21st Century Oncology, the largest integrated cancer care network in America, has announced the hiring of industry veteran Todd Higgins as the company’s chief financial officer.
Higgins, whose career has spanned two decades in healthcare services, joins 21st Century Oncology after recently serving as chief financial officer at Confluent Health, LLC and Kindred Healthcare, Inc., two Louisville, Kentucky-based companies. During that time, he has headed the financial activities for multiple Fortune 500 companies and privately held companies, demonstrating strategic prowess for surpassing revenue and cost-saving goals, and facilitating company turnarounds, integrations and acquisitions.
“We are excited to welcome such an amazing and experienced leader as Todd, whose extensive healthcare background and personal values align well with the patient-focused and physician-friendly culture we have established at 21st Century Oncology,” said Kim Commins-Tzoumakas, CEO of 21st Century Oncology. “Todd brings a strong blend of public and private company experience and an outstanding understanding of how to adapt to an increasingly consumer-driven healthcare industry. We will greatly benefit from his leadership and financial acumen as we continue to take 21st Century Oncology to new strategic heights.”
During his career as a chief financial officer, Higgins has been hand-selected to lead strategic acquisitions and turnaround efforts, helping grow revenue and earnings while transforming healthcare companies.
Salesforce announces new additions to Salesforce Health Cloud that improve healthcare through connected, intelligent patient engagement. Health Cloud brings CRM to healthcare, enabling providers like Piedmont Healthcare and 180 Health Partners to personalize patient interactions and improve outcomes. With new social determinants of health capabilities, care teams have a complete patient profile, empowering them to connect the care journey and deliver the personalized experiences that patients expect.
“As a not-for-profit, community health system, it is critical that we put the patient experience at the center of everything we do,” said Andrew Chang, executive director of marketing and physician outreach at Piedmont Healthcare. “Salesforce has enabled us to engage with our patients and help them get easier access to care, on their terms, by personalizing how we connect with them and using new ways to book appointments online.”
Introducing Salesforce innovations for healthcare
Salesforce Health Cloud’s new capabilities power complete patient profiles, relevant patient communications, and convenient, connected in-home care, including:
Social Determinants of Health: While medical care continues to improve at a steady pace, that alone cannot address the 80 percent to 90 percent of modifiable contributors to healthy outcomes, such as living conditions, socioeconomic status and environmental factors. These social determinants of health are frequently not identified by care providers, as systems for tracking and surfacing them are siloed in electronic health record (EHR) systems that require manual updates and are difficult to use.
Now care providers can capture critical social determinant information – such as a patient’s transportation options, housing status and care network, and access it in a patient profile – directly within Health Cloud. This gives the provider a more complete view of the critical factors that influence wellness, adherence and outcomes, all on one connected platform.
For example, a care provider that wants to limit a patient’s risk for readmission can know if the patient has access to transportation, or the ability to purchase healthy meals. Similarly, a life science organization that wants to help patients adhere to their therapies or properly use their medical devices can see a patient’s employment status and living arrangements, and thus offer the necessary level of financial and in-home support. A payer organization can deliver personalized preventive or wellness materials to members based on the member’s education or reading level.
By Samant Virk, MD, CEO and co-founder, MediSprout.
Samant Virk
Ask a doctor why he or she decided to go into the field of medicine and their answers vary. Many want to help people and they have personal stories like a sick parent that motivated them to become a physician. Others may come from a long line of doctors in their family and it’s a real point of pride. But, one thing is very clear, you likely won’t find a doctor who answers that question with, “So I could deal with insurance companies or get great at filling out the electronic health record (EHR).”
The cold truth is that in 2019 doctors spend more time filling out paperwork, playing phone tag, navigating federal and state mandates, and dealing with medication authorizations than they do helping their patients. Doctors spend only a fraction of their time actually building a better doctor/patient relationship and treating people. It’s hard to pinpoint when the doctor/patient relationship inextricably changed. But it’s estimated that doctors today spend just 27 percent of their time with patients.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment in healthcare is technology. We’ve all heard the “Oh how wonderful this new system is, it will change your world and healthcare for the better.” Rather than help us be better doctors who are able to assist a greater number of patients more effectively, it has created barriers and reduced our impact, interfering with one of the most essential parts of healthcare in which we were trained — communicating with our patients.
That’s because the technology is actually designed to reduce costs by leveraging data collected from government-mandated EHR rather than toward actually making patients feel better by addressing their medical needs.
