Without much warning, the novel Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has taken over our healthcare system. It has taxed our healthcare workers, our national stockpiles of PPE, and affected millions of Americans nationwide. In addition to healthcare workers on the front lines, the pandemic has also impacted the healthcare revenue cycle, causing major confusion, questions, and inconsistencies as coding specialists learn the latest COVID-19 codes and guidelines at warp speed. With cases rising by the tens of
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Public Health
Shoring Up the Healthcare Supply Chain: 4 Lessons From The COVID-19 Pandemic
In December 2019, the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response told a House committee that “supply chain issues were among the most significant challenges to preparing for an influenza pandemic as well as other infectious diseases.” A few months later, healthcare systems across the country and around the world are face-to-face with that harsh reality, as many of the largest healthcare suppliers are unable to fully meet the growing global demand for personal protective equipment
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New Survey Underscores Importance of Social Determinants of Health Amid COVID-19 Crisis
What You Should Know:
- Welltok survey reveals social determinants of health (SDOH) are becoming increasingly valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic for providers and health plans. It’s important they know what kind of lifestyle and environmental factors consumers are up against during social distancing and preventing the spread of the virus
- Welltok survey of more than 2,000 adults finds consumers don’t know what SDOH to share with their provider for optimal care
As the COVID-19
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Verily Launches COVID-19 Pathfinder for Health Systems & Hospitals
What You Need to Know:
Verily has launched COVID-19 Pathfinder-- a new set
of tools that provide on-demand access to COVID-19 information directly from a
hospital or health system website.
To help relieve the burden on care teams, Verily
has launched COVID-19
Pathfinder, a screening tool and programming template that provide
on-demand access to COVID-19
information directly from a hospital or health system website. San Joaquin General Hospital, Western
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In-Depth: 32 FDA-Approved COVID-19 Testing Kits
What You Should Know:
- In-depth look list of FDA-approved COVID-19 test kits
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) offers emergency use authorizations (EUAs) for unapproved products or new uses for approved items in urgent situations where no suitable alternatives exist. Dozens of companies have sought and received EUAs for their testing kits that screen for SARS-CoV-2 — more commonly referred to as COVID-19 or the novel coronavirus.
The FDA makes a
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COVID-19 Outbreak: The Opportunity & Importance of Health Informatics
Never before has health informatics played a greater role in public health than during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the Health IT industry is certainly challenged due to the overall disruption to the healthcare system, the pandemic undoubtedly underscores the opportunity and importance of health informatics, such as telehealth, remote patient monitoring, patient engagement, AI-based drug discovery, precision medicine, and clinical decision support, but nowhere more pressing than the fields of
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Sharecare Creates Free Embeddable COVID-19 Chatbot Screener
What You Need to Know
- Sharecare creates a free interactive, clinically validated COVID-19 screener -- that can be embedded on any organization’s website as a tool to initially screen for a person’s risk of COVID-19.
- The screener is a dynamic COVID-19 consult algorithm based on clinical guidelines from the CDC, WHO and other major medical organizations as well as primary research studies from medical literature.
- Sharecare has partnered with NTT DATA on this interactive
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Why COVID-19 Underscores The Importance of Social Determinants of Health
Google “Social Determinants of Health” and one will quickly discover a kind of litany of data pointing to a certain definition of “health” defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,” and socioeconomic barriers, which may prohibit equitable access to good health and wellness (Healthcare) more completely among diverse populations.
Nevertheless, the heart of the matter
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Health IT’s Vital Role in Controlling The Spread of COVID-19
The healthcare system in the United States is becoming overwhelmed as a result of COVID-19 and there is no doubt that this epidemic will test the limits of healthcare delivery systems from end to end. Of course, at the present moment, everyone’s focus is (and rightly should be) on ensuring hospitals and healthcare workers have the appropriate equipment and protective gear they need to stay safe and adequately treat patients. That said, there are other IT considerations that should be taken into
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What Does The CARES Act Mean for Hospitals and Health Systems?
As of today, the coronavirus has infected almost 2 million worldwide and caused the deaths of more than 125,000 people (Worldometer data as of 12:15 PM on April 14, 2020). In the United States, the relevant figures are more than 600,000 infected and north of 25,000 deceased. Without successful social distancing, those numbers could be dramatically worse.
And still, they are dwarfed by the massive numbers associated with the economic impact of the coronavirus and the illness it causes,
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