By John Nash, chief marketing and strategy officer, Redpoint Global.
John Nash
The Federal Retail Pharmacy Partnership underscores the status of retail pharmacies as frontline caregiving organizations, often the first point of contact for many healthcare consumers. The federal program, announced in November and activated on Feb. 2, is a partnership between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and 21 participating retail and independent pharmacies for the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. The partnership covers roughly 60% of pharmacies in the United States, including CVS Health, Walgreens, Costco, Walmart, Rite Aid, Kroger, Publix and Albertsons.
It is not surprising that the government would turn to pharmacies as primary points of care for vaccine distribution. In addition to offering ubiquitous access, retail pharmacies were built to serve micro-market, and ideally individualized consumer needs. With online and mobile app prescription orders, refills, reminders and overall management; drive-through pick-up and on-site urgent care facilities, retail pharmacies are already a first option for many consumers to access and manage healthcare across digital and physical channels.
With vaccine distribution ramping up, pharmacies have a vested interest in creating a compelling vaccination customer experience (CX) to attract new customers, increase customer loyalty or even entice customers to switch preferred pharmacies. This opportunity helps explain the widespread participation, despite pharmacies having to bear administrative and operational costs – such as training costs, a 15-minute required post-vaccine monitoring period for signs of an allergic reaction, or setting pop-up vaccination sites in partnerships with schools, churches or community centers.
Many pharmacies, Walmart included, are launching vaccine drives and community vaccine events specifically chosen to serve at-risk or underserved populations. Others offer drive-through vaccination sites as contact-free options.
Meet Customer Expectations with a Personalized CX
The return for going above and beyond the federal program measures for vaccine distribution – beyond contributing to a healthier population – is a satisfied customer who, the pharmacy hopes, will become a repeat customer, either in-store or through various digital channels.
Vaccinating an at-large population helps advance the cause not only by providing vaccine-eligible customers with a convenient, safe and pleasant experience, but also by receiving a wealth of first-party customer data. In addition to personally identifiable information (PII), vaccinated patients provide pharmacies with a host of behavioral preferences – how they scheduled, notification and channel preferences, and risk tolerance among them.
By using customer data to deliver a hyper-personalized CX, pharmacies will meet or exceed rising consumer expectations for brands to engage customers with a deep, personal understanding across channels. In a 2019 Harris Poll commissioned by Redpoint, 63% of consumers surveyed said that personalization is now a standard service they expect. In addition, 37% of consumers said that they will stop doing business with any company that fails to offer a personalized experience.
When I founded hc1 a decade ago, I believed that every patient should be treated as a unique individual. We built the hc1 Platform because we saw that if every individual’s laboratory data–which drives 70% of the diagnostic and therapeutic decisions–could be organized intelligently, we could unlock an unprecedented level of clinical decision support to personalize and improve care for all patients.
We knew that the platform would effectively lay the foundation for targeted pharmacogenomics and precision prescribing techniques. What we did not know at the time was that the decision to place our stake in the promise of lab insights would ultimately help drive an improved public health response to an unprecedented crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic.
A Coalition Is Born
From the earliest days of the pandemic, demand for greater transparency into COVID-19 data was high while the fluid nature of public health reporting impacted the ability to make well-informed decisions. As a result, local public health and healthcare officials were simultaneously overwhelmed with data and underwhelmed with the timely information and critical insights to help ensure optimal decisions around mitigation strategies.
The reality is that the state and national data relied upon by many public health officials offers limited proactive insight into the ebb and flow of the virus at the state and local levels. This remains as true today as it was in the earliest stages of the pandemic.
Consider the following:
On July 24, 2020, Florida’s statewide COVID-19 cases increased by approximately 10,000. Yet Okaloosa county in Northwest Florida reported just 3 positive new cases that day, while Polk County in central Florida reported 55 and Broward County in Southeast Florida reported 29
On Jan. 29, 2021, California recorded 20,138 new cases. Of those, 6,452 were reported in Los Angeles County. Meanwhile, San Mateo County reported just 277 new cases and Contra Costa County reported just 323.
In both instances, the local response in counties with higher infection rates should be quite different from those with significantly lower rates. Yet without insights offering public health officials a glimpse into the future, the default response was often cookie cutter actions guided by state-level decisions.
