COVID-19 has amplified troubling pain points in the healthcare sector. Forced to scale delivery of care beyond hospital walls at an accelerating pace, providers are experiencing the limitations of outdated legacy technology and siloed lines of communication. And in full ICUs across the nation, weary frontline workers are stretched thin, summoned from crisis to crisis by an unrelenting chorus of alerts, alarms and pages.
Better communication and collaboration tools, like those deployed in most other industries today, could help beleaguered frontline teams perform their jobs more efficiently and with less stress. In fact, some hospitals already provide their staff with technology that helps them better prioritize nurse call alerts, manage workflows and assignments, and collaborate with physicians, technicians and others involved in each patient’s treatment.
But those are the exceptions to the norm in one of the last industries to undergo a digital transformation. In fact, some 90% of hospitals still rely on faxes, and 80% still use pagers. In many cases, physicians using pagers must carry several at the same time. Communications between care team members and with the patient occur over outdated systems and can delay the exchange of vital information and timely scheduling of treatments. These antiquated communication systems decrease the quality of care and make it harder for healthcare workers to do their jobs.
21st-century communications
Healthcare leaders seeking improved efficiency and productivity in their organization’s patient outcomes, financial performance, staff satisfaction, or patient experiences should look first to the quality of their communications. A health system’s communications network provides the channels for critical collaboration between physicians, technicians, nurses and others as they pursue the shared goal of delivering quality patient care.
Platforms that prioritize data integration, patient engagement and collaboration among caregivers not only deliver the best care, but also enable doctors and nurses to do their jobs easier, improve the patient experience and realize the lowest operating expenses.
As physicians, nurses and administrators grow increasingly dissatisfied with the legacy systems still in use at their organizations, more and more hospitals and hospital systems are augmenting or replacing traditional IT infrastructure with cutting-edge technologies. What follows are key features to look for while planning improvements and evaluating available solutions.
Even though doctors and nurses change and save lives daily, they assume a great deal of liability in the process, causing many medical professionals to worry about potential malpractice suits. One way to avoid a malpractice suit is by using healthcare technology, which simplifies procedures and minimizes human error.
Benefits of Healthcare Technology
Incorporating medical technology into your practice will help you to avoid a malpractice suit for a number of reasons. This technology comes with several benefits, creating a more reliable, advanced, and helpful practice.
The biggest benefit of healthcare technology is that it offers more advanced treatments. This technology is up-to-date, helping it to minimize death and injuries. By offering treatment options that minimize these negative outcomes, you are less likely to find yourself with a medical malpractice suit on your hands. Additionally, health care technology gives you more efficient diagnosis and treatment, making it much easier to determine the cause of a patient’s illness and advise the best treatment.
For example, healthcare technology has provided opportunities for minimally invasive surgery, thanks to the help of robotics. These minimally invasive surgeries mean shorter hospital stays, less pain, and reduced scarring.
The last benefit of healthcare technology is that it makes documentation easier. Since the treatment is digital, most of these technologies include automatic recordkeeping, resulting in automatic, trustworthy data in the case of a malpractice suit. Within the last 20 years, medical technology electronic health records (EHR) have become a staple in many offices. This technology is so important that it was even mentioned by President George W. Bush in his 2004 State of the Union address for its ability to cut costs and save lives.
By Christina Perkins, NaviNet vice president of product management and strategy, NantHealth.
Christina Perkins
Efficient and effective ways of exchanging information between patients, providers and payers have become even more important during times of crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic, with a greater demand for urgent, high-quality care. Physicians need more time to devote to saving lives as the healthcare system is overwhelmed with patients and still bogged down by administrative tasks.
According to Sage Journals, the average doctor spends about 8.7 hours per week on administrative tasks, which amounts to nearly a full work day. With the current pace of the pandemic paired with the need for maintaining preventative healthcare through regular appointments, such as physicals or cancer screenings, physicians need as much time as possible to pay attention to the task at hand: patient care.
