Health plans have an incredible opportunity to make a positive impact on the health and well-being of Medicare beneficiaries. It's a responsibility that should not be taken lightly. One way health plans can ensure they’re providing the best possible care to members is to focus on improving CMS Star Ratings.
CMS Star Ratings help Medicare consumers compare the quality of Medicare health and drug plans so they can make the most informed decisions. Improving Star Ratings can help health plans
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The Evolution of Interoperability in Healthcare: Where We’ve Been, Where We Are Today, and Where We’re Going
We take for granted that we can seamlessly send money to another person regardless of where they bank, or that we can easily text someone who uses a different cellular network. It’s called interoperability, where disparate systems can seamlessly connect and share data with each other and it’s almost always in real or virtually real-time.
This ease of data sharing across systems may be a reality in most areas of our lives, but it still eludes healthcare. Initiatives to improve
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Healthcare Software Investment: 5 Questions for Hospital C-Suite
As hospitals and health systems continue to be stretched thin by negative operating margins, competitive pressures, and workforce shortages, decision-makers must do more with less and make strategic software investments to reduce costs and increase efficiencies in both the short and long term. Decision-makers agree that now is not the time to pull back on software investment: according to research from Bain & Company, 45% of providers have increased their software investments over the past
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Monopolization in Healthcare Could Affect Access to Quality Treatment
Consolidation and the threat of monopolization in healthcare are rising. The pharmaceutical industry has experienced a wave of accelerated consolidation since 2010. In 2019, the industry saw a record-breaking 1,276 pharmaceutical M&A’s, representing a total value surpassing $411 billion. Monopolistic practices within healthcare and pharmaceutical industries not only hurt a healthy economy, but they also ultimately limit patients’ choices when it comes to healthcare options, further eroding
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Why The Evolution of Tech Will be Based on APIs
Layoffs continue to ripple across the economy. Starting with big tech firms and the digital businesses that overhired during the early days of the pandemic, pink slips have now spread to the industrial, manufacturing and professional services industries.
While there are numerous theories on the underlying causes and exacerbators of the surge in job loss, at its core lies a question of efficiency. Companies lay off workers when they believe - rightly or wrongly - that they can accomplish the
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Navigating the Challenges of Biosample Consent in Clinical Trials
In the age of biotechnology, biosample collection has become an essential part of medical research. Through this process, samples are taken from patients through a variety of sources, including blood, tissue, saliva, hair, and other bodily fluids. The samples are then analyzed for their genetic, biochemical, or physiological properties, and the findings are used to further the understanding of human health, disease and the environment.
Many times, during clinical trials, sponsors will want to
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Building a Better, Digitized Hospital Incident Command System
Plenty of crisis events and safety initiatives can and do, receive extensive attention and pre-planning from hospital officials, but the reality is that when an emergency incident unfolds, time is not always on the side of health facility leaders. Natural disasters, severe weather, mass casualty incidents, system malfunctions and pandemics can present with little to no warning and impact every area of a hospital or health center.
Regardless of the circumstances or the timing of an adverse
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It’s Time We Put The Person Back Into Personalized Healthcare
One of the great wonders of life is that every person’s genome is completely unique. Dr. Suess put it best when he wrote: "Today, you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.” As nice as it sounds, this truism presents some serious challenges for healthcare leaders.
The reality that everyone is different makes it incredibly difficult to scale up healthcare systems to meet the unique demands of millions of individuals. In our digital age, the most
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The End of One Health Crisis Must Not Lead to a New One
Three years after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, the Public Health Emergency (PHE) enacted in the United States came to an end this May. As much as we would like to go back to normal, it seems that simply turning the page on the PHE without carrying forward what we learned during COVID-19 will leave millions of Americans scrambling for healthcare and disengaging from essential preventive health services. The result will have a devastating impact on those with chronic
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Does Alzheimer’s Cure Matter if We Don’t Fix the Economic Infrastructure of the Disease?
Our brain is an extraordinary organ. This three-pound structure is the central processing unit of our universe that controls intelligence, sense, movement, behavior and much more. When healthy, we take it for granted, and when diseased we carry a substantial burden.
Astonishingly, the burden of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias is growing rapidly with an aging population. The economic and health burden is expected to reach nearly $1 trillion by 2050. This is a massive
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