By Fahad Aziz, co-founder and chief technology officer, Caremerge.
As senior care providers brace for a potential second wave of COVID-19, they must hone their plans to keep residents safe, happy, and healthy while in quarantine.
But in a community of hundreds of residents, it can be challenging to monitor each and every resident’s health and wellbeing without help from technology.
Enter electronic health record (EHR) systems and resident activity and wellness data, which give community decision makers a fuller picture of each residents’ health so that they can provide the care and activities to match.
Here’s how data can help communities act on a more holistic, individualized model of care for their seniors, throughout the pandemic and into the future.
EHRs Streamline the Continuum of Clinical Care
The pandemic has highlighted a major operational pain point on the clinical side of senior living. Reliance on manual health data creates information silos, and it’s very difficult to transfer resident health information to and from health care providers when it’s all on paper.
EHRs make communication between care providers a lot more efficient and transparent. When a resident’s clinical profile is all digital, senior living staff can easily record, update, send, and retrieve information so that they can focus on what matters: providing excellent care for residents.
By Ilia Sotnikov, vice president of product management, Netwrix.
Ilia Sotnikov
New warnings from the FBI report “an increased and imminent cybercrime threat” to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers. Experts say the ransomware, called Ryuk, was seen by at least five U.S. hospitals in October. This isn’t unexpected.
In fact, recent research has found that every third healthcare organization experienced a ransomware attack during the past few months. This is the highest exposure across all industries surveyed, above education, finance and public sector. It has disrupted patient care at up to 510 facilities.
So with cyberattacks in healthcare at their peak, it’s time to take heed. Particularly since ransomware in the healthcare sector not only impacts money and reputation, but also human health and lives. And with the current pandemic, healthcare organizations are more vital and fragile than ever.
Today’s healthcare strongly depends on IT; without access to health data and IT systems, doctors cannot provide treatment to patients or make decisions. What is worse, if intensive care units and life-support devices, which are typically connected to the network, are blocked by ransomware, this puts lives of critically ill patients at risk. Such a damage is incomparable to losses in terms of reputation and money, but these still follow as well for healthcare organizations just as they do in other industries.
One of the common reasons why the healthcare industry is vulnerable to ransomware is the frequent use of legacy systems that can be easily exploited by hackers. Making hospitals even more vulnerable to cybercrime is that their IT departments are understaffed. This makes them prone to errors, particularly as they face additional pressure and the demand to support remote work due to pandemic.
In fact, 39% of healthcare organizations suffered from admin mistakes during the past few months. Such mistakes might include improper configurations changes or failure to install updates in a timely manner, which result in vulnerabilities.
The sad reality is that any hospital might fall a victim of ransomware. Therefore, it makes sense to get ready to the worst scenario, taking under consideration the shortage of resources that organizations in the health sector face. Here are five major areas to focus on:
Understanding the different types of medical practices is important for anyone getting into this industry, as the type that you choose to work in will have a lasting impact on your career and your life as a whole. It’s important to factor in the many characteristics and benefits of these multiple practices to learn which style suits you best.
Here is a look at some of the many different types of practices that nurses and doctors can get involved in, and their pros and cons, ranging from group practices to hospital-based employment a beyond.
Group Practice
Group practice is used to describe a medical facility that consists of two or more physicians providing medical care. Usually, these staff members will have different and complementary specializations so that the practice can provide a service to multiple types of patients. However, some group practices, such as a dental practice, will have multiple individuals who have specialized in the same field.
In a group practice, all the work and resources are shared, which includes the running and administering of the practice. If you’re interested in starting your medical practice, it’s first vital that you figure out how the income is going to be divided before you start going through the motions to set the practice up. Click here for more information on this.
It’s important to learn about the different ways that a group practice can be set up, as this will alter how it runs and operates. The most common type of group practice until very recently was association practices, however, partnership practices have risen in popularity because of their alternate funding model.
