Over the past year, COVID-19 brought new stresses to hospital scheduling, given limited resources, physician availability, staffing challenges and physical materials. Beyond the obvious struggles with ICU capacity, COVID-19 also put a heavy strain on every step of the chemotherapy patient journey – from navigating new scheduling protocols to pre-screening to delays in diagnosis to reconfigured, socially distanced waiting rooms and treatment chairs. As we continue to navigate the pandemic, many
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Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Leveraging Technology to Optimize Staffing Shortages Post-Pandemic
Chronic understaffing and nurse burnout are two of the greatest and long-standing challenges within the healthcare industry. As a result of the pandemic, these challenges were acknowledged more than ever before. Pre-pandemic research highlighted the fact that the nurse vacancy rate in the United States was 9% at the start of 2020, while the average turnover of bedside nurses was 17%. These trends have only accelerated during COVID-19 and during this period of transitioning into a new normal.
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Telehealth: Short-Term Fad or Key to Improving Access to Affordable Healthcare?
While telehealth offerings have always held great promise, prior to 2020, their success was sometimes hindered by provider hesitation to adopt the technology, consumer reluctance to using virtual care, and a reimbursement methodology that did not value the investments required by providers or the positive impact on patients.
That all changed practically overnight when COVID-19 struck.
Use of telehealth spiked to more than 32% of office and outpatient visits by April 2020, thanks in
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Healthcare Deserts: 80% of U.S. Lacks Adequate Access to Healthcare
What You Should Know:
- Over 80 percent of the country lacks adequate healthcare infrastructure in some shape or form, according to recent report findings from GoodRx Research. The research finds that over a third of the U.S. population lives in a county where there is less than adequate access to pharmacies, primary care providers, hospitals, trauma centers, and/or low-cost health centers.
- The report offers an in-depth look at the uneven distribution of healthcare across the
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EHR Data Reveals COVID-19 Vaccines Effective in Preventing Hospitalizations, ER Visits
What You Should Know:
- Real world evidence from electronic medical records (EHR) data reveals the COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at preventing hospitalizations, emergency department visits and intensive care admissions due to the virus, according to a study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
- The study, “Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines in Preventing Ambulatory and Inpatient Care” analyzes actual data from hospitals around the US and shows
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How Healthcare Can Weaponize Data to Fight Worldwide Disease
After more than a year since COVID-19 became a global pandemic, we now understand that part of the challenge in fighting it, and any infectious disease, is solving the underlying data problem.
Without reliable data, leaders can’t plan, epidemiologists can’t model, and citizens don’t feel confident following expert recommendations. Bad data has led to both poor behavioral and policy-oriented decisions, exacerbating COVID-19 and prolonging its consequences.
It’s not purely a data problem,
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How AI Helped Companies Survive COVID-19: 5 Tips for Resilience
As the coronavirus pandemic transformed workplaces and workflows, it cast a spotlight on service management and resilient systems. Here are key lessons in how AI can improve your company’s operations moving forward.
The coronavirus pandemic inaugurated a revolution in the workplace as millions of employees shifted to working remotely to stop the spread of the virus. It also expedited digital acceleration across industries, testing the resilience and scalability of service management
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Why We Need a Personalized Approach to COVID-19 Immunity Testing
To date, the battle against COVID-19 has been waged largely in the field of public health, using a series of binary, black-and-white thresholds to measure progress. The number of positive cases per 100,000 people, yes/no results on PCR tests, absence or presence of antibodies – these have set the benchmarks used to determine when we can open our schools and restaurants, remove our masks and resume something resembling our old routines.
While these numbers do tell us something about the
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Jasper Health Integrates BioIntelliSense’s RPM and COVID-19 Screening Solution for Members
What You Should Know:
- Today, BioIntelliSense announced it has formed a strategic collaboration with Jasper Health, an emerging leader of digital engagement for people diagnosed with cancer.
- As part of the strategic collaboration, Jasper Health will integrate the BioIntelliSense FDA-cleared BioSticker and medical grade BioButton® wearable devices as part of its remote member engagement and guidance platform. This new offering will enable Jasper Health members to leverage the
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UPS Launches First COVID-19 Vaccine Drone Deliveries at Atrium Health Wake Forest
What You Should Know:
- UPS, together with its UPS Flight Forward (UPSFF) subsidiary, announced it is now making COVID-19 vaccine deliveries via drone for Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, using new cold chain packaging developed specifically for drones.
- The announcement marks the first COVID-19 vaccine drone delivery in the U.S. and is an extension of current work for Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist. UPS’s drone airline received first-of-kind approval
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