Grand Rounds announces the launch of Premium Navigation, Grand Rounds’ population health solution that simplifies the healthcare experience by providing one place to go for all healthcare needs—clinical and beyond. In addition to comprehensive care management, Premium Navigation can replace traditional health insurance member services to give users a single entry point to access all employer-sponsored benefits.
Premium Navigation helps employers improve health outcomes and reduce costs by guiding employees to high-quality, personalized care throughout their entire healthcare journey. This encompasses everything from connecting members with a multidisciplinary clinical care team for acute case management, to guidance around clinically appropriate benefits and claims advocacy support.
Within Premium Navigation, members also have access to Grand Rounds’ Connected Care Program (CCP), a physician-led, comprehensive care management program that integrates traditional care and case management for those with complex health needs who face an array of health challenges. Grand Rounds’ PhD level team of data scientists continuously work alongside the clinical team to build CCP’s predictive models, which identify the members who need help.
“We know that a member’s non-clinical needs—financial, administrative, etc.—often dictate how they will address their clinical need, if they engage at all,” said Dr. Ami Parekh, chief medical officer at Grand Rounds. “That’s why our model is built on the idea that we have to meet the member where they are and help with their main concern which, at times, may be managing the financial or administrative burdens of the healthcare system. By first earning their trust, we can help members manage their ongoing medical needs. This comprehensive care approach allows us to deliver more personalized and impactful care that will lower unnecessary emergency department visits and inpatient hospitalizations and raise the standard of care for an entire population.”
For the fourth consecutive year, ChristianaCare has earned the “Most Wired” designation from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), which recognizes health care organizations that demonstrate the best practices through their adoption, implementation and use of information technology.
ChristianaCare earned the award in Most Wired’s new ambulatory category – which recognizes outpatient practices that demonstrate excellence in health care IT – as well as its hospital category, for both Christiana Hospital and Wilmington Hospital.
“We are leaning confidently and deliberately into a future where all care will be digital – except that which cannot be – and all care will be home-based – except that which cannot be,” said Randall Gaboriault, MS, chief digital and information officer at ChristianaCare. “That digital imperative is our organizational imperative, and it reinforces why we are relentlessly focused on leveraging technologies to forge deep connections with our neighbors to help them achieve their personal health goals.”
ChristianaCare’s place on the forefront of IT trends is the product of both a long-term investment in culture and a reimagining of IT processes, creating an environment in which good ideas can rapidly progress from concept to impact.
ChristianaCare’s use of transformational technologies to improve patient care includes:
Video monitoring to help protect hospital patients from falls.
Telemedicine advancements, including video visits with clinicians.
Direct access by patients to the physician notes in their electronic health record, and the ability to contribute to their record through an online patient portal.
Online express check-in at ChristianaCare’s five urgent care centers.
Exemplifying ChristianaCare’s effective use of technology to serve its neighbors is the organization’s electronic health record system, which enables providers to have access to all of a patient’s medical information, regardless of whether they show up at one of ChristianaCare’s primary care or specialty practices, hospitals, labs or emergency departments. It’s a concept that ChristianaCare’s IT team refers to as “one patient, one chart, one experience.”
As you get older, it is normal to have more health concerns. Our bodies deteriorate over time and some diseases can become more common. The risk of injuries are greater, as well. Simply put, as people get older, they need to be more careful. Not only can these injuries and health concerns be painful, annoying and debilitating, but they can also be expensive.
Healthcare costs can rise up into the thousands of dollars for more, for a variety of different issues. As a result, while having good health insurance is always important, this is especially true for individuals as they get older. However, what sorts of health insurance options are available to you?
While there are several potential options, one that you should consider is a Medicare Advantage Plan. Unsure of what a Medicare Advantage plan is? If so, you’ve come to the right place. This guide is going to not only introduce you to a Medicare Advantage plan, but will also show you all of the benefits so you can make an informed decision when it comes to your health insurance.
What is a Medicare Advantage Plan?
In the US, Medicare is a national health insurance program of the US. it first came into existence back in 1966 and currently, tens of millions of Americans utilize it to get their health insurance. While some younger people with disabilities or other life circumstances can use it, Medicare is largely for those over 65 years old.
Medicare is made up of several different parts which include Part A, Part B, Part C and Part D. Part C of Medicare, which is also known as Medicare Advantage Plan, is essentially an “all-in-one” plan when compared to original Medicare. Original Medicare is made up of Parts A and B, which are hospital and medical insurance, respectively.
