The healthcare industry is grappling with a perfect storm of critical issues, each with the ability to negatively affect the access to and the quality of patient care. These issues include the lingering uncertainty regarding the fate of the Affordable Care Act and how Americans receive and pay for their healthcare. Another is the growing trend of industry consolidation, as it becomes increasingly challenging for small hospitals to compete in today’s environment. However, research shows that
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
10 Best Practices for Executing Successful M&A Deals in Healthcare IT
Over the past couple of years, there have been around 200 merger and acquisition (M&A) deals in the healthcare IT space, driven by high enterprise value and the sheer size of the industry. 49 deals came together in the first quarter of this year alone. These numbers make health IT the highest performing industry in terms of M&A activity in the consumer and retail space, and the second highest in the infrastructure/industrial space.Between 2018 and 2019, we will see an insatiable need for
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Why Healthcare Organizations Need to Leverage Enterprise Data Lakes
As the so-called “oil of the twenty-first century,” there is little doubt that data is the crown jewel of the digital economy. The Internet of Things is poised not only to shake up individual industries, but to bring them together like never before with the promise of hyper connected, ultra personalized experiences. And for consumers, one particular application of IoT is perhaps the most intriguing: the impact of connected devices on health and healthcare. Indeed, McKinsey has projected a $11.1
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6 Questions for Providers Moving Their Health IT System to the Cloud
The last time you made a difficult decision, chances are you engaged in some form of a process called the 5 W’s, or maybe the 5W’s and Sometimes How, or 5W+1H … maybe 6 W’s.Right. So, what the process lacks in an agreed-upon name it makes up for with the logical consistency of directed, relevant questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? It’s a process journalists often use consciously in writing articles, and it comes in handy for non-journalists when the goal is breaking down options and
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The ABCs of FHIR: Reinventing Health IT Interoperability
The Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource, or FHIR (pronounced ‘fire’), is a new term in healthcare that’s witnessing growing interest and spreading almost like fire. FHIR is the latest standard to be developed under HL7 and is expected to contribute significantly to improving patient care, countering the barriers to interoperability, boosting information sharing, and unboxing innovation in healthcare. Stakeholders from all across the healthcare system are excited and enthusiastic about
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3 Ways MACRA is Changing Physician Payment in Medicare
The entry of the MACRA proposed rule, a little more than a year back, flagged a solid and remarkable consent to move towards esteem-based care, yet up to this point, a hefty portion of the subtle elements encompassing how it would be executed stayed obscure.In any case, a week ago, CMS discharged about 1,000 pages that shed light on how a doctor can improve their payments by following MACRA proposed rule.History Before MACRA proposed rule was introduced, specialists were paid for giving
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What Dogs Can Teach Providers about Designing Care Plans
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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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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