“You only know who is naked when the tide goes out,” Warren Buffett famously said of the nation’s businesses when markets tank. For the nation’s information systems, the opposite is true. You see their weaknesses when they are inundated by a tidal wave of data.
A case in point is the information infrastructure of the American healthcare system, which will play a critical role in understanding and battling the COVID-19 pandemic. Just as the capacity of some national health systems have been
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6 Benefits of Telemedicine in Managing the Diabetes Epidemic
The American Diabetes Association reveals that 9.4% of the American population has diabetes, and with numbers that high nearly all Americans have a friend or family member with the disease. However, many Americans are not aware that telehealth can enable diabetic patients to manage their condition—treatment that would have otherwise been difficult to come by for rural patients with limited access to care.
With such a high prevalence among the population, providing care regardless of proximity
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COVID-19: Why Africa Urgently Needs an Ubuntu Plan
One virus has disrupted the whole world in a manner never seen before in history.
Africa urgently needs a globally coordinated Ubuntu Plan in response to COVID-19, a fiscal stimulus that recognizes our shared and connected humanity, as we find ourselves in the midst of an unprecedented crisis.
The world's largest cities are eerily silent. One virus has disrupted the whole world in a manner never seen before in history.
COVID-19, a term that did not exist in our vocabulary a couple of
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COVID-19: 5 Steps for Health IT Teams to Accommodate New Demands
The rapid escalation of COVID-19 patient cases has created new challenges for healthcare organizations to scale up testing and care services, while also reducing risk for non-critical patients or care workers. Healthcare IT professionals are being asked to digitally transform overnight, in supporting remote workers, telemedicine, outdoor triage tents, and a surge in patients and connected devices. Here are five key steps for healthcare IT departments to take in order to accommodate the new
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COVID-19 Pandemic: Why Patients Need to Control Their Own Data
We’re in throes of a global pandemic. Healthcare providers must focus on fighting COVID-19, but we can’t afford to ignore the reason we’re going into this fight blind. Our best weapon is our own healthcare data. We are going to learn many things from this pandemic, not least of which is that the way we thought about data ownership over the previous decade needs to change.
Pandemics represent a system-wide attack on healthcare. Our best responses rely on social distancing, telemedicine, and
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3 Ways to Build a Back-to-Basics Approach to Revenue Cycle Management
Sixty-nine percent of healthcare revenue cycle leaders say they will put more money toward technologies that boost revenue integrity, eliminate human error and unlock greater efficiency in the year ahead, an HFMA/Navigant analysis found. But for many organizations, the biggest untapped opportunity to improve performance comes down to a single word: data.
For all the buzz at about the ways in which digital innovation and automation could transform revenue cycle management, healthcare
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COVID-19’s Impact on Telehealth & HIPAA Regulations
The declaration of COVID19 as a pandemic and the United States declaring a national emergency to help contain and enhance treatment access have resulted in a number of changes to ease potential regulatory burdens or barriers in healthcare. Like so much happening as a result of the pandemic, the changes have the potential to fundamentally change the healthcare industry not just during the time of the emergency declaration.
Of particular note are coordinated announcements from various agencies
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COVID-19: Why Limited HIPAA Waivers from HHS Don’t Do Enough To Address Telehealth
What You Need to Know:
- HHS issued some very limited HIPAA waivers to combat COVID-19999, but experts say it leaves out some very key guidance when it comes to telehealth.
- Alissa Smith, Partner at Dorsey & Whitney says the HHS is likely going to have to revisit this issue given the limited waivers issued this week.
The main thing I am hearing from my health care provider clients is that they are seeking HIPAA-related guidance
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Coronavirus: 3 Best Practices for Patient Communication & Prevention
For most providers across the country, the need to communicate easily, seamlessly and digitally with patients is growing exponentially. To be most effective and ensure the widest reach, as providers, there are a few best practices you should be following: Educate, identify and treat broadly.
Educate
With the novel coronavirus spreading quickly across the U.S., the need for accurate information is growing just as rapidly. Providers have to communicate to all patients in a given
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RCM: Boosting Practice Revenue Through Patient Financial Clearance
Medical practices have to balance many things. But one of the biggest balancing acts, which often gets overshadowed by patient care, involves keeping finances in the black, by ensuring revenue cycle management (RCM) flows smoothly. Whether practices are solo independent ventures or large, multi-specialty networks, the struggle is real.
When we discuss the most impactful ways to keep a practice’s bottom line in check — and keep the revenue cycle healthy — most people think of back-office
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