With healthcare workforce shortages growing more critical, policymakers are considering avenues to significantly expand clinical education programs, and academic institutions with health education programs must prepare for more medical, nursing, and allied health students to meet growing hiring demands — some proposals before Congress call for doubling and tripling health training programs.
The imperative for higher education institutions to integrate on-the-job learning extends beyond healthcare studies. Students and parents are demanding a more defined trajectory from education to employment regardless of the learners’ chosen major.
Exemplified by the healthcare education model of clinical rotations, experiential work-integrated learning — defined workplace experiences included in coursework — is becoming increasingly vital for academic institutions to incorporate into their programs.
But — as any health education administrator can attest — managing students’ workplace learning can be cumbersome, particularly when using traditional, manual processes. Software that automates the many moving parts of students’ workplace assignments can be crucial to an institution’s success for several reasons, while simultaneously better meeting the workforce demands of employers. Here’s how.
Smart technology that manages workplace learning assignments like clinical rotations gives institutions many advantages; for example, InPlace Software handles every step of managing students’ clinical learning, from workplace matching and assigning students, to tracking and grading their performance, and collecting feedback from clinical supervisors. That’s a significant time saver.
Cerebral palsy care is crucial in ensuring individuals have the support they require. This care does come with challenges and difficulties, however, seeking cerebral palsy compensation is vital, as this will help people to explore the different advancements that come with using assistive technology.
In this article, we are going to look at assistive technology and the role it plays in delivering this care.
Empowering Technological Solutions in Cerebral Palsy Care
Cerebral palsy care is transforming and that is down to assistive technology, and that makes this technology pivotal. These innovative solutions offer individuals avenues to enrich their daily lives, fostering independence and confidence.
Specialised devices, applications, and adaptive tools continually evolve to meet the distinct needs of those with cerebral palsy, providing tailored solutions that significantly contribute to their well-being and autonomy.
The outlook for cerebral palsy care is changing, but this technology is empowering individuals. With these tools seamlessly integrated into their daily routines, it creates a positive impact on their overall quality of life.
Enhancing Mobility
Assistive technology plays a pivotal role in enhancing mobility for individuals facing challenges in this domain. Cutting-edge wheelchairs equipped with intuitive control systems, alongside exoskeletons designed to aid ambulation, empower individuals to transcend physical limitations.
These technological solutions not only facilitate greater freedom in navigating their surroundings but also contribute to an improved quality of life. The integration of innovative mobility devices aligns with the commitment to providing tailored support, allowing individuals to overcome obstacles and engage more actively in their daily activities, fostering a sense of autonomy and well-being.
Facilitating Communication
Communication can come with challenges, especially when we consider cerebral palsy. However, assistive technology is driving change and bringing hope to those who live with the condition.
Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices, along with eye-tracking communication systems and speech-generating devices, play a pivotal role in empowering individuals to express themselves. These innovative solutions contribute to fostering meaningful connections and actively work towards reducing communication barriers.
By providing tailored communication support, assistive technology is massively transformative, enabling individuals to engage more freely with their surroundings and connect with others on a deeper level.
Supporting Education
The integration of assistive technology extends its impact to the educational sphere for individuals with cerebral palsy. Custom software applications and adaptive learning tools create a more inclusive and accessible learning environment, ensuring equal opportunities for exploration and growth.
Empowering Independence
Assistive technology goes beyond being a set of aids; it elevates the potential for independence and autonomy. Recent advancements in this field aim to empower individuals with cerebral palsy to unleash their capabilities, fostering a profound sense of self-reliance beyond the traditional boundaries imposed by physical constraints.
By offering tailored solutions that cater to unique needs, assistive technology becomes a catalyst for individuals to navigate their daily lives more independently, ultimately contributing to a more inclusive and empowering environment.
Customisation and Personalisation
A defining feature of modern assistive technology is its ability to be customised to individual needs. From personalised communication interfaces to tailored mobility solutions, technology adapts to the unique requirements of each person with cerebral palsy, ensuring seamless integration into their daily lives.
This focus on customisation not only enhances the efficacy of assistive devices but also fosters a sense of personalisation, empowering individuals to deal with the challenges they face with tools specifically designed to address their distinct needs.
