In the history of healthcare information technology (HIT), there is clear evidence that technology systems have been designed to provide individual solutions, instead of considering a provider’s workflow holistically. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, practice management (PM) systems offered medical practices the opportunity to automate their day-to-day operations. Then the electronic health record (EHR) became mainstream in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, to electronically store patient
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
The Short List of Remaining Health IT Interoperability Obstacles is Significant
Earlier this year, the ONC released the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), which responds to a mandate included in 2016’s 21st Century Cures Act and lays out principles, terms and conditions on which to base an interoperability framework that healthcare organizations can embrace. “This means patients who have received care from multiple doctors and hospitals should have their medical history electronically accessible on demand by any other treating provider in a network
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8 Tips for Urgent Care Clinics to Optimize Revenue & Remain Profitable
As the 2017-18 flu season winds down, it’s become clear that it was one for the record books. With the onset coming early and strong, emergency departments, primary care physicians, and urgent care clinics all over the country were overrun with patients waiting in line to see a doctor.While this had a negative impact on a large portion of the U.S. population, anyone involved in the on-demand healthcare space knows that the flu season and resulting increase in patient volume tends to feed the
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The Existing Challenges with EHRs and Physicians’ Workflows
EHRs grew out of the vast computers that looked after a hospital’s internal processes. The physician workflows, on the other hand, were an afterthought. Imagine a Wendy’s restaurant. You place an order and the guy at the counter rings up and relays your order to the kitchen. When the order comes, the fry guy drops a basket of fries in the fryer, the guy at the burger counter flips a patty, the girl over at the soda machine fills up your choice of soda, arranges your order on a tray, and rests it
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The Patient Experience and…Revenue Cycle Operations? The Two Are More Interlinked than You Might Think.
Think back to the last time you read a negative review about a restaurant. After reading the review, you probably dismissed the restaurant and considered other places to eat.Now, imagine you’re a patient considering options for an outpatient procedure and you came upon negative reviews about a provider. Chances are, you probably skipped that provider and opted for a consult with someone else. As providers, how can we fix this? Now, more than ever, patient satisfaction matters, especially given
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The Telehealth Movement – Access, Value, Convenience
Healthcare, like all other industries, is experiencing a phase of rapid transformation due to the increased use of technology.“We’re entering a second wave of health innovation, where new business models, exciting technologies, and exciting leaders will emerge,” said Unity Stoakes, Co-Founder & President, StartUp Health in the company’s 2017 Year End Report. Telehealth, or the provision of healthcare via telecommunication networks, is not new – but it’s now becoming a hot suite of
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The 3 F’s for Care Innovations— Flow, Feasibility, Flexibility
Recently, I came across a story on a high-end care facility situated in Philadelphia. The said center was equipped with highly advanced machines, served high-income patients, and their services were fairly ‘integrated.’ A patient could visit a PCP on one floor and get diagnostic imaging done on another. However, any two systems did not connect. An X-ray image had to be first printed, faxed, and then again scanned in the physician’s desktop— taking a fair amount of time, and image quality was
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Solving the Patient Access Labor Supply Challenge
Providers are struggling to stay profitable while also striving to keep patient satisfaction from being negatively impacted. Denials are on an upward trend, payors are becoming tighter around what is demanded of the providers, and patients are being squeezed to pay more out-of-pocket with the ongoing shift to self-pay and high-deductible plans.What many may not realize is that these financial challenges rear their head from the moment the patient walks through the door or schedules an
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AI & Machine Learning is Shaping the Future of Healthcare Delivery
An Accenture report was released at HIMSS18 with a bold prediction: the healthcare artificial intelligence (AI) market may hit $6.6 billion in the next three years. In 2014, that number was just $600 million, meaning the AI healthcare market could see an eleven fold increase in value in less than a decade.The survey showed that as of 2018, one in five U.S. consumers have already used healthcare services “powered by artificial intelligence,” and many are open to AI clinical services, like
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Apple Health Records Initiative: Peril or Promise?
Health Records is Apple’s new personal health record feature that was announced on January 24, 2018 as part of the iOS 11.3 update. Health Records will collect and compile patient-generated data, such as steps walked in a day or hours slept, together with information from the patient’s electronic medical record (EMR) if the user is a patient at one of now nearly 40 participating hospitals. UNC Health Care Chapel Hill, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Stanford Medicine are three health systems have
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