Did you know that you are a “telemedicine provider”? No? I can’t blame you for not knowing, but you are, and always have been. Well, maybe not always, but certainly since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Better yet, you provide free telemedicine services. Here is an idea: on the home page of your practice website, you should add a big huge flashing banner saying “Free Telemedicine Services!” Still hesitating because you are not using fancy monitors when you take calls from
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
How Accountable Is The Care Without Behavioral Health?
Continuity of care, accountability of care, unlikely without Medicare Shared Savings and Meaningful Use health IT incentives for mental and behavioral health providers
I could understand completely if many behavioral health providers and facilities feel like the proverbial red headed stepchild. All this energy and money poured into improving healthcare through comprehensive information technology (IT) systems and behavioral health is left holding an empty basket.
Even with regard to
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5 Cultural Pitfalls To Avoid In Health System Integration
Editor's Note: This spotlight article was recently included in PwC's Q1 2015 US health services deals insights report.
These days it seems every health system is in the middle of a transformation — be it buying, selling or trying to integrate the assets it has amassed over time. Being in the business of transformation, this means we find ourselves invariably and repeatedly answering the question, "What are the big stumbling blocks to avoid?"
Without fail, our answer will include some
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Why Healthcare Is Incapable Of “Plugging-In” New Solutions
The first time I heard Par8o’s tagline “Healthcare’s Operating System,” I remember thinking to myself, “what the hell does that mean?”
I now think I have a pretty good idea.
Over the last two and a half years, my partners and I have been on a journey to transform the healthcare consumer experience. We began this journey by developing a patent-pending process for creating virtual health insurance cards. Beyond providing consumers real-time information on plan benefits, the
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Parity Not Apparent: There Is No Biopsy for Mental Illness
Getting legislation through Congress—often a monumental battle—is one thing. But implementing new laws may be a greater challenge simply because they require so much sustained energy and attention.
Take mental health parity laws, for example.
Congress passed the Mental Health Parity Act (MHPA) championed by Sens. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and Pete Domenici (R-NM) in 1996. The law prohibits employee-sponsored group health plans from charging more in a year or over a lifetime for mental health
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The Death of Fee-for-Service in Healthcare
On April 16, 2015, President Obama signed into law H.R. 2, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015(MACRA), effectively sentencing Fee-for-Service (FFS) to death. The best explanation for how FFS is destroying the nation comes from Charles Munger, vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and ad-hoc health luminary, who is equating what American doctors do, to raising rattlesnakes so they can collect the bounty for dead rattlers offered by the government in an effort to combat a
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Behavioral Health: We Need EHRs, But incentives Would Help
Editor's Note: D'Arcy Gue is one of the co-founders of Phoenix Health Systems, a healthcare IT consulting and outsourcing firm. In April 2015, Phoenix welcomed a merger with Medsphere Systems Corporation and now serves as the vice president of industry relations for Phoenix Health Systems, the health IT services division of Medsphere.
Acute care hospitals have demonstrated what happens when you pay people—when you incentivize them—to do something.
Just 9.4 percent of
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Rebooting Meaningful Use: Is It Accomplishing Its Mission?
Editor's Note: Dr. Reid Coleman is the Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) for evidence-based medicine at Nuance.
Meaningful Use is an important set of criteria designed to improve quality and safety, but is it accomplishing its mission?
The proposed rules for Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 3 were just released by both CMS and the ONC. Many writers have commented on these rules, and this blog post is not a commentary about the rules. As always, I recommend readers go to John
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Healthcare On-Demand, Airbnb Style
If healthcare is becoming “cashified” as I previously discussed, and I am buying healthcare services on my own - I want an experience like Airbnb.
The realization came on a flight back from San Diego. We had just met with a potential investor who was incredibly interested in our startup, but who ultimately balked when he learned how long it takes health systems to make purchasing decisions. True enough, but a little oblique of our actual business model... Ah rejection, like a pair of fuzzy
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Want a Connected Healthcare System? You Are the Missing Key
Editor's Note: John H. Hammergren is chairman, president and chief executive officer of McKesson Corporation.
How often do we visit the doctor’s office and think, “This again?” when handed a long medical form to fill out? Don’t we all wonder why our medical information can’t be automatically transferred from our primary care physician to the specialist? Or to the hospital or outpatient surgery center?
The answer is this: we don’t currently have a national network of connectivity that
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