Nearly two-thirds of healthcare providers rate themselves as being behind the curve on their digital health initiatives, citing clinician resistance and interoperability of legacy systems with digital/mobile technologies as the top barriers, according to new research from Unisys Corporation.
On behalf of Unisys, HIMSS surveyed 220 IT decision makers/influencers at U.S. hospitals and health systems and asked them to rank their organization based on how they are leveraging digital and mobile technologies to improve the patient experience, lower the cost of care delivery and improve clinician/staff efficiencies. They were then rated as being ahead of the curve (early adopters/early majority) or behind the curve (late majority/laggards).
Of those surveyed, 64 percent rated themselves as being behind the curve, including 20 percent who were rated as laggards. Notably, only 11 percent of organizations were rated as early adopters when it came to adoption and implementation of digital technologies.
When asked about the barriers to advancing digital health initiatives, “behind the curve” respondents cited challenges starting with clinician resistance to adopting new solutions (51 percent) and difficulties integrating legacy systems with new digital/mobile technologies (50 percent). Availability of skilled IT staff (48 percent) and the identification/remediation of cybersecurity threats (45 percent) were also highly cited as challenges.
Jeff Livingstone
“These survey findings cannot be taken lightly, as we believe that being on the high end of the digital health continuum is positively correlated with reduced costs, improved efficiencies and most importantly, improved patient outcomes,” said Jeff R. Livingstone, PhD, vice president and global head, life sciences and healthcare, Unisys. “The survey also demonstrates that healthcare information technology needs to adopt modern technology platforms that have interoperability, transparency and efficiency at their core. Legacy healthcare systems do not easily meet these objectives and are costly to implement and operate.”
The survey also looked at the key initiatives that digital health technologies support. Notably, only 16 percent of laggards had a comprehensive data governance plan, and only nine percent of laggards said their organization was able to successfully apply data to determine the best course of action, compared to 83 percent and 78 percent of early adopters, respectively. Additionally, only 13 percent of laggards said that their medical devices could securely communicate with electronic health records.
“Access to real-time data is critical to healthcare providers and patients today. In many cases, providers can work with trusted vendors capable of offering both healthcare information technology and security strategies to help them better utilize and protect their patients’ data,” said Livingstone.
For more information on the study results, please click here.
Despite ending 2018 with a slow Q4, the outlook for technology services in healthcare remains strong, with opportunities in the provider space, robust M&A activity, newly introduced U.S. operations by India heritage firms, and more. The WITCH Report is a comprehensive review of the financial and market performance of global technology firms in healthcare and transaction insight of the sector’s biggest consulting firms.
Damo Consulting announces the annual review of major global technology consulting firms in healthcare. Titled “The WITCH Report” the report includes a comprehensive review of the financial and market performance of 11 global technology consulting firms in healthcare. The report provides a detailed review of market performance metrics, insights and dealings of major global technology firms, including Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant Technology Solutions and HCL (WITCH).
Aspects covered in the WITCH Report include financial performance, mergers and acquisitions, customer wins, strategic partnerships, new product initiatives and leadership announcements.
“Our annual review of 11 publicly held global technology consulting firms indicates a soft Q4 in 2018, with HLS business growth dropping below overall company growth. One firm continues to be an exception, growing at an impressive 18.56 percent on a YoY basis,” said Paddy Padmanabhan, CEO of Damo Consulting and author of The Big Unlock: Harnessing Data and Growing Digital Businesses in a Value-Based Era.
“The HLS business of all companies covered in this report contains a mixture of offerings, from infrastructure and applications services to business process services and in a couple of cases, IP and platform-based services. While the provider segment has long been a challenge for global IT consulting firms for a variety of reasons, we believe there are emerging opportunities in the provider space from digital transformation initiatives and cost reduction pressures, leading to IT operations outsourcing.”
The WITCH Report also provides additional insight on each featured company’s growth strategy. M & A activity continues to be robust. DXC, Cognizant and HCL have been the most active in the space. Many India-heritage firms have also set up operations centers and innovation hubs across the U.S. to be closer to customers with local talent and the need to tap into scarce skills such as design thinking which are important for digital transformation programs.
“The demand outlook for healthcare remains strong and broad-based. Most firms in this report are deriving their revenues currently from the payer and pharma segments, leaving a huge untapped opportunity in the provider space. As providers start to embrace outsourcing and invest more in digital transformation, global IT consulting firms will see a significant growth opportunity,” says Paddy Padmanabhan.
