Over the past several years, urgent care centers nationwide have opened their doors to millions of patients in need of COVID-19 testing and treatment, driving an increase in daily patient visit volumes and new, challenging patient care demands. To accommodate this rapid influx, urgent care centers developed new workflows that prioritized efficiency and transitioned to a reimbursement model that rewards providers for the number of patients treated per day. As a result, urgent care centers across
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Improving Healthcare With Systems of Engagement
It’s been nearly 15 years since the passage of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act and its requirements for the meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs). As expected, virtually all hospitals have implemented some form of EHR. In fact, the American Hospital Association (AHA) reported usage by 96% of non-federally run acute care hospitals and almost 80% of office-based physicians in 2021.
Have healthcare providers realized the promised
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How Health Payment Accounts Improve Health Equity
In 2022, 38 percent of Americans reported delaying medical care—a 20-year high. But as with many things, the burden of paying for healthcare doesn’t affect all Americans equally.
Lower-income communities, for example, tend to have higher incidences of disease and therefore a greater need for healthcare. And in a vicious catch-22, those with lower incomes, Black and Hispanic adults, and women often have health benefits mis-sized to their income, which contributes to higher incidences of
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Health Equity Gap: Why Cybersecurity Should Be A Priority
There has been a newfound effort to highlight and address the disparity in health outcomes for patients who belong to one or more marginalized communities. Opportunities for health and wellness are dictated by social, economic, environmental, and systemic factors, not by factors that are inherently genetic or physiologic. This means that the color of one’s skin, what ZIP code they are born and live in, the education they receive, the food and housing they have access to, and the jobs they hold
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How AI Can Improve the Human Connections of Healthcare
ChatGPT is the latest artificial intelligence (AI) advancement making waves. Nearly every industry is evaluating the advantages and disadvantages associated with incorporating this technology into their processes. In healthcare specifically, ChatGPT’s AI capabilities are far away from true disruption, but there is a sharp lens on its future potential for improving healthcare operations and delivery of care. Looking more broadly, we are at a pivotal moment in time with the AI and machine learning
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Health Tech: Why Design Matters and Ease of Use is Everything
Today, patient data and patient information are essential components of delivering the best care. As healthcare expands beyond physical clinical settings and into digital channels, the need for data-driven, analytics-enabled, context-rich decision-making is only growing. Because of this, healthcare staff deal with ever-increasing amounts of data. In fact, health data proliferates so quickly, it doubles in volume every 73 days. How can our overburdened workforce keep up?
Information systems,
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What VBC Providers Demand From Their IT Solutions
Value-based care (VBC) is a healthcare delivery model that differs from traditional fee-for-service because rather than compensating providers based on the number of services provided, it ties the amount providers earn to the results they deliver for their patients. The quality of these healthcare services is measured by patient outcomes that are based on metrics such as rate of hospital readmission, timeliness of care, and overall patient satisfaction. This VBC model holds providers
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How AI Can Deliver Benefits in Healthcare Manufacturing and Patient Device Usage
According to Grand View Research, the global artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare market size was valued at USD 15.4 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.5% from 2023 to 2030, to reach an estimated USD 208.2 billion. That’s an impressive growth rate, indicating the expected value delivery to a mostly early-phase adoption of AI in the healthcare marketplace. With such aggressive predicted growth, many health industry professionals may ask
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How to Improve Patient Confidence When Rolling Out New Medical Technology
A staggering 55 percent of patients have lost trust in a healthcare provider after a negative experience. Sometimes, that trust is broken during interactions with a medical device or digital therapeutic.
Maybe a patient’s diabetes management app uses overly clinical language, or perhaps it doesn’t walk them through every app feature. For many patients, it’s clear that new medical technology (or medtech) isn’t effectively providing the experience needed to improve their medical
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FWA Is Increasing. Healthcare Costs Are Spiraling. Now There’s A New Generation Of AI Technology To Take Back Control
In 2020, the Department of Justice estimated that fraudulent, wasteful, and abusive (FWA) billing practices account for more than $100 billion of the nation’s healthcare expenditures.1 Today, the National Healthcare Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA) conservatively estimates that healthcare FWA costs the nation about $68 billion annually, representing 3% of the nation's $2.26 trillion in healthcare spending.2 FWA estimates from commercial health plans range as high as $230 billion annually, or
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