring, patient engagement, AI-based drug discovery, precision medicine, and clinical decision support, but nowhere more pressing than the fields of
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The Technological Ironies of the Current State of Value-Based Care
Even though many think of 2008 as the first time CMS began emphasizing quality over quantity via the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (MIPPA), the truth is that we’ve been on a 30-plus-year journey to get to this point.
It really started when managed care became a hot trend, but eventually, the friction between payers and providers was too high and patients were caught in the middle. Then came accountable care, which while still important today, ultimately isn’t creating
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