Original Medicare is offered by the government, but a Medicare Advantage plan is offered by private companies. They essentially work with Medicare to provide you with all of the benefits of Medicare Parts A and B, as well as the potential for some extras.
Joining a Medicare Advantage plan is simple as long as you are qualified to do so. You must join them during an open enrollment period, which can differ depending on where you live in the country. Joining is as easy as using the plan finder, joining online, filing a paper enrollment form or even potentially calling in.
However, there are other types of plans available, these two are just the most popular and common. So what are the benefits of going with a Medicare Advantage Plan over a traditional original Medicare plan? Well, there are a couple of them.
Have you reached the pinnacle of your career as a plastic surgeon? Are there no other professional goals left for you to achieve? If so, you might want to consider starting your very own practice. Taking the plunge and becoming a fully-fledged business owner is the next logical step for you to take in your career — you just have to be brave enough to take it!
Should you decide to take this leap of faith and take your career in this particular direction, be sure to heed the advice laid out below. Here’s what you need to do to start a plastic surgery practice from scratch:
Organize your credentials
You aren’t going to be able to start your own plastic surgery practice without first organizing your credentials. Update your CV, gather your tax information and pay stubs, and unearth your surgeon licenses and certificates. With all of this information at hand, you will find it much easier to prove to the banks, your accountant, and insurance companies that your business venture is one that is worth backing.
Mobile health apps have raised the healthcare industry to a new level. Now consumers have an opportunity to track their blood pressure, pulse rate, input their symptoms that will then be analyzed by the ML app on the go. Without visiting the doctor’s office, we can now monitor our health condition and even connect with the provider by sending an in-app message and getting the consultation within hours.
No doubt, mobile health apps are now being developed at a high pace, however, not without dangers. Probably the most common cause of worry is how the software products approach security and data privacy issues.
With no opportunities to seal users’ health records, can we be sure that the confidential information isn’t exposed?
7 tips to help deliver a secure mHealth app
Collect only the needed data
The main tip is: don’t collect the data you don’t need. Collect the information with the clear purpose and regularly dispose of the data you no longer need.
Check the legal regulations (GDPR, HIPAA, COPPA, etc.)
Check the legal regulations your app is subject to. It is important that the app is developed in compliance with security and privacy requirements defined by the GDPR that outlines the procedures of handling EU citizens data, HIPAA and COPPA (a new child-oriented edition of which will come into force in 2020) in the US. According to all this, users, for example, have a right to ask you to delete any data you’re storing or explain the reason what you need this or that piece of data for.
Include a section with Privacy Policy practices
Make sure your app has a section including Privacy Policy practices that comply with Human Interface Guidelines (for Apple) and Developer Guides (for Android) standards. Also, if you’re storing users’ data, you should get their consent to do so. Also, users should be able to revoke the consent at any moment.
Make sure users’ data is not shared with any third parties
Ascertain that you don’t share the data of your users with any third parties, e.g. social media companies or advertising agencies. Enhancing user experience and monetization are the natural goals of any app developer but be careful with this. Recently a number of mHealth apps have been accused of sharing user records with Facebook. You don’t want to be among them, right?
Send push notification without confidential data
If you send push notifications, ensure they don’t include confidential health data.
Protect the app code
Different vulnerabilities may exist in the source code and may be caused by the developers’ error or lack of code testing. What can be done about this? Protect the code with encryption and run constant code scanning.
Run security and penetration testing
Proper mobile app security and pentesting will include the following stages.
Preparation – the testing team gets information about the software product and possible events that may lead to its successful exploitation as well as prepares test documentation.
Evaluation – the QA specialists evaluate the current security level of the app and recognize the potential vulnerabilities.
Exploitation – security test engineers act as hackers trying to make use of the discovered bottlenecks.
Reporting – the team presents the results to the stakeholders and gives recommendations on how the security level may be improved.
Future technology is changing the world of health. As a result, new ways on how health research is conducted and performed are beginning to emerge. Major Contract Research Organizations or CROs are starting to employ AI in pre-clinical tests, thus revolutionizing the role of technology in healthcare.
Artificial intelligence is a type of intelligence displayed by machines and computer systems. Nowadays, there are several ways how pre-clinical CROs use AI in their studies. But, first, what are pre-clinical CROs?
