In 2019, 41 million patient records breached in 572 reported incidents at an average cost of $1.8 million per breach. These statistics are far from surprising with healthcare records selling for a reported average of $45 on the dark web. Unfortunately, the year 2020 aggravated these issues as COVID-19 exposed the true vulnerability of the healthcare infrastructure. Organizations not only had to manage the medical and financial impacts of the pandemic but also the security risks inherent in the
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Why Some COVID-19 Testing Protocols Aren’t What You Think
While countries around the world continue to flounder with regards to COVID-19 testing, everyone is wondering how national governments could get things so horribly wrong. It’s true that governments have acted incompetently, leaders can make poor judgment calls, and optimistic testing targets are rarely achieved.
But the claims of various ambitious big pharma companies—about their ability to deliver on capacity and accuracy alike—have created a smokescreen for decision-makers, one that has
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Vaccine Safety Expert Shares 5 COVID-19 Vaccine Facts to Protect 2021
Now more than ever, public confidence is key. It's our job as medical professionals, the FDA's job, and public figures' job to convince the population to vaccinate by presenting the real results of studies.
The current vaccine hesitancy, which might result in a large proportion of people refusing vaccination, will leave us with an ongoing global crisis, even with the best vaccines ever made. A vaccine only works if it is actually administered.
Five Vaccine Facts to Protect
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Medical Device Design: 4 Ways Designers Can Create Medical Devices That Work for Everyone
Medical device design has been going through sweeping
changes over the last decade. Ten years ago,
medical device companies weren't concerned with delivering consumer-level
design: Devices that are both attractive and intuitively easy to use by a wide
variety of users. Then the Affordable Care
Act was passed, and adherence and healthy behavior change became a
regulatory requirement.
Our firm, which has been a long-time proponent of the
“consumerization” of medical
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Gleaning Insights for COVID-19: Why Claims and Clinical Data Matter
Healthcare organizations continue to rely heavily on data analytics to try to improve COVID-19 outcomes and public health. Since the novel coronavirus became widespread in the U.S., healthcare data scientists have leveraged clinical and claims data to pinpoint which underlying conditions put patients at higher risk of complications from COVID-19. Health systems are mining clinical data to predict surges in COVID-19 cases and looking at key factors—including increases in hospital website traffic,
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As Telehealth Surges, Are Seniors Being Left Behind?
A global health crisis has thrust us into a scenario in which lives quite literally depend on the ability to virtually connect. Telehealth has rapidly emerged as a vital tool, enabling continuity of care, allowing vulnerable individuals to access their physician from home, and freeing up resources for providers to treat the most critical patients. The acceptance of telehealth and expansion of covered services for the senior population demonstrate that this technology will endure long after
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Despite COVID-19: Providers Should Not Lose Sight of MIPS Compliance
When 2020 began, no one anticipated that complying with the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)—the flagship payment model of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality Payment Program (QPP)—would look so different halfway through the year. Like many other things, the COVID-19 crisis has delayed, diverted, or derailed many organizations’ reporting efforts and capabilities. Lower procedure volumes, new remote work scenarios, and shifting priorities have taken attention
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Billions in Federal Provider Relief Funds Have Been Distributed. Now Come Auditing and Compliance.
Of the $175 billion in federal Provider Relief Funds (PRF) allocated to healthcare providers, $125 billion has been accepted by hospitals and healthcare providers. The cash infusion was designed to cover costs related to COVID-19 related care. These targeted payments were earmarked for preventing, preparing for, and responding to the Coronavirus, solely for reimbursement of healthcare-related expenses or lost revenue directly attributable to COVID-19.
Early on, providers who received PRF
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COVID-19: How Hospitals Can Create Better Inpatient Bed Capacity through Math
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, key elements of hospital operations such as managing inpatient bed capacity, and access to ventilators and PPE have taken center stage. The general public got a crash course on what hospitals need in order to function successfully when disaster hits, and daily news and discussions were centered around ICU bed capacity as cases accelerated across the country.
The nightmarish predictions and reality led to the development of creative measures to
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5 Steps for Interoperability Excellence for Healthcare Providers
As if 2020 couldn’t be any more challenging for healthcare providers, new federal rules on interoperability and patient access, granting patients direct access to their healthcare data, begin taking effect in 2021 and will continue into 2022. These rules, while ultimately beneficial to patients, bring an additional level of operational complexity to many revenue-stressed healthcare organizations.
If anything, the 2020 pandemic has illustrated the vast potential of interoperability. For
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