As if 2020 couldn’t be any more challenging for healthcare providers, new federal rules on interoperability and patient access, granting patients direct access to their healthcare data, begin taking effect in 2021 and will continue into 2022. These rules, while ultimately beneficial to patients, bring an additional level of operational complexity to many revenue-stressed healthcare organizations.
If anything, the 2020 pandemic has illustrated the vast potential of interoperability. For
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
5 Myth-Busting New Hospital ADT Notification Requirements
When doctors know their patients have been to the hospital, they can act fast to provide needed support. Widespread use of hospital event notifications is associated with all kinds of health benefits, including a 10 percent decrease in readmissions for Medicare beneficiaries. These event notifications are one of the simplest, easiest (most-bipartisan!), and most impactful changes we can make to improve patient outcomes in U.S. healthcare.
To this goal, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
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The Modern Approach to Acquiring Healthcare IT
The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on the shortcomings of today’s hospital and healthcare IT infrastructure, with many healthcare organizations quickly adopting the latest and greatest technology to support remote operations. However, in the scramble to adapt, many IT leaders did not ensure that the acquired technology integrated well with legacy systems – resulting in underused components and wasted costs. As we enter into a new era in healthcare, it is paramount that these organizations
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Virtual Engagement During COVID Pushes Paradigm Shift for Physician Training and Patient Care
The dominant presence of COVID-19 has not meant the absence of cancer, ear infections, heart attacks, chronic pain, or other illnesses that need attention and care. Physicians have continued treatment for all types of maladies, and physician training has continued as well. But this treatment and this training look much different these days. Despite the challenges that came with major COVID shutdowns and changing requirements, the healthcare system and patients have been both creative and
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Your Room is Ready: How to Recapture Health System Revenue by Solving “The Motel Problem”
Healthcare leaders attempting to regain some of the revenue lost during the COVID-19 shutdowns now face a formidable challenge. The American Hospital Association estimates that U.S. hospitals and health systems lost $202.6 billion in just the four months from March 1 through June 30—roughly $50.7 billion per month.
Many variables feed into the overall financial impact for individual healthcare organizations, of course—including geographic location, local ordinances, specialty designations,
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NLP is Raising the Bar on Accurate Detection of Adverse Drug Events
Each year, Adverse Drug Events (ADE) account for nearly 700,000 emergency department visits and 100,000 hospitalizations in the US alone. Nearly 5 percent of hospitalized patients experience an ADE, making them one of the most common types of inpatient errors. What’s more, many of these instances are hard to discover because they are never reported. In fact, the median under-reporting rate in one meta-analysis of 37 studies was 94 percent. This is especially problematic given the negative
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COVID-19: How Can Payers Prepare for Mandates and Support Pandemic Relief Efforts
Healthcare can achieve optimum efficiency when patients are at the center of care. When patients have the necessary information to navigate their care journey, they will choose the path to high-quality care at the lowest costs. Cost-sharing and insurance premiums are rising consistently since the last decade for employer plans, which covers nearly half of the country’s population. Plan members are shouldering a part of the healthcare cost burden, so they want to keep it as low as possible. At
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3 Key Solutions to Fighting Stress In the Medical Field
As you read this, doctors are on the frontlines fighting a global pandemic. Lives depend on their skills and expertise, but what often gets overlooked is the fact that doctors are still prone to stress. Sure enough, according to a report by Medscape, more than 42% of physicians across various specialties say they are burned out.
Burnout is still a common occurrence among physicians and it's a matter that practitioners and healthcare institutions should take seriously. After all, doctors are
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How Care Coordination Technology Addresses Social Isolation in Seniors
Senior isolation is a health risk that affects at least a quarter of seniors over 65. It has become recognized over the past decade as a risk factor for poor aging outcomes including cognitive decline, depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, hypertension, heart disease, impaired immune function, and even death.
Physical limitations, lack of transportation, and inadequate health literacy, among other social determinants of health (SDOH), further impair access to medical and mental
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Hospital Sustainability Demands that Revenue Integrity Move Front and Center
Razor-thin operational margins coupled with substantial and ongoing losses related to COVID-19 are culminating in a perfect storm of bottom-line issues for U.S. hospitals and health systems. A study commissioned by the American Hospital Association (AHA) found that the median hospital margin overall was just 3.5% pre-pandemic, and projected margins will stay in the red for at least half of the nation’s hospitals for the remainder of 2020.
The reality is that an increase in
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