If you scan a bright, clear night sky, you will likely pick out familiar shapes. Depending on your creativity, you might see Ursa Major and Minor or perhaps only the Big Dipper and its little brother. But those stars are not only entertaining, they also are important points of navigation used by ancient sailors, the Apollo missions, and even the Mars Rover.
Just as sailors might choose the North Star to guide them, CFOs and healthcare revenue cycle leaders often seek a simple,
Read More
The Gains and Pains of Using AI in the Pharmaceutical Industry
The costs for drug discovery and development are skyrocketing, but AI (artificial intelligence) is introducing new efficiencies to help find effective treatments faster.
A study in 2020 concluded that the estimated median capitalized research and development cost per product was $985 million. Contributing factors to this included larger trial sizes, the need to assess health technology, the requirement to provide data on comparative drugs’ effectiveness, and most
Read More
Healthcare Payments: 3 Ways to Make the Experience Better for Patients and Providers Alike
The past few years have seen an enormous acceleration in the adoption of technologies that streamline and modernize payments across all industries. As embedded finance becomes more popular and companies begin to embrace automation technologies, there’s a clear opportunity for healthcare providers to embrace digital payments. Through the use of digital payment technology, healthcare professionals can make their services easier for their vendors, suppliers and patients.
Simplifying the Patient
Read More
Should I Get Another Booster? How Doctors Can Help Patients Navigate the Next Phase of COVID-19
The general consensus is that COVID-19 in some form is here to stay. As people come to terms with this reality, primary care providers may be getting more questions from patients – especially older and immunocompromised ones – asking for advice on how to handle different situations. Should I get another booster? Can I start traveling? Is it OK to go to a wedding next weekend? How cautious do I need to be in social settings?
The answers to these questions aren’t always clear. A lot depends on
Read More
When Advancing a Medical Device, Be A Partner First & Seller Second to Hospital Systems
US hospital systems validate the safety, clinical utility, and robustness of newly FDA-approved devices, 510(k) cleared, before adopting them into clinical practice. This work occurs alongside evaluating how to integrate the medical device into the hospital system’s diagnostic paradigms, including in relation to quality improvement programs. Companies can have a role but there are 415 US hospital systems (comprising ~5,000 hospitals), and each has a bespoke process and ever-changing set of
Read More
Payers Must Increasingly See The Consumer As The Customer
Last year, the average annual premium for employer-sponsored family health coverage rose 4% to $22,221—including employer and worker contributions—according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. While employers are most often the ones selecting the health plan options and insurance for employees, the worker is the one who is left to navigate the healthcare continuum (including their true cost of care). In a recent study, 96% of patients indicated that the quality of their financial experience
Read More
Healthcare’s Evolution: Agile, Secure, Hybrid Work
Whether it’s expanding service-line offerings or embracing remote work models, there have been significant changes in the way healthcare is delivered to patients and supported by providers. The culture of healthcare has long been, “If the physicians and clinicians need to be onsite, then everyone does.” While remote work did happen within healthcare organizations, it was often limited to a very small population and/or very few use cases.
Two Years of Change
Over the last two years, with
Read More
Moving The Focus of Healthcare to Building Healthy Habits That Last
Without addressing root causes through sustained behavior modification, all results are temporary
The most effective approach to preventing and treating chronic disease today focuses on the creation of healthy habits that fundamentally change behavior in a sustainable way. Smart solutions involve personalized programs based on genetic testing, nutrition, exercise, mental well-being and 1:1 personal health coaching. This combination has achieved remarkable success in both warding off chronic
Read More
Quality vs. Quantity: The Case for Clinician-Centric Technology
Care providers continue to face mounting pressures – from increasing staffing shortages to balancing patient needs across in-person and virtual settings and managing pent-up patient demand. Rather than navigating through fragmented digital solutions that feed care providers disparate data, more and more clinicians now rely on connected technology to access the care context, i.e. the right patient data translated into reliable actionable insights at the right point in their workflow.
To truly
Read More
The Case for Incorporating Patient Perspectives into Clinical Decision Support
A recent report from the Leapfrog Group found that patient experience scores at hospitals declined during the pandemic. This should be no surprise. Hospitals faced an incredible crucible during COVID-19, with many still experiencing high levels of stress in their systems. In addition to increasing demands on caregivers, the pandemic created a fundamental change in how patients are treated. The drive to telehealth was rapidly accelerated, transforming traditional in-person interactions between
Read More