By Bill Chartnetski, EVP health system solutions and government affairs, PointClickCare.
For too long, long-term and post-acute care (LTPAC) facilities have not benefited from the same health IT investments or incentives as other care sectors.
Since the U.S. government introduced the meaningful use program as part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act in 2009, LTPAC organizations – notably nursing homes – and the vulnerable patients they serve have been left behind. As a result, these provider types sit outside of current interoperability and health information exchange efforts, and have been slow to adopt electronic health records (EHRs) due to a lack of government incentive programs. In fact, recent data show that only 18% of skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) integrate patient health information electronically.
The lack of investment impairs the necessary exchange of health information, exacerbates care fragmentation and disables the ability to transmit a patient’s critical health and demographic data across the trajectory of care. Patients of LTPAC providers are more likely to have chronic health conditions or behavioral health needs.
The complex nature of their health history and requirements makes care coordination more difficult as they transition between settings. So, why are we depriving the providers that care for them of critical infrastructure investments, especially as other sectors have received similar investments and adoption incentives in recent years?
Long-term care facilities are suffering from long-existing shortcomings exacerbated by COVID-19. On a daily basis, they contend with staffing challenges, infection control, oversight and regulation. Yet they are resilient and unwavering in their commitment to care.
Technology presents enormous opportunities to alleviate these issues, namely staffing challenges and the burden of administrative tasks that often take them away from caring for patients. One study, for example, found that six months after implementation of an EHR, nurses were spending significantly more time engaging patients in their rooms with purposeful interactions and less time at a nurse station. Using health information technology to capture resident health information in real time can also substantially reduce staff fatigue, burnout and the burden of relying on short-term memory, while also improving patient safety by enhancing the accuracy of the patient information.
By Ryan Mooney, general manager, Source Division, HealthEdge.
In our healthcare ecosystem, waste, fraud and abuse run rampant: in 2020 alone, healthcare spending in the U.S. exceeded $4 trillion, and estimates suggest about a quarter of that was attributed to waste. What this tells us is that an increased focus on payment integrity – and in particular, fixing its traditionally disparate practices – has the potential to greatly benefit payers, providers, and ultimately members.
At its core, payment integrity is the process by which stakeholders ensure healthcare claims are paid properly, both pre- and post-pay. It encompasses determining the correct party, membership eligibility, contractual adherence, and fraud, waste and abuse detection and prevention. In recent years, as healthcare spending continues to skyrocket, payment integrity has received more attention – and investment – than ever. And yet, it leaves much to be desired.
The Current State of Payment Integrity
A comprehensive payment integrity strategy is key to lowering costs and achieving higher quality of care for members, but the systems in place are far from perfect. With over 24 years working in payment integrity, throughout this experience I’ve found it nearly impossible not to run into issues within the system. As it stands, many parties focus on enriching the contingency model versus solving the problem. Structurally, the contingency model is flawed: when the vendor gets paid according to the quantity of errors they find, the core problem will continue, as these parties are incentivized to identify what is incorrect rather than why.
Our 2021 Voice of the Market survey of over 200 health insurance executives found that payment accuracy would help reduce administrative costs at their organization, directly impacting savings that can be reallocated for other business priorities such as considering partnerships, acquisitions, or investing in a new geography or line of business. This represents a substantial shift from the past, demonstrating how stakeholders today want to take advantage of all available resources to expand in the current landscape.
By Heidi Jannenga, PT, DPT, ATC, co-founder and chief clinical officer, WebPT.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic began, only 2% of physical therapists were providing telehealth consultations. Since then, telehealth has evolved into an integral part of the rehab therapy industry. This was no easy feat, as physical therapists have long been left out of telehealth.
According to WebPT’s 2021 State of Rehab Therapy report, 44% of therapy professionals reported using videoconferencing or virtual meeting software for the first time in 2020, and 40% reported using telehealth software for the first time. As interest in remote services continues beyond initial pandemic lockdowns, our entire industry needs to flex and embrace new technology. Here’s what to know.
