What You Should Know:
- October was a challenging month for hospitals and
health systems nationwide amid ongoing instability spurred by the COVID-19
pandemic, according to Kaufman Hall’s latest Hospital Flash Report.
- Margins and volumes fell, revenues flattened, and
expenses rose as COVID metrics continued to climb and some states moved to
retighten social distancing guidelines.
- As of Oct. 31, the number of daily U.S. COVID cases
reached a high of more than 90,500 and related
Read More
Public Health
How Care Coordination Technology Addresses Social Isolation in Seniors
Senior isolation is a health risk that affects at least a quarter of seniors over 65. It has become recognized over the past decade as a risk factor for poor aging outcomes including cognitive decline, depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, hypertension, heart disease, impaired immune function, and even death.
Physical limitations, lack of transportation, and inadequate health literacy, among other social determinants of health (SDOH), further impair access to medical and mental
Read More
COVID-19 and Racial Disparities: Transforming the Health of Businesses
American businesses and their leadership are at a crossroads. COVID-19 has forced us all to re-evaluate how we work and live, while the current protest movements have placed a spotlight on the systemic injustices non-white workers face both in and out of the office. Given that communities of color have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, companies serious about doing right by their employees need to act decisively and clearly or risk becoming complicit in the racial and social
Read More
VA Taps Appriss for Drug Monitoring to Curb Substance Abuse
What You Should Know:
- The Department of Veteran Affairs is working with
Appriss Health to tackle the veteran opioid epidemic via drug monitoring.
- The tool will give VHA prescribers more complete clinical information, including controlled substance prescription histories, for patients, helping clinicians identify and prevent prescription drug misuse, resulting in better-informed care decision-making and improving patient safety.
Appriss
Health, a provider delivering
Read More
How COVID-19 Has Revealed Healthcare’s Blockchain Use Cases
Blockchain technology has somewhat infamously been described as “a solution in search of a problem,” but as the healthcare industry responds to the demands of the pandemic, several valuable use cases have surfaced that could benefit from employing the emerging technology.
Due in large part due to its ability to promote trust, transparency, and privacy, blockchain has emerged as today’s best technology-based option for accomplishing the important objective of delivering real-time
Read More
White House Coronavrius Task Force Doubles Down on Rapid Testing Strategy
What You Should Know:
- White house coronavirus task force doubles down on rapid testing strategy to fight the coronavirus as some states say they don’t have the supplies to comply with the federal government’s advice.
- This article was originally published by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative news organization based in Washington, D.C.
The White House coronavirus task force is doubling down on part of its strategy for halting the spread of the virus:
Read More
Is Remote-Learning A Public Health Dilemma?
In 2014, pediatric occupational therapist Angela Hanscom set out to better understand the student experience by sitting in on middle school classes. She sat. She sat some more. She then noticed that a day’s worth of sitting was affecting her ability to focus. She asked “how on Earth do these children tolerate sitting this long?” before spotting all the fidgety, distracted bodies – “well, the short answer is they don’t.”
This phenomenon is rooted in the commonly ignored factor that students
Read More
Lean on Your Connected Community of Care in Times of Crisis
We’ve all experienced crises in our lives. They may be personal in nature (e.g., involving our interpersonal relationships), organizational (e.g., relating to our employment or retirement income), or nature-made (e.g., floods, tornados, or the COVID-19 pandemic). When crises hit our communities, the impacts can be widespread and far-reaching. Healthcare providers and community-based organizations (CBOs) are called upon to provide more rapid and extensive care and support to the community than is
Read More
AMA Unveils 2 Vaccine-Specific CPT Codes for Coronavirus Immunizations
What You Should Know:
- The American Medical Association (AMA) published an
update to the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) code set that includes new
vaccine-specific codes to report immunizations for the novel coronavirus
(SARS-CoV-2).
- The new Category I CPT codes and long descriptors for the vaccine products 91300 and 91301 for better tracking, reporting, and analysis that supports data-driven planning and allocation.
The American Medical Association (AMA) today published an
Read More
Ontrak Acquires Science-Backed, Behavior Change Platform LifeDojo
What You Should Know:
- Ontrak acquires LifeDojo Inc, a San Francisco, CA-based
comprehensive, science-backed behavior change platform.
- The acquisition broadens Ontrak’s addressable market
and footprint to lower acuity populations enabling new interventions and remote
patient monitoring.
Ontrak, Inc., a
leading AI-powered
and telehealth-enabled,
virtualized healthcare company, today announced that it has acquired
LifeDojo Inc, a comprehensive, science-backed behavior change
Read More
