The loss of lives and livelihoods from COVID-19 is almost too much to comprehend. And yet, slowly, conversations are emerging about the positives percolating from the pandemic.
It’s human nature to want to look for the positives in even the worst of situations, and I’ve noticed that in both my personal and my professional circles of late, people are talking about the things they hope we don’t lose when things go back to “normal.”
Chief among them, especially in my healthcare technology
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Hospital Wayfinding: The Next Frontier in Healthcare Design
Healthcare facilities and their sprawling campuses can be overwhelming and challenging to navigate. In fact, facilities lose close to $800 million a year due to missed hospital appointments, and many physicians blame a significant portion of this lost revenue on the problems patients have navigating these facilities.
Figuring out where to park and finding the correct office can be stressful and negatively impact the patient’s experience. Making matters worse, most hospital staff members work
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COVID-19: Why Designers Must Play A Larger Role in Healthcare’s Future
The coronavirus outbreak has brought epic casualties as more than 7.3 million cases have been confirmed globally and more than 413,000 people--and counting--are known to have died. In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown flaws in our medical system, from basic preparedness to the coordinated distribution of medical equipment. Within this global tragedy, there are stories of heroism and renewed mind power and energy addressing health care.
In reaction to shortages, we’re
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Post COVID-19: Medical Billing Finally Realizes the Value of Text-to-Pay
Contactless payments were on the rise even before COVID-19 hit. But now, health systems should see them as essential. Consumers are increasingly wary of touching a credit card terminal that others have used, a perfect conduit for spreading germs. For consumers, text payments serve as a convenient contactless way to pay, but there are other unique benefits when this method of payment is applied in a healthcare setting.
Let’s look at how text payments can fit into a health system’s revenue
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Top 4 Disruptions Healthcare Providers Should Prepare to Address
The past few years have been particularly interesting for the healthcare landscape. We’ve seen a surge in telemedicine and retail clinics, increasing use of personal healthcare devices such as watches and fitness trackers, aggressive attempts to dismantle the ACA, the growing influence of private equity investment firms, and massive mergers with disruptive enterprise market entries such as Amazon. As the ground beneath them continues to shift, many providers are venturing into new territory to
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Eliminating the Long, Cumbersome and Costly Diagnosis of Genetic Diseases
The answer to questions about human disease can be found in our genes. The difficulty in the past has been the testing process, a sort of trial and error approach of drilling down into the multitude of variants that can be found within the genes, variants that when analyzed in tandem with detailed clinical histories can actually tell the story and lead to a faster diagnosis.
Human beings carry around 20,000 genes and, of those, approximately 5,000 are somewhat understood, and those genes can
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Why COVID-19 Highlights Urgent Need to Humanize and Modernize The Patient Financial Experience
It’s no secret that COVID-19 and the
corresponding near-immediate economic catastrophe will be felt for
significantly longer than the few short months it took to wreak its initial
havoc. While losses hit businesses from “a to z” (...except maybe Amazon, ironically),
hospitals and health systems tasked with treating the victims of this pandemic
bear a particularly harsh dose of the financial fallout -- $72 billion in CARES
Act hospital grants barely serving as a band-aid to the financial
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Give Your EHR a Makeover—Not a Do-Over
EHRs have long been blamed for fueling clinician frustration and burnout. According to a recent study published in the Journal of Informatics in Health and Biomedicine, 70 percent of clinicians reported experiencing stress related to the use of health information technology. In an effort to address those issues, healthcare organizations have spent countless hours and revenue to rip out inefficient clinical systems and replace them with new technologies—yet clinician satisfaction hasn’t
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Social Distancing for Medical Devices: 5 Steps to Clinical Network Segmentation to Thwart Cyber-Attacks
Since the beginning of 2020, cyber-attacks have spiked by 300%. As members of the world's most targeted industry, healthcare organizations like hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and distributors of medical equipment are more at risk now than ever.
Even if an attack isn't directly targeted at connected medical (or, Internet of Medical Things: IoMT) devices, it can spread through a hospital’s internal network and infect equipment used to diagnose and treat patients such as IV pumps, patient
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How Can eConsults Help Clinically Integrated Networks Deliver Better Care and Demonstrate Value?
A Clinically Integrated Network (CIN) strategy that leverages eConsult technology can help physicians and health systems deliver better care at a lower cost.
Physicians increasingly face pressure to deliver high-quality care efficiently while continuing to grow and sustain their practices. But lowering costs while sustaining growth often means giving up autonomy. The percentage of solo physicians in the U.S. fell to 17% in 2014, compared with 41% in 1983. Additionally, hospital ownership of
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