As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, more healthcare consumers than ever before have begun to engage digitally with their healthcare providers rather than seek in-person treatment and care options. A survey recently released by software company Redpoint Global found that 65 percent of consumers reported using telehealth during the pandemic, with 34 percent of those respondents indicating they will continue to do so as the pandemic winds down.
In this context, it’s no surprise that
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
5 Tips for Hiring and Retaining Medical Practice Staff
Finding the right employees for your medical practice and keeping them happy can be challenging enough during normal times. Add in the realities related to the COVID pandemic, including staffing shortages and “the great resignation,” and busy physicians can be at a loss to keep their practices fully staffed with qualified people.
The good news is the hiring outlook may be starting to improve, even compared to just a few months ago, so there is a reason for hope. The following tips could help
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Why Now is the Time to Double Down on Virtual Care
For an industry that traditionally embraces change at a glacial pace, the pandemic has been a wake-up call for healthcare. Once COVID-19 struck, the shift to video, telephone engagement and remote patient monitoring spiked seemingly overnight.
This surging demand for virtual care resulted, in many cases, in increased provider efficiency, provider-patient interactions, and satisfaction. One national telehealth organization covering 2,000 hospitals and 81,000 doctors, for example,
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Imaging Strategy and Digital Mastery in Healthcare IT
How you handle imaging says a lot about your organization’s digital maturity
The ongoing digitalization of industry continues to disrupt business and service models in every sector. Even though U.S. healthcare has traditionally lagged behind other fields in technological adaptation, there has still been a broad and tremendous shift in how healthcare functions, which is driven by IT infrastructure.
From the slow and often frustrating rise of the EHR to the lightning fast rollout of
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Why Health Systems Need a New Transition Strategy to APMs
There is an adage that change in healthcare moves at the speed of tectonic plates. The slow adoption of Alternative Payment Models (APMs), the central feature of value-based care, is a good example of constraint despite immense pressure to control costs.
Data from 2020 demonstrate almost zero change from 2018 in the proportion of straight Fee-for-Service (FFS) reimbursement. Other results show a slight uptick in APMs with or without downside risk at 34.6 percent. However,
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The Fast Pace of Cancer Research is Leaving Community Clinicians Behind
We are witnessing an accelerated pace of amazing breakthroughs and advancements in cancer care today, with new treatments emerging almost weekly and unprecedented opportunities to help improve patient outcomes every day. However, if a doctor is not working in an academic setting, reading every new paper, and recruiting patients for new studies, how can they be expected to keep up with the latest treatments and approaches to specific cancers? When
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Enacting Care Coordination Policy to Curb the Drug Epidemic
The U.S. has reached a grim milestone with an estimated 107,622 drug overdose deaths in the United States during 2021. With a post-pandemic spotlight on mental health and substance use disorder challenges, Congress and the Biden administration are working on multiple plans to address these issues.
Earlier this year, the Biden Administration sent its first national drug control strategy to Congress, which focused on two pillars, one of which centered on addressing untreated addiction.
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Pharmacogenomics: The Key to Unlocking the Future of Personalized Healthcare
Pharmacogenomics—the study of genetic influences on an individual's response to therapeutic medications—is an area of personalized medicine that is gaining momentum. Although pharmacogenomics has been around for a while, providers, health plans, pharmacists and legislators are developing a greater appreciation for its potential benefits and applications.
How Can Pharmacogenomics Improve Outcomes?
By considering a person’s DNA in treatment options, providers can determine how an
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Why Healthcare Needs Tech-Enabled Human Intervention
There's a "perfect storm" facing healthcare today: Chronic disease prevalence, physician shortages, and a growing population aging into Medicare are set to overwhelm our healthcare system if action isn't taken. Over 133 million Americans have at least one chronic disease, and as that number continues to rise, delivering adequate care to these patients has never been more challenging. It's widely understood that factors beyond the clinic primarily influence health. Yet the expectation remains
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How AI and Automation Will Solve America’s Healthcare Administration Crisis
As the existential crisis facing American healthcare reaches a fever pitch, here's how executives can use automation to build resiliency
The American healthcare system is in crisis. There are a huge number of tasks to be completed, and not enough people to do them. Costs are rising, and health systems are finding themselves facing difficult choices.
An enormous amount of time, money, and resources are being devoted to paper shuffling that would be better spent elsewhere. Healthcare
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