As 2014 begins, hundreds of thousands of Americans are signing up for health insurances through the Health Insurance Marketplace initiative. Latest figures suggest that close to 2 million people have purchased insurance plans with the deadline to do so approaching quickly. This influx of new patients means that healthcare providers and professionals will have to Read more…
Health IT
EHRs Can Reduce the Cost of Care for Diabetes
A recent report found health IT to be one of the biggest contributors in successfully treating diabetes in western New York. The report found that over a three-year period, Electronic Health Records, care coordination and health information technology have been instrumental in reducing hospitalizations for diabetic patients, by 26%. Brief highlights: 50% of the physicians Read more…
Future holds promise for HIEs
The future for Health Information Exchanges is looking better for 2014 but there will be some challenges. Achieving success in this area will require knowledge and the technical flexibility to adapt. Broadly, there are three HIE groups based on technological and operational preparedness. The first group has deferred investments in technology foreseeing low enrollments. This Read more…
mHealth is Transforming Care Delivery
Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh and Denmark’s health minister Astrid Krag, highlighted mobile healthcare as the way to improve outcomes in the future at the mHealth Summit. Yunus, the Grameen Movement pioneer, who opened up his native Bangladesh to the power of cellphones, said that smartphone has the power to transform people’s Read more…
Key 2014 deadlines for physicians
The new year is going to be important for physicians in meeting regulatory requirements and reporting deadlines. These deadlines will affect quality of care, adoption and usage of Electronic Health Records (EHRs). These deadlines relate to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and more importantly, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). January 1, 2014: CMS Meaningful Use Read more…
Healthcare IT Risk Assessment: 5 Steps
Healthcare IT systems are intertwined with operations, policies and processes along with a bunch of systems, application and data. Sometimes the systems are so complex that one breakdown can last for days and cost the organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost time and money. Therefore, it is imperative that healthcare organizations dependent on Read more…
Improving patient engagement through patient portals
Patient portals are one of the major requirements for Meaningful Use Stage 2 and beyond, and they are in big demand. From large scale practices to small and medium ones, everyone is using these portals to improve patient engagement and shared decision making. Even the physicians who are not offering patient portals are looking to offer Read more…
CMS extends deadlines for Meaningful Use Stage 2 and 3
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has extended the provider attestation deadlines for Meaningful Use Stage 2 and stage 3. Under the new timeline, Stage 2 will now be extended until 2016 while. Stage 3 will begin in 2017 for providers who would complete two years in Stage 2. According to Rob Tagalicod, Read more…
Data center outages costing healthcare industry big time
Without a shadow of doubt, technology has made our lives simpler in a way that we could not have imagined about two decades back. If someone back then had spoken of how we would be able to carry our emails with us all the time through smartphones, browse the entire world with just a few Read more…
The Right Marketing List Can Lead to More Revenue
Most medical practices depend on patient visits to generate revenue, which in turn, can be used to pay for the various operational costs of running a particular practice. Modern day practices are doing all they can to increase their patient volume. In an effort to retain their current patients and to attract new ones, they Read more…