The timing couldn’t be more critical for us to start making serious headway to reduce the growing problem of burnout among America’s physicians. In 2018, physician burnout was already at an alarming 42%, but that number is growing as COVID-19 cases surge around the country.
While we are at a hopeful place in the virus’ trajectory with millions of vaccinations administered, the reality – even once we get through the pandemic – is quite grim for physicians and their
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Health Plans Must Go Beyond the ONC Mandate and Prioritize Member Experience
We are all frustrated when there’s a glitch with our online banking, or if bandwidth problems interfere with streaming the movie we want to watch. Imagine how individuals will react when the results of a cancer screening don’t find their way into Apple Health or Google Health, where such information is supposed to be easy to find. Or worse, if an individual is given the wrong information about a cancer diagnosis.
An individual’s first call about missing health data or claims is going to
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Why Cancer Registries are Part of America’s Fight for Racial Equality
According to a 2019 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one in 1,000 Black males can expect to die at the hands of the police. Black males were also 2.5 times more likely to die during an encounter with police than white males. For some, those figures are staggering. For many others, they are reminders of the racial disparities that have existed for far too long in this country.
So, in 2020, when recent events have brought racial injustice back into the national
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3 Ways Hospitals Can Improve Employee Communication—Now and Beyond the Pandemic
This year and the coronavirus pandemic brought new challenges to hospitals and healthcare facilities across the globe. And while the first phase of vaccine distribution has put a light at the end of the tunnel, many regions are still handling surging cases as a result of the holiday season.
As we navigate combatting the latest surge and distributing the first rounds of the vaccine, hospital and healthcare system leaders should use lessons learned from this year to ensure the doctors,
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Telehealth Helped Me Beat COVID-19, But It’s Just A Start
I was the voice of social distancing, a proponent of mask-wearing from the very start. Still, after months of keeping distance from loved ones, the idea of a quick, safe, outdoor family gathering on a beautiful fall day, even if we weren’t going to be wearing masks, was too good to pass up.
A week later, I was sequestered in my bed, with a 103-degree-fever that didn’t break for 12 days, unrelenting migraines and aches, and what felt like an impossibly heavy weight on my chest, making
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Virtual Care in the Post-COVID World: How to Prepare Your Healthcare Environment
As the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated telehealth adoption, many patients and providers supported the remote-friendly technology. While the big spikes of usage may slow, adoption is still far ahead from where it was pre-pandemic, and we expect that to remain. In fact, the global telehealth market is projected to reach $559.52 billion by 2027, and estimates indicate that up to $250 billion of the current U.S. healthcare spend could potentially be virtualized.
Organizations were forced to
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A Patient Engagement Strategy Needs to Deliver a Holistic Experience
Researchers from Johns Hopkins published a study in October on the impact of the pandemic on health care delivery. Among its findings, the data show a 21.4% decrease in primary care visits in Q2 of 2020, compared against the average volume of Q2 visits for the previous two years. By contrast, there was a sharp increase in telehealth engagements, accounting for 35.3% of all provider visits in Q2 this year, compared with 4.1% in Q1 and 1.1% in 2018-2019.
Despite the shifts in healthcare
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Treat in Place: Protecting Nursing Home Patients From Hospital Readmission
A night doctor’s dilemma
Five years ago, I was practicing medicine in a rural hospital in North Carolina as a nocturnist, when I received a call from an Emergency Room (ER) doctor. “Hey, it’s Blake. Room 7. Demented. UTI,” he says, and hangs up.
I was struck by the abrupt and sparse communication—no detailed report. Not even a name. Charged with admitting and caring for patients, I head downstairs and find myself in room 7 where an elderly woman with a blown IV and no family around is
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Evaluating COVID-19’s Behavioral Health Impact on the Economy
We’re now in a new year and new presidential administration. At least three companies are producing effective COVID-19 vaccines, which are being administered to healthcare workers, teachers, and the elderly. By summer, hopefully a large majority of the population in most countries will be vaccinated. From where the world now stands, we can see an end to prolonged isolation, trauma, fear, grief, and economic torpor.
But out of the woods, we are not.
The virus mutates, perhaps
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Healthcare Metadata Management: 3 Critical Capabilities to Creating A Unified, Automated Approach
The healthcare industry, like many others, has become a data driven industry collecting data from patients, doctors, labs, and payers that are all crucial to patient healthcare diagnosis and outcome. When it comes to research, data can be useful in creating emerging healthcare technological innovations, pharmaceutical discoveries, as well as other advances in the market but it also is accompanied by strong regulatory compliance, like stringent HIPAA laws, that dictate that this data is kept
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