Several studies have shown that if dog owners are told to walk their overweight dog more often to improve the dog’s health, the dog owners will comply, and also lose weight themselves. Their concern for their dog’s health makes the goal of increased exercise an easy one to follow. The regimen combines the pleasurable activity of spending time with a pet with a healthy activity–walking. In this way, the dogs become accidental health coaches for the human patients, encouraging them to be more
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
If MPIs are Dead, What’s Next For The Future of Patient Matching?
Healthcare technology continues to advance with ever greater sophistication and functionality. Yet one key component in the health IT toolkit has not kept pace with innovation. Patient matching technologies, including conventional master patient indexes (MPIs), hit a wall 10 years ago, and it’s time to admit it: conventional MPIs are a dying breed.The reason is that patient matching needs have grown exponentially at exactly the same time the underlying technology for patient matching solutions
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Mid-Year Checkpoint: 3 Ways to Improve Health Plan Member Engagement
Summer is almost over, but for health plans it’s time to check in on plan performance and course correct to meet 2017 goals. For those who fall shy of meeting projected performance targets, it’s not too late to boost vital metrics like Star rating or HEDIS score. With less than five months left in 2017 it may seem an impossible goal to move the needle on quality ratings, but that’s not the case. It is not too late to make a difference, provided you are smart and targeted in your approach.One of
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Why The Mental Health Industry Is Ripe For Innovation
Technology has been tested and proven effective in many advanced and innovative industries, and is now extending and applying its benefits to more regulated industries such as healthcare. According to Mary Meeker's Internet Trends 2017 report, healthcare is “at a digital inflection point.” She recognized and attributed this change in part to the increase of data collection from fitness trackers and health apps as well as the increase of hospitals sharing healthcare data with patients.As part of
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How Will ACA-Repeal Legislation Impact The Medicaid Population?
The expansion of Medicaid and insurance subsidies through the ACA meant 20.4 million more people had health insurance in 2016 than in 2010. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, somewhere just north of 20 million Americans would lose health insurance in the various repeal-and-replace scenarios that have been floated of late and rejected, for now. That number jumps to 30 million-plus if Obamacare is simply repealed.What all proposed ACA-repeal legislation has in common is
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Why The Opioid Epidemic Makes EHRs Essential To Public Health
When public health is threatened by an outbreak of SARS or Zika or avian influenza, widely disseminated information becomes a crucial tool used to curtail the spread of disease.But transmittable diseases are not the lone threats to public health. Other metaphorically pathogenic events—the current opioid epidemic, for example—are more effectively managed by making sure doctors have complete information when evaluating patients and, especially, writing prescriptions.Even if you know what the
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Mobile Messaging vs. Online Patient Portals: Streamlining the Patient Intake Process
The waiting room is full, there is a line forming in front of the scheduling desk, new patient information has to be collected, patients’ records must be updated, and appointments need to be rescheduled. The patient intake process, particularly for new patients, can be time-consuming and arduous for administrative staff.One of the most effective ways to reduce staff’s workload, while speeding up the patient intake process, is with automated mobile-first messaging strategies. This approach
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4 Ways Augmented Reality Will Transform the Medical World
Looking to the near and distant future of medical technology, augmented reality (AR) will be central to innovation. The medical field will be enhanced dramatically via the rise of augmented reality products emerging in the market. In just a few years, the entire healthcare experience will look entirely different from the medical environment today. How so?By overlapping valuable medical information with the real world – whether it be making visible patient information, mapping an individual’s
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Why Data Governance Is The Backbone to Artificial Intelligence’s Potential
A recent contributor to HIT Consultant made a bold, yet not too far fetched statement about the data analytics space. He noted that applied artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay, and that the more common form of healthcare analytics will slowly but surely be replaced. For a quick IT lesson, applied AI refers to the intersection of artificial intelligence and machine learning, where the best of human intelligence is brought together with the best of computing capabilities.Related: Why
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Healthcare in the Gigabit Society: Improving Care by Improving Connectivity
Today’s technologies are expected to offer tremendous potential for innovation in the healthcare industry. In fact, the digital health market is expected to surpass $379 billion by 2024.The reasons behind this expected growth is two-fold; the current infrastructure in healthcare is already outdated, and the world around us continues to innovate.As communities become more connected and technology continues to be ingrained in almost every part of our life, healthcare needs to keep pace. Current
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