Pre-clinical CRO Defined
Pre-clinical CROs, otherwise known as Pre-clinical Contract Research Organizations, are companies that provide knowledge, skills, and experience needed to transform a medical or pharmaceutical idea concept into a final product. There are a lot of processes involved before the final product is revealed, which include the discovery and development stage, pre-clinical research stage, the clinical research stage, and, lastly, the FDA review.
The period between pre-clinical tryouts and the unveiling of the product is where the role of a pre-clinical CRO is most critical. Drug ideas and prospective products may fail within this period; hence modern pre-clinical CROs, like Ion Channel CRO, continue to dig deeper into the capacity of future technology to increase efficiency in health research.
Reasons Why Pre-clinical CROS Are Using Future Technology/AI To Conduct Health Research
Reduces uncertainty in pre-clinical experiments – AI is now being used to reduce the improbability that comes with pre-clinical trials. This will go a long way in reducing time spent on research, cutting down financial costs, and optimizing data gathering.
Gathers data and obtains actionable insights – Researchers now use AI to streamline data collection and selection of recipients of pre-clinical tests. Data collection and analysis are an integral part of health research, and keeping up with the zillions of data available is impossible for the human researcher. However, with the aid of AI tools, such as deep learning and machine learning, it is possible to analyze, select patterns, and connect relevant data that can lead to drug discovery.
Researchers also make use of reports generated by AI to gain actionable insights during their pre-clinical studies. AI tools can also improve recipients’ selection by choosing the most appropriate group capable of responding to pre-clinical research and tests.
By Kali Durgampudi, chief technology, innovation officer, Greenway Health.
Kali Durgampudi
The electronic health record (EHR) industry continues to undergo a significant transformation, with many physicians asking themselves whether they consider their EHR a friend or a foe.
In too many cases, medical staff feel their EHR works against them, not for them. In fact, according to Medical Economics’ 2019 EHR score report, 60% of physicians said their current EHR system was harming their ability to engage with patients. In addition, The National Academy of Medicine found that as many as half of American physicians and nurses experience substantial symptoms of burnout. And, the same study found that poorly designed technology is a major contributing factor due to the increased amount of time needed to keep systems properly updated.
This should not be the case, and it’s time to change this narrative.
As we near a new year and a new decade, it’s time to focus on advancing EHRs to make the lives of physicians easier, while assisting in improving the patient experience, increasing engagement, enhancing administrative burdens, and more.
Required features and functionalities of EHRs in the next decade include:
Adaptability
Legacy EHR’s are typically thought of as outdated and lacking customization. Custom forms take months to build, cost extra and users ultimately lack control over the functionality. This is not acceptable by today’s standards. Every healthcare practice and specialty is different. So, the EHR must be customizable to fit each practices’ needs in order to optimize efficiency in data entry and management.
In addition, medical trends and challenges are constantly evolving. For example, opioid addiction has risen to epidemic levels in the United States, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimating that more than 130 people die from an opioid overdose every day. Fortunately, health information technology has emerged as a powerful tool for tracking prescription activity.
EHR’s hold a tremendous amount of data – data that can help physicians provide better care to a specific patient or population. Armed with these analytics, a practice can gain insight into population health — along with reporting requirements for government incentive programs and data to optimize billing and cash flow.
According to the CDC, six in 10 Americans live with a chronic condition such as heart disease, cancer, or diabetes, and about seven in 10 deaths each year are due to a chronic condition. Through its analytics capabilities, a population health management solution can help a practice determine its highest-risk patient groups, identify gaps in care, and reach out to patients to engage them in their care.
The EHR of the next decade should be a tool for decision making. EHRs need to utilize advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to make smart suggestions based on data.
An EHR should not just track if a patient is following their care plan, but alert providers when a patient has missed certain critical elements and make suggestions on how best to proceed. As such, the technology can be used to play a larger role in lowering no-show rates and helping predict which patients will have the most success – or biggest challenges – with certain treatment plans.
EHR’s should also be capable of helping physicians make the best financial decisions for their practices. In addition to increasing practice efficiencies and costs, EHRs assist in offering reduced drug and treatment plans with expected costs.
Healthcare providers continue to find themselves with more initiatives and opportunities for innovation than actual capital to deploy to IT projects. Health IT projects have become more integrated with clinical and business areas, which is driving more complexity and alignment than ever before. 2020 will bring a continue focused on the following trends and one growing concern:
Defining and rightsizing AI for your organization. Additionally, organizations will begin and expand the ethical debate as to how broadly to use AI within their organizations. RPA/robotics will continue to expand, followed by deeper machine learning opportunities.