The rise of telehealth
The transition to telehealth has brought countless benefits to physical therapy (PT) providers, along with a few challenges. While it’s true that telehealth will never replace hands-on treatment, it is an extremely promising alternative method of care delivery—and a true game-changer for the industry. In fact, our research has found that 9 in 10 therapy professionals have patients showing interest in telehealth services. This is no surprise, since telehealth offers the convenience that today’s patients want.
Telehealth allows PTs to reach a much wider range of patients than they would otherwise be able to treat. Many patients live in remote areas or do not have the time to travel to a clinic, making telehealth an ideal alternative. It also expands access to care for patients who might otherwise never receive PT treatment. This is extremely important, since 90% of those who could benefit from PT never receive it. At the same time, telehealth supports revenue diversification to safeguard clinics against future crises.
Another advantage of telehealth is how it allows physical therapists a new view into their patients’ lives and to learn how to provide the best help possible. For example, PTs can now see a patient’s home and gather clues regarding their environment, which helps them provide more customized treatment and advice. For example, do they have stairs in their home, are there transitions from hard flooring to carpet, or do they live alone?
Finally, PT and OT have been shown to be beneficial for those who have suffered severe COVID-19 cases, especially those who are struggling with muscle and respiratory weakness. These patients are able to receive the help they need through telehealth without putting others at risk. Also, a 2022 JAMA study shows that “telehealth encounters for chronic conditions had similar rates of follow-up to in-person encounters for these conditions.” Altogether, we can expect telehelath to play a greater role in managing ongoing conditions—including those best addressed with physical therapy.
Diabetes mellitus type 1 and type 2 belong to chronic health conditions that are widely spread all around the world. The main difference between them is that type 1 diabetes occurs when the body does not produce insulin to regulate blood sugar levels, while type 2 diabetes takes place when the body produces a certain amount of insulin but does not use it effectively.
Both types ofdiabetes mellitus oftentimes make people dependent on daily injections of insulin to regulate their blood sugar levels. While these injections, in their turn, might be performed with the help of insulin syringes, pens, or pumps. Usually, it is the task of the healthcare provider to define what device will work best in the individual case of each patient.
In case the usage of syringes is your option, it is essential to define what kind of syringe and needle size will be right for you. To do so, feel free to go through the below-mentioned information.
A Few Words on the Usage of Insulin Syringes and Needles
The usage of insulin syringes and needles is probably the most popular method of injecting insulin. Despite the appearance of insulin pens and pumps, a great number of people consider the insulin syringe to be the easiest, most convenient, and most cost-effective device to administer insulin beneath the skin.
By Dr. Shayan Vyas, SVP and medical director of hospitals and health systems, Teladoc Health.
As patient expectations continue to evolve, hospitals and health systems are required to offer an omnichannel experience that lets patients connect with the health system whenever and wherever, and via the channel of their choice (in-person, phone, video, etc.).
As patients gain more choices, it becomes harder for health systems to ensure a quality experience, maintain complete patient records, keep patient data secure and maintain care coordination.
In fact, a 2019 Deloitte study found that 90% of healthcare data is unstructured and largely inaccessible for data-driven decisions. The result is ultimately elevated risks to patient safety, care quality and compliance.
Fortunately, these challenges can be avoided with a well-connected platform for hybrid care – a method of care many leading U.S. health systems employ today. In planning for this new care model, hospitals and health systems can implement care technology that integrates into a single platform that supports internal clinicians, care team and patient communications across all channels that also integrates with current workflows and systems.
The integration of communications across both physical and virtual channels gives patients and providers the engagement options and experience they want, and health systems the security, coordination, information access and control they need. And ultimately, it minimizes clinician burden by eliminating redundant devices, logins, data entries and other workflow tasks.
Here are what we believe to be the most important features of an integrated platform:
A single sign on to simplify and promote a good user experience
Multiple logins are more than an inconvenience, they are a risk. When clinicians and patients are required to log into multiple systems to perform their common activities it becomes tempting to reuse the same login credentials. This raises the risk of exposure and chances of a system breach. The more logins that are required, the more chances there are for failed logins, which can cause appointments to be missed or for records not to be updated. A single sign on allows patients and clinicians to launch telehealth visits directly when logged into the patient portal and/or EHR system.
