The big question for healthcare organizations that have expanded their telehealth services since the beginning of the pandemic has been what will happen when the public health emergency ends. This uncertainty is what’s known as the “telehealth cliff.”
By authority granted under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services provided flexibility for...
Digital solutions have driven massive changes in the healthcare industry in recent years, both in patient care and in business operations. The rapid evolution of technology will spur even greater changes going forward, affecting clinicians, line-of-business staff and IT teams.
One key change spurred by this evolution is that IT is being integrated more fully into patient care and other...
Virtual nursing is moving from concept to real-world implementation as health systems look for new solutions to address workforce challenges and better support patient care.
Some 36 percent of hospitals reported a nurse vacancy rate of 10 percent or more in 2022. Healthcare organizations across the U.S. are grappling with inflated labor costs, increased staff burnout and potential risks to...
It’s no secret that healthcare is a data-driven business. The average hospital produces roughly 50 petabytes of data every year. That’s more than twice the amount of data housed in the Library of Congress, and it amounts to 137 terabytes per day. Due in large part to the proliferation of medical devices, genetic testing and patient-generated health data, coupled...
The military is modernizing its systems for telehealth by implementing telecritical care programs that enable 24/7 monitoring of critically ill patients.
The program equips intensive care unit rooms with telehealth technologies, allowing care providers to remotely monitor patients in real time and provide remote support to onsite medical staff.
Col. David De Blasio, chief of medicine at Womack Army Medical Center,...
Saad Chaudhry, now the chief digital and information officer at Annapolis, Md.-based Luminis Health, has faced challenges on his healthcare IT career journey.
When he applied for his first official job in the sector — after years of education and experience working on an IBM 286 computer in his dad’s psychiatry clinic in exchange for video game time — he...
Outsourcing has been a near-universal strategy for IT teams in every industry, and healthcare is no exception. From cloud-based data centers to outsourced call centers, these solutions allow teams to focus on supporting care delivery and leave nonstrategic IT tasks to specialists.
Though outsourcing can save money and deliver better service, it also means that players outside of your organization...
Over the past few years, there has been uncertainty about whether telehealth will continue to be approved by the federal government, keeping hybrid healthcare at the forefront of growth in a patient-centric environment. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services extended flexibility for Medicare telehealth billing until December 2024, and now telehealth programs are evolving as part of...
Over the past few decades, healthcare organizations have been moving toward digitized workflows. In this transition, many organizations are swamped with paper from years of record keeping. While digital scanning solutions are becoming more readily available, paper isn’t going away, says Haol Yao, product manager at Epson America.
“The fact is that paper is still much easier and more familiar...
Collecting social determinants of health data provides clinicians with information about nonmedical factors affecting a patient’s health. With this added context, care teams can personalize care, which can lead to better patient outcomes. SDOH initiatives can play a major role in improving health equity, but it’s important that patient data is available to all providers within a health system...
