risk reimbursement

Accurate and efficient radiology billing can prove tricky, especially with so many factors influencing the final outcome. Still, maintaining a healthy revenue stream is possible for any healthcare provider so long as the practice adheres to a handful of best practices.[read more]

mobile apps in healthcare

Now that medical practices have begun using electronic medical records, embracing a mobile application is the most natural next step. People of all ages and income levels are using mobile technology to manage their lives. With the right patient care app, they can manage their healthcare as well.[read more]

social media engagement

In healthcare marketing, social media (SM) is broadly understood to simply mean your choice of tools. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google Plus are most popular and important. But curiously, the meaning of social media’s companion buzzword, engagement, is often fuzzy.[read more]

Targeting new movers

More than 14 percent of the U.S. population moves each year, according to Melissa Data. This creates a large pool of new people buying homes and moving into your community -- who could become new patients for your medical practice. The following steps will help you get a little extra mileage from your efforst when targeting new movers.[read more]

connected health

I heard the other day that by 2017, 50% of the pharmacy spend in the U.S. will be on specialty pharmacy. It seems this is driven by two phenomena. The first is the growing crop of new molecules that are in the class "biologics"; the second phenomenon is that just about everything else will be generics.[read more]

wellness program

As wellness becomes a more formal staple within the healthcare landscape, we are hearing from participants of wellness programs about the components that would truly enhance their experience. Here's a list of some of the exciting things that technology can help promote in wellness to design truly immersive and engaging programs.[read more]

patient patron / shutterstock

No doubt your marketing plan contains a mélange of patient KOL tactics. But what if instead of trying to get patients to say something, you helped patients do something? Instead of brand advocacy tactics, what if your brand became a patron of patients?[read more]

ICD-10's top 10 head-scratchers

The hassle of adopting ICD-10 has only just begun for some - others might imply that they’ve been waiting for it for years, having started preparations many moons ago. While I’m sure any medical coder would tell you that they have a list of crucial and obvious missing codes, some of them seem a little odd to me.[read more]

Massachusetts / shutterstock

Like many, I’ve been surprised that the rollout of the Affordable Care Act has had such an impact on Massachusetts. But somehow Massachusetts screwed up the rollout of the Obamacare exchange, which is costing $100 million to fix, and at least some Massachusetts small businesses are getting hit with big rate hikes as they renew.[read more]

Big Data's dark side

In a previous episode of Digital Health Illustrated I discussed the benefits of health data, from its ability to speed medical research to even predict whether people will become ill. In this installment, I focus on questions related to the dark side of big health data.[read more]

Dr. Richard Pazdur

I gotta be fair to Dr. Richard Pazdur, the king of cancer drug approvals (or rejections) at the FDA. I have been sharply critical of him in the years past, but now it seems a combination of better science, great support from patients and advocates, and yes, a kindler/gentler Dr. Pazdur and the FDA, has all led to quicker drug approvals.[read more]

Top 5 HIPAA violations

We've compiled a collection of data around HIPAA complaints over the past decade to give you a better picture of the regulatory landscape and enforcement actions across the country, along with the types of complaints, breaches and fines that most often occur when it comes to HIPAA compliance issues.[read more]