Client News Coverage

A number of regulations currently govern retail pharmacy operations to ensure that each facility meets the minimum requirements for safe practice. Included in these are guidelines mandating that patients be provided with information on their prescription medications.

What is not mandated, however, is the format of that information. This gap has led to a common misperception that is negatively impacting pharmacy budgets and patient health literacy: That medication education leaflets must be provided in paper form.

Progressive Grocer »

Effective population health management begins at the point of care, where strong governance processes must be established to guide how data is collected, structured, accessed, maintained, and analyzed. Many healthcare organizations continue to struggle with creation of these policies, hampered by the sheer volume of data and the pace at which change is taking place. By Subbu Ravi, COO, Amphion Medical Solutions

Health IT Outcomes »

Terminology is core to everything in healthcare - from diagnoses to procedures to outcomes, healthcare IT systems represent clinical concepts in coded terminologies or free text. The lack of a common clinical vocabulary across disparate systems is currently a primary roadblock to the national efforts to increase interoperability, transparency and collaboration within our healthcare system.

Advance Healthcare Network »

If there is one emerging pattern within the clinical informatics field, it is the quest to make data "actionable" for users. With all the technology infrastructure development over the past decade to facilitate electronic health record installation in healthcare facilities, providers are finding that the data generated often can't be used in a timely and constructive manner.

Healthcare IT News »

Enhancing care experience and outcomes, improving population health and reducing costs is healthcare’s “Triple Aim,” a concept introduced by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to help navigate a shift in focus from “health care” to “health optimization.” When it comes to achieving these laudable objectives, anecdotal experiences and data emerging from several pilot programs led by senior living providers and Medicare managed care organizations suggest that remote monitoring technology has a crucial role to play.

Senior Housing News »

National regulatory initiatives such as Meaningful Use, Value-based Purchasing and the accountable care movement are working in tandem to raise the bar on adoption and integration of evidenced-based practices across all clinical care settings. Higher performance expectations mean that healthcare organizations must deploy strategies to standardize care delivery by providing more robust clinical decision support (CDS) at the point of care.

Government Health IT »

As the healthcare industry unwraps the next phase of population health management (PHM), providers are increasingly embracing its promise to drive success with healthcare’s triple aim of improving population health, enhancing patient experiences and reducing costs. It’s a 180-degree shift in thinking for many providers who have been conditioned to long-standing fee-for-service models, one that will require a coordinated care effort and an advanced technological infrastructure to support decision-making based on the latest industry evidence.

Electronic Health Reporter »

If you think maintaining an accurate record of who’s who across one facility is difficult, try doing it across multiple organizations.

With the Affordable Care Act granting more Americans access to health care, the demand for better patient identity technologies continues to climb. The combination of additional patients and the growth of data-sharing health information exchanges (HIEs) may lead to serious patient identification problems, including duplicate records, overlays, and other inaccuracies. Hospitals with lax processes or that fail to employ strong patient-matching algorithms can potentially tarnish data flowing through HIEs. Bad data easily can spread as information travels across different facilities and organizations.

For the Record »

Sepsis data are talking, but should the health care industry be listening?

Big Data has become a big commodity in the health care industry. The government, payers, researchers, providers, and even patients are interested in what data are trying to tell us about the quality of care provided. EHRs have allowed the complicated manipulation of these data, yet there continues to be limitations on the conclusions that can be drawn.

For the Record »

A senior population that is the fastest growing sector in the U.S. has created a booming home health industry, one that is expected to reach a value of $150.8 billion by 2018. That rapid growth has also given rise to another highly lucrative industry: reimbursement fraud.

Security Today »

The paradigm shift currently occurring in the healthcare industry is unprecedented. Longstanding fee-for-service care delivery models are rapidly evolving to a value-based system that rewards providers based on outcomes performance and cost-efficient care.

Health Management Technology »

A significant paradigm shift is underway in healthcare as new quality-driven care delivery models demand the support of advanced technological infrastructures and professionals try to keep pace with a rapidly evolving health IT landscape. As the industry turns towards Stage 2 Meaningful Use (MU) attestation with greater urgency and anticipates the coming expectations of Stage 3 and beyond, strategies for increasing EHR adoption rates within the physician community are paramount.

Executive Insight »

Patient-centered care that actively employs strategies to engage patients and family members in the delivery of their healthcare is a foundational component to current industry movements. Going forward, healthcare organizations that deploy consistent and effective patient education programs to align with these movements will experience the greatest success with national initiatives such as Medicare Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (HVBP) and the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP).

Advance Healthcare Network »

The introduction of the United States Pharmacopeia Chapter <797> regulation in 2008 sent and continues to send shock waves through hospital pharmacy departments and other sterile drug preparation settings.

Compounding practices that had been ingrained in the pharmaceutical industry for decades were simply turned upside down, and many pharmacies today remain challenged in their pursuit to successfully comply.

Becker's Hospital Review »

Improving care and lowering costs in the medical field are of the utmost importance. "Quality improvement initiatives are essential in every aspect of healthcare delivery because we will never be as good as we can be without additional monitoring and improvement of performance," says Thomas Deas, Jr., MD, MMM, FASGE, of Gastroenterology Associates of North Texas in Fort Worth.

Becker's ASC Review »