What You Should Know:
Rising healthcare expenses, lack of certainty over costs and financial support and poor coordination between providers and payers have caused consumers to feel more stressed than ever before about their healthcare bills. According to the 2024 Healthcare Financial Experience Study, 72% of consumers cite affordability as the biggest challenge to paying larger healthcare bills—not that they don’t want to. Struggling to afford healthcare bills isn’t just a headache, it can
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Roundups: 16 Recent Strategic Digital Health Partnerships
Walgreens and Pearl Health, a provider enablement company has announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the expansion of value-based care in collaboration with community-based primary care physicians. As part of the strategic partnership, Walgreens will provide complementary services, including prescription fulfillment, medication adherence, immunizations, care gap closure and diagnostic testing. In addition, Walgreens will also work with providers to help patients discharged from the
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Q/A: DocStation CEO Shares How AI Will Help Pharmacies Use the DIR Fee Changes to Their Advantage
Early next year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will remove the application of retroactive DIR fees and move DIR fees to the point of sale instead. The major issues with the DIR fees, which are paid by pharmacies to pharmacy benefit managers, are the fact that they drive up the costs of prescriptions for patients and delay reimbursement of care to the pharmacies.
Now, a brand new issue will arise in early 2024 - namely, pharmacies will be facing a DIR “cliff” where
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How Telehealth Can Combat Clinician Burnout
The crisis of clinician burnout is worsening.
Clinicians are feeling stressed, overworked and underappreciated. Some are responding by leaving healthcare or cutting back on hours. Nearly 334,000 healthcare providers, including 117,000 physicians left the workforce in 2021, according to a 2022 study.
And the problem did not end when the public health emergency did. In a recent survey by a financial consulting firm, 40% of clinicians said they were considering leaving their jobs for
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Provider AI Strategy Moves From The IT Dept. To The C-Suite
What You Should Know:
A new study from Bain & Company and KLAS Research shows US healthcare providers are accelerating spending on IT and software. The research shows nearly 80% of healthcare executives say they increased spending materially over the past year, spurred by emerging technologies—particularly generative AI—labor shortages, and cost pressures.The survey of more than 200 US healthcare provider executives showed nearly 75% are expecting growth in software and technology
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Debunking 3 Myths About Virtual Care to Drive Health Equity
Despite positive proof points, the expansion of virtual care and remote patient engagement strategies - including RPM - continues to be hampered by misconceptions among potential users and misalignment of financial incentives among providers and payers.
It’s time to take a look at some of the myths holding back the adoption of virtual care and remote patient engagement tools and limiting progress toward achieving the interconnected goals of the Quintuple Aim.
If there’s a silver
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Notable Launches ChatGPT-Like Assistant for Patients
What You Should Know:
Notable, the leading automation platform for patient engagement and staff workflows, launched Notable Assistant, a first-of-its-kind patient assistant designed to expand access to healthcare information and services using large language models (LLMs) and conversational AI.Built on the rich data at the heart of the Notable platform, Patient AI, Notable Assistant introduces an accessible experience, in which every patient has a personal guide navigating them through
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Intermountain to Replace Cerner with Epic Enterprise EHR by 2025
What You Should Know:
- Intermountain Health, one of the largest not-for-profit healthcare systems based in Salt Lake City announced the implementation of Epic’s enterprise EHR platform across the organization by the end of 2025. Intermountain’s current contract with Cerner is slated to end by November.
- The deployment will establish a single, unified EHR platform across 33 hospitals and 385 clinics across seven states to optimize cost savings, patient experience, and interoperability.
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M&A: NextGen Healthcare EHR Acquired by PE Firm for $1.8B
What You Should Know:
- Thoma Bravo, a private equity software investment firm has acquired NextGen Healthcare, Inc, for over $1.8B in cash.
- Under the terms of the agreement, NextGen Healthcare shareholders will receive $23.95 per share in cash. The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth calendar quarter of 2023
- Upon completion of the acquisition, NextGen Healthcare’s common stock will no longer be listed on any public stock exchange and will become a privately held
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UPMC to Replace Oracle Cerner with Epic Enterprise EHR by 2026
What You Should Know:
UPMC announced it is replacing Oracle Cerner with Epic’s enterprise EHR platform to create a unified platform across its health system, representing more than six million patient records. UPMC previously deployed Epic in its outpatient space, Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports.UPMC cites lowering operational costs, optimizing security, and improving patient engagement as reasons for the EHR replacement.Migration of all UPMC patient records to Epic’s EHR platform is expected
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