Technology is the powerful tool necessary to streamline physician workflows by increasing efficient, effective communication between payers and providers in order to determine the most appropriate treatment plan for an individual patient based on their condition and health plan. One such workflow that can oftentimes be quite time-consuming for payers, providers and patients due to disputes or other disagreements around a therapeutic path is prior authorizations.
Streamlining the prior authorization process can alleviate the burden for all stakeholders, reduce delays, and offer providers and their patients confidence they are getting the most appropriate care with the highest chance for success. With the right technology in place, prior authorizations can be streamlined greatly.
Leveraging electronic tools to enhance administrative workflows can make it clear to providers when and why a prior authorization is required, what information is needed for each kind of service, and which services are within the guidelines for treatment.
By implementing digital technologies to streamline processes like these, there is a greater reduction of time and money spent to arrive at the best possible treatment plan – bringing about a new era of value-based care. Giving doctors tools they need to efficiently get tedious administrative tasks done will greatly improve the treatment process for all stakeholders. This is the gateway into enabling true value-based care.
Interoperability also plays a critical role in uplifting value-based care by boiling down the superfluous tasks, reducing heavy administrative lifts for providers. Allowing a range of healthcare information technologies to exchange, interpret and use data cohesively consistently leads to higher quality care by relying on a value-based and evidence-based care system. There are three foundational ways in which efficient and effective exchange of information through the use of technology can be extremely valuable to the healthcare system, including:
To say the least, 2020 was a difficult year for skilled nursing providers. Aside from the rapid, ongoing changes necessitated by COVID-19, providers are still reeling from recent, sweeping regulatory changes, including the CMS Patient Driven Payment Model (PDPM).
A year into life under the new model, some skilled nursing facilities are adapting to the new case-mix classification system mu
Russ DePriest
ch better than others, according to Russ DePriest, vice president and general manager of skilled nursing at PointClickCare.
“Under PDPM, CMS wants you to up your game when it comes to care outcomes, so fewer of your residents end up being readmitted to the hospital,” DePriest said. “As part of the new model, Medicare can withhold as much as two percent of reimbursements if a SNF has high readmission rates.”
The good news: Medicare pays facilities in full when they have low readmission rates, and offers added incentives up to 1.6 percent for exceptional performers. But what contributes to high readmission rates? For starters, a lack of automation, integration, and digitization across the resident journey.
Electronic Health Reporter recently spoke with Russ DePriest and Lauren Talbot, an EHR Consultant for Reliance Healthcare. Here, they discuss PDPM, the pandemic, and how digital transformation is driving outcomes in skilled nursing.
Question 1: Russ, how has the pandemic affected PDPM? And how have providers been leveraging technology to adapt to those changes?
Prior to COVID-19, PDPM was one of the biggest changes the SNF industry had seen to its system of operations. Prior to COVID-19, rather than focus on therapy, the new system incentivized treating the needs of the patient as a whole.
In terms of dealing with a high-needs population, PDPM is arguably better designed for a pandemic than the prior RUG system. Given COVID, where we know patients with co-morbidities are at a higher risk, paying on patient characteristics rather than therapy is beneficial to SNFs. So, although it wasn’t designed in anticipation of a pandemic, the new system is well-matched.
To help us further understand the impact of our technology on skilled nursing providers’ operations, including PDPM, we commissioned Forrester Consulting – part of an independent, objective research firm – to conduct a study and talk to some of our skilled nursing customers. I should note that Reliance Healthcare and Heritage Living were not among those customers.
Some of the interviewed facilities were able to save over $200,000 per year in PDPM-related penalties. This is because our platform enables digital transformation, and allows facilities to trace all treatments and associated results delivered to a resident. As a result, it’s easier for management to standardize and improve their evidence-based care plans, translating into better outcomes for residents. The result: facilities using the PointClickCare platform are better positioned to maintain the low readmission rate necessary to avoid penalties.
