MDaudit, an award-winning provider of technologies and analytics tools that enable premier healthcare organizations to retain revenue and reduce risk, announced today the retirement of its long-time president and CEO, Peter J. Butler, effective Mar. 31, 2023. Stepping into the CEO role will be the company’s current COO, Ritesh Ramesh.
Butler will continue serving on MDaudit’s Board of Directors and as an investor, advising on future investments and growth opportunities for the company. He has been with MDaudit for 30 years, including the past 16 as president and CEO.
“My tenure with MDaudit has been truly rewarding, but it is time for me to pursue my personal goals,” said Butler, who was the visionary behind the company’s successful transition from consulting to technology. “By remaining on the board, I get the best of both worlds; the opportunity to start the next chapter of my life while supporting Ritesh as he guides MDaudit’s continued innovation and strengthens its position at the leading edge of the revenue integrity marketplace.”
Ramesh joined MDaudit in 2019 as CTO and played an integral role in the company’s conversion to a technology organization focused on supporting the healthcare industry’s evolution toward revenue integrity. In 2021, he was recognized by the Globee Awards as Chief Technology Officer of the Year in the 16th Annual IT World Awards and in 2020 won Silver in the 8th Annual CEO World Awards, Executive Achievement of the Year for Information Technology Services category. Ramesh was promoted to COO in 2021 and has been leading MDaudit’s customer and technology teams to fuel the company’s growth and ongoing innovation in the revenue integrity marketplace.
“It is an honor to take the helm of MDaudit and build upon our mission of delivering innovation through technology-enabled healthcare revenue integrity,” said Ramesh. “We have a great culture, growing customer base, and a market leading platform. We will continue to focus on delivering the next-generation tools and innovative partnerships that transform revenue cycle management and compliance strategies and empower our customers to strengthen revenues and stay ahead of regulatory risks.”
According to a report, about 50 million (20.4%) American adults had chronic pain, while 19.6 million (8%) experienced high-impact chronic pain. Sadly, researchers and doctors are discovering that painkillers, including over-the-counter medications and potent opioids, may not lessen specific kinds of chronic pain or enhance the quality of life. However, technological advancements have helped make chronic pain treatments more effective, affordable, and accessible.
With the help of technology, chronic pain sufferers can track physical symptoms as they happen, recognize environmental factors that impact pain levels, spot early depression and anxiety warning signs, and more. Here are five ways pain management has advanced with technology.
Extracorporeal Pulse Activation Technology (EPAT)
EPAT, also called shockwave therapy, is a non-invasive treatment alternative for relieving pain associated with most musculoskeletal conditions, including tennis elbow, plantar fasciitis, frozen shoulder, and carpal tunnel syndrome. This solution is FDA-approved, doesn’t have downtime, needs no anesthesia, and doesn’t leave scars.
EPAT treatment utilizes acoustic pressure or shock waves to improve blood circulation while speeding up recovery. It can effectively address chronic and acute pain, including knee, foot, heel, hamstring, ankle, back, shoulder, neck, hand, elbow, and wrist pain. Sports injury-related pain can also be handled using EPAT.
Telemedicine
Telemedicine, also known as telehealth, is a distinctive care model for chronic pain patients. It consists of virtual visits through phone, chat, or video. Chronic pain sufferers experience extra barriers when looking for medical care. Taking an hour or two seated in a vehicle may worsen the pain. With telemedicine, physical medical visits are reduced because people with chronic pain can manage it from anywhere.
While in-person appointments may be essential for injections, this treatment option does great for other procedures, including follow-ups or pain assessments. A telemedicine service can address chronic pain conditions, including lower back, nerve damage, arthritis, cancer-related pain, migraine or facial pain, and pelvic or belly pain.
By Anthony Cusimano, technical director, Object First.
There’s no sugarcoating it: cybercriminals are attacking the US healthcare industry. The FBI announced recently that healthcare suffered more ransomware attacks than any other industry in 2022.
As healthcare professionals, the ultimate goal is to provide safe and efficient patient care. Consistent and accurate access to electronic health records is a massive part of this objective, which any data disruption can harm. Once a threat actor is inside a system, they can disrupt operations by exfiltrating data, locking or deleting files, and encrypting data until a ransom is paid. Healthcare organizations should be aware of ransomware’s threat, no matter the institution’s size, and plan to protect its data.
A rampant threat
The focus on healthcare as a target for ransomware attacks has been building for some time. From 2016 to 2021, ransomware attacks against US healthcare organizations more than doubled. But now, cybercriminals gangs are becoming more innovative, using new techniques to get into networks, evade detection, and encrypt files.
In February, the Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center warned healthcare systems of a new ransomware variant targeting the industry: MedusaLocker. The group took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to infiltrate and encrypt healthcare systems. Ransomware variants like MedusaLocker, including Royal and Clop, make healthcare their primary target because of the wealth of personal information available in these systems. Additionally, healthcare organizations often have less robust IT/cybersecurity departments than other industries, such as the technology or financial sectors, due to staffing shortages, lack of funds, and outdated tech.