NTT DATA Services announces that it has acquired Cognosante Consulting, LLC, the consulting division of Cognosante. Cognosante Consulting provides IT strategy, planning, quality assurance and project management for state HHS agencies undergoing large-scale Medicaid and related human services IT and business transformation programs. The company has nearly three decades of experience working with 48 states and the federal government, developing, managing, and executing large, complex health information technology implementations.
As a result of the acquisition, NTT DATA Services will add more than 250 specialized consulting resources, as well as intellectual property currently supporting IT transformations, including those specific to Medicaid in more than 20 states.
Bob Pryor
“The acquisition of Cognosante’s consulting practice immediately establishes us as a leader in a growing health and human services market and enhances the value we can deliver to our clients in the public sector and healthcare,” said Bob Pryor, CEO, NTT DATA Services. “This acquisition is the latest in our ongoing strategy of growth by strategic acquisitions that augment our specialized industry expertise and geographical presence.”
“Cognosante Consulting has built an unmatched reputation supporting IT projects for state HHS departments and other state agencies. Combining our team with the resources and expertise of NTT DATA will enhance our ability to serve clients as they continue to modernize their IT systems to support business transformation,” said Jim Joyce, general manager of Cognosante’s consulting practice, who will continue to lead the organization and serve as senior vice president with NTT DATA Services. “As states revamp their legacy systems and business models, there is significant opportunity for NTT DATA. We are excited to be part of their long-term strategy to support successful state IT implementations.”
As part of NTT DATA Services, the consulting practice will be focused on client IT strategy, project management, quality assurance and Independent Verification and Validation services.
“Cognosante Consulting has been one of the building blocks of Cognosante,” said Michele Kang, founder and CEO of Cognosante. “We are extremely proud of what we have accomplished for our clients, while also increasing both top line revenue and the number of employees by about 500 percent since 2010. This growth of scope and reach, however, began to create conflicts with Cognosante’s core business, requiring us to look for divestiture opportunities.
“We could not have found a more perfect home than NTT DATA Services to align with Cognosante Consulting’s overall mission and company culture. Both Cognosante Consulting clients and employees will benefit tremendously from this combination. We are confident NTT DATA Services will take Cognosante Consulting to the next level while Cognosante continues to focus on its core mission of transforming the nation’s healthcare through innovative technology and solutions.”
A new technology which uses visual warnings to warn healthcare workers of infection could improve diagnosis and recovery times of human skin wounds, according to the University of Bath’s Biophysical Chemistry Group. The team worked with British clinicians to produce “Smartwound,” a dressing which releases a warning as soon as bacterial toxins are detected. The brains behind the technology are so confident in its ability, that they’ve created three prototypes, and say the technology within them will ward off infection in patients with both acute and chronic health issues.
Quicker diagnosis
While there are multiple signs – such as swelling, redness, and discharge – which will alert a medical professional that a wound is infected, these symptoms can take between one and three days to appear. During this time, the infection will have taken over the body, and malaise and high temperature will have set in. But the University of Bath’s new technology will cut this diagnosis time down to just minutes.
When the smartwound dressing is placed on the skin, it will dispel a harmless fluorescent dye when it comes into contact with bacteria from the wound. Meanwhile, when the scientists’ second technology prototype, a swab known as Space, is used, it will provide a positive or negative result for five key microbes in just half an hour, thanks to the phospholipid vesicles housed in the indicator solution. As a result, the relevant treatment can be given immediately.
More effective treatment
Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem throughout the world, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to treat many common infections. As such, smartwound technology will contribute to alleviating this problem, as a definite diagnosis means unnecessary antibiotics won’t be prescribed. Furthermore, when antibiotics are required, smaller doses will be required as infections will be less severe. This smart technology is, therefore, crucial for microbial fermentation process development. This is because it will aid the development of new antibiotic drugs and will make it easier for microbiologists to obtain and isolate the relevant organism for fermentation.
By Marvin Luz, senior director of revenue cycle management transformation, Greenway Health.
Marvin Luz
The move to value-based care not only impacts the approach providers take to serving their patients, but it also changes the way they document, account for, and bill patients — quickening billing cycles and creating a need for better cost containment.
Timely revenue cycle management (RCM) is essential for success in this new healthcare realm, but many practices still handle billing as if they were in the fee-for-service age. This leads to critical mistakes that cost them in the long run, including:
#1 – Lack of a defined process
Billing glitches originate in several areas of practice operations, especially during busy times. With many patients coming in and out of the office, important information may be miscommunicated, overlooked, or even lost. Practices must standardize their billing processes as a “cycle” that is clinically driven and embraced by staff.