This is a common question for those weighing the options of whether to get insured or not. Over the past few years, affordable health has sparked debate in America and across the world. This has received prodding by the rise in infections and other lifestyle diseases over the last decades. The truth is insurance has played a massive role in dealing with the rising mortality rates. However, until today, the insurance narrative has not yet sunk deep into people’s minds. Many are still in doubt whether to purchase medical covers or wait for the time when visiting the hospital is necessary and pay the bills from their pockets. Many still believe that insurance is a waste of money, and at times one never enjoys its benefits.
The truth is the cost of receiving medical care is not getting down any soon, but instead, the graph is continually rising. It is evident how hard scientists and other medical industry stakeholders are trying so hard to come up with effective ways of handling specific issues. Medical technologies are advancing every time the sun sets to rise. As such, it is difficult for the prices to go down considering the effort put towards making services and success rates even better. Insurance aims to help everyone plan and budget for their medical needs in time, and by so doing, the burden of hefty bills gets taken away.
How Medical Insurance Works
The basic idea of health insurance is that when one buys premiums with a given insurance provider, they will gain their medical bills taken care of either in part or whole, depending on the cover details. It goes hand in hand with what happens in the care sector, where the car insurance’s objective is always to restore the beneficiary to where he/she was before the car got damaged. In some instances, one might get an accident that writes-off the car’s value calling for an entire replacement.
Though these two types of insurance covers might work in the same manner, health insurance is way more comprehensive than car insurance. A medical cover covers a range of activities apart from accidents and treatment expenses. Most health insurance covers a range of goings-on like routine medical checkups, vaccinations, and many more.
There are so many signs that should make you book an appointment with a neurologist. But first, let’s understand who a neurologist is. A neurologist is a medical professional who can diagnose and treat conditions that affect the brain and the nervous system.
Innovation is at the heart of the healthcare sector as technology brings new tools and approaches to the table. For this reason, practitioners and healthcare providers are always looking into methods that revolutionize the way they detect and treat certain diseases.
One of these innovations is light therapy. Although controversial, this approach has been the subject of numerous studies that vouch for its effectiveness across different fields. Also known as phototherapy, this method has encouraged further research into the usefulness of artificial light in the medical sector. So far, experts have identified a number of ways in which light therapy could be applied:
Treating seasonal affective disorder
In countries where there are extensive periods of no sunlight, seasonal affective disorder or SAD is mostly common. Weather changes and changes in the light-dark cycle are also important factors that contribute to SAD. While antidepressants are usually administered to people experiencing this mood disorder, light therapy can also provide an alternative approach.
According to an article by the Harvard Medical School, patients with SAD can be exposed to artificial light for a certain amount of time depending on how drastic the weather changes in their location. Although there has yet to be a significant link between light exposure and winter depression, light therapy can still help with optimizing the effects of medication and reduce a patient’s reliance on antidepressants.
When men start to reach the age of 40, their testosterone level can start to decline by 3 percent almost every year. However, testosterone is still an essential hormone when it comes to men’s health and although this decline will not always mean that you will be in need of therapy, there are still symptoms and conditions that can emerge and will ultimately make testosterone replacement necessary.
Good thing there are Testosterone Replacement clinics that are qualified to provide you with the testosterone replacement that you are going to need. By being able to maintain the necessary testosterone level, you will also be able to maintain a healthy sex drive and it can increase your overall energy.
When a man is still in his adolescence stage, he still has adequate testosterone levels and this will continue to produce largely through the ages 20 to 30. However, after that certain age range, men will then tend to suffer testosterone deficiency thereby leading to a lot of issues that can be resolved easily through testosterone replacement treatments.
When men start to reach the age of 40, their testosterone level can start to decline by 3 percent almost every year. However, testosterone is still an essential hormone when it comes to men’s health and although this decline will not always mean that you will be in need of therapy, there are still symptoms and conditions that can emerge and will ultimately make testosterone replacement necessary.