Telehealth has been a hot topic during COVID-19, but the technology powering virtual care consultations has been around for more than half a decade. A survey from 2014 found that 90% of healthcare organizations had already begun to implement telemedicine programs six years before the novel coronavirus pandemic.
But telehealth struggled to become a primary method of care delivery due to the negative perception of it within the health care industry. Telehealth was viewed as a claims deflection model that only treated low acuity patients, and this perception created a negative stigma for medical professionals regarding billing for telehealth solutions.
The same study found that 41% of health care provider respondents were not reimbursed for telemedicine services, and 21% reported receiving lower rates from management companies for virtual care. Health care professionals felt they were doing the same amount of work for little to no compensation, and because telehealth was typically reserved for low acuity patients, they had an exceedingly high no-show rate.
COVID-19 and the Explosion of Telehealth
The need for socially-distanced health care launched telehealth to the forefront in 2020. The pandemic forced the industry to quickly adapt telehealth for a broader spectrum of patient care, and claims models have since enabled clinics to bill virtual appointments like in-person visits.
This adjusted approach to telehealth also opened the door to potentially life-saving benefits, such as reserving in-person care for the highest acuity patients, increasing the scope of provider networks outside of a patient’s immediate location and allowing patients to receive quality care in the comfort of their homes.
According to research published by Advisory Board, doctors spend 37% of their day on administrative tasks, which shifts their attention away from patients and onto their technologies.
Because of this, it’s critical for telehealth solutions to be mindful of the pre-existing administrative burden on doctors and health care staff. Telehealth should simply be another vehicle for providing care—not an unnecessary hindrance.
With the use of telehealth, patient data management becomes particularly important. Clinicians can provide telehealth services to anyone in any state they’re licensed to practice in, but this can turn out to be a disservice if data isn’t integrated properly.
Providers who are seeing a patient for the first time through telehealth need to make sure they have access to the patient’s up-to-date medical history. By having an interoperable network of health care technology, telehealth providers can make more accurate diagnoses, collect data and bill accordingly while providing the highest level of virtual ongoing care.
ISO 9001 is a universal quality management standard adopted by organizations across all industries to standardize and improve the services offered to their customers. It is the most recognized quality management standard at the global level, boasting more than 1.1 million certificates given to organizations in 178 countries.
In the healthcare sector, ISO 9001:2008 was adopted to provide a structure for service provision, compliance improvement, and monitoring for quality assurance. The standard was adopted across the healthcare sector, including care homes and third sector community health service providers, to help in risk management and compliance to statutory requirements whilst maintaining a working partnership with clinical services.
ISO 9001:2015, which an improvement of the former ISO 9001:2008 requires healthcare providers to adjust their quality management systems in response to the changing and more demanding regulatory and statutory framework.
The standard provides the specific requirements for a quality management system that enhances the ability to deliver risk-based and high-quality customer-based services that not only meet patient needs but also comply with legal and statutory requisites.
The major reason for the adoption of ISO 9001 standard in healthcare is to improve quality and enhance patient safety through a quality management system that provides patient-centered care as the core principle of all Health and Social care provision.
A recent Gartner report suggests that the COVID-19 crisis is causing demand for cloud solutions from major vendors to soar. Data indicate that spending on cloud solutions rose 34 percent in Q1 2020 to a total of $31 billion despite falling corporate revenues.
The flurry of spending comes on the back of the need to operate capable remote workforces. Companies need to provide systems that will enable their employees to remain productive from any location. The current upsurge in demand for cloud solutions is a continuation of a trend already underway in the pre-crisis era.
Companies That Invest In The Cloud Are At An Advantage Post-Crisis
According to Gartner, companies that continue to invest in digital transformation are more than 1.4 times more likely to have an advantage coming out of the present crisis. The research organization argues that firms with highly developed cloud-based IT networks can marshal their resources in response to disease threats and continue trading, even when physical premises are vacant.
McKinsey argues that the response to the pandemic will go through five distinct phases. Resolve and resilience – the first two – are already largely behind us. Companies committed to fighting the threat posed by COVID-19 in March and then developed systems to help them continue trading in the following weeks. Now they are entering the final three phases – return, reimagination, and reform – each of which has specific characteristics.
Innovaccer is a healthcare technology company pioneering the Data Activation Platform that’s helping the industry realize the promise of value-based care.
Innovaccer’s integration & analysis engine activates healthcare data, cleaning, aggregating and delivering insights at the moment of care. This revolutionary technology streams analytics with custom insights and dashboards, automates workflows, provides real-time decisions for care teams, and point-of-care alerts—actionable intelligence without leaving the EHR experience.
Innovaccer is based in San Francisco with offices across the United States and Asia.
What is the single-most innovative technology you are currently delivering to health systems or medical groups?
Innovaccer is a leading healthcare technology company that deploys its FHIR-enabled Data Activation Platform to help the healthcare industry realize the promise of value-based care. The name “Innovaccer,” is, in fact, a play on the words “innovation” and accelerator.”
Innovaccer leverages AI and predictive analytics to generate insights that help healthcare organizations achieve better clinical outcomes. The FHIR-enabled Data Activation Platform is built on a Hadoop-based Big Data repository with a scalable architecture that allows the integration of disparate sources of data without having to write code. Its agile and modular structure can ingest structured, semi-structured, unstructured data, pool it as a single source of truth, and work on a central HL7 FHIR-based data schema.
How is your product or service innovating the work being done in the organization to provide care or make systems run smoother?