This shift towards personalised solutions contributes to a more inclusive and supportive environment, where assistive technology becomes an integral part of each individual’s journey towards increased independence and improved quality of life.
Cerebral Palsy Compensation and Assistive Technology
If we look at this from a legal angle, cerebral palsy compensation does have a link with the integration of assistive technology. Compensation addresses the challenges and needs arising from cerebral palsy, providing resources to access advanced and tailored technological solutions that significantly enhance daily life.
Looking ahead at the role of assistive technology
It is becoming clear that assistive technology and cerebral palsy care can go hand in hand, and they are. The outlook is changing rapidly and that is a massive positive for those with the condition.
What makes it so useful is that it helps to deal with challenges, however, it can assist in creating a better future. All of this means that individuals with cerebral palsy can do more and hope for more as technology advances further.
That said, the synergy between cerebral palsy compensation and assistive technology symbolises a commitment to improving the lives of those with cerebral palsy. It is a fusion that goes beyond conventional boundaries, offering not just tools but empowerment.
As we explore this field of innovation and possibility, the promise of a more inclusive and enriched future for individuals with cerebral palsy becomes increasingly tangible.
Responses from Matthew Hawley, EVP, payment integrity, Cotiviti.
Matthew Hawley leads operations and content development for Cotiviti’s prospective payment integrity and fraud, waste, and abuse solutions. He brings more than 30 years of healthcare experience to his role as executive vice president of payment integrity operations for Cotiviti and has been with the organization since 2004.
With the U.S. healthcare system constantly shifting and facing new challenges, it is critical for healthcare leaders to adapt to these changes and leverage proven, technological solutions to solve problems. Here, Hawley shares his insights on how taking a data-driven approach is vital to preventing fraud, waste, and abuse in the healthcare industry and how healthcare organizations can operate more efficiently to optimize patient care.
What are a few significant changes you expect to see in the year ahead, and how can data-driven approaches help healthcare organizations navigate these shifts?
The U.S. healthcare system has been experiencing a rapid evolution marked by new therapies, changing care sites, and fast-paced technological innovation. As healthcare leaders adapt and prepare for more shifts in 2024, forward-thinking, data-driven approaches will be key for supporting payment integrity while capitalizing on emergent new ways to optimize patient care. For example, analytics can identify areas at highest risk for fraudulent, wasteful, or abusive spending—such as billing for non-traditional care sites—and also uncover trends in utilization that could indicate unmet needs among certain populations.
Data-driven approaches will also become increasingly important to prevent inappropriate payments as more complex specialty drugs and gene therapies emerge with million-dollar price tags. Looking forward to 2024 and beyond, payers and providers must collaborate to ensure future innovations in medical technology and treatment are billed and delivered appropriately to improve patient health while protecting members’ plan benefits.
By Tim Bristol, PhD, RN, CNE, ANEF, FAAN, director of strategic planning, NurseThink, Wolters Kluwer Health.
The ever-worsening nursing shortage is taking the United States by storm, with nearly 800,000 nurses planning to leave their roles or retire by 2027. Unfortunately, nursing education is not immune to this crisis.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) reports that 8.8% of faculty positions are vacant at U.S. nursing schools and additional positions would need to be created to meet student demand. Without enough faculty, this has a serious impact on the capacity and effectiveness of nursing education programs as nursing schools are already being forced to turn away qualified applicants. Fortunately, while faculty shortages won’t be solved overnight, advancements in instructional technology can help fill the gap.
One key challenge facing nursing education is that the curriculum is not set up to teach students in a way that mirrors real-world practice. While new nurses today will often face greater challenges – and often higher caseloads – than ever before, nursing students are not being adequately trained to face this reality. In many ways, today’s nursing classrooms look no different than the classrooms students may have encountered in 1993.
But a lecture hall looks very different than the chaotic hospital setting new nurses will actually experience. To help ensure students build skills and engage in clinical judgement, even if faculty numbers are limited, incorporating electronic health records and virtual simulation into their daily education can make a major difference.
