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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Medicaid | Medicaid Patients | Medicaid Reform | Regulation, Policy, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
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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Could ‘Hospitals Without Walls’ Be the New Normal for Telehealth and Remote Patient Monitoring?
The statistics surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic continue to be startling, despite the ever-growing mental and physical fatigue that we’ve all experienced living through this frightening, intimidating and unprecedented era. More than 125 million cases worldwide have resulted in a death toll closing in on three million, while in the United States alone, 30 million reported infections have resulted in a death toll that reached 550,000. (1) One thing that can be said for certain about
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Boost Operational, Clinical and Financial Performance with Good Data
There’s an old adage that every challenge is merely an opportunity in disguise. COVID-19 highlighted the healthcare industry’s ongoing challenge with producing clean, standardized data. As the industry looks to rebound from the severe financial impact of the pandemic, there’s a renewed urgency among hospitals and health networks to improve operational efficiency. The push toward greater operational efficiency – in a time of constrained budgets and resources – has accelerated
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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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Unite Us Nabs $150M, Reaching $1.6B Valuation to Address Social Determinants of Health
What You Should Know: - Unite Us, the tech company creating coordinated care networks nationwide, has just announced a $150M Series C round of funding led by ICONIQ Capital, bringing its valuation at $1.65 billion. - Unite Us is leading the care transformation movement towards whole-person health with its core product, Unite Us Platform, an outcome-focused coordination software sconnecting community-based organizations with health care providers, health plans,
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Quality Virtual Care Matters for Patients – Even More Than Telehealth
The COVID-19 pandemic made healthcare visits over video or phone the norm, likely turning telehealth into a permanent fixture within the U.S. healthcare system. In fact, the majority of patient access leaders at large hospitals believe 20-30 percent of appointments will happen over video in 2021, according to recent research. Further, an overwhelming portion of those leaders – 95 percent of them – believe the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services should continue to reimburse for video
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DispatchHealth Reaches $1.7B Valuation, Raises $200M for In-Home Care Model
What You Should Know: - DispatchHealth has secured an additional $200 million in a Series D round of funding led by Tiger Global. The additional financing brings DispatchHealth into the “unicorn” category and solidifies its valuation at more than $1.7 billion. - DispatchHealth’s new round of financing will allow the company to bring it’s model of in-home medical care to more than 100 markets across the country
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Untapping the Potential for Virtual Care in a Pandemic and Beyond
Virtual care is everywhere and ubiquitous. But at a time when the world is amid a global pandemic, virtual care is also being underutilized. The technology exists today to help our healthcare system not only more effectively and efficiently manage care during COVID-19, but also exponentially scale capacity in the face of future outbreaks. Virtual care defined Virtual care is a broad term. It encompasses all the ways healthcare practitioners provide for care remotely. This can mean
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3 Ways to Boost Patient Confidence with Real-Time Contactless Communication
Although the vaccine’s rollout is slowly underway, Covid cases worldwide are continuing to reach all-time highs as new mutations make the virus even more contagious than ever before. Not surprisingly, patients’ concerns about visiting their healthcare providers in the midst of this global pandemic persist, pushing demand for telehealth solutions that allow patients and their doctors to communicate without the need for in-person visits. In fact, a recent report from McKinsey found that
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