Today, the average cost of a healthcare data breach is $429 per record. When organizations factor in the loss of productivity, the amount of civil complaints and fines levied, plus the public relations besmirching, the cost implications skyrocket. In 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights concluded a record year in HIPAA enforcement activity – 10 settlement cases and one judgment totaled a whopping $28.7 million.
Though every industry is susceptible to cyberattacks, healthcare has experienced the largest growth in attacks over the years because patient records, insurance information, and social security numbers are more valuable on the dark web. Unfortunately, legacy systems may to be blame for the uptick in cyberattacks. Forescout researchers determined 53% of common medical devices are still operating on traditional, legacy platforms.
Legacy systems, insufficient access controls, and the proliferation of medical IoT devices have created security vulnerabilities that leave hospitals wide open to cyberattacks. Research from Vectra found that the majority of legacy systems are unsecured because healthcare organizations simply can’t afford the amount of downtime that patching requires.
To guarantee that unstructured data is transmitted securely, healthcare organizations must extend their analog fax machines to a hybrid-cloud network that is HIPAA complaint and provides end-to-end encryption, two-factor authentication, and direct faxing capabilities.
Hybrid-Cloud Technology
By leveraging the cloud and delivering all faxes via HTTPS, outdated fax boards, media gateways, and the complex telephony stack are eliminated. Unlike a legacy analog fax infrastructure, hybrid cloud technology can ensure that time-sensitive protected health information (PHI) are delivered within seconds with high-resolution, near-diagnostic image quality, and the highest levels of encryption. The accessibility of fax, coupled with the scalability of the cloud, ensures the exchange of PHI among the healthcare ecosystem is protected. This allows patients to receive high-quality care without compromising their personal information.
By Marc Helberg, managing vice president at the Philadelphia office, Pariveda Solutions.
Marc Helberg
Data. It’s everywhere, and healthcare organizations know it can be theoretically useful in the modeling of predictive patient outcomes.
This sounds promising enough. But when we look beneath the surface, we learn that the industry as a whole has been relatively slow to adopt predictive analytics as a standard course of nonacademic care. In fact, just 34% of providers include it as part of their strategy.
This isn’t to say there aren’t plans for future applications. Providers recognize the potential for predictive analytics to improve outcomes and lower long-term costs. A Deloitte survey found that 84% of executives certainly see the benefits of predictive analytics in healthcare, as they say it will play a role in their organization’s strategy over the next three years.
So when will the role of data analytics in healthcare move from academic to more practical applications? And perhaps more importantly, what stops providers from taking action?
The Promise of Predictive Analytics
Some of the hesitation about analytics can be credited to misunderstandings about its scope. Given the hype — the market is expected to nearly quadruple in size to $8.46 billion by 2025, according to some estimates — many providers believe predictive analytics will make inherently disruptive changes to day-to-day operations. This includes supplanting sensitive tasks usually carried out by doctors (such as developing custom treatment plans).
In reality, analytics should focus on incremental improvements to allow doctors to do more of what they already do well. As it stands, six out of 10 physicians feel their time with patients is far too short to treat them effectively. The median time for visits is 11.8 minutes for patients in their 30s and rises to 14.3 minutes for patients who are 70 or older.
With predictive analytics, one possible initial deployment could assist with calendar management by using data on missed or canceled appointments to help doctors better estimate when they might have more time to handle complex patient visits. Small changes like this one could make a significant impact on patient experience.
Even if a provider is willing to invest in a larger-scope analytics project, its value will come in augmenting existing processes, not redoing them. In the near future, patient-generated data could help doctors assess and score the risk of an illness or disease in particular cases, but it will still require a doctor’s expertise to interpret the best way for the patient to address that risk.
When applied during care delivery, analytics could even factor in social and environmental conditions that could increase the likelihood of complications. That alone could reduce hospital re-admissions and improve the standard of care across the spectrum.
Again, this has nothing to do with a patient’s treatment plan. There will always be a need for human creativity in care that only a doctor or clinician can provide. Instead, the pros and cons of predictive analytics in healthcare can be better divided into high- and low-value applications. Data can excel in identifying health challenges, anticipating certain risk factors, and streamlining administrative tasks, which also provides an opportunity to further improve patient care.
Although barriers still prevent fully implementing predictive analytics in healthcare, leaders — especially those in information technology — can help break them down. Here are some of the best ways to start:
TigerConnect released its annual “State of Healthcare Communications” report, a survey of healthcare leaders and patients detailing the pervasive challenges in healthcare communications. The survey confirmed the fragmented state of communication in healthcare – with many organizations still heavily reliant on landline phones, fax machines, and pagers, and the adoption of modern communication technology often happening in silos.