Big data and advanced analytics will continue to be a strong focus as clinical and business users seek the right data at the right time to help make the best decisions possible.
Back office and shared service technology means many organizations have not modernized their ERP platforms in 15 or 20 years. Organizations have gone through numerous transitions, mergers, consolidations, etc., with no core technology changes. Healthcare organizations now have the ability to adopt and deploy next-generation and cloud-based ERP solutions. After spending five to eight years deploying EMR/RCM solutions, organizations now need to focus on ERP modernizations and enterprise data standardization.
Data interoperability will continue to be at the heart of clinical care and enhancing healthcare operations. No one vendor can offer all the necessary functionality needed for healthcare providers; as such, organizations need to spend the necessary time and investment in not only deploying leading clinical, revenue cycle, and ERP solutions, but also an enterprise data interoperability platform. Point-to-point interfaces must be phased out in order to manage the complex enterprise multi-cloud ecosystems that all healthcare providers find themselves living in today with an enterprise data interoperability platform. These platforms offer APIs to help reduce development / connection time, but they don’t always lessen the complexity of business.
With the continued trend toward cloud and hybrid cloud environments, cybersecurity needs to be front and center in all conversations. Organizations need to continue to invest in the development of the correct skills and partnerships to effectively manage cybersecurity in 2020 and beyond.
Health IT resourcing will continue to be in a short supply. The IT resources of 2020 and beyond are not your traditional database administrators or network engineers – they need to have project management skills, business / clinical skills, the ability to manage third parties and actual knowledge of the applications and tools the business uses. Health IT resources need to transform into health IT partners, helping the operations transform by supporting technology enablement.
Jordan Pisarcik, vice president of account management and business development, DocASAP
Providers and health systems will look to more unified, omnichannel solutions to close gaps in care. Health systems will invest in tools and technologies used to streamline the patient journey, including elastic provider search, navigating patients to the right care setting and engaging with patients between visits.
Gone are the days of the adversarial position between payers and providers, replaced now by integrated “payviders.” Through collaboration, “payviders” are expected to reduce financial risk, increase profitability and provide higher quality medical care to patients. Payers also represent a digital channel for providers to improve access to care that can help them meet these objectives.
Health systems will continue to see an increased demand for non-traditional visit types, such as telehealth/virtual appointments, walk-ins, home visits and phone appointments.
In 2019, voice search dominated the news as a major trend; however, consumers won’t see mass adoption of this new technology quite as quickly as anticipated. Still, healthcare systems are working to utilize this new medium as a way to close gaps in care.
Sean Price, EMEA industry solutions director (public sector and healthcare), Qlik
There has been a shift in focus from a traditional use of data and analytics where it has been used for compliance and performance, to a use where operational users are driving decision making and better outcomes at the point of service. The Analytically Powered Command Centre is a great example of this. Healthcare organizations will look to maximize the value of their data by bringing patient flow information into a near real-time environment command center to efficiently manage the end to end process of patient safety, experience and cost. This will enable strategic and tactical management of demand, resource and capability that can lead to process improvement, improved outcomes and notable efficiency savings.
However, moving data to the point of operational front-lines does challenge traditional support and continuity for these systems. Traditionally they would not require 24/7 support – this shift moves big data systems into a new support and maintenance style model.
As more data and insight is being provided to staff, there is the topic of data literacy. A key trend this year will show when you skill up staff in analytics it provides better outcomes and realizes significant productivity gains. Sometimes data literacy is channeled towards just using a system, rather than understanding statistical significance in data. Arguing with data means you present a case with data, and this requires an understanding of significance and goes way beyond system training.
Grand Rounds announces the launch of Premium Navigation, Grand Rounds’ population health solution that simplifies the healthcare experience by providing one place to go for all healthcare needs—clinical and beyond. In addition to comprehensive care management, Premium Navigation can replace traditional health insurance member services to give users a single entry point to access all employer-sponsored benefits.
Mobile health apps have raised the healthcare industry to a new level. Now consumers have an opportunity to track their blood pressure, pulse rate, input their symptoms that will then be analyzed by the ML app on the go. Without visiting the doctor’s office, we can now monitor our health condition and even connect with the provider by sending an in-app message and getting the consultation within hours.
Future technology is changing the world of health. As a result, new ways on how health research is conducted and performed are beginning to emerge. Major Contract Research Organizations or CROs are starting to employ AI in pre-clinical tests, thus revolutionizing the 