Group practices are good because they increase the financial security of all those involved, and because there’s multiple staff, it also increases your flexibility. There’s also a greater tolerance to financial risk when compared to the other types, and there is very little if not any at all startup costs when joining an existing practice.
For the first time in our lives, we have been able to see how artificial intelligence would influence a pandemic from identification and tracking to treatment and vaccination. Two things had to perfectly align to make this happen.
Technology had to advance to a place where it could analyze, predict, and engage with extreme accuracy and a virus had to be dangerous enough to spur massive funding and demand for action. We reached that tipping point in 2020. As the year comes to a close it is time to consider all that AI has done and where it is likely to continue to impact epidemiology and disaster response moving forward.
Tracking
HealthMap, an AI application run by Boston Children’s Hospital, was launched in 2006 and was one of the first tools used to detect and track the COVID-19 outbreak in China. The algorithm uses online data about infectious disease events from news outlets and social media in more than a dozen languages. It then applied machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to track outbreaks.
Diagnosis
Tracking or predicting where cases might show up is just one step in a long journey to stopping the spread of the virus. An article published in May 2020 by researchers in the U.S. and China would reveal that Artificial Intelligence was accurately diagnosing COVID-19 in 68% of patients who had previously been thought to be negative and had normal results on chest imaging. The AI algorithm used to compare imaging, symptoms, medical history, and exposure was said to have “equal sensitivity as compared to a senior thoracic radiologist.” I have also had the pleasure of reading some yet-to-be-published articles about how AI is helping in the ICU to predictively determine ventilator utilization but it’s not just ventilators.
When it came time to harness AI in the diagnosis of COVID-19, even the CDC jumped on board. In partnership with Microsoft’s Azure platform, they embedded a symptom checker chatbot on their website. Likely out of an abundance of caution, their bot uses what I term “light-AI” to guide patients through a very basic decision tree. Answering simple yes-no questions to determine their likelihood of needing a test.
As long as we continue to prioritize data, AI will have the information needed to analyze and predict, it’s a very logical application of the technology — but what about using it to engage patients and address widespread misinformation and fear?
The Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was adopted in 1996. It seeks to ensure the secure management of healthcare information and outlines guidelines that all healthcare organizations and employees must follow to manage protected healthcare information (PHI). Under HIPAA, PHI is any information that can be used to identify an individual, including:
Contact information
Demographic information
Lab test results
Insurance information
Medical history
As technology continues to evolve, the risks facing PHI also grow. It’s now more important than ever for players in the healthcare industry to comply with HIPAA to avoid costly penalties. To understand the significance ofHIPAA compliance, it’s best to revisit past cases relating to violations. These cases will provide crucial lessons on how to avoid common HIPAA-related mistakes.
Case #1: Allergy Associates of Hartford, Conn.
Hartford-based Allergy Associates was fined $125,000 after a patient complained to the Department of Health and Human Services about the disclosure of her PHI by a physician at the facility to a reporter. An investigation revealed that the physician disregarded advice from the hospital’s privacy officer not to respond to the media regarding claims that the woman had been turned away from the facility for bringing along her service animal. Following the disclosure, Allergy Associates failed to take any corrective or disciplinary action towards the physician.
Lesson Learned
Allergy Associates should have disciplined the physician besides taking corrective action to prevent similar incidents from occurring. Had it done so, the facility would probably not have been penalized. This highlights why healthcare entities should take immediate remediation action when such incidents occur and hold employees responsible for their behavior. Likewise, employees should be trained on media protocols to ensure that PHI is not intentionally or unintentionally disclosed to the media as it happened with Allergy Associates.
Technology has been slowly making its way through almost everything in our lives. From simple daily chores, to entertainment, shopping, education and even to medicine, it is everywhere. Not only does it make things more convenient but more accessible as well.
One of the many things that it has revolutionized for the better is addiction treatment!
