About Social Media Today
April 24, 2014
Are You Seeing Greater Consumer Scrutiny of Healthcare Prices? You Will
The number of consumers inquiring about healthcare prices is increasing. Some just want to know what a specific procedure or drug will cost. Others want to understand their out-of-pocket contributions. And many, many more complain about prices and pricing structures that, quite frankly, just don’t make sense.[read more]
April 24, 2014
Can We Survive an Epidemic of Corporate Wellness?
Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov
If a company truly believes that wellness is right for workers and business, then create a corporate culture that encourages this and provide leadership. If it’s really as good an idea as they say, then folks over time will be persuaded to do join in. Leave the financial rewards and penalties off the field.[read more]
April 24, 2014
How Are You Using Physician Data Mining?
The pay for performance model of payment has been the preference of health insurance companies for several decades. Pay for performance measures are meant to validate payments to physicians in accordance with The Affordable Care Act by using data mining techniques to keep tabs on physician costs.[read more]
Recent Infographics
Why US Healthcare Costs More
Expensive healthcare / shutterstock
Why are healthcare costs in the United States twice that of other countries? Healthcare inflation has been going on for decades, and although its rise has slowed the last few years, the costs of healthcare threaten to consume both the federal and state budgets and are still a leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. The main reason is price.[read more]
Collaborating with Patients in the Digital Information Age
Digitally educated patient (source)
Who hasn’t encountered, in their working lives, a patient who comes to a healthcare appointment having done so much outside research that somewhere along the way he or she has stopped being open to new ideas or prescriptions? But are they really resisting, or just mired in copious, conflicting, and sometimes inaccurate information?[read more]
Ideas for Sustainable Health Bloom in the Arizona Desert
health tech
The past two days, I’ve been in Tempe, Arizona, to participate in an invitation-only conference to launch Project Honeybee. The mission is to expand and accelerate efforts to sustain health through the prevention and early detection of disease. The focus is on clinical application of wearable biosensors.[read more]
Benefits of ACOs to Both Patients and Providers
One of the goals of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to provide coordinated care which, in turn, increases quality and efficiency within the healthcare field, and reduces costs. Have you considered the benefits of ACOs from both the patient and provider perspectives?[read more]
Monash Health Benefits from a Vendor-Neutral Archive
Tony Gabbert, Operations Manager at Monash Health
Monash Health in Victoria, Australia, has implemented a vendor-neutral archive (VNA) to store, secure, and access its medical images and other clinical data. Tony Gabbert, operations manager at Monash Health, told us that the facility has many sources of imaging, and that using a VNA provides a better experience for the physicians and the patients.[read more]
The Differences Between Good and Bad Health IT
Good / bad health IT
This infographic takes a look at six different instances where examples of good and bad Health IT exist. These areas include finding patients, evaluating test results, entering case information, ordering prescriptions, dealing with dosing, and discharging patients.[read more]
9 Ways to Kill Your Physician Liaison Program Before It Begins
Physician liaison programs often fail at both the practice and the hospital level. Well-intended efforts frequently crash and burn. This resource-wasting demise, in our experience, can be traced directly to one or more of the following “reasons to fail.” Ignore these classic mistakes at your own peril.[read more]
Do Patient Satisfaction Surveys Help or Hurt Reimbursement?
patient satisfaction
Addressing community health literacy as a whole is no small task, but taking even small steps forward to increase access to resources and create content for patients that is easy-to-read, actionable and brief is helpful. Redesigning patient satisfaction surveys to follow a similar format will will assure that the questions are understood.[read more]
Are Blogs a Good Idea for Doctors?
Should doctors blog?
Blogging is a great way for doctors to connect with their patients and potential patients as well as establish themselves as a leader in their fields. However, blogging for doctors carries its own unique set of potential pitfalls. Here's what to look out for.[read more]
Where Will Medicine Be 20 Years from Now?
A peek into medicine's future / shutterstock
I can answer this question, at least speculatively, from the perspective of clinical practice and medical technology, where there will be enormous changes to healthcare. Here are examples of what I see from tracking trends in clinical practice and medical technology development.[read more]
Can Cloud-Based Doctors' "Lounges" Help Keep Your Fund of Knowledge Current?
checking into a doctors' "lounge"
The success of medicine largely depends on how well it develops, acquires, and uses knowledge. Yet doctors face an exploding base of bio-medical literature increasing in size and complexity. Some tools that expand the find-ability of information are free and can sleuth the stacks for you.[read more]
ObamaCare Signups: More Than Just the Exchange Numbers
Obamacare survives (Fresh Conservative / photopin cc)
President Obama just announced that 8 million people signed up for coverage on federal and state health insurance exchanges during the initial open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare. But focusing just on the exchanges actually seriously underestimates ObamaCare’s impact.[read more]
Applications, Global Markets in Tissue Engineering and Cell Therapy
tissue engineering / shutterstock
The market for tissue engineering and cell therapy products is set to grow from a respectable $8.3 billion in 2010 to nearly $32 billion by 2018. The largest segment in the overall market for regenerative medicine technologies and products comprises orthopedic applications.[read more]
One Medical Group Scoops Up Additional Funding
Image: One Medical Group
Concierge primary care practice One Medical Group has raised more than $117 million in capital with the addition of a new $40 million round announced today. That’s a lot of cash for the seven-year-old company, which now runs 27 primary care offices in six tech-savvy cities including San Francisco, Boston, New York and Chicago.[read more]
The Cost of Resistance: Clinical Coding Optimization
medical coding savings
Physician practices may be lagging behind hospitals when it comes to implementing clinical coding software. The hesitation to do so is costing them not only efficiency in coding, but reimbursements withheld due to avoidable errors. So, why are practices resisting the new technology? The short answer is, upfront cost.[read more]
HealthWorks Collective Series
David Davidovic David built and led commercial functions in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries for 33 years and has been di More »
Barbara Ficarra Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA is an award-winning journalist, media broadcaster, health educator, speaker and consultant More »
David Harlow David Harlow is Prinicipal of the Harlow Group LLC, a healthcare law and consulting firm based in Boston, MA. More »
Stephen Schimpff Stephen C. Schimpff, MD is the retired CEO of the Univ. of MD Med. Center and the COO of the Univ of MD Medical System. More »
Andrew Schorr Andrew, a leukemia survivor and respected medical journalist is the founder of PatientPower, an excellent web resource. More »
John Sharp John Sharp has interests in social media in healthcare and clinical research informatics including secondary use of EMR More »
Christina Thielst Christina Thielst is a hospital administrator, consultant, educator and author with 30 years of healthcare experience. More »
“People were not making bad decisions because of the results of 23adnme testing. This urban myth has circulated enough. What could they possibly do? Take off their own breasts? Any so called drastic measure needs a doctor involved. The fact doctors called the tests entertainment was part of the problem - they had no idea what information they had and no desire to investigate. What ...”
“ Excellent article! I am Canadian and, unfortunately, we have exactly the same problem with our public healthcare system. Our medical practitioners are paid by government (that's why we pay ridiculously high taxes) and they have little motivation to spend more than allocated minimal time with their patients. Patients' feedback doesn't really matter as with shortage of doctors ...”