The Covid-19 pandemic scrambled the business models and labor-market dynamics for many industries, but probably none as dramatically and directly as healthcare. Incredible, sustained demand coupled with regional disparities, political complications, and cultural challenges have left the healthcare industry on life support, especially regarding staffing. Healthcare workers are burned out and are quitting in huge numbers. Two-and-a-half years of relentless patient need, inadequate workforce,
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Driving Healthcare Operational Efficiency with IoT Sensing as a Service
Amid widespread staffing shortages across the healthcare sector, the need for IoT-enabled digital transformation in hospitals and patient care facilities is increasingly clear. For the first time since 2004, a lack of staffing has overtaken financial volatility as the No. 1 concern among healthcare CEOs in the American College of Healthcare Executives’ annual survey. Meanwhile, from canceled appointments to delayed surgeries, more than half of all U.S. patients report reductions in care quality
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Specialty Pharma’s Next Big Opportunity: It’s Time for Patient Access to Adopt an Open Protocol
In January 2020, the financial conglomerate Visa announced it was acquiring a relatively unknown startup, Plaid, for $5.3 billion. Corporate acquisitions like these are not uncommon, but someone at the United States Department of Justice took notice of this announcement. Visa had established a stranglehold on financial transactions. The Justice Department moved to stop the acquisition on grounds that Plaid posed “a threat to this monopoly: it has been developing an innovative
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Telehealth: Addressing The Mental Health Crisis in Kids
Children in America were increasingly struggling with mental health before COVID-19, but the pandemic compounded an already growing crisis. Today in the U.S., nearly one in five children experience a mental health disorder. What’s just as alarming is that for every five children with a mental health disorder, only one will receive treatment. In October 2021, leading pediatric healthcare associations declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health. This declaration was a
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How to Empower Patients With Price Transparency
The evolution of e-commerce – led by Amazon – has created an intensely savvy consumer population. Amazon’s platform allows users to easily compare products from different vendors to get the best price. People travel to retail stores to try on clothes and shoes, only to purchase them online for less. Even the longest running game show in television history awards points for knowing how much consumer products cost. Healthcare, on the other hand, does not engender the same kind of
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Does Data Hold the Key to Streamlining Provider Credentialing?
Provider credentialing is an essential part of healthcare. A provider cannot work or get paid without a proper license or credential, and yet this highly complex process is still done on paper (also sticky notes on file cabinets, Excel spreadsheets—you get the idea) by many healthcare organizations. Manually credentialing providers adds to an already lengthy process. One expired certificate or a delayed privileging request can prevent a provider from seeing patients for more than 60
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Why Security Misconceptions Are Threatening Healthcare Systems’ IoT Devices
Hospitals and other critical healthcare systems face skyrocketing risks as ransomware attacks—which most commonly target IoT devices—continue to escalate. In 2021 alone, IoT ransomware attack incidents targeting healthcare organizations increased by 123%. While most healthcare systems have a healthy respect for the importance of securing the myriad Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices humming within their facilities, many harbor misconceptions that hamper their abilities to
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How Fines Push Hospitals To Go Beyond CMS Price Transparency Rules
The gamble is over for hospitals that avoided complying with CMS price transparency mandates. After a slow start since they were implemented more than 18 months ago, CMS has issued 350 warnings for noncompliance, 157 corrective action requests, and finally issued fines to two Georgia hospitals in June. It seems many more will be on the way. The fines are significant. The first two hospitals faced fines of roughly $880,000 and $214,000. Noncompliant hospitals with 550 beds or
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How Will New FDA Hearing Aid Regulations Impact Health Plans?
The time has finally arrived. The Food & Drug Administration’s new over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aid regulations are now in effect and health plans are starting to explore what it means for them. Among the many questions they may need to grapple with, a few are particularly salient: - How will the new rules impact their benefit offerings? - What new opportunities will arise? - What potential pitfalls should they be aware of? Introducing OTC hearing
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3 Seismic Shifts Transforming Women’s Health – FemTech
My company recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, which prompted me to reflect on the progress of the women’s health sector over the last decade. There has been so much change, so many technological innovations and clinical breakthroughs. And yet, two things haven’t changed all that much. Our outcomes in the U.S. have not improved; in fact they are in decline. This is true whether you are measuring maternal mortality, health equity, or complication rates. And as an industry, we’ve yet to
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