Electronic health records are not optional
While electronic health record (EHR) systems are a highly discussed technology across the healthcare landscape, they have been shown to reduce errors and lower medical costs. Needless to say, EHRs are here to stay across healthcare and something that care teams need to use, every day. However, they can only positively impact healthcare as a whole if nurses are trained to use them effectively and efficiently before they encounter them in clinical practice.
It’s important for faculty to understand how easy it is to implement EHRs into the daily classroom experience. Students could simply login to a basic, blank EHR and enter data based on a case study or challenge given by their instructor. For example, students could be tasked with entering a blood pressure reading that would indicate that they should hold (not give) a patient medication to lower their blood pressure. When faculty allow students to experience this type of activity, they are learning in the same way in which they will be using EHRs in practice. This is something that could easily be incorporated into nursing classrooms, even in a lecture hall of more than 100 students.
By Josh Marsh, vice president and general manager Sonexus access and patient support, Cardinal Health.
Every patient’s journey through the healthcare system is different, but patients on specialty medications need extra support with navigating both high costs and overcoming barriers to access. For specialty patients, streamlining access to care is especially critical.
Looking back at 2023, below are five industry trends that have made a big impact on both the patient and provider experience. These trends – some positive and some negative – have shaped the patient journey over the past year and provide insight into how the patient services hub industry will evolve in the new year to come.
Digital assistant chatbots allow for increased flexibility and efficiency
Over the past year, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered digital assistant chatbots have played an important role in removing obstacles that prolong and complicate patient access to life-changing therapies. Chatbots allow for flexibility in the patient’s schedule by assisting with tasks and providing information without the need to pick up the phone.
These tasks include filling in missing health data, uploading insurance cards and answering questions about certain services available, all while simulating human conversation. Many physician offices prefer chatbots, due to the ability to communicate with the patient services hub without major disruption to their workflow. This allows providers to allocate more time to other parts of the patient’s health journey.
The digital assistant chatbot’s 24/7 availability gives flexibility to both patients and physicians, and makes a real impact on improving patient access and speed-to-therapy. The key to an effective digital assistant chatbot experience is to ensure that the technology is powered by a human when necessary, resulting in a custom-fit patient experience.
In cases where a more complex issue needs to be solved for the patient or provider’s office, a live team member should be able to seamlessly take over from a digital interaction. This experience can still be delivered virtually via the digital assistant chatbot, or the patient can be connected via phone.
By Ken Perez, healthcare marketing, strategy and policy consultant
The 340B Drug Pricing Program was created in 1992 to give safety-net providers—those that deliver a significant level of both healthcare and other health-related services to the uninsured, Medicaid, and other vulnerable populations—discounts on outpatient drugs to “stretch scare federal resources as far as possible, reaching more eligible patients and providing more comprehensive services.”
In brief, the program requires drug makers participating in Medicaid and Medicare Part B to provide discounts on outpatient drugs to 340B providers, which include various types of hospitals and certain federal grantees, such as federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) and comprehensive hemophilia treatment centers. These providers are referred to as covered entities (CEs).
In recent years, there has been much debate regarding the legality of the use of contract pharmacies by 340B CEs. One other, arguably even more fundamental, issue is the definition of a “patient” of a 340B CE who is eligible to receive a 340B drug.
On November 3, the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina issued a monumental decision endorsing a broader view of the definition of such a patient. In Genesis Healthcare, Inc. v. Becerra, the South Carolina district court overturned part of the government’s definition of a 340B-eligible patient, ruling in favor of Genesis Healthcare, Inc., a FQHC CE that filed a lawsuit in 2018 challenging a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) audit finding that Genesis violated the 340B statute by using 340B drugs for ineligible patients.
According to the Veterans Health Care Act of 1992, the law which established the 340B Program, CEs are prohibited from transferring or reselling a 340B drug to a “person who is not a patient of the entity.” The definition of a 340B-eligible patient is critical to a CE’s ability to benefit from 340B participation because CEs can generate 340B savings by purchasing outpatient drugs at discounted prices, administering or dispensing them to eligible patients, and receiving payer reimbursement. The scope of the 340B patient definition determines how widely CEs can use 340B drugs and generate 340B savings.
