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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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
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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3 Telemedicine Security and Compliance Best Practices
The coronavirus pandemic accelerated telemedicine exponentially as patients and doctors switched from in-person visits to remote consultations. Health providers rapidly scaled virtual offerings in March and April and traffic volumes soared to unprecedented levels, with practices “seeing 50 to 175 times the number of patients by telehealth than before the outbreak,” according to McKinsey. By early August, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services expanded the list of
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Is Your Community Ready For A Connected Community of Care Model?
This question initially brings to mind many possibilities such as connection to the latest 5G cellular service, a new super-fast internet provider, or maybe one of the many new energy suppliers jockeying for market share from traditional utility companies. While all of these might represent legitimate opportunities to improve one’s community, here we are talking about a different concept; specifically, whether your community is ready to have a Connected Community of Care (CCC) to advance
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Getting Beyond the Telehealth ‘Stop-Gap’ Mentality
Since COVID-19 emerged as a major health threat, virtual care has taken off. As many as 46% of patients reported in late April that they had used telehealth to replace a canceled healthcare visit in 2020, while 48% of physicians said they had started using telehealth to treat patients.
While a shift in care models was necessary to address business continuity amid the pandemic, these trends also represent positive movements as a growing body of evidence supports the real-life benefits of
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