In today’s digital-first world, the medical call center still plays a crucial role in connecting healthcare consumers with providers. As an important method of alleviating staffing shortages, elevating the patient experience, and optimizing revenue for healthcare organizations, strategic call center programs covered unique gaps in the patient journey during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic such as information hotlines and patient outreach to engage patients once the facility re-opened. In
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Unlock the Full Potential of Inpatient Bed Capacity with AI
Every day, hospital staff do the best they can to navigate the daily chaos of bed management by making educated guesses as to what is going to happen over the course of the day. Relying on team huddles throughout the day, staff pore over Excel or paper spreadsheets to predict how many beds will open up and when. They try to estimate demand for those beds by the time of day, unsure when to deploy “surge capacity.” On some days, this method works out well. However, more often than not, the staff’s
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Encouraging Health Literacy Through Member Advocacy
With the swift rise of digital health tools in the last two years, consumers have easier access to more health information than ever before. But for many, the proliferation of digital health tools has done very little to change their level of health literacy.
Consumers are still confused about their insurance benefits, the resources they can access, and their options for care management, among other things.
As just one example, new research found that 50% of health insurance
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Wraparound Programs – An Alternative Approach to Address the Children’s Mental Health Crisis
The mental health crisis impacting America’s children requires states, parents, guardians, and behavioral health professionals to rethink how we provide treatment. For many young people, high-fidelity wraparound programs are the answer.
Even before the pandemic, mental health issues were a leading cause of disability for children. The pandemic only worsened the situation. In the fall of 2020, Challenge Success conducted a national study that found that only one-third of high school students
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Modernizing Data Access: 3 Tips for Securing Patient Data in the Cloud
There is a tremendous amount of data within the healthcare and life sciences industries. According to RBC Capital Markets, the healthcare sector accounts for 30% of the world’s data and is forecasted to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 36% in the next two and half years.
The benefit is that healthcare professionals, organizations, and analysts can use this data to improve the quality, quantity, and accessibility of healthcare. But it also carries great risk. More organizations
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To Truly Address Behavioral Health Worker Shortages, We Need Telemedicine
In late September, the Senate Finance Committee released a bipartisan discussion draft bill that aims to address the nation’s crippling behavioral healthcare crisis by providing funding for 4,000 Medicare Graduate Medical Education psychiatry residencies over the next decade.
Four thousand more psychiatrists are certainly a step in the right direction, but there is still much work to be done in light of projections that we will be short between 14,280
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3 Elements Required for Data Ecosystems to Drive Innovation
For years, the healthcare industry has been inundated with stories about the importance of sharing data among payers, providers, and other key stakeholders – and for a good reason; widespread interoperability of healthcare data has the potential to transform much of the industry for the better.
What's often not mentioned is how expensive, time-intensive, and potentially legally hazardous data-sharing is. Combining disparate data sets is a technically challenging undertaking that requires
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Convenient Scapegoat: Why Hesitancy is Not the Cause of Low Vaccination Rates in Africa
At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, the topic of the COVID-19 pandemic and its destructive impact was central to many of the discussions that took place. Among them, was the issue of vaccine hesitancy around the world, especially in underdeveloped nations such as those in Africa. According to Africa CDC, as of September 2022, Africa, the second most-populated continent, has only vaccinated 21% of its people; an inadequate number In comparison to other populated countries such as India
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Clinical Trials: 5 Steps to Greater eConsent Adoption
Clinical trials advance much-needed treatments while offering hope to patients and their families. However, the process of enrolling in a study where they will receive investigational medicines, vaccines or procedures can be a source of friction – enough for patients to rethink participation.
The weight of the decision combined with a perceived lack of transparency of information can confuse or dismay even those patients that are most savvy in the medical industry. Even if they do end
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4 Roadblocks That Are Hindering The Promise of Predictive Analytics
COVID-19 will likely impact and strain healthcare systems for many years to come — possibly even forever. As its attention wanes, we need technology to step in and tell us when and how to act next. What if there was a way to predict the next COVID-19 surge months before it affected operations? How many beds will be available? PPE? Where will you need to allocate additional resources and staff? What other seasonal uptick of disease will it align with? Will our revenue take a
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