By Amy Groden-Morrison, vice president of marketing and sales operations, Alpha Software.
In an era where technology intersects with health to create impactful solutions, healthcare mobile applications are proving to be a lifeline in remote and underserved regions. These digital tools are not just applications but are transforming into portals of hope, providing critical healthcare services that were once deemed inaccessible.
Let’s dive into the transformative power of healthcare mobile apps, particularly in regions where traditional healthcare infrastructure struggles to reach — primarily focusing on the realm of healthcare and technology, shining a light on innovations that spark inspiration and demand active participation and advancement within this critical sector.
One of the most significant contributions of healthcare mobile apps is the facilitation of telemedicine services. In remote areas, where the nearest healthcare facility could be hours away, telemedicine has become a game-changer. It enables patients to seek advice from healthcare professionals via video calls, messages, or emails. This immediate access to doctors and specialists can mean the difference between life and death in critical situations. Moreover, it helps manage chronic conditions, mental health, prenatal care, and post-surgery follow-ups, making healthcare a continuous, rather than sporadic, service.
Empowering Community Health Workers: Training and Data Collection
Healthcare mobile apps are instrumental in empowering community health workers (CHWs) in remote regions. These apps serve as both a training tool and a data collection platform. With tailored apps, CHWs can access up-to-date medical information, training materials, and guidelines, enhancing their ability to provide care. Furthermore, these apps facilitate real-time data collection and patient monitoring, enabling healthcare providers to make informed decisions and track health trends in the community. This digital empowerment of CHWs extends the reach of healthcare services, making them more effective and responsive.
Responses from Dr. David J. Sand, chief medical officer, ZeOmega.
The healthcare industry is fraught with workflow challenges that impact care quality and costs, but tools like AI and ML have sparked a turning point. These technologies are opening new doors for healthcare organizations to streamline processes and automate tasks with accuracy, allowing staff to focus on matters that require their hands-on attention. David J. Sand, MD, MBA, addresses the need for workflow automation and explains how AI/ML can be a game-changer.
What staffing hurdles are payers and providers facing this year, and why is workflow automation the solution?
Two of the biggest challenges facing the healthcare industry are staffing adequacy and the cost of staffing. COVID took its toll on the healthcare workforce, igniting a spike in labor needs that had a lasting impact on organizations. Consequently, healthcare labor costs surged by 57% post-pandemic and now constitute over 50% of hospital expenses. These financial burdens have severely impacted the industry and contributed to 73 healthcare organizations’ (including 12 hospitals and health systems) bankruptcies in 2023.
Finding and retaining employees is a longer-standing issue that can be partly attributed to factors like staff burnout, spurred by heavy workloads laden with administrative tasks. The industry is also experiencing demands for escalating salaries and workforce strikes from staff who feel overburdened by the escalating pressure to balance workloads laden with administrative duties and meet patients’/members’ needs.
It is more important than ever for healthcare organizations to look at ways to optimize workflows and automate time-consuming manual processes so staff can focus their time on pressing member/patient issues that require hands-on involvement. Technology provides excellent opportunities to improve utilization management by reducing time spent on administrative duties, ultimately reducing staff burden, saving costs, and improving patient/member experience.
How will technology help organizations alleviate staff burden and automate processes in 2024? Can you share any examples of areas in which it may be most impactful?
When we think about how and where technology can assist in healthcare, it’s useful to think in terms of peripheral, or care-adjacent, tasks that don’t involve actual hands-on treatment. Envision repetitive tasks with little variation and processes or workflows that inform our practice. While many of these applications are discrete, they are really part of a continuum.
Ambient listening is one area that is gaining widespread acceptance. The ability to listen and transcribe has become commonplace in many industries. Complaints about the provider looking at the screen rather than the patient, as well as the alternative cost of hiring a human notetaker, can be relieved. Data generated by digital scribes can be mined with natural language processing in real time using keywords and phrases to call relevant insights from the medical record or trigger care recommendations based on large language model queries of, hopefully, rigorously curated big data.
Our challenge is not to just have enough granularity in the data for precision propensity matching but to have adequate outcome data associated with the recommendations. By generating accurate, specific, and consistent recommendations, automated workflows can eliminate unwanted variation caused by human bias, lack of information, or even intentional discretion. The elimination of unwanted variation is the definition of Quality. Analysis of the spoken words can similarly save time dedicated to repetitive and tedious assessments. Contextual information such as speech cadence, tonal variation, and other characteristics can be used to objectively complete and reliably compare behavioral health assessments, potentially more accurately than self-reported measures.
