Business

medical billing problems

Everything we read suggests the day is nearing when all hospitals and doctors will use computers instead of paper. But despite the progress being made to eliminate it in hospitals and clinics, there remains an insidious blizzard of paper in the health industry that seems to be only getting worse--medical billing.[read more]

Microbes / shutterstock

Imagine the network of connections that link bacteria with patients, their immune systems, the healthcare facility itself, and everyone working in and passing through that facility. What a complex array of relationships and interdependencies! Now superimpose on this complexity our desire and need to impose order.[read more]

Health Start-Ups!

After my last round of health start-ups, I received lots of emails, comments, and shout-outs on LinkedIn, FB and Twitter about more cool health start-ups. I culled the lot and this is what I came up with as a second round of cool health start-ups.[read more]

Mammogram

The most common imaging test for breast cancer detection is the mammogram, but it’s not the only one. Other screening procedures include the breast MRI, a sonogram or ultrasound. Medical practices set their list prices based on normal business concerns such as staff costs, facility costs, etc.[read more]

Hospitals & content management

More than a few marketing-savvy hospitals have grown from a simplistic and static Web presence to a dynamic, multi-layered Internet encounter with their many audiences and various messages. Hospital administrators and communications professionals have embraced content marketing.[read more]

Primary-care physicians / shutterstock

As health systems maneuver to dominate regional markets, physician employment has become their principal lever. Primary care physicians (PCPs) are now precious commodities that can manage populations and steer patients into the system’s services.[read more]

Brianna Garrison, oncology social worker

Do you have resources to deal with cancer that go beyond understanding treatment? Patients like me certainly spend a lot of time talking about treatments, and research into better treatments, which makes a lot of sense. But that’s just part of the cancer journey.[read more]

Emergency department / Lisa Jarvis, Wiki Commons

Insightful new healthcare research from the RAND Corp, commissioned by the Emergency Medicine Action Fund, proposes that the 4 percent of U.S. physicians who work in emergency rooms serve as the major decisionmakers for nearly half of all hospital admissions in the U.S.[read more]

healthcare costs

Under today’s reimbursement system, better care doesn’t always yield better business results. That’s because healthcare organizations aren’t incentivized to eliminate profitable procedures that may not benefit patients. The way most hospitals and clinicians are paid today, why would we expect otherwise?[read more]

It’s been just over one year since the JOBS Act was passed, which makes equity- and debt-based crowdfunding legal for accredited and nonaccredited investors. Although the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to finalize and implement specific rules around those provisions, several online platforms have plowed ahead and created private portals for accredited investors and startups to find each other in the meantime.[read more]

patient engagement / shutterstock

This is the transcript of my recent interview with Harvard Pilgrim’s CEO Eric Schultz. We talk about what consumer engagement is, how it is finally starting to get real traction, and what Harvard Pilgrim is doing in that area.[read more]

Andy Rooney, lovable curmudgeon

I am getting close to the age where I should be a bit confused, but my younger colleagues also seem confused about the Affordable Care Act. From what I read the Affordable Care Act is not affordable, nor is it patient oriented. Patients really had little to do with its formation.[read more]