As healthcare leaders reflect on lessons learned during the pandemic, the need for more tech-driven and proactive care models is taking center stage. It has become clear that organizations that invested in robust technology infrastructure early on were better positioned to not just survive a global pandemic – but thrive--growing their reach and supporting their patients.
The Importance of Holistic Care Strategies
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Why Healthcare IT Must Embrace Full-Stack Observability for an Increasingly Digital Future
Long before the pandemic, digital applications were already incredibly important to healthcare organizations, but over the last few years, they have become essential. Applications can assist with scheduling appointments, virtual doctor visits, accessing medical records and conducting tests down to the most complex AI-powered technologies such as medical imaging. As COVID-19 fundamentally transformed the way industries operate, healthcare has been the world’s focus as physicians, nurses, EMTs,
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Healthcare at the Crossroads: Value-Based Care and Interoperability
Amid the difficulties of the last year, a bright spot has emerged that may provide a strong indication of renewed movement toward the transformation of the healthcare industry that we know today. Value-based care, a model that rewards better patient health outcomes, has experienced a surge in interest amid heightened consumer awareness and among payers seeking to lower costs and stabilize reimbursement. This interest, along with the recent mandate from the Centers for
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Why Family Caregivers Need Help from the Healthcare Establishment
I recently spoke with a woman whose husband contracted a serious, chronic illness that requires long-term use of a peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) line.
As her husband’s primary caregiver, this woman is responsible for cleaning and flushing the PICC line three times a day. And while she knows how to carry out these functions, she nonetheless remains fearful of inadvertently introducing bacteria into the line and the consequences that could result.
For this woman, the
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Taking a Platform Approach to Drug Pricing Issues Can Help Unify Adversarial Sides
Healthcare is a notoriously complex industry with a multitude of stakeholders, many of whom find themselves in adversarial positions, simply due to the way the market operates. Ultimately, there is a shared goal of providing the best care to the patient. But as stakeholder relationships grow more complex, there can also be conflicts that drive wedges between parties and hamper successful collaboration.
We see this dynamic playing out in many areas of healthcare, but particularly in drug
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6 Steps for Securing Patient Information in Healthcare
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) strive for innovations in healthcare technologies that drive down costs and improve the patient experience. One big step forward is the 21st Century Cures Act passed in 2016, putting patients in charge of their own health records.
Then in 2021, both the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) Information Blocking Rule went into effect, which aims to drive
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4 Ways Hospitals Benefit From Improved Surgery Scheduling
Hospitals rely on elective surgeries as a source of up to 50% of all revenue, allowing them to take losses on a range of high-cost service lines to remain profitable. The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the impact of reduced surgery volume, with hospitals suffering immediate revenue loss and negative profit margins.
As surgical service lines return to pre-pandemic volumes, it’s imperative for hospitals to have the right technology tools and best practices in place to maintain safe, accurate, and
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Learning from Financial Fraud Detection to Tackle Opioid Abuse Amid COVID-19
Despite falling from its prominent place in the headlines, America’s opioid crisis is still raging. Anxiety, stress, depression, and isolation caused by the pandemic have contributed to substance use disorders. At the same time, the Drug Enforcement Administration has loosened prescribing restrictions, including waiving the requirement for in-person visits and allowing clinicians to prescribe controlled substances via telemedicine alone.
Given these conditions, it is not surprising that over
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3 Ways Digital Health is Transforming Decentralized Clinical Trials
Decentralized Clinical Trials (DCTs) have been gaining steam over the last decade, but it was the COVID-19 pandemic that cast its advantages into the limelight. Sponsors benefit by creating efficiencies virtually throughout drug discovery, research, and treatment phases. However, the greatest long-term benefactors will ultimately be the patients.
Many aspects of traditional clinical trials are inconvenient for potential candidates, including the commute distance to trial sites, time
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4 Ways 5G is Transforming Healthcare & Patient Care
We hear a lot about 5G technology, but for many of us, it's link to our lives goes as far as our smartphones and mobile service providers. But to think that 5G technology is only valuable for making our data speeds faster is like saying that electricity is great because it allows us to read books before bed. Sure, both are favorable side effects, but the impacts of each invention are far more widespread than that.
A lot of industries have been disrupted by 5G technology — the video game
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