It might be a new year, but healthcare is dealing with old problems:
Too much time spent on administrative tasks. Staff struggling to keep up with high call volumes. Patients waiting too long for care or falling through the cracks altogether. Services delayed or cancelled because patients were not appropriately prepared.
It’s past time for healthcare to adopt workflow automation and patient self-service tools to address these challenges. Other industries embraced these options years ago, documenting better performance and higher satisfaction among staff and consumers.
Where do bottlenecks occur and what solutions are available to improve workflows related to the patient care journey?
Obstacles impede these pathways in two significant ways:
How patients access information and care. Most consumers want to go online at their own convenience to check symptoms, learn about providers and make appointments. They prefer not to make a phone call – and, candidly, providers seek strategies to reduce call volume too. It’s critical for providers to deliver smart, conversational chatbots and virtual assistants that can be accessed across the web, text, email or voice channels to satisfy patients and alleviate staff workloads.
How patients navigate an episode of care or procedure. Both patients and staff struggle to complete forms, education and prep steps – in the right order and at the right point of the process – to ensure scheduled services happen in a timely manner. Interactive digital tools guide patients through their journey and give them online options to complete all prerequisites. Dashboards allow staff to monitor patient progress and flag individuals who need one-on-one intervention.
How can these tools support the complex nature of healthcare, as well as ensure the information provided is accurate?
Early generations of chatbots failed healthcare. Rarely did they provide patients the information they needed, resulting in dead ends, inaccurate answers and an unacceptable level of drop-offs.
But today’s virtual assistants and online tools are smarter and more responsive. Developers leverage conversational AI so patients can pose questions in the words and phrases they are comfortable with. Interactive dialogs probe for more details to add context. This means the virtual assistant can zero in on the precise answer the patient is looking for.
By Val Poltorak, head of US Regulated Industries, Sterling
Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity within the healthcare industry has experienced a slow decline over the past couple of years due to the economy’s downturn. However, as we approach 2024, the forecast predicts that M&A activity could rebound. Hospital and health systems are looking for ways to alleviate operational and budget control challenges due to staffing shortages and high wage inflation. In a report by KaufmanHall, hospitals and health systems who underwent M&A in 2023 indicated that financial distress was a key transaction driver.
In this ever-changing environment, healthcare organizations must navigate the challenges, complexities, and risks involved in the M&A process. Some of these risks include omissions of material information, conflicts of interest, verification of credentials, or past criminal activities. To safeguard heath systems’ interests, investments, and reputation, while protecting their patients, an in-depth review and investigation of an organization and its employees should be an integral part of all investment deals.
Mitigate Risk by Introducing Background Screening Providers into the M&A Process
Partnering with a reliable background screening provider early in the M&A process is critical for success. These organizations play a vital role in navigating the complex and often public nature of the process, and can assist healthcare organizations in hitting the reset button on deals and acting as liaisons with the integration teams.
A background screening provider can help hospitals and health systems involved in a M&A by:
Protecting Against Liability: Negligent hiring during M&A can lead to legal liabilities and can also damage the reputation of the merged organizations. Conducting thorough background checks can identify any past criminal records or unethical behavior, reducing the risk of employing individuals who may pose a threat to your organization’s reputation.
Adhering to Compliance and Regulations: As a heavily-regulated industry, health systems need to meet specific regulation and compliance requirements at the federal, state, and county levels. A background screening provider with deep healthcare expertise can help organizations to verify incoming staff, especially those in sensitive positions, helping to ensure that they have the regulatory requirements and certifications.
Maintaining Quality of Patient Care: When healthcare organizations are consolidating, they are introducing new staff and bringing together different organizational cultures and practices. With the responsibility to ensure patient safety, conducting a thorough background check enables companies to confirm that their employees have the necessary qualifications, experience, and ethnical standards needed for maintaining high-quality care standards.
The sooner a background screening provider is looped into the developing deal, the better they can position the merging organizations for success.
Digging Deeper: How Due Diligence Can Uncover More Information
Due diligence is an integral part of all healthcare mergers and acquisitions that go beyond standard background checks. A standard background check is meant to help organizations make an informed selection on job candidates by determining their criminal history and verifying their credentials. Due diligence investigations, on the other hand, seek to take this one step further and uncover information not disclosed by a subject or a business entity. They paint a full picture for your hospital or health system, and can be your first line of defense in protecting your organization from serious financial issues, reputational damage, and even legal repercussions.
Selecting an inpatient drug rehab accepting Medicaid is vitally important to individuals looking for treatment, yet each facility offers different approaches and may impose different requirements upon individuals – some may need extra documentation or may incur out-of-pocket expenses.