Response from BJ Boyle, senior vice president and GM, acute and payer market, PointClickCare.
BJ Boyle
The one question healthcare technology professional should be asking right now is: how can we further address the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges that came along with it with the help of technology?
There are a lot of ways to look at this and the ways technology has helped over the past year has already proven to be successful but we need to think about what’s next. With that in mind, healthcare professionals should look at this with a lessons learned lens. Interoperability will continue to be an important trend to watch this year.
We have entered into a new normal and senior care facilities and providers in particular simply need to share data to drive better health outcomes, which is where trusted data frameworks, come into play.
The objective is to connect, send-receive information, and automate admission workflows to help senior care teams ensure more seamless continuity of care for their patients through quickly reconciled medications, diagnoses, and more, with the ultimate goal of reducing readmissions and driving care plans forward.
The current situation has heightened the need to have access to all of patients’ vital information, comorbidities, allergies and medication information and having the ability to share through technology has made all the difference for providers. The ability to see the full view of the patient will allow clinicians to better track patients throughout their entire journey.
Part of this is through tracking referral network patterns.?There is a pattern between hospitals, homecare, and hospice, but it all needs to be brought together through interoperability, which is where technology plays an important role.
The ability to seamlessly transition patients between care settings needs to be addressed through one way or the other.
Vyne Medical, a leading provider of electronic health information and communication management solutions, announces the launch of new functionality to help streamline hospital administrative functions. Auto-indexing accurately transforms documents and unstructured patient information into structured, shareable data for use across hospitals and health systems.
Part of Vyne Medical’s Trace platform, auto-indexing technology leverages advanced machine learning and form recognition technology to read incoming text and map it to targeted fields in Trace. Demographic information contained in high-volume forms such as physician orders, insurance forms and patient registration forms is automatically classified and pre-populated into the appropriate patient record fields.
“Vyne Medical remains dedicated to helping hospitals and health systems improve the way they capture and share information to ensure a more complete patient record, create workflow efficiencies and recover lost revenue,” said Marcy Tatsch, president of Vyne Medical. “Auto-indexing accomplishes these key objectives by quickly transforming documents into structured, reliable data.”
Machine learning is possibly the most disruptive technology of the 21st century. Good machine learning systems will, with limited interaction from a doctor, will be able to analyze almost any kind of information so that doctors can make better decisions.
But since a machine learning system is trained on data from humans, it reflects their internal bias, and can magnify them. Hospitals need to focus not only on what advantages these systems are bringing but also the biases that they encourage. WebText, a solution used to train natural language processing to analyze new articles and documents, was trained on posts from Reddit.
Reddit is almost 70% men with more than half of the users are from the US. The majority of the users are under the age of 35. These biases in the data create machine learning solutions that reflect these biases. One criticism, for instance, when asked “A man is a doctor, as a woman is, too” responded with “nurse.”
AI systems used in hospitals have already shown to be able to do incredible things from being able to diagnose disease from a simple, but also accomplish human mistakes at the speed of a machine; for example, an AI system rejected black medical students because data it was trained on was principally white students.
To prevent these effects companies need to carefully monitor these new artificial employees and make sure they are meeting the standard of governance reflecting the values of the company and the law. This can only be accomplished through specific tools that allow you to enter the mind of these artificial employees and understand how they think.
Since the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, many leaders in the healthcare technology space talk about the concept of transforming the patient experience by providing a “digital front door” for their patients. Of course, for those of us who have been working to transform and move healthcare in a consumer-focused direction for a long time, we remember the bold proclamation of a digital “new front door” from Larry Merlo in late 2017 as the CVS Health and Aetna merger promised a radical change in how patients access and receive their care.
This new industry buzzword is built on the initial concept – the “digital” front door. And, even though disruptions in the healthcare industry emerged prior to the pandemic, according to a 2018 Adobe survey, only 7% of healthcare and pharmaceutical companies said they had gone digital, compared to 15% of companies in other industries. Furthermore, despite the fact that the U.S. healthcare market is projected to reach $5.7 trillion by 2026 in national health spending, the industry continues to be a laggard when it comes to investments in digital transformation.
