With a new administration looking to reshape healthcare policy and additional special enrollment periods already underway, now is the time to ensure Medicare enrollment systems are ready for the unpredictability, and potential opportunities, ahead. While Medicare is the fastest growing segment of the healthcare industry, it is also highly competitive, expensive to operate in, and riddled with complexities and regulations to navigate. Health plans don’t have room to make a misstep when it comes
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Decentralized Clinical Trials: Surviving & Thriving in the Clinical Research World of COVID-19
As with so many aspects of our daily lives, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on clinical trials was both widespread and monumental. Thousands of trials—an estimated 80% of non-COVID-19 trials—came to a halt or were interrupted by the pandemic, which challenged the ability to conduct trials safely and effectively and was complicated by the reality that trials often deal with the populations most at risk from COVID-19 exposure1.
In response, clinical researchers turned to a range of
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What Will It Take for Hospitals to Survive the Pandemic?
On New Years Eve, just as the Covid-19 outbreak in Los Angeles was at its worst, all 451 of Olympia Medical Center’s exhausted employees learned they would soon lose their jobs. After 74 years, the hospital closed for good on March 31st, leaving residents of the surrounding community — poor and mostly people of color — without a place to see a doctor.
And it isn’t the only hospital closing.
At least 47 hospitals have closed or filed for bankruptcy in the last year, and there will
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PHINs: Addressing the Fundamental Flaws that Have Broken Healthcare
The fundamental problem with healthcare can be summed up in one sentence: We expect healthcare services that cater to our individual needs, yet the health care system operates under a one-size-fits-all, trial-and-error model. It is a model that results in missed diagnoses, protracted illnesses, and even premature death and wastes $935 billion annually.
The financial toll of this outmoded approach pales in comparison to the human toll. More than 128,000 people in the U.S. die each year
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Why the Digital-First, Patient-Centered Care is Critical to Healthcare
In the turmoil of one of the hardest years the healthcare industry has experienced, many healthcare organizations innovated nearly overnight, transforming bedside tablets into virtual care providers and parking garages into field hospitals. Through the help of agile, flexible technology, healthcare has empowered providers to support patient care anywhere.
The pandemic created a tipping point: The healthcare industry must accelerate its drive toward a digital-first mentality.
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Time and Goals Should Drive Your Post-COVID-19 Care Management Strategy
COVID-19 forced many health systems to reassess and reconfigure their care management processes and staffing models so that clinicians could better manage more of their acute, complex, and otherwise healthy patients remotely to limit in-person care.
During this time, health systems likely learned quite a bit about remote care management and discovered that they could still deliver high-quality care without their patients needing to visit their providers in-person as often. With two
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Does Telemedicine Impede or Help the Patient-Centered Medical Home?
Traditional patient care patterns have been radically altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. And after more than a year of disruption, it’s doubtful that everyone will revert to those patterns after the pandemic.
New habits have been formed, and consumers are more willing to pursue the path of least resistance in obtaining care, such as opting for quick and easy telemedicine appointments. Both patients and clinicians have identified benefits from virtual care approaches.
However, this and other
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How a Virtual Care Mindset Leads to Greater Patient Acceptance and Sustainable Telehealth Growth
There's no question that the demand for telehealth and virtual care has grown exponentially over the last twelve months. With that growth has come a fundamental shift in the attitude toward virtual care. No longer do patients and providers take a "let's try it" approach—now, it's "we must do it." This is evidenced by the number of telehealth claims filed. In 2020, telehealth claims skyrocketed, increasing by 2,938% in November 2020 versus November 2019 as patients demanded virtual options and as
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Key Lessons from COVID-19 & How We Can Better Support our Healthcare Provider
COVID-19 has been a novel pandemic in many ways beyond the actual virus itself – from the irreparable impacts it’s having on society, to the immense strain it’s put on the healthcare industry. A recent report stated that 93% of healthcare professionals reported experiencing stress, 86% reported experiencing anxiety, and 76% reported exhaustion and burnout [1]. Considering that the virus will continue to have an impact in 2021 and the reality that COVID-19 will likely not be the last epidemic we
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Biospecimen Procurement for R&D Needs to Look More Like an Online Marketplace
As healthcare digitizes everything from insurance claims to clinical decisions, some functions remain frustratingly analog, old school, and inefficient.
One such function is the distribution of human biospecimens necessary for medical research. Specimens are essential in providing much of the data that researchers examine, EHRs capture, and scientific databases aggregate. Unfortunately, the distribution of specimens and their data to researchers is woefully outdated and inefficient. Frankly,
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