Just like Uber disrupted the taxi industry and fintech is disrupting financial services, our practices need disrupting, too. And I believe it should be an inside job. Start-ups with 20-something computer geniuses are clearly brilliant, but the start-up model of launch, fail, re-launch won’t work for doctors. In healthcare, there is little room, or tolerance, for error.
The American Medical Association delivered the following comment letter to ONC National Coordinator Donald Rucker, MD and CMS Administrator Seema Verma urging a 30-day extension to the comment periods for the two proposed federal rules regarding interoperability and information blocking. The letter is posted in its entirety below:
Dear Dr. Rucker and Administrator Verma:
On behalf of the physician and medical student members of the American Medical Association (AMA), I want to express my appreciation for the detail and thought put into your proposed rules, 21st Century Cures Act: Interoperability, Information Blocking, and the ONC Health IT Certification Program and Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Interoperability and Patient Access for Medicare Advantage Organization and Medicaid Managed Care Plans, State Medicaid Agencies, CHIP Agencies and CHIP Managed Care Entities, Issuers of Qualified Health Plans in the Federally-facilitated Exchanges and Health Care Providers.
The 21st Century Cures Act includes many provisions that, through prudent regulation, will advance patients’ and physicians’ access to medical information. I recognize and appreciate the desire for swift rulemaking. However, such rapid change in health care policy, technology, and business practices may lead to unintended consequences for patient privacy and physician burden. Moreover, the proposed rules are interwoven, complex in nature, and include multiple detailed requests for information. To ensure that the rules are as successful as possible in meeting your goals, it is vital that stakeholders be given adequate time to provide comprehensive, thoughtful, and detailed comments. Expediency should not take precedence over deliberation as we confront a true paradigm shift in health care. I therefore urge that the comment periods for both rules be extended by at least 30 days. I appreciate your consideration and ongoing collaboration.
Thank you for considering our request. If you have any questions or care to discuss further, please feel free to reach out to Margaret Garikes, vice president of federal affairs, at 202-789-7409 or margaret.garikes@ama-assn.org.
Health Level Seven International (HL7), announces the launch of the HL7 FHIR Accelerator Program. The program is based on a model piloted by the HL7 Argonaut Project and, more recently, the HL7 Da Vinci Project. The goal is to strengthen the FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard and enhance market adoption through a programmatic approach available to myriad stakeholders.
Charles Jaffe, MD, PhD
“HL7 FHIR has achieved remarkable adoption on a global scale,” said Dr. Charles Jaffe, CEO of HL7. “An ever-growing community of implementers has emerged across a broad spectrum of health care, eager to participate in an agile onramp for FHIR adoption and implementation. The HL7 FHIR Accelerator Program provides the framework for that community to leverage the technical capability, management expertise and experience gained during the creation and growth of the Argonaut and Da Vinci Projects.”
Building on the success of current projects – Argonaut (provider-provider and provider-patient) and Da Vinci (payer-provider) – The CARIN Alliance has recently been approved as an HL7 FHIR accelerator project (payer-patient). The three projects are complementary initiatives.
“On behalf of the CARIN Alliance, its board and membership, we are grateful for the opportunity to work more closely with HL7 as part of the FHIR Accelerator Program as we work to develop additional FHIR implementation guides so consumers can get access to more of their health information,” said Ryan Howells, CARIN Alliance Project Manager and Principal at Leavitt Partners. “Consumers and their authorized caregivers are requesting more access to health care data with less friction to empower them to become more informed, shared decision-makers in the care they receive.”
The original concept behind accelerating HL7 FHIR began approximately four years ago with the advent of the Argonaut Project.
By Pratik Kirve, writer, blogger, and content writer, Allied Analytics.
Pratik Kirve
Healthcare providers have been considering data confidentiality more than ever. It has become a part of patient experience as the implementation of biometric technology to safeguard patient information adds a layer of trust and confidence. As the popularity of biometric authentication increases among smartphone users, healthcare providers have been utilizing it for various processes, especially security. According to the cybersecurity survey by HIMSS, there has been a significant improvement in awareness regarding cybersecurity among healthcare organizations.
More funding has been allocated to IT departments and the advantage of an increasing number of healthcare-specific solutions have been taken. Though the survey spotted many flaws in the implementation of security measures such as usage of outdated tech in the networks, the awareness, and implementation of security shows organizations have taken patient data security seriously. The survey found that hackers have begun security breaches and organizations need to put better vigilance over the patient data and information.