Brad Brooks
“Adoption of modern communication solutions has occurred in every other industry but healthcare,” said Brad Brooks, chief executive officer and co-founder of TigerConnect. “Despite the fact that quality healthcare is vital to the well-being and functioning of a society, the shocking lack of communication innovation comes at a steep price, resulting in chronic delays, increased operational costs that are often passed down to the public, preventable medical errors, physician burnout, and in the worst cases, can even lead to death.”
In fact, industry research shows that communication inefficiencies cost a single 500-bed hospital more than $4 million annually (NCBI) and worst case, can lead to death, with communication breakdowns estimated to be a factor in 70% of medical error deaths (JMIR).
Our latest research sought to better understand the state of healthcare communication today and how technology solutions can foster better communication and collaboration in healthcare. Specifically, the survey found 90% of organizations are still using fax machines and 39% are still using pagers. Additionally, nearly 40% of healthcare professionals say that it is difficult to communicate with care team members, contributing to bottlenecks at various touchpoints when moving patients through the healthcare system.
Moreover, the majority of healthcare organizations – 52% – experience communication disconnects that impact patients daily or multiple times a week. It is also worth noting that non-clinical staff greatly underestimate the frequency of communication disconnects that impact patients. Clinical staff members were nearly three times more likely than non-clinical staff to say communication disconnects impact patients on a daily basis.
Survey findings include:
Communication in Healthcare is Broken:
The healthcare industry is still heavily reliant on 1970’s technology, with 89% using fax machines and 39% using pagers among some departments or roles, or even organization-wide.
Communication channels are badly fragmented in healthcare, with groups across the health system all using different tools to communicate.
Despite a growing mobile workforce in healthcare, landlines are still heavily relied on. Landline communication is the top choice of communication when secure messaging is not available – used 29% of the time. Among organizations using secure messaging it still ranks number two – used 25% of the time.
NextGen Healthcare, Inc. is acquiring Medfusion, Inc., a patient experience platform leader. The proposed acquisition is expected to close in early December 2019, subject to the satisfaction of closing conditions, including the transfer of Medfusion’s data services business out of Medfusion. The total purchase price of $43 million, subject to customary adjustments, will be paid in cash at acquisition completion.
Three powerful ambulatory care market trends make the acquisition of Medfusion a timely next step in NextGen Healthcare’s evolution:
As patients assume increased financial responsibility for their healthcare, they are more actively involved in making choices based on both cost and quality
High quality healthcare depends on improved access to care and information
Patient experience drives patient engagement which is key to improving health outcomes
Medfusion Patient Experience Platform enables key aspects of patient-provider interactions. It includes a modern portal with an attractive, easy-to-use interface designed to run on any device. The platform includes powerful capabilities for patient intake, patient scheduling and patient payment capabilities and is used by more than 16 million patients today.
Rusty Frantz
“We must further engage patients in their healthcare journey as engagement is essential for great outcomes and lowering the cost of care,” said Rusty Frantz, president and chief executive officer of NextGen Healthcare. “Providing the overall experience, tools and meaningful information isn’t just essential, it is increasingly expected by today’s healthcare consumer. The acquisition of Medfusion will add a best-in-class patient access and engagement capability to NextGen Healthcare’s award-winning, fully-integrated ambulatory platform.”
“From our founding, Medfusion has been focused on patient-provider communications and making health IT work for both patients and practices,” said Kim Labow, chief executive officer of Medfusion. “By joining forces with NextGen Healthcare, we will expand our market reach and accelerate NextGen’s mission of empowering the transformation of ambulatory care.”
Acquisition Terms
The acquisition agreement provides for the acquisition of all of the outstanding equity in Medfusion, but will be subject to Medfusion transferring, prior to the closing, its data services business, which is in its infancy and will be transferred out of Medfusion as Greenlight Health.
XRHealth, formerly known as VRHealth, a provider of extended reality and therapeutic applications, and Sheba Medical Center, ranked by Newsweek at the 10th best hospital in the world, are partnering to create the first fully VR-based hospital, utilizing XRHealth’s technology throughout each department.
The integration of virtual reality technology is part of the medical center’s innovation efforts and commitment to digital health.
Sheba Medical Center is strategically transforming the hospital into a center of innovation that embodies a startup culture and that encourages the hospital’s complete transformation to digital health. The hospital is guided by a strategy named Innovation ARC that stands for accelerate, redesign, and collaborate with a focus on investing in digital health, collaborating with key partners and inspiring innovation. As part of this vision, Sheba is partnering with XRHealth to use their VR platform for cognitive therapy, physical therapy, pain relief, and many other applications throughout the entire hospital.
