The healthcare industry is facing numerous global challenges in 2018, with ballooning costs, changing payment models and new legislation that routinely changes the relationship between patients, regulators, health care providers and health insurance carriers. With an aging global population and worldwide healthcare spending expected to grow from $7.1 trillion to $8.7 trillion by 2020, new technologies, products, and services in the healthcare space must demonstrate cost-effectiveness while
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Is Behavioral Economics in Healthcare The Key to Future Patient Compliance?
In 2009, mostly to fund the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, the U.S. government increased the tax on cigarettes from 39 cents to a $1.01. What followed was a demonstration of what we now commonly call behavioral economics.When taxes drove the price of cigarettes up, teenage smoking rates fell 10 percent, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and overall smoking dropped more than 8 percent, the most significant dip in smoking since 1932. The increase-taxes approach to
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MGT Act Gives Pause to Reconsider the Mainframe for Government-Run Healthcare Organizations
IT consultants working with government-run healthcare organizations are getting many questions right now about the newly passed MGT Act, which carves out funds for government agencies to modernize their technologies. These agencies have just started applying for this funding, and as they ponder where to begin, many are looking squarely at the figurehead of so-called legacy technologies, the mainframe. Mainframe systems have been used by government agencies for years to support large databases
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Virtual Reality: 4 Ways Mixed Reality Helps Pediatric Patients
Hospitals can be depressing, scary or boring, making people feel isolated and out of the loop. But this experience is several times more challenging for children, especially those in need of prolonged treatment. There can be unpleasant tests and procedures, strict visiting rules, and not so many available activities to entertain or distract young patients.Thankfully, technology is ready to alleviate hospital stay for the youngest patients, as mixed reality gradually integrates with pediatric
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HMS’ Jennifer Forster Talks Leveraging Social Determinants of Health to Improve Population Health Outcomes
HMS’ Jennifer Forster explains how payers can cut costs and improve population health outcomes by incorporating social determinants of health (SDoH) into the mix.While the future of precision medicine is often associated with advances in genomics, there is more to consider when it comes to developing personalized treatment and PHM efforts. In fact, considering social determinants of health (SDoH), a recent and growing trend in predictive analytics, is gaining traction.A new study in Population
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Can Bots Take the Patient Experience to the Next Level?
In today’s mobile-first environment, it’s somewhat surprising that nearly 30 percent of healthcare providers still use phone calls — and only phone calls — to ensure patients make it into their scheduled appointments. While fewer Americans tend to answer their phone calls, they do use their phones for text messaging. In healthcare, the benefits of text message appointment reminders are increasingly recognized and on the rise, but this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to providing a
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Hospital Culture: 4 Best Practices for Evidence-based Medicine Adoption
Does your organization follow evidence-based care guidelines? Do you currently utilize evidence-based content in your EHR? Do your clinicians embrace practices based on the best and most current clinical evidence?If your hospital has not yet fully adopted evidence-based medicine, yet wants to move in that direction, an important first step is to assess your organization’s readiness, starting with an examination of the hospital’s culture. As I travel across the country in my job, I often
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4 Benefits of Augmenting Your Integrated Care Strategy with Performance Management Analytics
Integrated care is a hot topic today – numerous studies have shown the value and benefit of integrated care costs, quality of care and patient satisfaction and engagement. To effectively execute on any integrated care strategy, you need not only great clinical initiatives but also a strong Performance Management Analytics solution to augment and enhance your clinical initiatives. Integrating both will significantly impact your time to value with any solution as well the financial and quality
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How Design Thinking in Healthcare Can Improve Patient Experience
According to the American Hospital Association, an overwhelming majority of hospital executives consider technological innovation a centerpiece of their long-term organizational goals, particularly as it pertains to solving complex problems and meeting the needs of consumers.However, if you are a regular attendee of healthcare tradeshows, you may have noticed that innovations come and go while the problems they were intended to solve remain as intractable as ever. Despite a robust market for
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EHRs Need More Bananas, Fewer Oranges to Improve Care
Physicians are people, too, as it turns out.Well of course they are, you say, perhaps while acknowledging that we may have expected doctors to perform superhuman feats since television feeds us a steady diet of doctors as boy geniuses, adult geniuses, other types of geniuses and personally troubled but ethically unassailable walking Greek tragedies.In the real world, we know that doctors these days are engaged in very human struggles to pay off massive medical school bills, walk the gauntlet of
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