While many hospitals and healthcare facilities were recently forced to ramp up their focus on digital transformation and telehealth efforts, significant gaps still exist, especially when it comes to patient billing.
Shifting the burden
Like a loose screw or hinge in a door, when one area of the revenue cycle is not optimized, the rest of the organization shoulders the burden. For example, health systems without a modern billing strategy report that confusing paper statements filled with medical jargon and the lack of clarity on what insurance covers is a big reason that patients call their health system. As patients experienced delays in receiving bills due to the Postal Service crisis last summer, the need for digital delivery options has never been greater.
To create a transparent and intuitive billing experience, patients need a personalized, digital option where they can access and pay their bills on time and set up affordable payment options, even outside of traditional business hours. Patients should also have access to 24-hour support to help them better understand their charges and what their statements mean. Real-time chat options or text options offer this to patients in an efficient and convenient way. These types of digital-first options help patients feel empowered to navigate their healthcare financial experience which, in turn, helps to build loyalty.
Extending bedside manner from the clinical to financial care side
Healthcare organizations strive to provide compassionate clinical care, which involves good bedside manner that informs and empathizes with patients, no matter what their diagnosis. It’s time to extend that bedside manner and offer compassionate patient financial care. Today’s healthcare consumer deserves a focused effort from their health system to provide a personalized and compassionate financial experience. Health systems in 2020 must collect patient payments to keep the lights on. However, rather than risk earning a reputation for prioritizing the business and bottom line above all else, consider digital-first billing and payment experiences for patients to be an extension of good bedside manner. Healthcare providers can ensure an overall positive experience throughout the full healthcare journey: from making the initial appointment all the way to providing payment options to cover any out-of-pocket costs.
Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts your data and can lock the computer so that you cannot access your data. A message is delivered to you demanding some particular amount of money for unlocking your computer or for decrypting your data. So for protecting your data from these types of virus attacks you need to take some precautions. There are so many ways that malware is distributed by criminals. So you should be cautious about your security and data protection.
1. Backup Your Files or Data
The best way to avoid your data loss from viruses and malware is by keeping a backup of your files and data to external hard drives or on Cloud storage. There are multiple Cloud options available for storage such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive. Another benefit of backing up your data is to reuse and retrieve your deleted and lost data. You can get your data easily from your back-up and use that.
2. Update your Antivirus
You should update your Antivirus regularly, as a result, it protects your data from unauthorized programs like ransomware and other dangerous malware. Besides, it keeps your computer safe and secure. It also analyses the performance of your computer by removing temporary and harmful files. So always keep your computer with updated antivirus.
3. Avoid Unprotected And Unsafe Websites
Always stay away from unsafe websites due to hazardous malware and other fake links are attached to these websites. These fake links and malware can harm your data as well as your computer. Use always “HTTPS” websites that are more secure than “HTTP” websites. These websites can be a copy of the original websites that ask for your personal information and misuse that information in several ways.
4. Avoid Spam Links in Emails, Social Media Posts, and SMS.
The most common way to infect your computer and data by simply providing you with spam links from different mediums. The most common way is by emails, instant messenger, SMS, social media platforms like Facebook, GB Whatsapp, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Hence you must not open untrusted links which keep you secure. These links take you to a particular website and try to attract you to offers.
5. Avoid Untrusted Email-attachments and Downloads
Always download things from trustworthy websites and when you are a hundred per-cent sure, then open your email attachment. That downloadable file or email attachment can be malware or virus which can damage your computer and data also. Hence you should keep this in mind.
6. Use a Secure and Modern Browser with Updated Versions.
If you are using an outdated version of your browser then you are taking an unnecessary risk for your Personal Information and Data. When you update your browser the vulnerabilities presented in the earlier version are removed which makes your browser more secure and helps it get faster and safer. It is also recommended to periodically update your router’s firmware to fix any vulnerability who’s patch may have been released. To login in to your router firm, type your default IP address, typically 192.168.1.1, and enter it in your web browser. If it doesn’t work, try finding your gateway address manually. Most Tenda routers use 192.168.0.1 as it’s default IP address.
7. Use Authority VPN in public WiFi
Along with that, you should always use VPN (Virtual Private Network) while using Public Wifi, as a result, this encrypts your information and builds a secure tunnel between your browser and server. There are some free VPN and some are paid in which they compromise your information. So you should use only trustful and reputed VPN.