Interoperability with EHRs
With care models, patient preferences and clinician workflows all changing, hospitals and health systems are rethinking their communications channels and workflows to better support these changes. A constant amid these changes is that the EHR will remain as the system of record. Ideally, as healthcare organizations improve their systems of engagement with patients, these systems work in concert with the EHR.
Clinicians should be able to access the EHR to review information and make updates while they are interacting with patients via telehealth, from the same screen. This level of integration encourages timely and complete record keeping, which supports care quality and continuity. It also eliminates the need for redundant data entry (once in the telehealth system, and again in the EHR), allowing clinicians to give patients their full attention, ultimately leading to a better patient experience.
Throughout 2020 and much of 2021, as the pandemic raged, nursing home staff fled their jobs amid the unsafe and poor working conditions, unfair compensation and the lack of work-life balance due to unrelenting overtime.
While staffing shortages have been commonplace in nursing homes for decades, the pandemic made it extremely hard to retain nurses in post-acute care/skilled nursing homes. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that the nursing home industry has lost approximately 235,000 jobs since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 , representing a 15% loss in industry staffers. While some workers are shifting to healthcare jobs in hospitals or other types of facilities, many are leaving the industry entirely.
Nor is the staffing shortage expected to get better anytime soon. For example, a recent American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) survey finds that nearly every nursing home operator has trouble finding qualified workers. At the same time, a record three-quarters of facilities may close due to persistent staffing issues.
The ongoing shortage of nursing staff in the U.S. is causing a projected $19.5 billion in unrealized revenue by the end of this year. With organizational funding and reimbursement tied to patient volumes, every unoccupied bed equals a missed revenue opportunity and declining profitability. Without the necessary staff to increase patient volumes, nursing home operators nationwide are punting the organizational funding and reimbursement they need to thrive.
A new examination of patient perspectives on data privacy illustrates unresolved tension over the eroding security and confidentiality of personal health information in a wired society and economy. More than 92% of patients believe privacy is a right and their health data should not be available for purchase, according to a survey released today by the American Medical Association (AMA).
The survey of 1,000 patients was conducted by Savvy Cooperative, a patient-owned source of healthcare insights, at the beginning of 2022 and found concern over data privacy protections and confusion regarding who can access personal health information. Nearly 75% of patients expressed concern about protecting the privacy of personal health data, and only 20% of patients indicated they knew the scope of companies and individuals with access to their data.
This concern is magnified with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization as the lack of data privacy could place patients and physicians in legal peril in states that restrict reproductive health services.
The survey indicated patients are most comfortable with physicians and hospitals having access to personal health data, and least comfortable with social media sites, employers and technology companies having access to the same data.
“Patients trust that physicians are committed to protecting patient privacy – a crucial element for honest health discussions,” said AMA president Jack Resneck Jr., M.D. “Many digital health technologies, however, lack even basic privacy safeguards. More must be done by policymakers and developers to protect patients’ health information. Most health apps are either unregulated or underregulated, requiring near and long-term policy initiatives and robust enforcement by federal and state regulators. Patient confidence in data privacy is undermined as technology companies and data brokers gain access to indelible health data without patient knowledge or consent and share this information with third parties, including law enforcement.”
Laboratory information system (LIS) and laboratory information management system (LIMS) are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably. However, although the two overlap and are somewhat similar, they are inherently different.
Essentially they were designed to support different laboratory types and functionality. While LIS is used to support clinical and patient-centric specimens, LIMS was intended for sample-centric laboratory requirements. This includes clinical research or other nonclinical laboratory settings.
But, because the overlap today is so close, it might be tricky to pinpoint the difference. So, we thought we would take a look at them separately and then delve into the key differences to better understand what they offer.
What Is a LIS?
A LIS is software that records, manages, and stores patient testing data. This is used for clinical and pathology laboratories.
Its main features include receiving test orders, sending orders to a laboratory to analyze, tracking orders and results, and transmitting results from a searchable database.
LIS software such as NovoPath LIS can help the overall streamlining of a workflow with various tools including outreach tools, data mining capabilities, and point-of-care testing support. This whole process is essential to the determination of patient health status as well as pinpointing and developing treatments.