Have you heard about the ultrasonic pocket devices that connect to your phone and that are 50 times less expensive than hospital machines? Or did you notice that virtual reality expedites cures in rehab centers? Or that artificial intelligence can identify lung malignancies more accurately than medical professionals? These are just a few advancements that are remarkably quickly changing medicine today.
Though no one can foresee the future, the innovations and ideas that follow at least offer a peek at it. They are at the forefront of healthcare, like the individuals behind them. Check out the list that will reshape the medical and public health that is anticipated to occur in the 2020s, especially in 2024 onwards.
Medical supplies delivered by drones
UPS has been flying an autonomous drone to transfer vital medical samples, such as blood or tissue, between two branches of a hospital 150 yards apart in Raleigh, North Carolina, since March as part of a trial program dubbed Flight Forward. Although the drones couldn’t cover the same distance as quickly as a fleet-footed runner, the initiative proved successful as a proof-of-concept, and in October the FAA approved the company’s expansion to 20 hospitals nationwide over the 2 years. In case of critical truck accidents and road accidents, sending medicines to victims will no longer be a time-consuming issue.
Diabetes treatment using stem cells
Of the 1.25 million Americans who suffer from type 1 diabetes, Doug Melton, a scientist at Harvard University, was particularly interested in his two children, Emma and Sam. Insulin injections, numerous daily blood-glucose tests, and a lifetime of cautious eating are possible treatment options. Melton takes an alternative tack, generating insulin-producing replacement beta cells using stem cells.
The business has developed a tiny implantable device that can house millions of replacement beta cells, allowing immune cells to stay outside while still allowing glucose and insulin to pass through.
In today’s dynamic healthcare landscape, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions is becoming increasingly crucial. Healthcare organizations need to balance superior patient care with operational complexities. The adoption of AI presents a transformative opportunity, empowering your organization to enhance various facets of your healthcare services.
You may be wondering, “Why should I embrace AI solutions for my healthcare organization?” The answer lies in the numerous benefits AI brings to the table. In this blog, we’ll shed light on a few reasons why healthcare organizations, just like yours, are wholeheartedly embracing AI.
Enhance Diagnostics and Precision Medicine
In the healthcare sector, AI technologies are actively advancing diagnostic accuracy, particularly concerning dangerous diseases. A study published in the National Library of Medicine highlights the extensive utilization of AI in enhancing medical diagnostics. These technologies, proficient in interacting with medical image data, contribute significantly to disease diagnosis and prediction.
For instance, AI’s capability to detect tumors in medical images stands out, providing a crucial advantage in early-stage diagnosis and subsequent treatment. The study emphasizes the pivotal role played by AI-based algorithms in identifying patients who might otherwise go undiagnosed, including rare diseases. This effectiveness opens up abundant opportunities for early intervention and improved patient outcomes.
Personalize Patient Care with Predictive Analytics
Harnessing predictive analytics through AI is revolutionizing patient care, offering tailored interventions, and enhancing healthcare outcomes. Grand View Research reveals that the global healthcare predictive analytics market reached $11.7 billion in 2022, underscoring the widespread adoption of this transformative approach.
Predictive analytics allows healthcare organizations to proactively anticipate patient needs, facilitating personalized treatment plans. This proactive approach enables timely interventions and preventive measures based on individual patient data, contributing to a more patient-centric healthcare model. The insights derived from analyzing vast datasets enable healthcare professionals to optimize resource allocation, reduce unnecessary procedures, and streamline patient care pathways.
Enable Clean Water for Healthcare Facilities
Ensuring clean water for healthcare facilities is a paramount objective embraced by healthcare organizations leveraging AI solutions. AI technologies facilitate the efficient management of water resources, optimizing usage and minimizing wastage within healthcare infrastructure. By actively monitoring water quality and consumption patterns, AI-driven systems enable healthcare facilities to identify potential issues promptly.
Access to clean water is crucial for healthcare organizations, as a lack of it can lead to disease outbreaks, challenging the healthcare industry’s ethos. Your organization should learn from past incidents, such as the Camp Lejeune water contamination, which resulted in severe chronic conditions. According to TorHoerman Law, the incident affected veterans, family members, and workers, causing them to suffer from diseases like cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