8. Use an Ad Blocker
Adblocker is the software that is integrated with many browsers which block and clear unwanted distractions and advertisements. It is more beneficial regarding privacy and security because malware may be distributed through advertisements and this blocks them by loading quickly. That’s why Adblocker reduces the risk of malware.
9. Remove Outdated Plugins and Extensions from Browsers
Plugins and Extensions are the software tools that add specific features and applications for your uses. Most plugins and extensions are used for video players, audio players, and other marketing applications. You should have to update and remove your unnecessary plugins and extensions respectively. Which keeps your activity safe and secure from malware and viruses.
10. Restart your computer once a day
You should Restart or Reboot your computer once a day as a result it cleans up the useless and temporary files and improves the overall performance of the computer. It helps in flushing RAM files, stops memory leaks, removes vulnerability, fixing network and security-based issues.
As digitalization increases day by day the management of digital documents becomes easy. The creation and distribution of digital documents have become faster than physical documents. For documents management, there are so many companies available in the market which provide you with services for your medical documents management. Therefore there is a list of the 5 Best Services for your Medical Document Management.
1. Lua
Lua is the best online and free service to manage your medical documents. It manages all types of documents and they can even be converted into any required formats. You can convert all types of documents into PDF which is the most used file document in the world. To convert PDF to PNG or other format you have to upload your document which can be a Word DOC, Excel spreadsheet, PNG, PPT, and HTML file by simply tapping on the convert option to get your file converted into a PDF format document in a few seconds.
After conversion, you can download the PDF on your device. It also converts PDF to DOC, Excel, JPG, PNG, PPT, and HTML files. Lua can be used from anywhere and anytime, all you need is your laptop, computer, or mobile phone with an internet connection. It is a flexible management tool for medical documents that supports all operating systems whether you are using Windows, Mac, or Linux.
2. Google Drive
Google drive is the product of one of the world’s top technology companies, Google. It is a cloud-based storage platform that can be used for your medical documents management. The benefits of Google Drive are that you can use it from anywhere, you need an internet connection in your smartphone.
The important features are, it gives you 15 GB of storage for free that is equal to the storage of normal smartphones provided, it keeps your files secure and you can share anywhere with any platform. There are other apps and tools including google form, docs, spreadsheets, and slides in Google Drive that help manage your medical documents in one place effectively.
3. Apple iCloud
Moreover, if you are using an iPhone then iCloud is the best medical document management service for you. In iCloud, you can store and share your files, photos, videos, and more with other devices easily. It provides you with 5 GB of free storage and you can add more storage later.
It supports all types of files that can be stored in one place which you can access from any other Apple device, iCloud is accessible from all your Apple devices that keep your Apps including Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Reminders, Safari, and more, also it keeps you updated from the App Store across all your devices.
4. Smallpdf
Furthermore, Smallpdf is another free online medical documents management service with which you can manage all your medical documents by converting and sharing. Smallpdf provides you with 21 tools to convert, compress, and edit PDFs for free. It supports all types of files including JPG, Word, PPT, and Excel can be converted into a PDF.
It allows you to simply drag and drop for the process of converting your medical documents into PDF files and after conversion, you can save and share that PDF file. For making convenience, this is a web-based medical document management service so you can utilize it from any OS from anywhere whether you are using Windows, Mac, or Linux. You just need an internet connection on your device.
5. Adobe Acrobat DC
Likewise, Adobe Acrobat is a web-based service that manages, creates, views, edits and prints the document in PDF format. PDF can hold a layout that cannot be modified and manipulated by sharing with any other device. Adobe Acrobat DC has excellent customer satisfaction for managing medical documents.
It allows you to convert, edit, share and e-sign PDF documents. It also provides you with the best security for your files and data, keeping medical-related documents safer. Adobe Acrobat gives you accessibility that you can use from any device, any operating system, and also an android app. So if you want to manage your medical documents without any hassle consider Adobe Acrobat DC.
Vyne Medical, a leading provider of electronic health information and communication management solutions, announces the launch of new functionality to help streamline hospital administrative functions. Auto-indexing accurately transforms documents and unstructured patient information into structured, shareable data for use across hospitals and health systems.