#2 – Neglecting critical information
While managing every type of information contained in documents that practices require may seem overwhelming, providers must embrace this task to optimize revenue opportunities. For example, when organizations understand the nuances of payer contracts, they are in a better position to fully leverage payment and negotiations. Equally important is staying on top of edit reports, explanation of benefits forms, and other claims issues, while also making sure denied claims are reworked and resubmitted in a timely manner.
#3 – Failing to follow up
Providers employ a variety of strategies to improve collections, including appeals, tracers, collections letters, and payment plans. While these tactics are a good first step, many fall short due to lack of follow-up. Research conducted by Greenway Health found that only 62 percent of practices review delinquent claims, while just 59 percent of secondary claims are filed due to back office time constraints. Often, by the time a practice realizes a patient or payer has not responded, it’s too late to collect the money owed.
#4 Drowning in detail
Details are important, but when billing practices become all about them, organizations can neglect the bigger picture revenue opportunities. For example, if practices look for trends, such as repeated claims denials for the same services or claims that are denied for registration errors, processes can be reworked to avoid those common errors to occur in the future.
One of the sole national issues that the government can agree on is bringing down the astronomical costs of drug prices in the United States. The Senate Finance Committee and House Oversight Committee began to take on drug prices by holding two hearings this year on the issue with leading pharmaceutical companies, and a third planned for early April to examine pharmacy benefit managers’ role in the issue after they were called out as major contributors in previous hearings.
During the February meeting, the biggest players in the industry testified before the committee and it became clear that big pharma and the government are having trouble coming to a solution.
There has been much discussion around this critical issue of drug pricing in America but now a few innovators are shifting the conversation to how precision medicine provides hope for a possible solution. Therapeutics come with the risk of not working effectively for some patients and causing adverse side effects. However, applying precision medicine stratifies patients based on their disease biology and matches that patient group to the drugs that target their specific disease.
The drug prescribed will be more likely to effectively work and the cost of treating the patient group will decrease. While the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s investigation can eventually lead to legislation to mitigate price hikes, precision medicine technology currently exists to be a key driver in deflating drug spending for patients and payers and, thus, reducing drug prices. Two ways this type of technology can help to lower drug costs are: cutting spending on ineffective treatments and motivating the industry to develop and market personalized treatments.
The healthcare industry currently wastes roughly $2.5 billion in ineffective treatments annually. Take for example, the 1.3 million Americans living with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) – because autoimmune diseases like RA vary significantly from patient to patient, blockbuster therapies, which are “targeted” therapies and therefore only treat one pathway of the disease, are not effective for 66 percent of patients taking them.
This means that patients who see little or no benefit from these treatments are still paying up to $38,000 annually, proving to be a significant financial and emotional burden to patients and their loved ones. As medicine advances, it is becoming more apparent that giving these drugs to everyone diagnosed with the respective diseases no longer works, they need to be prescribed to sub-groups of patients based on their specific disease biology to truly be effective.
Through RNA data analysis, precision medicine can both help patients with autoimmune diseases like RA find targeted treatments that they are more likely to respond to before treatment is prescribed and direct pharmaceutical companies to develop targeted drugs specifically for those who do not respond to currently available therapies.
Thanks to the advent of technologies, we can witness irreversible changes in our daily life today. It is now easier to cope with our everyday routine because we have smart solutions that speed up the pace of our life and make it more convenient.
Healthcare is where technologies are expected to revolutionize treatment and research methods we are used to so much. Hence, we have prepared some technological trends that will make healthcare more advanced in 2019.
The Internet of Medical Things
The notion of The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is tightly connected with wearables. This technology is designed to transmit the patient’s data through various sensors and gadgets attached to the patient’s clothes or directly to their body. Fitness trackers and smart sensors are specifically elaborated to measure blood pressure, glucose level, pulse, heart rate, etc. Along with that, you can count calories you’ve burned, and miles walked.
Well, it doesn’t sound that innovative in 2019. But what makes it one of the most progressive trends is that the gathered data can be used in many various and innovative ways. For example, preventive medicine can benefit a lot with the help of IoMT. Research gets more accurate and timely, and it is even possible to prevent epidemics using the stats gathered in this way.
Anyway, if this is your college topic and you need thorough research of the field, you can consider getting case study help by ordering your paper online to ensure the highest quality and most accurate statistics.
Telehealth
Well … yes, consulting a doctor through your telly looks like a scene from one of those futuristic novels showing what the world would look like in the 21st century. In fact, it is what we have now. Modern technologies allow us to forget about hours spent in a clinic waiting for your doctor to invite you. That also includes waiting for the results of your tests.