Yes, that’s right, addiction treatment. From sobriety tracker apps to online counselling assistance, treatment is now easy and more accessible than it ever was. Especially in the time of a pandemic, when a lot of people might not have access to a treatment facility on hand. Here are a few reasons why you need to put your faith in technology for addiction treatment:
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the best things to come out of the digitization of addiction treatment. AA is an international forum of people who have faced drinking problems. Anyone can join and seek help from people who have been through alcoholism and can act as a mentor. The book Alcoholics Anonymous first published in 1939 was a collection of stories from people who have been through addiction and later on it was turned into an online platform, making it the world’s largest self-help platforms for alcoholism treatment. It is free of cost and anyone can join it to get help or to be a mentor. They have a large collection of online resources on treatment and self help, that provide help with all stages of alcoholism.
Sobriety Tracker Apps
Sobriety tracker apps also known as sobriety clocks helps recovering addicts track their progress. It alerts them of their goals and achievement, reminding them how long they have been sober and provides them access to online resources in time of need. There are many free of cost sobriety clocks available, some come with smart gadgets to keep a record of the patient’s health as well.
As technology continues to develop, it becomes necessary to upgrade your equipment or select new software to help run your practice or clinic more efficiently. Periodic updates are often helpful, but they might come with a few challenges. For instance, how can you know which software or equipment are best for your office? Are there new tools you should bring into your clinic, knowing that you’ll have to train your employees in their use and foot a higher bill?
Deciding when and what to upgrade can be tricky for even experienced administrators. Let’s break down what you should do to make smart choices when selecting medial tech and equipment and their vendors.
Determine what your practice needs
First, it’s a great idea to do a full inventory of your practice or clinic. Figure out what you want, what your goals are, and what frustrations your staff and patients are currently experiencing.
Is your patient scheduling software simply too slow and clunky for comfort? In that case, maybe upgrading that software or buying different software entirely is a good idea. Alternatively, maybe your practice will benefit from redoing your computer systems or upgrading the terminals throughout your rooms. Figure out what you need before purchasing anything so that every dollar you spend provides the most value.
Don’t skip your due diligence
You’ll also want to perform due diligence regarding software and equipment vendors. It’s an excellent idea to research a vendor or company’s history, past clients, and reputation to figure out if they’ll be a good match for your service. Check if a given vendor is a secure vendor, given that vendors are the weak link for healthcare security in many cases.
Don’t have the time to do an investigation yourself? Hiring a firm to do domestic investigations might be an alternative solution. These companies can dive deep into vendors or potential business partners and tell you if they’re hiding anything before you make a deal.
Statistics say that the average person changes their job between five and seven times in their lives. As we grow older, although the frequency of these changes slows, the importance of them grows. No longer do we have to live up to someone else’s expectations and fulfill someone else’s dreams. No longer do we have time to waste wondering whether we’re capable of doing what we always wanted to do.
Around 7.5 million people over the age of 25 go back to some form of schooling to gain the qualifications they need to change their careers entirely. One of the qualifications on offer is nursing, and it’s a popular one. But what is it about nursing that makes it such an excellent choice for those in their later years who want a change of career? There are many different reasons, and although each individual will have their personal ideas of what it means to them to become a nurse, read on to find out more about the most common ones.
Nursing requires a good amount of knowledge. It requires an education and the right qualifications – at the very least it requires an RN. But what it also needs is experience.
This is not just the nursing experience that will be gained over many years of helping patients and dealing with doctors. The very best nurses also have plenty of life experience, and if they are coming to the profession late, this is experience they will no doubt already have.
They will know exactly how a decision can make all the difference, and how to cope with disappointment, how to solve a challenge that others might not have an idea what to do about.
With this experience, and the ability and willingness to learn, older nurses have a definite advantage over those who are turning to the profession directly from high school, which accounts for the vast majority of trainee nurses.
Age isn’t going to matter to any medical facility that needs nurses. With a nursing shortage, anyone who is willing to work and who has the right qualifications stands just as much chance of getting a job as anyone else, with age being the lowest barrier to entry. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there will be 371,000 new nursing jobs available by 2028; this equates to a 12 percent growth forecast for the profession.
