High readmission rates are a $17 billion problem across the U.S. for hospital administrators. What’s even more alarming is a portion of 30-day readmissions are preventable. By Lee Horner, President of Stratus’s Telehealth Division, HIT Leaders and News
Hospitals and other healthcare organizations are in the midst of a digital revolution that’s forcing them to change their traditional ways of capturing, storing, and sharing information. To keep up with their needs for greater IT infrastructure agility, performance, security, and compliance, many savvy healthcare organizations are exploring the benefits of the public cloud.
5 Key Steps Companies Can Take to Start or Accelerate Their Digital Health Strategy.
Telemedicine is the future of healthcare. According to the 2014 World Market for Telehealth report from HIS Technology, the number of patients using telemedicine will increase to about 7 million in 2018. Telemedicine solutions fall into two broad categories. Remote patient monitoring solutions use a wired or wireless connection to link home healthcare equipment (heart monitors, dialysis equipment, etc.) to the Internet and then securely report patient data back to a healthcare provider.
Physicians face an increasing array of non-clinical demands on their time — in some practices doctors spend as much time working on documentation and sorting through insurance denials as they do seeing their patients. With the expansion of both private healthcare insurance and Medicaid in many states under the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), demand for healthcare services has increased while the amount of time doctors have to see new patients has been reduced.
This organization wanted to leverage smart mobile device technology for better patient care, improved operational efficiency and to ensure adherence to stringent government regulatory standards. The organization wanted to move towards “untethered clinical computing” using smart devices.
When care providers at Androscoggin Home Care & Hospice, the largest Home Care & Hospice agency in Maine, initially launched their telehealth program, they were quickly able to see positive results from utilizing Honeywell’s Genesis family of remote patient monitoring devices to track the daily vital signs of patients and streamline patient-acquired data into one internet-accessible clinical dashboard.
When home care providers at VNA Home Health Hospice (VNA) looked at ways to improve their already-successful telehealth program, they realized patient care could be improved by giving physicians the ability to monitor their patients’ health status, using VNA’s existing telehealth system.
In January of 2011, the St. Alexius Medical Center (SAMC) and the Great Plains Telehealth Resource and Assistance Center (gpTRAC) joined forces to evaluate the potential of a new telehealth program. Their goal was to determine whether they could improve access and care for their many patients with chronic conditions who live in rural areas. In order to determine its effectiveness, SAMC and gpTRAC worked together to develop research parameters by which to quantify the results of the program.
Movement within the nation’s healthcare system has been swift and broad-‐based since the October 2011 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Shared Savings Final Rule.
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