Now you can consult any doctor in the world having a computer and an Internet connection. Imagine that you needed to see a reputable specialist in another country. It would be highly inconvenient to go all the way there just for a consultation. Firstly, you’d have to spend a lot of time. Secondly, you might need help to move around. And finally, it would be costly.
Today, you can contact your doctor from any spot in the world and get their consultation. It will not work in emergency cases, but it can work well if you need help with urgent but small issues. This is a good possibility for those who reside in far rural areas or require a highly specialized doctor to receive timely medical assistance.
The technology can also allow people to get consulted more frequently, which will improve the overall health of the population and establish better relations with doctors.
By Scott E. Rupp, publisher, Electronic Health Reporter.
The healthcare technology world is ablaze, on FHIR. New proposed standards for interoperability are being established to allow health systems the ability to share information and facilitate patient access to data. Specifically, in large part through a structure known as FHIR.
This “FHIR” the market is speaking of is Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, an interoperability standard for electronic exchange of healthcare information. FHIR was developed by Health Level Seven International (HL7), a not-for-profit that develops and provides frameworks and standards for the sharing, integration and retrieval of clinical health data and other electronic health information.
FHIR emerged in 2014 as a draft standard for trial use to enable health IT developers to more quickly and easily build applications for EHRs and to exchange and retrieve data faster from applications. FHIR soon received support from EHR vendors like Epic, Cerner and AthenaHealth. Shortly thereafter, the Argonaut Project emerged to move FHIR forward, and in February 2017, FHIR became a full data exchange standard.
FHIR is interoperability
FHIR is built on the concept of interoperability and modular components that can be assembled into working systems to try to resolve clinical, administrative and infrastructural problems in healthcare.
FHIR provides software development resources and tools for administrative concepts, such as patients, providers, organizations and devices, as well as a variety of clinical concepts including problems, medications, diagnostics, care plans and financial issues, among others. FHIR is designed specifically for the web and provides resources and foundations based on XML, JSON, HTTP, Atom and OAuth structures.
FHIR can be used in mobile phone applications, cloud communications, EHR-based data sharing and among institutional healthcare providers.
According to HL7, FHIR aims to simplify implementation without sacrificing information integrity. FHIR “leverages existing logical and theoretical models to provide a consistent, easy to implement and rigorous mechanism for exchanging data between healthcare applications. FHIR has built-in mechanisms for traceability to the HL7 RIM and other important content models. This ensures alignment to HL7’s previously defined patterns and best practices without requiring the implementer to have intimate knowledge of the RIM or any HL7 v3 derivations.”
Health sector buy-in
The healthcare sector has clearly bought into FHIR, primarily because of interoperability challenges.
“Sharing data between different health systems has required significant investment of IT resources on one-off projects,” said Nilesh Chandra, healthcare expert at PA Consulting. “As the needs for data sharing have increased, hospital IT departments have been swamped with demand for all of this custom integration.
“FHIR and similar standards are an attempt at standardizing data integration, to make it easier to connect EHR systems and easily extract or upload data into them, based on reusable IT components,” added Chandra. “That said, FHIR is an important step in the right direction, but is not the panacea for all health IT integration issues.”
FHIR uses a set of commonly used medical ideas termed as “resources.” The resources are used across many different types of companies and organizations, but can all mean the same thing. An example would be blood pressure readings, or an MRI scan. Those resources are held in EHRs, smartphones, health information exchange databases and so on. FHIR also allows for the mining of those elements since they are tagged in a similar way in the FHIR standard.
“The complex part is done by individual systems that don’t have the same operating system,” said Jason Reed, PharmD blog founder. “Because they can pull that tag then they pull it and exchange it with other entities. They only show the tag and not the other code or structures they had to use to get to that tag.”
While consolidated clinical document architecture allows a group of healthcare items to be sent together, this is essentially like sending an electronic PDF, Reed said. Other systems that have different operating systems can’t break that down unless they use the same operating system.
FHIR’s culmination
All of this is a culmination of the fact that digital health data can improve outcomes and lower costs, but the reality has been something less than ideal. For example, during the economic stimulus in 2009, systems were designed before modern web standards for storing and exchanging data were ubiquitous. The industry was caught in the middle of a technical revolution and spent its cash before the best new practices were available, said Nick Hatt, senior developer at Redox.
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Thanks to the advent of technologies, we can witness irreversible changes in our daily life today. It is now easier to cope with our everyday routine because we have smart solutions that speed up the pace of our life and make it more convenient.
The healthcare technology world is ablaze, on FHIR. New proposed standards for interoperability are being established to allow health systems the ability to share information and facilitate patient access to data. Specifically, in large part through a structure known as FHIR.