By Dr. Jeremy Kenter, chief medical officer, Ally Medical ER.
COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on every aspect of American life, but the health care sector- particularly emergency care – has been hardest hit.
The overwhelming number and cost care for COVID-19 patients has pushed health care professionals to exhaustion, forced some facilities to ration care or close, and has led to significantly delayed access to care for all. In this crisis, every option must be utilized to ensure crucial resources are maximized and patients receive the care they need.
Pre-pandemic, the average ER wait time in the United States was around 40 minutes. At the height of the current Delta variant, ER waits increased to several hours, or longer. More than 10 states have recently reached their highest hospital admissions of the pandemic. From the Southeast to the Pacific Northwest, patients are seeking alternative emergency room care.
To avoid having to endure packed waiting rooms full of potential COVID-19 patients, many doctors are urging patients to consider alternatives, including freestanding ERs. As the pandemic surges, freestanding ERs are playing a crucial in relieving stress on community hospital systems and improving patient care.
Here’s why.
Safe, Faster Service and Less Waiting
Outside of COVID-19, emergency room overcrowding can be dangerous for patients and is considered a severe public health issue. For sick and injured patients, long wait times can result in complications and more detrimental outcomes, even death. Ensuring emergency room access that is readily available, fully staffed, and stocked is the key to patient satisfaction, safety, and better overall patient outcomes. By offering COVID-19 testing and treatment, freestanding ERs in certain regions, like Texas and Oklahoma, have helped thousands of patients avoid crowded waiting rooms and receive sterling care.
Early in the pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported the proportion of ER visits for exposure and contact with infectious diseases (COVID-19) was nearly four times higher than previous years. More people sought out alternative treatment options due to the sheer number of patients crowding hospitals.
Freestanding ERs are smaller, typically less trafficked than mainstream hospitals, and often owned by fully accredited emergency room physicians. In some cases, they have direct agreements with payers, such as mid-sized businesses, and other providers as referral sources. These facilities are often located in underserved areas and offer an invaluable resource to the local community. In these cases, freestanding ERs provide PCR tests and access to critical treatments that are otherwise unavailable.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced patients and healthcare providers alike to accept new ways to stay in touch, communicate, and to ask and give advice – which, in turn, catalyzed adoption of digital tools.
Although patients might not have thought to request them, the vast majority appreciated the convenience of digital tools, with one survey finding that 90% of people who used digital health tools during the pandemic rated their experience as good. Another poll found that 77% of Americans have been very or completely satisfied with their virtual health visits.
A big part of the shift speaks to the meta-trend of the digitized customer experience. Today’s healthcare patients are used to ordering pizza through a website, checking their bank accounts with a native smartphone app, and interfacing with a touchscreen kiosk to pay for the bus. We receive personalized marketing, customized discounts, and even our massage therapists send us automated texts when it’s been a while since we’ve booked a session.
In this context, having to arrive at a clinic in person to receive blood test results seems ridiculously outdated.
“Consumers expect to engage and transact online,” says Jack Brock, Head of Healthcare Provider Practice at Cognizant. “They are used to frictionless, intelligent, and digitally enabled experiences, such as seeing recommendations based on purchase histories or securely moving funds on a mobile app. That’s the standard healthcare providers must match.”
It’s beyond time for healthcare to join the 21st century. Today, patients say they appreciate digital tools – but it won’t be long before they expect it and get irritated at providers who don’t embrace the tech. Some 60% said that using digital health tools increased their trust in healthcare providers, so those providers who stay ahead of the curve and use tech to maximize engagement will reap the benefits, while those who lag behind will feel the consequences.
If you’re still trying to get with the digital program, here are five ways that tech can help you supercharge your patient engagement.
Regardless of industry, the purpose of analytics is to better utilize data to improve organizational understanding, which leads to better decision-making. In health care, this is true for both individual clinicians making judgment calls based on patient needs and for the health system as a whole.
The health care industry has had (and continues) to navigate challenges in the way that we collect and analyze data. Now, health care faces an additional challenge: simplifying the vast amounts of information at our disposal so the most important insights are immediately clear and are translated into action.
