There is a lot of buzz around Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrency as a new kind of payment technology and how it can change our future. I am going to take a different spin on what is really interesting about cryptocurrency. There is much more behind cryptocurrency and Bitcoin than being a new way to make a payment. The technology that Bitcoin is built on is extremely interesting and has many other applications. The underlying tech that drives cryptocurrency is called blockchain which is a
Read More
Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Why Medicaid Needs to Lead the Charge in Remote Patient Monitoring
In a system that is straining under the pressure of an increasingly sick and aging population, the benefits of digital healthcare are indisputable. Technology has played a crucial role in the industry’s continued transition to value-based care, driving costs down while increasing access to personalized care.[1] But despite the rapid gains that technology has affected, policy-makers have been slow to catch up. Until recently, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) enforced rules
Read More
Using Telephonic Nurse Advice to Reduce Avoidable ED Visits
Delivering care in the right setting at the right time is a well-accepted tenet of value-based, population health management. Directing patients or members to the most clinically appropriate level of care promises not only to reduce costs but also to improve the member experience. Take, for instance, the emergency department (ED). While EDs are vitally needed facilities that save countless lives, the experience can be stressful for patients given that ED staff are often rushing to care for
Read More
6 Ways Online Medical Courses Are Impacting the Healthcare System
The medical field is changing, from the way people seek emergency medical care to how they find a primary care physician. These changes have had some positive effects on the healthcare system, but one of the most startling is how online education for the medical and healthcare field has caused an influx of qualified and certified individuals in many sectors. A recent study showed that almost 80 percent of students are learning online, and these classes are having quite an impact on how patients
Read More
Why Artificial Intelligence Could Fail Healthcare Providers in 2018
Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds tremendous potential to transform care delivery by automating, augmenting and amplifying human labor in repetitive cognitive tasks. Just like any tool, however, it can be leveraged with improper or incomplete strategies and create more harm than good. This harm translates not only into mistakes that can impact an organization's bottom line, but also the lives of the patients that the organization serves.As we approach the start of HIMSS 2018 we can expect to
Read More
Healthcare CRM: From Marketing to a Foundation for Value-based Care
For many healthcare organizations, the decision to employ a customer relationship management (CRM) solution is typically driven by the marketing department. Marketers need data-driven tools that enable them to better segment and identify high-value consumers, leverage demographics and behavioral data to personalize messages, and measure the ROI for marketing programs.Today, the potential value of healthcare CRM extends far beyond marketing, supporting myriad use cases in both clinical and
Read More
Patient Misidentification: The Case Against The National Patient Identifier
The healthcare IT industry is at a crossroads.On the one hand, there have been tremendous advancements made in health technology over the past decade: wide adoption of electronic health records, telehealth, remote monitoring tools, and the broadening effort to enable secure health data exchange. On the other hand, many problems lurk, including one with nationwide, massive implications: patient matching.As patient data skyrocket and the need for data sharing increases, matching patient records
Read More
Will HIMSS18 Recognize The Disruption of the Traditional Office Visit?
Healthcare is evolving quickly and HIMSS 18 offers a broad range of healthcare issues to explore, but will it recognize the disruption of the traditional office visit?New requirements for implementing HIT systems are changing as new health IT priorities and procedures emerge. Convergence in the health care sector is accelerating the need for interoperability, not just for EHRs, but also across clinical, financial, and operational systems. This need is also challenging and changing one of the
Read More
Healthcare Cyber Hygiene: 5 Best Practices to Protect Patient Data
Hospital-acquired infections and data breaches may have vastly different causes, but they have one thing in common—they put healthcare organizations and patients at risk. The “pathogens” which cause data breaches originate both externally and internally—but practicing healthcare cyber hygiene can reduce or eliminate their “infection."Patient data has high value—to others. According to Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report, healthcare has the second highest number of breaches after
Read More
DevSecOps in Healthcare: Solving the Security Issue in Digital Transformation
According to Forrester data, the healthcare industry is estimated to spend up to $66 billion in technology budgets in 2017. In fact, healthcare systems are expected to see the most growth in business technology application spending as the remit for software in the industry expands. While the prospect of increased investment in health IT is exciting, data also show that 70% of digital transformation projects are expected to fail by 2018. With such a high risk for failure, how can health IT safely
Read More