Benefits
Individuals living with substance use disorder (SUD) often face obstacles when seeking treatment for their disorder, but Medicaid and other government-funded insurance programs offer assistance in accessing care they require. Coverage depends on state but generally most Medicaid plans cover at least some aspect of addiction treatment such as medically necessary services, counseling sessions or even more advanced therapies; additionally, some states provide tailored options tailored specifically to individuals’ specific needs.
State laws dictate that Medicaid recipients possess at least some minimum health coverage. Furthermore, they must possess either a mental illness or physical disability requiring treatment; or in some instances both conditions combined, and the individual will need to demonstrate they require attention as part of a serious medical condition that requires care.
People looking into attending a drug rehab that accepts Medicaid should research the center online or call directly for more details about its guidelines and requirements, cost considerations, and applying for Medicaid coverage. Healthcare providers or local resources may also be helpful when seeking more information about attending rehab facilities that accept this insurance option.
Eligibility
Medicaid is a health insurance program that covers an array of medical expenses, such as addiction programs. Unfortunately, not everyone qualifies for it; eligibility requirements differ between states but generally have similar rules regarding income eligibility; individuals should aim to meet at least 133% of the federal poverty level before qualifying for Medicaid; some states may even set higher income eligibility thresholds than this minimum threshold value.
Individuals seeking eligibility should meet income requirements as well as other criteria, including age, disability status or mental illness. Individuals interested in outpatient rehab centers that accept Medicaid should contact their local Medicaid office or program provider for more information on determining their eligibility. In many instances the state will also request a copy of an applicant’s medical history in order to ensure adequate coverage for addiction program services.
Medicaid’s coverage for addiction programs varies depending on the type of rehabilitation program chosen and an individual’s specific needs. While inpatient drug rehab programs tend to last several months, outpatient programs could last as long as one or more years and cover medications like Methadone and Suboxone as part of its coverage.
In the controlled chaos of the emergency room (ER), time and accuracy are of the essence. Not only do they impact care outcomes, but also quality, safety, costs, and patient satisfaction. With wait times and costs for emergency care rising, the ER is a prime target for efficiency, productivity, and cost improvement strategies.
The state of the ER
Of the nearly 140 million annual ER visits reported by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, more than 13% resulted in admission. Less than half (~42%) of patients were seen in fewer than 15 minutes. What’s more, driven by staffing shortages and higher demand, ER wait times are creeping upwards, increasing to 2 hours and 40 minutes in 2022 from 2 hours and 35 minutes in 2021.
Those same headwinds are driving up ER costs. According to Syntellis, ER labor costs increased by nearly 50% between January 2020 and January 2023 even as ER visits declined by 9.5% over that same period. One casualty of overcrowded and understaffed ERs is accuracy, particularly when it comes to patient histories.
One recent study concluded that medication histories performed in the ER are largely inaccurate and incomplete after finding discrepancies in 27% of medication lists obtained during triage. Of those, nearly 10% involved discontinued medications and nearly 28% involved missing medications. Thirty-eight percent of patients reported taking a non-prescription medication not listed in their electronic medical record.
Given the percentage of ER visits resulting in admission, errors made during ER triage carry through to impact safety and outcomes for inpatients. One study found that up to 67% of patients admitted to a general medical ward had at least one error associated with their medication history.
Further, inaccurate or incomplete medication histories can lead to adverse drug reactions (ADRs), which can prolong hospital stays by anywhere from 1.5 days to nearly five days, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ADRs are attributed to approximately 6.5% of all hospital admissions, many involving drug-drug, herbal, and/or supplement interactions.
Many of these medical safety errors result from inadequate reconciliation during admission, with one medical center estimating that approximately one in 10 patients with inaccurate medication lists are likely to suffer an adverse drug event (ADE) that causes physical or mental harm or loss of function. ADEs are also associated with longer hospital stays and higher care costs.
The recently released CMS Interoperability and Prior Authorization final rule is a pivotal measure to reshape the industry. By laying the groundwork for expanded access to health information and streamlined prior authorization processes by mandating the use of FHIR APIs, this regulation takes a critical step toward using comprehensive, timely data to support value-based care initiatives, reduce costs, and improve outcomes.
As stakeholders navigate the ever-changing interoperability landscape, the first step is tapping FHIR APIs to ensure compliance and adaptation to shifting tides. From there, organizations can look beyond compliance to see how FHIR APIs can open the door to next-level innovation and usher in a future where efficiency, collaboration, and patient-centric care take center stage.
