In 2018, medical practices saw significant developments, from the growth of outsourcing to the emerging popularity of predictive analytics tools, which promise to transform revenue cycle management. While many of these developments had a largely positive impact, the need for better RCM solutions continues. Challenges such as managing the high cost of healthcare, finding and maintaining qualified staff to handle billing and claims, or even keeping up with legislation will prove more cumbersome in the coming year. With that in mind, here is a glimpse at five important RCM trends that will shape 2019, and how medical groups should respond to them.
Recent studies show that 52 percent of smartphone users gather health-related information on their phones. This rise in mobile health activity echoes the widespread change in user behavior; 52 percent of global online traffic is now generated through mobile phones.
Things began to change for Orthopaedics & Rheumatology of the North Shore (ORNS) once our small, independent practice realized we could no longer afford to operate as a defacto bank for patients. Like other provider groups across the nation, our Skokie, Illinois-based practice has been grappling with an ever-increasing mix of patients who hold high-deductible health plans (HDHPs). While HDHPs may benefit health insurers’ bottom lines, they can have the effect of severely hampering providers’ cash flow – especially small groups, like four-provider practice.
The United States is a hodgepodge of different income levels, backgrounds, cultures, geographical locations (rural vs. urban), and even languages. These differences impact not only your day-to-day interactions with patients, but also the successful implementation of practice policies, such as cancellation and no-show policies. In order to boost the overall success of your practice’s operations and improve the health outcomes of your patient base, it’s important that you understand and take these differences into account.
With the growing number of “check lists” and mounting pressures to improve quality, safety, efficiency and performance, it is easy for healthcare providers to lose sight of an essential part of medicine – compassion.
A recently released article in the Journal of Pediatric Quality and Safety shows the independent research results of an observational study on how to reduce the time nurses and physicians spend on communication tasks that take them away from patient care in a critical care environment.
It was a Monday night, the busiest time in the ED. The ED charge nurse received an alert on her Vocera smartphone app. The alert was from Qventus, which predicts operational bottlenecks and recommends course corrections. The alert was telling the charge nurse that the ED was going to have a surge of patients in two hours. Qventus predicted this with machine learning based on the current census in the ED, historical admit and discharge times, the practice patterns of the clinicians currently working in the ED, and the current queue and expected turnaround times for diagnostic tests.
A physician needed to perform emergency surgery at a hospital that was in the same large integrated delivery network she worked in, but not her home hospital. As she set out to prep for the case, she needed to contact the care team, including the on-call ER doctor, surgery team, and the person in charge of room scheduling. She needed to find and obtain supplies.
Vocera empowers care teams through intelligent, real-time communication. We enable communication and coordination across the patient’s Healthcare experience. Vocera helps care team members reach the right person at the right time, on the right device, with the right information, in the right place, anywhere.
Health IT Outcomes is the premier information resource for today’s most pressing Health IT topics. Our mission is to provide healthcare providers with expert guidance on technology system selection, integration, project management, and change management.
Health IT Outcomes covers all technology solutions that impact the productivity, efficiency, patient care, and cash flow of a healthcare facility — from the latest electronic health record software (EHR), healthcare information exchange (HIE), healthcare information management Software (HIM), healthcare document management, healthcare business intelligence software, healthcare revenue cycle management software, point of care (POC) EMR (electronic medical record) and HIM (health information management) software to point-of-care solutions and medical imaging systems. The site features a comprehensive buyer's guide, daily health IT news updates on the latest technologies, contributed articles from leading healthcare industry analysts and vendors, and original success stories that highlight how leading healthcare facilities are implementing technology solutions with maximum return.
The long-anticipated Report on Improving Cybersecurity in the Healthcare Industry has been released by the HHS Healthcare Industry Cybersecurity Task Force, and with it comes clear, prescriptive recommendations on protecting your organization from the growing risk of cyber-attacks.
To protect PHI, healthcare organizations often build a system of usernames and complex passwords. But why are we still relying on usernames and passwords when solutions such as single sign-on (SSO) have a measurable benefit of giving time back to clinicians, which is everything in healthcare. That time saved –amounting to hours per week – can now be spent with patients, increasing both patient and clinician satisfaction.
UW Medicine’s Valley Medical Center dramatically improved patient outcomes after moving to a smartphone-based platform for clinical communication and alarm and alert notification.