In pediatrics, this is increasingly difficult. While children are generally a very healthy segment of the population, it is important to understand the unique social and environmental conditions of these patients – and how these manifest over time as they grow and mature at different stages. It’s also important to remember that while kids are generally healthy, many pediatric and adolescent patients have complex care needs.
The American Medical Association (AMA) announced that the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code set has been updated by the CPT Editorial Panel to include vaccine and administration codes for pediatric doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer.
The provisional CPT codes will be effective for use on the condition that Pfizer’s two-dose regimen for the prevention of COVID-19 in children ages 5 to 11 receives approval or emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The AMA is publishing the CPT code update now to ensure electronic systems across the U.S. health care system are prepared in advance for the potential FDA approval or authorization.
“The AMA supports the goal of extending COVID-19 immunization protection to a broader age range of children,” said AMA president Gerald E. Harmon, M.D. “A rigorous, transparent review process by the Federal Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will examine the safety and efficacy of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for potential use in children between ages 5 and 11. An open and comprehensive evaluation of data from pediatric vaccine trials is critical to inspire necessary public confidence in COVID-19 vaccines for children under age 12.”
The development of vaccine-specific CPT codes has clinically distinguished each coronavirus vaccine and dosing schedule for better tracking, reporting and analysis that supports data-driven planning and allocation. COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca, Janssen (Johnson & Johnson), Moderna, Novavax and Pfizer have previously been issued unique CPT codes.
To help ensure accurate coding and reporting of COVID-19 vaccines and immunization services, the AMA offers a vaccine code finder resourceto help identify the appropriate CPT code combination for the type and dose of COVID-19 vaccine provided to each patient.
For quick reference, the new vaccine and administration codes assigned to the pediatric doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine are:
In the healthcare industry, there are several lucrative and rewarding careers. One of these careers is that of a pharmacy technician. In this field, individuals will be able to work in pharmacies and provide medication to patients.
This is an ideal career for those who enjoy customer service in a healthcare setting. Working as a pharmacy technician can also prepare students for a career as a pharmacist. As a result, completing a pharmacy technician online training program is essential in embarking on this career path.
Here’s what students need to look for when choosing the right educational institution:
Quality education
When attending an educational institution to complete apharmacy technician online training program, students will want to attend an institution that provides the highest quality education. Look out for a combination of updated courses and professional instructors when choosing the right program. This way, students will receive the best possible education needed to prepare for this exciting career path.
Updated courses
Choose regularly updated courses with the latest findings and information that is the most relevant within the field. Suppose students would like to become a pharmacist eventually. In that case, they need to opt for a program that not only prepares them for a career as a pharmacy technician but will also help them advance their career as a pharmacist.
Professional instructors
Most importantly, instructors need to have extensive experience in the field. As professionals, they must have first-hand knowledge and be exceptional mentors for their students. When students are preparing for a career as a pharmacy technician, this professional experience is worth its weight in gold.
It’s no longer a question of if or when — physicians are burnt out, plain and simple… and COVID-19 is only partially to blame for the strain. Long before the pandemic through a wrench in staffing, operations, and physical resources, hospitals were trying to do more with less, resulting in an increasing number of critical care physicians, and neurointerventionalists specifically, covering two or three hospitals at once — myself included.
Research shows that physicians who cover more than one hospital on-call have two times higher rates of burnout compared to those who covered a single hospital.
Add in physician shortages, increasing patient volumes, and the added strain of the global pandemic, on top of balancing personal and family schedules, and it is no wonder that we are nearing crisis levels of burnout. Physicians are looking for relief.
This burnout can not only negatively affect physician work-life balance and well-being, but also the quality and safety of care delivered to patients. In fact, some reports state that burnout triples the incidence of medical errors. To make matters worse, a study of neurointerventionalists found that physicians meeting criteria for burnout are 17 percent more likely to face malpractice lawsuits. Along with posing harm to patients, this can also hurt health systems financially and in public trust.
On the financial front, burnout in physicians has the potential to cost hospitals millions of dollars each year due to physician turnover and reduced clinical hours. Losing a full-time physician can cost health systems an average of $990,000 each, prompting the hospital to recruit and replace a physician, which costs between $500,000 and $1 million. The same report estimates that approximately $4.6 billion in costs related to physician turnover and reduced clinical hours is attributable to burnout each year in the United States.
