With tight-knit communities, strong traditions, and a deep sense of resilience, rural America is a key piece of our nation’s fabric. Yet, for many people living in these areas—one in five Americans—getting basic healthcare can be an uphill battle. Limited hospital options, provider shortages, and economic struggles can make what should be routine checkups feel like monumental tasks.
Ensuring equitable access to care across the nation is a critical goal. While technology offers
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Streamlining Hospital Discharge: How Technology Can Solve Readmission Challenges
Hospital discharge is a make-or-break moment in patient care, yet it is one of the most challenging aspects of healthcare delivery. A poorly executed discharge can result in confusion, medication errors, and, ultimately, costly hospital readmissions. For healthcare organizations focused on value-based care, improving discharge procedures is essential for enhancing patient outcomes, ensuring seamless care transitions, and reducing financial costs.
The good news is that hospital readmissions
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AI Optimizing Payer-Provider Relations: From Adversarial to Collaborative
Payer-provider relations are undergoing a major shift. The classic adversarial battles in the fee-for-service world are gradually giving way to capitated plans with more win-win incentives. The reality is that providers and payers famously have to live in the “two canoes” world, with one foot in volume-based revenue and the other foot in value-based revenue.
As one can see, there is extraordinary information and calculation needed to optimize revenues on both sides. The good news
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Health Plan Tech Transformation to Improve The Member Experience
Getting ahead of digital transformation is difficult for healthcare organizations. There’s AI, GenAI, Agentic AI, and new uses for existing AI technologies that help staff get work done more efficiently.
With these rapid changes, an organization can’t keep up with the changes on its own. That’s where a consultant comes in.
Consultants benefit healthcare organizations in many ways, not the least of which is staying abreast of technology changes, new ways to use technology, associated
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Cycle Time is the New Currency of Drug Development
For years, the life sciences industry has been trying to address the same R&D challenges: rising costs, patient recruitment and retention, and difficulty maximizing ROI. Drug development is expensive, and failure rates remain high. Studies estimate the total cost to develop a new drug is between $300 million and nearly $4.5 billion. Meanwhile, clinical trial cycle times continue to lengthen – significantly impacting overall drug development timelines. Clinical trials are increasingly
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Closing the Affordability Gap: How Automation is Advancing Biosimilar Adoption
Millions of Americans are currently facing a difficult choice: either pay for expensive biologic medications or ration doses to afford basic needs. Cost-related nonadherence (CRN) is where patients either skip or delay their medication due to cost concerns, a challenge that is widespread throughout the U.S. The financial burden is even greater for those managing multiple chronic conditions, where prescription costs can quickly add up to unmanageable amounts.
Despite the financial strain,
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How Payer-Provider Collaboration is Creating A More Patient-Friendly Healthcare Industry
A KFF survey from 2023 revealed nearly one in five adults had health insurance claims denied in the previous year. On a national level, that suggests millions of disaffected patients. As the calendar turned to 2025, the growing public frustration with the cracks in the U.S. healthcare industry had exploded into a national conversation.
The chorus of complaints might have reached its crescendo recently, but insurance companies
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Beyond FHIR: Why True Healthcare Interoperability Needs AI
It’s time to flip the script on interoperability—specifically, how to achieve it.
For years, there’s been a push for a FHIR-only standard for interoperability. It’s based on the idea that if organizations are going to seamlessly send, receive, find, and integrate information, they need a common standard for communication.
This movement marked an important step forward for the healthcare industry, and on the surface, it seems like a viable path forward. The problem: Some
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Telehealth: An Essential Bridge to Healthcare Equity for Rural Communities
Rural America faces a unique set of healthcare challenges. While 20% of Americans live in rural communities, only 10% of physicians practice in those areas, leading to shortages that drastically limit access to care. With the United States expecting to face a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians over the next decade and over half of the rural physician workforce already over the age of 55, these gaps are at risk of worsening over the coming years without the proper solutions to address
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The Evolving Physician Advisor: From UM to Value-Based Care & AI
In today’s complex healthcare landscape, Physician Advisors (PAs) play an increasingly vital role in ensuring hospitals and health systems function smoothly, efficiently, and with a focus on patient-centered care. As healthcare spending continues to rise, the need for professionals who can effectively navigate the intersection of clinical practice and financial stewardship has never been greater.
What is
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