Is value-based care still the right strategy to reduce U.S. healthcare costs? Or is it time to move to what comes next in the generation-long battle to constrain total medical spending?
The question is being increasingly asked and with good reason. For 2024 medical costs are projected to rise 7.0% year over year for Individual and Group markets. That is greater than the medical cost trend in 2022 and 2023, which was 5.5% and 6.0%, respectively, and adds to a decade-plus of at least 5.5% per
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Breaking the Vicious Cycle of Hospital Staffing
Matt Dane, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Hallmark Health Care Solutions
The healthcare labor market is in the middle of a fundamental shift. Healthcare workers are looking for greater flexibility and balance when it comes to their working arrangements, which poses significant challenges for nurse recruitment and retention. At the same time, traditional staffing models employed by large healthcare providers, which have heavily relied on staffing agencies to fill labor gaps, have
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Small Language Models vs. Large Language Models: Which is Better for Healthcare?
Large language models (LLMs) use AI to reply to questions in a conversational manner. Our friend ChatGPT is an LLM. It can reply to an uncapped range of queries because it taps into one billion or more parameters of data. Small language models (SLMs) are their pocket-sized cousins.
An SLM specializes in tasks associated with smaller, more focused datasets. For instance, a hospital could leverage an SLM to enhance clinical documentation. How? By training the SLM on the patient’s
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3 Ways Post-Acute Placement Solutions Improve Transitions of Care
For patients, every transition of care to a different facility brings the risk of complications.
When a patient is transitioning from a hospital to a post-acute care facility, for example, essential patient information relating to medical history and medication lists may be lost, overlooked, or not shared, resulting in delays to treatment and suboptimal care.
Like many things in life, successful transitions of care often start with strong communication. To match patients to the
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Centering The Patient in Value-Based Care Benefits
Forty years ago, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, HIV researchers and physicians discovered that simply treating the symptoms of the disease was not enough to provide lasting improvement for patients. Other factors like unstable living conditions, drug use, the public stigma over AIDS and HIV – known today as social determinants of health – all require attention in addition to a traditional treatment plan. This holistic view of the patient and caring for their symptoms, treatments, and the
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Strategic Cost Management Ensures ACO Viability
For ACOs to remain relevant as leaders of Value-Based payment models, they must step up now to generate more cost savings for Medicare patient care. Budget cuts for Medicare are once again under discussion by conservatives as political pressure mounts to lower governmental spending. Meanwhile, CMS is expanding risk in Medicare value-based payment models, moving quickly away from Fee-for-Service reimbursement. The new ACO PC Flex model is designed to create per-patient reimbursement for
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Safeguarding Your Health: 5 Ways Healthcare Organizations Can Navigate Cybersecurity Risks
The healthcare industry poses a unique set of challenges when it comes to its cybersecurity framework. Hospitals, doctors' offices, and local clinics are all home to vast amounts of sensitive patient and employee data. Hospitals alone store about 50 petabytes of sensitive data every year. In order to operate seamlessly and provide the best care possible, these healthcare havens need to ensure that their IT stack is robust. Cyber threats are rampant and have the potential to jeopardize patient
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How AI Bridges The Gap Between Mental Health Appointments
The causes and effects of America’s mental health crisis are well-documented. Easing access to necessary clinical help has not grown in tandem.
A study by the National Council for Mental Well-Being reveals that mental health services in the U.S. are insufficient despite more than half of Americans (56 percent) seeking help, with limited options and long waits becoming the norm. In some ways, meeting patients where they are is optimized, thanks to telehealth tools such as Zoom
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A Roadmap For Improving Diversity in Cancer Research and Advancing Therapeutic Development
Last month was Cancer Research Awareness Month, which is a great time to celebrate recent findings that the number of adults enrolled in oncology clinical trials has increased – nearly twice as high as past estimates – while also reflecting on the fact that we still have much work to do in overall and proportional clinical trial enrollment. Highlighting the work that still needs to be done, a recent analysis revealed that individuals who participated in new drug trials were not representative of
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Why Treatment Planning in Counseling Makes Sense for Patients and Providers
Treatment plans are an often-overlooked element of quality mental health treatment. Some providers see them as inefficient busywork, a necessary evil to meet compliance standards. However, treatment plans in counseling have value far beyond compliance. They can actually enhance patient care and benefit a practice’s efficiency.
Understanding Treatment Plans in Counseling
A treatment plan is a document that records a patient’s current mental health status and lays out goals for the outcome
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