But ransomware isn’t the only thing that can take down a healthcare practice. Natural disasters, such as flooding or inclement weather, or human error, such as an employee accidentally deleting an important file, can happen just as unexpectedly. All hospital IT departments and independent practices should have a data backup and recovery plan to protect sensitive electronic medical records and keep patient care running smoothly and safely. However, often these departments only have the resources to implement solutions that run unmonitored in the background. Without a proper plan, this leaves them vulnerable when data disruptions occur.
While all of this may seem disheartening, actions are within our control. Consider these steps to be prepared for when data disruption strikes.
Inovalon, a provider of cloud-based software solutions empowering data-driven healthcare, launches Converged Outreach. This new cloud-based SaaS product is a patient outreach orchestration solution that empowers healthcare organizations to coordinate the analytically-derived patient intervention programs of multiple concurrent initiatives to achieve optimal engagement, impact, and efficiency.
Traditional approaches by health plans and other value-based and outcomes-based organizations often have multiple patient engagement initiatives running simultaneously, such as quality improvement, risk score accuracy improvement, smoking cessation, cancer screening, medication adherence, vaccination management, and others. This frequently results in discordant outreach efforts that confuse patients, drive up costs, and add unnecessary friction to both the patient and their providers.
Inovalon’s new cloud-based Converged Outreach SaaS solution enables healthcare organizations to customize integrated, patient-specific intervention programs and coordinate outreach in one efficient solution. Utilizing predictive analytics informed by the data of billions of medical events, Converged Outreach leverages sophisticated algorithms focused on key elements such as patient compliance likelihood, total impact opportunity, and operational workflow optimization.
Tracking and modifying programs at the patient level in response to past patient engagements, historical intervention performance results, and resource availability are further differentiators of the solution. The resulting coordinated outreach plan is available to the customer in real-time for provision to their existing resources or a growing ecosystem of third-party healthcare services vendors for the outreach plan’s coordinated intervention plan to be undertaken across the identified patients.
“Inovalon believes in personalized care, and in the power of data to drive the right action at the right time,” said Craig Savage, President and General Manager of Inovalon’s Payer business. “With Converged Outreach, customers have a powerful solution at their fingertips to coordinate programs that otherwise have operated in separate silos, now confidently targeting the right coordinated interventions to the right patient at the right time, driving significant improvements to quality of care, economic outcomes, and clinical performance.”
Converged Outreach is fully interoperable with Inovalon’s cloud-based Converged solution suite, a set of integrated, pure SaaS offerings that simplify implementation, shorten the time to program impact, and avoid the need and cost of additional disparate data integrations, data security auditing processes, vendor management, and operational reporting.
Revenue cycle management solutions provider AGS Health announced the launch of operations in Manila, Philippines. Serving as a strategic growth partner to more than 100 major healthcare providers across the U.S., the expansion will offer AGS Health and its customers increased access to global talent.
Identified as one of the most popular outsourcing destinations in the world, the Philippines is known for the quality of skills offered in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector. With strong medical backgrounds and voice-based skills, AGS Health aims to focus on supporting end-to-end accounts receivable services. “By augmenting our service line with patient calls, responding to patient queries, and timely patient follow-ups, the addition of our Philippines operations represents an exciting added value to our customers,” said Patrice Wolfe, CEO of AGS Health.
As the company continues to grow, AGS Health is diversifying its global operating locations. The Manila office is the second recent global addition for the company, following the opening of its Jaipur, India office in June 2022. With more than 11,000 employees worldwide, AGS Health combines a global pool of expertly trained, college-educated resources with AI-enabled technology to leverage the latest advancements in modern revenue cycle practices.
The COVID-19 global pandemic and widespread natural disasters have highlighted the importance of business continuity planning. With an already-extensive presence established in India, AGS Health strengthens its infrastructure with this cross-country addition.
“Our expanded footprint reduces the risk of business disruptions to our clients should operations be interrupted in India,” Wolfe said, adding “The Philippines emerged as our top choice for its solid, low-risk infrastructure and its role as a top business center.”
With the trend of remote working on the rise and telehealth becoming increasingly significant, high-speed internet has become a fundamental necessity for every community. Despite these advancements, rural Americans are being left behind. According to the Federal Communications Commission, around 17% of rural Americans lack broadband access as of 2019, the most recent data available. Urban Americans without broadband access is in the low single digits. As such, the absence of high-speed internet directly affects the implementation of telehealth in rural areas.
Even more concerning is the fact that rural communities in the U.S. are facing a shortage of healthcare professionals. It is estimated that 4,000 additional primary care practitioners are needed to meet the needs of rural communities. Rural Americans often need to travel long distances to access specialty care in person, but travel is not an option for everyone, leading to delayed care and poor health outcomes. Rural Americans also have higher rates of death, disability, and chronic disease than urban Americans, and are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 infections.