Various measures have been taken by market players and tech giants to ensure the security of data. Fingerprint reading technology has been released to improve security and offer controlled access. Market players have been collaborating to enable better security through integration of iris biometric information with blockchain network. The industry for healthcare biometrics is booming. According to the research firm Allied Market Research, the global healthcare biometrics market is expected to grow at a considerable CAGR through 2023. Following are some of the activities taking place in the industry:
By Brooke Faulkner, freelance writer; @faulknercreek.
Being rushed to the hospital is a traumatic event in a child’s life, yet a staggering 25.5 million children are taken to the emergency room each year. The reasons for these ER trips range from poisonings and infections to mental health conditions and diabetes, plus a host of terrifying injuries and baffling disorders. In addition to emergencies, there are children who make frequent visits to hospitals or stay there for weeks on end to receive ongoing treatment for chronic conditions.
Children today are much more tech-savvy than in the past — they’re getting smartphones before their age hits double digits. Many hospital administrators take tech trends into consideration in order to make the overall experience better for patients and their families. Even the processes and workflows that hospital staff follow now stress the patients’ experience. Technology is also helping doctors and surgeons perform their jobs more efficiently and safely while offering quality healthcare to more families than before.
Faster care for injuries
The last thing you expect when heading to a birthday party is leaving with your child in an ambulance. Bounce houses and similar structures are responsible for a number of injuries, and they have been for a long time. Injuries can happen at any time, and hospital staff needs to be prepared to handle them to ensure optimal health outcomes.
In more dire circumstances, faster care is necessary to save the lives of those injured. In the wake of natural disasters, as local leaders scramble to help their respective communities find stability, faster healthcare processes are required to protect the lives of those affected.
Some hospitals are using technology that tells patients the wait times at nearby emergency rooms. This can help parents decide where to take their child for the fastest attention possible. If there’s no hospital that can treat an injury at the moment, the parent can opt to visit their primary doctor or another emergency clinic.
I recently returned from HIMSS19 where I attended some excellent educational sessions and met with dozens of individuals serving the sector through their businesses and partnerships. While there I was specifically looking to establish new content partnerships with health IT’s thought leaders. My goal: To produce an abundant amount of high-quality content from the brightest and most innovative minds in the healthcare technology community for my site, Electronic Health Reporter, which I’ve published for nearly seven years.
Like most health IT sites, I have aggressive growth goals for 2019 and the amount of content I need to meet these goals I cannot produce on my own. So, I need some help. I am seeking content and thought leadership pieces from members of the healthcare technology community. If you are interested in contributing a piece or a series or a regular column, I’d grateful to have it. Requirements are pretty straight-forward: 600 words minimum, vendor neutral and non-markety (unless you’d like to sponsor a piece).
If you are a member of a content development team or agency, please consider passing this along to your colleagues and clients; if you are a thought leader who would like to contribute, please contact me directly for more details.
Thanks to the support of the healthcare technology community, Electronic Health Reporter has experienced tremendous growth in the last year or so and I’d like see even more of it. For those who don’t know, this experiment is a passion project for me; it doesn’t pay my bills nor does it keep me from working a full-time day job. I publish the site because I love health IT, and as a content creator myself I understand the value of publications that see my work and my client’s messages as important. With your content (and social) support, perhaps we can keep this thing going for another seven years!
Salesforce announces new additions to Salesforce Health Cloud that improve healthcare through connected, intelligent patient engagement. Health Cloud brings CRM to healthcare, enabling providers like Piedmont Healthcare and 180 Health Partners to personalize patient interactions and improve outcomes. With new social determinants of health capabilities, care teams have a complete patient profile, empowering them to connect the care journey and deliver the personalized experiences that patients expect.
The American Medical Association delivered the following comment letter to ONC National Coordinator Donald Rucker, MD and CMS Administrator Seema Verma urging a 30-day extension to the comment periods for the two proposed federal rules regarding interoperability and information blocking. The letter is posted in its entirety below:
Being rushed to the hospital is a traumatic event in a child’s life, yet a staggering 
I recently returned from HIMSS19 where I attended some excellent educational sessions and met with dozens of individuals serving the sector through their businesses and partnerships. While there I was specifically looking to establish new content partnerships with health IT’s thought leaders. My goal: To produce an abundant amount of high-quality content from the brightest and most innovative minds in the healthcare technology community for my site, Electronic Health Reporter, which I’ve published for nearly seven years.