Innovaccer’s smart FHIR-enabled Data Activation Platform has intelligent workflows powered by unified patient records, advanced analytics and true interoperability, enabling collaborative healthcare. Innovaccer brings the data and all healthcare stakeholders together and empowers them with complete patient information to help them care as one.
Today, Innovaccer’s COVID-19 Management System uses AI to optimize the provider response to the disease, allowing medical facilities to reduce assessment time and prioritize patients with a high-risk profile for the next steps of care.
By Jeffrey Sullivan, chief technology officer of the cloud fax division, J2 Global, Inc.
Jeffrey Sullivan
Time may heal most wounds, but it has done little to lessen the sting of prior authorization.
Despite decades of streamlining and automating healthcare business transactions, prior authorization remains one of the most burdensome, complex and costly administrative activities in the industry that creates hardship for all stakeholders—providers, payors and patients, contributing an estimated $25 billion per year to healthcare costs in the U.S. This is primarily because it remains a largely manual process and, therefore, prone to error.
With the number of transactions steadily increasing year over year, providers and payors need to collaborate and push for an electronic solution. The effort will involve changes to technologies as well as processes and regulations.
The high cost of business as usual
Prior authorization (PA) is a check run by insurance companies and third-party payors before they agree to cover the cost of certain healthcare services and medications. It was designed to ensure patients received the most appropriate and cost-effective care. However, increased demand for documentation, along with lack of standardization and automation, are undermining its original intent.
The increasing implementation of digital solutions is setting new trends in health technologies. In more than 50% of cases, consumers of European healthcare services are actively responding to the current trend in digital healthcare to use various applications:
control your health
to measure your fitness level
make a follow-up appointment
to fill prescription drugs
to share health-related data with your doctors.
Health technology trends in 2020
Healthcare delivery and healthcare prevention are based on AI technologies and diagnostics based on a personalized approach, which means implementing virtual healthcare and the accelerated global use of digital health tools and applications. Utilizing modern technology along with tips from romecriteria.org can do wonders for you.
According to digital health experts, the specific areas that promise to grow in 2020 are as follows
Artificial health Intelligence
In recent years, digital technologies’ versatility has given birth to new health trends based on artificial intelligence. A significant wave of innovations in the AI healthcare market should prevail.
At Electronic Health Reporter, we take innovations from healthcare companies very seriously. For nearly a decade, we’ve featured their work, products, news and thought leaders in an effort to bring our readers the best, most in-depth insight about the organizations powering healthcare. That mission lies at the heart of all we do, for the benefit of our audience.
For the first time, we are officially naming some of the most progressive companies in healthcare technology, in our inaugural class of the best, most innovative brands serving health systems and medical groups. Our call for nominations for this “award” series received hundreds of submissions. From these, we selected the best companies from that class. The work these organizations are doing is forward-thinking; award-worthy, we think. We think you’ll agree with all of our choices.
In each of the profiles to come in this series, we’re share their stories — from their own perspective, through their own responses to our questions about what makes them remarkable. Some of the names featured here you’ll recognize, some you won’t. But we believe you’ll agree – all those profiled are doing innovative, groundbreaking work! That said, here’s a member of our inaugural class:
Once COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic and states across the country began issuing shelter in place orders, one thing became very clear: there was a crucial need for healthcare providers to adopt innovative solutions to continue caring for patients.
Practices needed a way to see their patients outside the office — and they needed it fast. As a result, telehealth quickly changed from a ‘plus’ or ‘nice to have’ to a requirement to stay in business.
At a time when many patients were quarantined and canceling appointments, practices were losing a significant amount of revenue. Telehealth provided a way for physicians to continue seeing their patients and keep their offices running.
In fact, implementing telehealth can also save practices an average of $200 per patient by reducing costs associated with missed or canceled patient appointments. As a result, telehealth skyrocketed during COVID-19, with nearly half of Americans (42%) reporting having used telehealth services since the pandemic first began, according to a recent Harris Poll survey commissioned by Updox.
Now that patients have become accustomed to the telehealth experience with their trusted physician, which is being provided by independent practices and large health systems alike, virtual care is on track to becoming fully integrated into our healthcare system. As we look ahead, healthcare providers will need to start balancing virtual and in-office appointments – and as they do, they will continue to adopt innovative new virtual care solutions that meet changing consumer expectations. Here is a look at what’s in store.
Meeting Patient Demands
According to the survey by Updox, around half of Americans say that if they were to use telehealth services post COVID-19, convenience (51%) would be among the most important factors to them. Drilling down deeper, of patients who like using telehealth services, 65% say it’s because telehealth visits are more convenient than in-office appointments. Additionally, Americans who like using telehealth like it because it’s easier to schedule an appointment via telehealth than an in-office appointment (44%), and because follow-ups/communications post-appointment are more streamlined (38%).
In the traditional healthcare environment, patients would often have to block out hours for a doctor’s appointment. But with telehealth, a visit can take as little as 15 minutes. This is not only more convenient for patients, but it also enables physicians to “see” more patients during the day. By using virtual care solutions, physicians can reach their patients at the touch of a button.
They can collect information ahead of the visit and send follow-ups out via text and even alert their whole patient base to important updates by broadcast messages. They can safely and effectively care for patients while helping reduce exposure to staff. Additionally, by leveraging video chat vs. a phone call, they can garner a stronger, more personal connection with patients, ultimately increasing patient engagement and satisfaction.
Innovaccer is a healthcare technology company pioneering the Data Activation Platform that’s helping the industry realize the promise of value-based care.