Fortunately, increased broadband access in outlying areas can help patients get the care they need and close the accessibility gap thanks to telehealth for rural communities. As these solutions gain traction, it is now more important than ever to ensure that telehealth options and increased broadband capabilities are implemented as we work to improve rural healthcare.
How Telehealth Solutions Are Closing the Accessibility Gap
Telehealth solutions are already closing the gap in healthcare access for rural citizens in several ways. For example, the technology used in telehealth has improved in recent years, with increased integrations between platforms, medical devices, and EMRs. The platforms themselves have never been more user-friendly. These advancements make it easier and more accessible for patients and providers to use telehealth services.
Furthermore, scalable solutions have provided a greater variety of services. The range of telehealth services available has expanded in recent years, with technology that addresses multiple specialties under a single platform. This also includes more widespread coverage. As telehealth solutions and services have expanded, so have insurance coverage options. These improvements make telehealth a more cost-effective solution for many patients for the right use cases.
There have been several regulatory changes in recent years that have made it easier for healthcare providers to offer telehealth services, such as temporary waivers on certain requirements. All these improvements in technology, insurance, and increased telehealth service offerings have worked together to create more accessible health solutions than ever before.
By Sameer Bhat, vice president of sales and co-founder, eClinicalWorks.
How has the pandemic changed your view of healthcare? For many patients, they recognized that the services their doctor was providing them wasn’t good enough. In a recent survey from Concierge Medicine Today, 25% of respondents said convenience and long wait times were an issue when going to the doctor, while 16% said they feel like a number. Many found a solution in concierge care.
Concierge care provides personalized care to members with added flexibility to work with patients’ schedules. Many concierge doctors offer at-home appointments, on weekends or after-hours for added convenience. Because of the benefits this type of care offers, the market is experiencing tremendous growth. In the next 10 years, concierge care market size is expected to nearly double to $22.7B.
C by Precision Care is a leading global medical navigation concierge business that provides access to revolutionary predictive, personalized, and life-saving diagnostic tools. The business was created to offer new medical technologies and innovative precision diagnostics. With such innovative tools for patient care, the practice wanted to ensure that its internal technology and software were just as advanced.
A Digital File Cabinet and Search Engine for Patient Records
A doctor-patient relationship is developed over time so that the doctor has a deeper understanding of a patient’s medical history and needs. But when a patient needs to visit a new doctor or change doctors, their medical history needs to move with them. While the industry has undergone a massive transformation, digitizing physical records into electronic health records (EHRs), there’s still room for improvement when it comes to accessing and organizing all that data.
C by Precision Care gathers records from hospitals such as Mount Sinai, Holy Cross and Baptist which use different EHR software. With multiple EHR software platforms to search depending on the hospital a patient is referred from, providers waste time trying to piece together a patient’s medical history. EHR platforms are creating innovative solutions to help streamline this process. PRISMA is a health information search engine that brings together records from small clinics to large-scale hospital systems into one searchable system. It also aggregates patient information from insurance payers and patients’ wearable devices to promote better interoperability. C by Precision Care is using the tool to search for patients records more efficiently and use their findings to improve value-based care.
By Jason Warrelmann, vice president global services and process industries, UiPath.
FHIR, or Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, are quickly being adopted on a massive scale. While only 24% of healthcare companies currently utilize application programming interfaces (APIs) at scale, according to recent data, FHIR APIs will become widespread by 2024.
The data also shows that more than 50% of providers (out of 400 surveyed stakeholders) said they are consuming and producing a large number of APIs. However, some players lag behind, with 43% and 37% saying they consume and build APIs, respectively. That being said, however, 67% of providers and 61% of players expect their respective organizations to utilize APIs at scale as soon as 2023.
But what exactly does FHIR do?
Developed by Health Level 7, or HL7, FHIR has quickly become the standard for representing and exchanging health information. FHIR enables how healthcare information can be exchanged between different computer systems regardless of how it is stored. It allows this information, including clinical and administrative data, to be available securely to those who need access to it and who have the right to do so for the benefit of a patient receiving care. However, FHIR APIs are not easy for businesses to adopt, as it is mostly driven by the need for compliance with interoperability rules today. For healthcare providers, this means several steps of preparation before they can be fully FHIR-ready.
FHIR-enabled automation can help make this adoption easier, leaving the preparation to software robots. Automation software makes sharing data and information between teams more seamless, ensuring everyone is on the same page when it comes to FHIR APIs. FHIR-enabled automation also ensures compliance and streamlines important processes, reducing the cost of FHIR adoption and making it faster and more efficient.
Here are the three ways FHIR-enabled automation can simplify the FHIR adoption process:
Inovalon
