On New Years Eve, just as the Covid-19 outbreak in Los Angeles was at its worst, all 451 of Olympia Medical Center’s exhausted employees learned they would soon lose their jobs. After 74 years, the hospital closed for good on March 31st, leaving residents of the surrounding community — poor and mostly people of color — without a place to see a doctor. And it isn’t the only hospital closing. At least 47 hospitals have closed or filed for bankruptcy in the last year, and there will
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Health Systems| Integrated Delivery Network (IDN) | News, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
PHINs: Addressing the Fundamental Flaws that Have Broken Healthcare
The fundamental problem with healthcare can be summed up in one sentence: We expect healthcare services that cater to our individual needs, yet the health care system operates under a one-size-fits-all, trial-and-error model. It is a model that results in missed diagnoses, protracted illnesses, and even premature death and wastes $935 billion annually. The financial toll of this outmoded approach pales in comparison to the human toll. More than 128,000 people in the U.S. die each year
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TytoCare & GIVA Care Partner to Bring Telehealth to Ukraine
What You Should Know: - TytoCare has partnered with GIVA Care Group, a leading healthcare distribution company, to bring its all-in-one remote examination solution to the Ukrainian healthcare industry. - The partnership with GIVA Care will mark the first implementation of the TytoCare telehealth solution in Eastern Europe. As the sole distributor
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Time and Goals Should Drive Your Post-COVID-19 Care Management Strategy
COVID-19 forced many health systems to reassess and reconfigure their care management processes and staffing models so that clinicians could better manage more of their acute, complex, and otherwise healthy patients remotely to limit in-person care. During this time, health systems likely learned quite a bit about remote care management and discovered that they could still deliver high-quality care without their patients needing to visit their providers in-person as often. With two
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Does Telemedicine Impede or Help the Patient-Centered Medical Home?
Traditional patient care patterns have been radically altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. And after more than a year of disruption, it’s doubtful that everyone will revert to those patterns after the pandemic. New habits have been formed, and consumers are more willing to pursue the path of least resistance in obtaining care, such as opting for quick and easy telemedicine appointments. Both patients and clinicians have identified benefits from virtual care approaches. However, this and other
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How a Virtual Care Mindset Leads to Greater Patient Acceptance and Sustainable Telehealth Growth
There's no question that the demand for telehealth and virtual care has grown exponentially over the last twelve months. With that growth has come a fundamental shift in the attitude toward virtual care. No longer do patients and providers take a "let's try it" approach—now, it's "we must do it." This is evidenced by the number of telehealth claims filed. In 2020, telehealth claims skyrocketed, increasing by 2,938% in November 2020 versus November 2019 as patients demanded virtual options and as
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Key Lessons from COVID-19 & How We Can Better Support our Healthcare Provider
COVID-19 has been a novel pandemic in many ways beyond the actual virus itself – from the irreparable impacts it’s having on society, to the immense strain it’s put on the healthcare industry. A recent report stated that 93% of healthcare professionals reported experiencing stress, 86% reported experiencing anxiety, and 76% reported exhaustion and burnout [1]. Considering that the virus will continue to have an impact in 2021 and the reality that COVID-19 will likely not be the last epidemic we
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To Advance Health Equity, Put Real-World Cancer Data to Work
Despite decades of scientific progress against cancer, access to treatment remains highly unequal. Some of the reasons — like institutional racism and poverty — are a reflection of our broader society. Other inequities may go unrecognized but are no less damaging. People with underlying health conditions, for example, may be excluded from clinical trials, preventing them from accessing leading-edge treatments and limiting the evidence available to guide their care. With multiple drivers of
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How the Pandemic is Accelerating the Shift to Alternative Care Delivery Models
The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed how we interact with one another, with businesses, and with the world around us. From social distancing to hand sanitation to remote working, its impact on society is immense. And among the various industries that are experiencing significant change as a result of the pandemic, healthcare tops the list. Supply chain disruptions, crowded ICUs and exhausted medical staff has taken a toll on hospitals and clinics — and they’ve had to pivot rapidly to new
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AKASA Raises $60M to Automate Revenue Cycle Operations for Health Systems
What You Should Know: - AKASA (formerly known as Alpha Health), a South San Francisco, CA-based Unified Automation™ company for revenue cycle management in healthcare, announced it has raised $60 million in its series B round of funding. - Founded in 2018, AKASA uses the same machine learning approaches that made driverless cars possible to provide health systems with a single solution for automating revenue cycle operations. AKASA’s unique expert-in-the-loop approach combines modern
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