Healthcare organizations across the country are under enormous pressure to improve health outcomes, where the notion of “population health management” has suddenly evolved from a “nice-to-have” to a necessity. This prominent care initiative involves grouping patients together based on certain characteristics - age, gender, chronic conditions come to mind, just to name a few - and working to improve the health status of that group by monitoring, analyzing and improving the health of the
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Why GE Won’t Sell its Health IT Business
As John Flannery, the new CEO of GE takes on the task of sweeping cost-cutting at the industrial behemoth, recent market speculation has suggested he may be looking to offload GE’s Healthcare IT business. Here's why we think this won’t happen.Crumbling, but not to the coreGE's health IT portfolio has been compiled from many acquisitions, creating a complex and sometimes disjointed product set. At its center is a core set of software and services focused on clinical IT. GE’s products that support
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MACRA: The Yardstick for Quality that Health Systems Need
The number of quality initiatives is rapidly rising in the healthcare industry as stakeholders shift their focus toward the value of patient care. In addition, with the recent implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), the rules surrounding healthcare reimbursement are being rewritten, incentivizing healthcare providers to prioritize the quality of patient visits over the quantity.Historically, it has been difficult to achieve consensus on defining quality;
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Why Payers Must Invest in Real-Time Analytics to Increase Profitability Against ACA’S Risk Adjustment Program
With the future of the Affordable Care Act in limbo, health payers and providers alike are back to focusing on how to work within that system. And as payers in particular struggle to find avenues to profitability in the ACA’s complex topography, we’ll likely hear more rhetoric about the difficulty of enticing young, affluent Americans to sign up for health insurance.The conventional wisdom of the moment holds that failure to enroll enough of those so-called “healthy wealthies” to offset the
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The Value of EMRs: Broken Promise or Unintended Consequences?
Editor's Note: Justin Campbell is the VP at Galen Healthcare Solutions, a professional services firm helping healthcare clients migrate from paper to electronic health records. Prior to joining Galen, Justin served as the IT Director for a long-term care pharmacy, leading a paperless initiative, the migration of the Pharmacy Information System (PIS) from a legacy platform, and the integration of the PIS to the pharmacy’s packaging system.In the world of healthcare many are tempted to believe in
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Why Veterans Deserve Better Patient Handoffs at Care Transitions
Communication failures in U.S. Hospitals are a leading cause of preventable medical errors and adverse events. The most dangerous times are patient care transitions at the time of shift changes and patient transfers between hospital areas, healthcare facilities, and care settings. According to the Joint Commission, an estimated 80 percent of serious medical errors involve miscommunication between caregivers during “handoffs” and between care providers at patient care transitions. In light of
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Healthcare IT: Now More Than Ever, It’s About Quality… and Quantity
Editor's Note: Scott Ciccarelli, CEO SRS Health, a provider of EHR/EMR, PM, and PACS software solutions for high-performance medical practices. Ciccarelli has 20 years of diverse management and operations experience garnered as a senior executive at GE, where he headed two of the company’s businesses—most recently, GE Healthcare’s Services, Ambulatory and Revenue Cycle Solutions.People perform better if they have a vested interest in the outcome of a given situation. Employees who are given an
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How Personalized Patient Care is Brokering a Reset in Payer-Provider Relationships
For better or for worse, patients increasingly call the shots in the healthcare arena. Yes, they’re paying more for care. But with the emergence of telehealth and personalized therapies, patients also have more care options. To meet their expectations, both payers and providers must have access to personalized information about the patient. And they can best get this by working with instead of against each other.Specifically, insurers and providers must collaboratively approach the patient both
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NHIT Week: Reflecting on Health IT’s Transformation of Healthcare
As we celebrate National Health IT Week, it is incredible to realize how health technology tools are transforming every facet of patient care. From telehealth, to 3D printers to artificial intelligence, the explosion of personalized health devices redefines the dynamics of patient treatment and interactions.However, we still fall short in comparison to other industries, particularly in terms of consistent patient information access, and the lack of incentive for industry collaboration to achieve
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How Wearable Technology Can Enhance Long Term Patient Care
Wearable technologies have been widely adopted by consumers to measure and track aspects of health. Bracelets can track steps and calorie burn, clothing can measure heart rate and VO2 levels. While adoption is slower in clinical settings some health care organizations have begun to integrate wearable technologies into patient care to create more opportunities for e-health programs and to create new data availability.Some wearable technologies developed for the healthcare sector are designed to
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