Fortunately, emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robotics and internet of things (IoT), have the potential to offer relief. These technologies are helping physicians manage a higher capacity of case volume, by taking over tedious tasks, streamlining and standardizing processes — ultimately resulting in more consistent, quality care.
As a practicing neurologist, I have personally begun to work more closely with these AI-based neuroimaging solutions, and my workload has become considerably more manageable. Even just the simple ability to receive alerts and access my workload from my phone has drastically improved my remaining work-life balance. Previously, I would have to physically go to the hospital setting or find a computer, which in turn would delay care for the patient. Now I have access to more clinical information and imaging at my fingertips, enabling faster and more data-driven decision making and faster treatment times.
AdhereHealth, a healthcare technology medication company in adherence insights and health outcomes, today announced a new partnership with Health Connect America (HCA), a multi-state mental and behavioral health services manager.
The new collaboration provides HCA’s pediatric and adult clients with immediate access to AdhereRX digital pharmacy services, including personalized compliance packaging and medication delivery services designed specifically for underserved, higher-risk patients.
“Our collaboration with AdhereHealth’s digital pharmacy will have a significant impact on the lives of our clients,” said Jennifer Perry, director of integrated care and health link services at Health Connect America. “Medication adherence is a real challenge for vulnerable individuals with mental illness and behavioral health issues, such as ADHD or developmental disabilities. We want to do more to help meet the complex needs of these higher-risk individuals to improve outcomes. Compliance packaging is a proven strategy with results that average 96 percent adherence.”
Research shows more than half of patients do not take their medications as advised. However, easy-to-use compliance packs, such as blister packs and dosage strips, can raise correct self-dosing and adherence rates to upwards of 96%, reducing the risk of nonadherence and avoidable hospitalizations.
“Health Connect America is a forward-looking organization that understands it takes the right tools and a personalized approach to meet the needs of higher risk, underserved populations,” said Jason Z. Rose, CEO of AdhereHealth. “Our AdhereRx digital pharmacy supports overcoming barriers of care and social determinants of health to keep these patients safe at home.”
Compliance packaging offers streamlined management of complicated medication routines. Paired with synchronized medication refills and pharmacist-led initiatives to enhance access, compliance packaging is crucial for any efficient, highly effective care management program.
Telehealth is far more than a technology that allows patients to be monitored virtually within a hospital by a specialist or at home by a provider. Although these are key areas for hospitals to utilize telehealth for patients to access specialists and for home care – there is so much more.
My definition of telehealth is that it is a healthcare strategy to be utilized to dramatically improve the care of patients and communities and to support families who care for patients.
4 Ways Telehealth Can Improve Hospital Operations
Telehealth can aid in reducing hospital readmissions as patient behaviors account for most of the readmissions from medication nonadherence, not scheduling follow-up appointments and, not having access to equipment or supplies.
Proactively utilizing telehealth for high-risk patients and for the elderly, to maintain care at home and ensure health outcomes.
Innovative areas where telehealth can be used include rehabilitation care, mental health resources, and even second opinions.
Telehealth can be used within hospital marketing campaigns to increase awareness and utilization of the service.
As a seasoned industry expert in the healthcare industry, and the CEO and founder of VIE Healthcare Consulting, I am considered a trusted advisor to hospital leaders on operational strategies within margin improvement, process improvements, technology/telehealth, the patient experience, and growth opportunities.
Since founding VIE in 1999, my team and I have achieved over $785 million in non-salary cost savings and revenue improvements for clients globally. My goal is to continuously encourage hospital leaders to achieve their boldest vision and in order to help them do so, I have created the healthcare sector’s only cost savings strategy methodology that is proven to extract unnecessary costs.
For healthcare providers, developing a specific telehealth strategy is key to your overall strategic plan. To begin, I will provide you with five self-assessment strategies to help you further define, develop and deploy a comprehensive telehealth strategy in your organization.
By Dr. Jeremy Kenter, chief medical officer, Ally Medical ER.
In the healthcare industry, there are several lucrative and rewarding careers. One of these careers is that of a pharmacy technician. In this field, individuals will be able to work in pharmacies and provide medication to patients. 