What are three ways the new CMS interoperability and prior auth rules will impact healthcare organizations?
Overall, the new rules serve as a critical foundation for expanding access to health information and improving the prior auth process in healthcare.
For all stakeholders, the collective FHIR APIs provide the ability to use comprehensive, timely claims and clinical data to support value-based care programs by implementing a common data approach to leverage historical patient data to maximize quality outcomes for patients. These initiatives are critical to reducing healthcare delivery costs while maximizing patient quality in real time. Additionally, as acutely acknowledged by CMS in its rule commentary, while many patients over the course of a year can have a significant number of providers, it is likely that they will only have one or two payers, thus making the making payer the prime hub in a hub-and-spoke style data sharing model.
For payers, if the FHIR APIs are implemented and utilized as advised by CMS, the respective APIs will not only have the ability to materially improve the ability to share relevant data in a more timely manner, it will also significantly reduce the cost and administrative burden of such data sharing. Today, many payers have entire departments that are focused on packaging and sending data to relevant provider partners. By automating the data sharing process with FHIR APIs, not just for CMS compliance but for all other interoperability use cases, payers can ‘kill two birds with one stone’ and meet regulatory requirements while also creating internal efficiency and significantly improving access to data, as outlined above.
For providers, using interoperable data for prior authorization can help make patient care decisions more quickly, improving patient, provider, and payer alignment and ultimately improving outcomes.
Email remains a cornerstone communication tool for healthcare entities, yet the communication channel also presents formidable cybersecurity hurdles. The sensitive nature of patient data and the open nature of email renders it susceptible to data exposure and phishing attempts. Thus, as healthcare continues its technology maturation, the imperative to grasp the gravity of email security intensifies. Advanced email security solutions offer a potent means to tackle these challenges head-on.
Why does this matter now? Isn’t email dying? Not based on the numbers. For example:
In a review of just the fourth quarter of 2023, VIPRE reviewed roughly 7.2 billion emails worldwide that were processed through its systems. Of those, more than 950 million malicious or unwanted emails were detected (~13 percent) and blocked. Most of these were detected using classical signature-based detection of bulk email, known malware, and known malicious links, including 20 million emails with malicious attachments and 41 million emails with malicious links. But there were 500,000 malicious emails that were only detected because of advanced, behavioral simulation of a user actually clicking on the link, i.e. detecting true zero-hour malicious sites, which is a feature built into our VIPRE Email Link Isolation.
It was interesting to note a rise and fall in favored malicious email types each quarter and throughout the year. In 2023, we noticed the following trends:
276% increase in emails containing malware between Q1 and Q4
23% rise in scam emails between Q1 and Q4, with a 179% spike in Q2
6.4% decrease in phishing emails between Q1 and Q4
Regardless of the slight percentage decrease, phishing emails continue to be tied with scam emails in volume, making them a perennial favorite of hackers and a constant threat to inboxes. Healthcare is in the top three targeted industries, representing 14% of the attacks that we observed across all of our customers.
With this data as a reference point, it’s easy to see that healthcare is chronically at risk regarding its vulnerability to cyberattacks driven by phishing and malicious inclusions in email. While writing this piece, one of the nation’s largest healthcare clearinghouses, Change Healthcare, was affected by a massive ransomware attack.
Change Healthcare is a unit of UnitedHealth Group’s Optum subsidiary, and its products are used by a huge variety of healthcare organizations.According to HHS, Change Healthcare “was impacted by a cybersecurity incident in late February. HHS recognizes the impact this attack has had on healthcare operations across the country.” The Russian-speaking cybercriminal gang known as AlphV and Blackcat claimed responsibility and said on its darkweb site that it exfiltrated 6 TB of data in the attack against Change Healthcare.
This specific attack affected healthcare systems, prescription deliveries, and anyone who processes insurance claims. This should raise red flags for all healthcare organizations regardless of size, particularly for smaller organizations with limited budgets. After all, if companies as massive as Change Healthcare—who undoubtedly had advanced cybersecurity measures in place—can be breached, then smaller organizations with fewer resources should take action to protect themselves.
The attack underscores the critical importance of proactive measures to mitigate the risks of sophisticated cyber threats. Although the attack vector in the Change Healthcare breach has not been identified as of this writing, the same group was responsible for the massive MGM Resorts hack in September 2023, which started on LinkedIn with a social engineering-driven exploit. A form of phishing, this foothold was leveraged to gain access within MGM, and this access was then expanded to target many of MGM’s key business systems.
