A recent article in The Commonwealth Fund blog, “Envisioning a Digital Health Advisor,” raises the question of being able to use smartphone apps to get real-time, accurate and personalized guidance for health concerns. While one can envision the convenience, affordability and peace of mind that would result from their use, such services face a number of hurdles before they become reality. As a result, the “digital revolution” has not yet greatly affected most people’s interactions with the
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Philips, Texas A&M Partner to Develop Population Health Solutions
Philips and The Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp has announced a joint project to drive innovation in population health management for Southern Texas, emergency medical service response and biosurveillance. As part of the Healthy South Texas pilot project, the joint project will create integrated Emergency Medical Services (EMS) technologies for more efficient and effective coordination of response efforts, and developing point-of-care diagnostics and biosurveillance to help
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Experian Health Integrates with Epic’s EMR for Revenue Cycle Optimization
Revenue cycle provider Experian Health announced that its Coverage Discovery® on demand tool is now integrated into Epic’s EMR environment. The integration will provide Epic clients with additional opportunities to find coverage early in the revenue cycle, avoiding the downstream complications and costs associated with missed insurance coverage.Coverage Discovery enables Experian Health clients to proactively reclassify uncompensated care by alerting them of patient coverage across both
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Is The Health IT Gap Driving Medical Errors into the 3rd Leading Cause of Death?
Hardly a day goes by without some new revelation of a US IT mess that seems like an endless round of the old radio show joke contest, “Can You Top This”, except increasingly the joke is on us. From nuclear weapons updated with floppy disks to needless medical deaths, many of which are still caused by preventable interoperability communication errors as has been the case for decades.According to a report released to Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that the US
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8 Digital Health Jobs of the Future to Watch
Editor’s Note: Richard van Hooijdonk is a futurist and international keynote speaker on future technologies and disruption and how these technologies change our everyday lives. Van Hooijdonk and his international team research ‘mega trends’ on digital health, robotic surgery,drones, the internet-of-things, 3D/4D printing, Big Data and other how new technologies affects many industries. With people living increasingly longer lives, medical care from surgeons, physicians, pharmacists and dentists
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How True Price Transparency Is Only 3 Lines of Code Away
Editor's Note: Lori Mehen is the Founder & CEO of Medlio, healthcare’s only social CRM – a new technology designed to help providers better engage with their digitally-empowered customer base. I have an allergic reaction to all the haughty industry wonks who run around talking about healthcare price transparency like it’s some kind of mythical grail. In fact, their core belief is that it’s impossible to know how much a doctor’s visit is going to cost before it happens.In an age of big data
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Healthcare Data Breaches: The Gap Between Awareness & Readiness
Editor’s Note: D’Arcy Guerin Gue is a co-founder of Phoenix, with over 25 years of experience in executive leadership, strategic planning, IT services, knowledge leadership, and industry relations — with a special focus on patient engagement and federal compliance issues. She currently serves as the Director of Industry Relations at Phoenix Health Systems, a division of Medsphere SystemsYou may be suffering from IT security fatigue at this point, for which I offer a half-hearted apology.Yes,
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Why Your Patient Portal Strategy Should Embrace Both Consumers & Patients
Patient engagement is easy, right? Just create a portal and tell patients it’s there.Of course, no one who puts a little thought into this idea believes it can be so simple. Healthcare isn’t “Field of Dreams,” after all. We can build it. They still might not come.But we still need to try and understand why, as this 2014 Health Affairs study found, the increased use of EHR technology has not created a parallel increase in electronic communication among patients and clinicians. In short, if
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6 Implications for 2017 Medicare Advantage & Medicare Part D Programs
Editor's Note: Kyle Stapp is the Program Director at Eligibility.com where he oversees the educational center inside Eligibility.com and works daily with program applicants to answer their questions. His programs include Medicare, Unemployment and more. Follow him on Twitter at @kyle_stapp or connect with him on LinkedIn.According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), 32% of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, amounting to 17.1 million people. This
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At The Heart & Soul of MACRA Is Waste
Ms. Jeannie is a 65 years old woman, slightly overweight with mild hypertension that is perfectly controlled. Ms. Jeannie is the office manager at Dr. Abrams, the pediatrician down the hall, who’s been taking care of your kids since you moved here. Ms. Jeannie called earlier because her allergies are killing her today and she’s out of refills for her blood pressure meds anyway. After an uneventful 15 minutes, and a brief chat in the hallway, Ms. Jeannie pays her $15 copay and heads back to work.
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