“With XRHealth, Sheba Medical Center believes we will be able to provide improved training for our facility, along with better and more personalized care for our patients,” said Professor Amitai Ziv, director of Sheba’s Rehabilitation Hospital.
Dr. Eyal Zimlichman, Sheba’s chief medical and chief innovation Officer added, “We’ve identified medical virtualization as one of the technologies that will transform healthcare. Within this realm, we aim to be a leader in developing new health services based on VR.”
Millions of registered nurses face growing pressures on their professional and personal lives in the new decade because of increased demand for services, nursing shortages, and structural changes in the healthcare industry, according to a newly released survey of nearly 20,000 RNs by AMN Healthcare.
The survey, AMN Healthcare 2019 Survey of Registered Nurses: A Challenging Decade Ahead, found warning signs of larger problems ahead, including that significant percentages of nurses are working second jobs – and many with two full-time jobs. Nurses say they are unable to spend the time they need with patients, and most have been affected by some form of workplace violence, a recognized hazard of the healthcare industry. Nurses are concerned that their jobs affect their health, and many say they are planning to leave their current jobs, either to another nursing job, retirement, or getting out of bedside nursing altogether. Their biggest influence to remain at a job – even greater than pay — is flexibility and work-life balance.
Nursing Pressures Grow in the 2020s
Pressures on nurses may intensify in the next decade as the aging of America enters a rapid phase, which will increase demand for healthcare services (people 65+ have three times more hospital days than the middle aged) and accelerate the retirement wave of Baby Boomer nurses. At the same time, the healthcare industry will undergo dramatic structural changes because of consolidation and the movement to value-based medicine.
“From everything we know, this next decade will be extremely challenging for the nursing profession and healthcare in general, with serious workforce issues facing healthcare organizations at a time when many nurses are already experiencing tremendous pressure,” said Dr. Cole Edmonson, chief clinical officer at AMN Healthcare. “The 2019 RN Survey can help healthcare organizations understand and prepare for the workforce issues they face, particularly through addressing the need for greater flexibility and work-life balance, better professional development opportunities, embracing diversity, and reducing workplace violence.”
The survey found that more than one in five nurses holds more than one job, and many of them hold two full-time jobs. Two-thirds worry that their jobs are affecting their health, 44% say they often consider quitting their jobs, and 41% say they usually don’t have the time they need to spend with their patients.
Baystate Health, the premier integrated health system serving more than 800,000 patients in western New England, announced a partnership with Life Image, the largest medical evidence network providing access to points of care and curated clinical and imaging data, to develop novel artificial intelligence tools that would help advance technical innovations in radiology, neurology and oncology.
Specifically, TechSpring, the innovation arm for Baystate, will work with Life Image to evaluate a number of AI solutions including those that promise to improve speed and accuracy in diagnosing blood clots in stroke patients; improve clinical pathways for physicians treating or diagnosing a patient by finding and comparing clinical criteria against a group of de-identified patients with similar clinical characteristics; and identify potential patient matches to oncology clinical trials in order to advance cancer research, as well as give western New England residents better access to potentially life-saving treatments.
Baystate and Life Image began working together 10 years ago when the health system became one of the company’s first customers. Life Image created the image exchange category when it developed solutions more than a decade ago to help solve the many technical and structural barriers that prevented the seamless exchange of medical images.
With its beginnings in image exchange, Life Image is now a global medical evidence network that offers ‘living’ datasets of novel imaging data that’s linkable to other clinical information and provides network access to points-of-care to enable improved care delivery, novel research and innovation.
While pharma companies have grown to become effective direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketers, hospital systems and other large providers continue to struggle with effective DTC marketing essential for growth. In fact, it’s their Achilles heel. Why?
First, providers have never needed to compete historically. With light competition and reasonable levels of reimbursement for decades, everything was fine until the cost of health care began to spiral out of control. In response, payors began to push back by negotiating lower levels of reimbursement in-network. In addition, payers, including CMS, have denied claims creating losses and cash flow issues for many providers.
There is also a rapid rise of chronic conditions ranging from arthritis to diabetes to dementia. These chronic conditions are expensive to treat for health care providers. They are an even greater challenge to treat profitably in an environment of declining reimbursements.
At the same time, advances in medical treatment and care have extended life spans and placed additional burdens on our health care system, including the extraordinary cost of heroic and end-of-life care.
To help offset rising costs and declining reimbursements, large scale providers need more new patients to cover fixed costs. As a result, most of these providers have added DTC marketing to the mix. This usually takes the form of a website, some SEM and a little local advertising. Unfortunately, many any of these marketing tactics are often random acts of marketing without the marketing insights and strategy required to efficiently compete and effectively reach their target audience.
