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…
Health IT
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…
Should healthcare be free of cost?
Medical ethics, a set of moral principles that govern the practice of medicine, imply that a medical practitioner needs to display consideration, compassion, and benevolence to their patients. This is a complex concept. Compassion arises from humanitarian sensitivity, and that would essentially dictate that if I am unable to cover the expenditure associated with my Read more…
Healthcare.gov problems: What to tell patients in under two minutes?
Glenn Stream, former president of the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), has warned that there are a lot of challenges ahead for providers, especially in terms of questions from patients about their insurance registration. He made these remarks a few days before marketplaces for federal and state health insurances went live. The Obamacare Health Read more…
Survey finds seniors relying on technology to manage healthcare
As technology continues to assist patients in improving their health care experience, it is finding acceptance among senior citizens as well. According to a recent survey, by the research firm Accenture, 57% of patients aged 65 years and older are seeking digital tools to manage health. As seniors become more tech savvy, they are seeking virtual Read more…