So long as we could say, “Healthcare is a business,” we could continue to avoid the moral and ethical choices from which such statements shield us.
But then COVID-19 came into the picture and the bottom dropped out of healthcare as a business. Hospitals and health systems are hemorrhaging money; the American Hospital Association estimates total losses will exceed $300 billion by the end of the year.
“The growing number of cases is threatening the very survival of hospitals just
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
COVID-19 Pandemic Further Exposes Systemic Racism…
This will be ugly and sad. Racism has cost this country $16 trillion over the last twenty years according to a recent Citigroup report. Much of this loss ($13 trillion) was attributed to discriminatory lending practices and the 6.1 million fewer jobs created as a result, while disparity in wages ($2.7 trillion) and discrimination in housing policies and lost income due to restricted access to higher education accounted for the balance. The report estimates that if these gaps were to be
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Rural Hospital Execs Can Beat COVID-19 By Shifting From Reactive to Proactive Care
The COVID-19 virus is ravaging the planet at a scale not seen since the infamous Spanish Flu of the early 1900s, inflicting immense devastation as the U.S. loses more than 200,000 lives and counting. According to CDC statistics, 94% of patient mortalities associated with COVID-19 were simultaneously suffering from preexisting conditions, leaving a mere 6% of victims with COVID-19 as their sole cause of death. However, while immediate prospects for a mass vaccine might not be until 2021, there is
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5 Trends Driving The Future of Healthcare Real Estate in 2020 & Beyond
The COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed patient expectations for healthcare delivery, including offered services and health office operations. Although health systems have remained dynamic in adopting telehealth capabilities, their long-term capital, like real estate and supply chain management (SCM) protocols, have not adapted to match these expectations. Health systems must be aware of current trends in both areas to inform their future decisions.
Divesting in healthcare real estate
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The Future of the ICU? How Clinical Decision Support Is Advancing Care
Without a doubt 2020 has been a devastating year for many; the impact of COVID-19 on both personal lives and businesses has had long-term consequences. At the end of September, the number of COVID-19 cases fell just short of 350 million, with just over 1 million deaths reported. The expectation of a second peak in many countries exposed to the deadly illness is being handled with care, with many governments attempting to minimize the impact of an extreme rise in cases.
COVID-19
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The Future of Patient Access: From Appointment Reminders to Automated Patient Journeys
The concept of 'Patient Access' has evolved significantly. We all remember the good old days when patient access was an inbound responsive model – patients dialed into a call center phone number and were connected "round-robin" to the next available staff member with their call script. Then outbound voice and email messages and patient appointment reminders became common, and now access centers have begun to deploy more advanced communication channels such as natural language voice response,
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COVID-19’s Amplification of Digital Technology in the Patient Experience
In the last decade, the healthcare industry has experienced a rapid rise in digital health solutions that have promised to transform care delivery and improve outcomes. Yet, with change comes skepticism – especially in an industry that is notoriously slow to adopt new technologies and innovations. Despite the industry’s conservative reputation, we have seen an influx of global venture capital funding for digital health services, which hit a record $3.1 billion in funding this
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Were We Mentally Ready for COVID-19? Why It’s Time to Take Behavioral Health Seriously
As you read this, over 200,000 American deaths have been attributed to the virus. The influx of cases continues, while state and local economies are experiencing hardship, children are shuttered in their homes learning remotely, grown children are moving back home and the “new normal” disrupts nearly all of life’s plans.
Yet, these issues don’t reveal all the traumas that Americans are experiencing 10 months into the pandemic. The pandemic's impact continues to be swift and brutal,
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Thriving in a Value-Based Care Environment: Impacting Outcome-to-Cost Ratio
As the COVID-19 pandemic creates surges in acute care, many imaging departments are experiencing a decrease in volume, due to patients deferring or canceling non-urgent appointments and surgeries. The impact of this makes it painfully obvious that -- because imaging departments rely on a fee-for-service model – when the volume is down, finances suffer. As an aspect of healthcare that has historically been hyper-focused on volume, adoption of a value-based care approach in radiology has evolved
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Bouncing Back Stronger: A Playbook for Reopening Medical Practices
It is a grim irony that the greatest health crisis of our generation separated most Americans from their healthcare providers. During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, most medical practices that responsibly followed social-distancing guidelines drastically limited in-person visits or were shuttered entirely. But as doctors start to open their doors to patients again, one thing should be clear: We cannot go back to the way things used to be. For even though pre-COVID surveys showed that
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