It wasn’t that long ago that people went to the bank on a Friday to cash their paper paychecks. Maybe they’d put some in checking and take some out in cash. They’d go to the grocery store over the weekend and maybe write one of those checks. Everyone always had to have a pen with them.
It wasn’t that long ago that people would call the ticket agent and discuss flight options for vacation. They’d send a paper ticket in the mail. When it was time to go, people would carry that ticket with them
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Patient Payment Strategies to Accelerate Cash Flow Amid COVID-19
In the past few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has shaken societies, economies, and human wellbeing to the core. While protecting public health and welfare are top priorities for hospitals, the harsh reality is that it takes cash to keep the doors open and serve patients effectively. Revenue is down significantly as a result of canceled elective surgeries, while the costs of medical supplies and in-demand personal protective equipment for workers have skyrocketed. Hospitals’ operating challenges
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How Times of Crisis Spur Needed Change in Healthcare Delivery
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to change healthcare operations in the world, foundational systems are being adapted to meet these new demands. Sometimes it takes extreme circumstances to see the cracks in a system. COVID-19 has exposed areas with more room for improvement in the healthcare system, such as optimizing operational efficiency. Organizations and individuals have changed their interactions, processes, ways of working, treatment plans, and even foundational technology. As the
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Super-Spreading of COVID-19 Co-Infections Reveals a Deadly Diagnostics Gap
Secondary bacterial or fungal co-infections in COVID-19 patients have received inadequate attention from the public. For most, co-infections pose little to no risk according to reports that an estimated 8% of patients are found to experience this during hospital admission – a relatively low number compared to the global impact of the virus. However, once a patient enters a hospital for care or becomes ventilated while in the ICU, the risk for acquiring and spreading a deadly
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The Adoption of Telehealth During the Pandemic will Shape Healthcare’s New Normal
COVID-19 has presented healthcare with a challenge like no other, with nearly nine million cases all over the world and over 470,000 lives lost. The speed of the outbreak and the disruption caused by it has created unforeseen challenges for communities and economies, and it’s especially apparent in healthcare delivery. Healthcare systems in nations around the globe have dedicated substantial resources to respond to the pandemic and the growth has only somewhat stymied.
While the U.S.
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5 Critical Considerations for Patient Privacy in Telehealth
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous ripple effect across all industries, with one of the most impacted being healthcare. Providers have had to quickly adapt to supporting patients ‘virtually’ in a secure manner, while simultaneously developing procedures to support accurate reporting to government organizations. These changes have placed added pressure on security and privacy professionals, as they struggle to keep up with urgent demand.
Mature healthcare organizations already have
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Telehealth Platforms: 5 Pillars of Patient-Centric Design
To accelerate the adoption of telehealth services and remote health platforms, the patient-centric design is a must. By paying attention to five key areas, you can develop a telehealth solution that works for the most important users: the patients.
There are several universal challenges in delivering telehealth solutions, including a lack of patient adoption. It’s a reasonable reluctance:
- Healthcare has always been delivered in-person.
- Trusting sensitive information to devices
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How COVID-19 is Driving Changes in Hospital Safety Through Technology
COVID-19 has had a tremendous impact on all of us, and it’s likely that many aspects of our daily lives will never return to “normal.” In the same way that we scoff at the notion of driving cars without seatbelts today, we’ll likely feel the same about many other previously normal things we did pre-pandemic.
This will most certainly include the way we manage high-risk spaces where there’s close contact and a higher than average risk of infection - like hospitals, airports, retail stores,
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Avoid COVID-19 Modeling Pitfalls by Eliminating Bias, Using Good Data
COVID-19 models are being used every day to predict the course and short- and long-term impacts of the pandemic. And we’ll be using these COVID-19 models for months to come. While many of us in healthcare are not epidemiologists or data scientists, we’re all sifting through the data to get a handle on how many people are going to get sick, how many will end up in the hospital or on a ventilator, and ultimately, how many people will die.
Government agencies are using models to set public
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How ADT-Based E-Notifications Can Enable Better Safety for COVID-19 Patients
As COVID-19 continues to impact the country, providers across the continuum face new challenges delivering care and ensuring safety for their patients and themselves. During this period, sharing real-time information about patients’ care encounters across provider types and care settings matter more than ever. In particular, hospitals sharing admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) events with COVID-19 patients’ community-based providers is critical to ensure the best treatment course and
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