There was tremendous interest in telemedicine before 2020. However, the COVID-19 pandemic made it a reality triggering unprecedented disruption across the industry. For instance, digital-first healthcare aggregators had been testing programs for telemedicine but, since 2020, the demand for telehealth services has exploded across the globe. Despite stabilizing forces such as vaccine rollouts, telehealth utilization remains 38 times higher than it was in the years before the pandemic (1). Health
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Cost Transparency Ecosystem in Healthcare
Cost transparency is a driving force in the American market. Whether consumers are looking to purchase a latte, a plane ticket, or surgery, they increasingly expect to pay an “out-the-door” price– something that includes all labor and materials as well as the finished product or service. When polled, 66% of Americans indicated that they would shop for care if prices were publicly disclosed. And in pursuit of competitively and transparently priced services, some patients attempt to shop locally;
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Healthcare Data Lake: The Key to Operating a Data Informed Organization
Two decades ago, business priorities within a healthcare organization were largely driven by a select few executive visionaries. Today, the most successful healthcare organizations are using data to validate ideas and further refine them through advanced studies and predictive models.
The data-informed healthcare organization has come of age through recent advances in data technologies, a surge in artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities,
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It’s Time to Give Patients “Admin Access” to Manage Their Healthcare
While the entire healthcare industry is inching toward giving people more autonomy to manage their care, we can’t seem to hand over the keys just yet.
The latest KLAS data on patient preferences shows that most individuals interacting with the healthcare system want greater control, especially over their care visits. That’s because the capabilities patients value most—including appointment scheduling, prescription refill
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Physicians and Technology: A Blessing or a Curse?
Burnout is a growing situation that has been slowly undermining the productivity of physicians and their staff. And in recent years, it’s gotten worse as demands from patients, documentation, and regulatory requirements increase.
Adding to the situation are challenges related to added technology, the need to be virtual and to meet patients where they are, and the need to keep up with constantly changing information and landscape in terms of what our patients need from us.
Kirk Davis,
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4 Factors Driving Healthcare Transformation in 2022 to Watch
As the healthcare industry becomes more interconnected in response to a wide range of economic and societal factors, the landscape is changing for all parties involved, including payers, providers, and patients.
In a dynamic time for the industry, here are four of the main factors driving the changes and what they mean for the primary stakeholders:
The lines between traditional and digital are blurring
As startups and traditional providers race to meet their patient's
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Reimagining The Operating Room of The Future with Robotics
Make way for the age of software-defined healthcare.
Amid a growing shortage of doctors and nurses, hospitals around the world are increasingly turning to AI to improve the quality of care in the face of an aging population. One major undertaking across the healthcare industry is to deliver AI-driven solutions that can improve surgical care - a tall order.
According to the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, in the US alone, individuals can expect to undergo, on average, seven
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Biometrics as the Next Frontier of Authentication in Healthcare
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, more healthcare consumers than ever before have begun to engage digitally with their healthcare providers rather than seek in-person treatment and care options. A survey recently released by software company Redpoint Global found that 65 percent of consumers reported using telehealth during the pandemic, with 34 percent of those respondents indicating they will continue to do so as the pandemic winds down.
In this context, it’s no surprise that
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5 Tips for Hiring and Retaining Medical Practice Staff
Finding the right employees for your medical practice and keeping them happy can be challenging enough during normal times. Add in the realities related to the COVID pandemic, including staffing shortages and “the great resignation,” and busy physicians can be at a loss to keep their practices fully staffed with qualified people.
The good news is the hiring outlook may be starting to improve, even compared to just a few months ago, so there is a reason for hope. The following tips could help
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Why Now is the Time to Double Down on Virtual Care
For an industry that traditionally embraces change at a glacial pace, the pandemic has been a wake-up call for healthcare. Once COVID-19 struck, the shift to video, telephone engagement and remote patient monitoring spiked seemingly overnight.
This surging demand for virtual care resulted, in many cases, in increased provider efficiency, provider-patient interactions, and satisfaction. One national telehealth organization covering 2,000 hospitals and 81,000 doctors, for example,
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