Healthcare Economy

Minute Clinics are now called the "Disruptive Innovation" in the Health care Industry. This term refers to a product (or service) that enters a market as a simpler, lower-cost alternative to an existing product that is "overbuilt" for the needs of the market. Using lower-cost technology or workers, the innovation improves until it establishes a dominant market share. (Source: Bohmer, "The Rise of In-Store Clinics.")

Continue reading "Minute Clinics - To be or not to be" »

Posted by Vidya Rajagopalan at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Acute ambiguity exists in the market right now in the ares of product readiness, analysis readiness, and people readiness; There is precious little time remaining to evaluate, decide, and act in these areas to prepare your facility for ICD10. 

Continue reading "2012 is your last chance to assess the impact of ICD10; Don't lose it." »

Posted by Mark Brownlee at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Making healthcare affordable, accessible & accountable is not any unique initiatives to any health care system. The pivotal concern has been always to make the healthcare system sustainable. If I have correctly analyzed the prevalent facts & figures, I can well claim that the current US healthcare system is absolutely operating under an unsustainable bubble with a perfect mismatch of cost and quality giving rise to the increasing trend of inequity, inequality and inefficiency. Moreover, with the fast pace in healthcare market the future provisions are never an easy one to grasp. Changes are certain in medical technologies, management of chronic illness, reimbursement patterns, coverage policies & etc. In such a situation, if a healthcare system can't move towards a comprehensive system-wide reform or just aims (even with incremental changes) to address either financing or delivery system problems but not both, it is bound to be dysfunctional, lose its credibility and we will ever continue to waste billions of dollars and thousands of more lives every year. So, as an answer to this issue let me now weave the concept of a "True" sustainable healthcare system". Yes, I agree quality, cost, delivery & financing mechanisms are the four pillars, and still the open question is what is beyond these to reap the full impact in cost, affordability and accessibility and make health-care sustainable and for all including the most vulnerable ones.

Continue reading "Six aspects to make US Healthcare Sustainable...A thought" »

Posted by Dr Suman De at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Many commercial payers started on ICD 10 compliance activities quite early. However, based on my current visibility, a significantly large number of payers that are in the early phases of assessment are not ready for the Oct 1, 2013 date.

Following are the key issues..

Continue reading "Will HHS grant an extension for ICD 10 compliance beyond Oct 1, 2013?" »

Posted by Siva Nandiwada at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Minute Clinics are now called the "Disruptive Innovation" in the Healthcare Industry. This term refers to a product (or service) that enters a market as a simpler, lower-cost alternative to an existing product that is "overbuilt" for the needs of the market. Using lower-cost technology or workers, the innovation improves until it establishes a dominant market share. (Source: Bohmer, "The Rise of In-Store Clinics.")

Continue reading "Minute Clinics - To be or not to be" »

Posted by Vidya Rajagopalan at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Better care for individuals is one of the important goals for the ACOs in the Shared Savings Program as established by the Affordable Care Act. This highest-level goal also known as the three-part aim consists of the following:
•Better care for individuals - As described in the Institute of Medicine report, it has six dimensions of quality: Safety, effectiveness, patient-centeredness, timeliness, efficiency and equity
•Better health for populations with respect to educating beneficiaries about the upstream causes of ill health
•Lower the expenditures by eliminating waste and inefficiencies while not withholding any needed care that helps beneficiaries

Continue reading "Scope for leveraging IT in establishing patient centred care in an ACO" »

Posted by Radhabaran Mohanty at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the recent past we have seen a paradigm shift in application of social media to healthcare industry. Studies in this area show optimum utilization of social media can help improve the patient experience. However, there are equal numbers of challenges in adoption of social media tools in healthcare industry (in particular - healthcare providers). Some of the challenges in successful implementation of social media in hospitals include: lack of IT/social media awareness amongst the healthcare providers, need for IT infrastructure, time and resource crunch.

Having said that we also have some of the world class examples in United States of America where social media is revolutionizing the patient experience.

Here is a brief note from Mayo clinic center for social media: "The Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, a first-of-its-kind social media center focused on health care, builds on Mayo Clinic's leadership among health care providers in adopting social media tools, which began with podcasting in 2005. Mayo Clinic has the most popular medical provider channel on YouTube and more than 175,000 "followers" on Twitter, as well as an active Facebook page with over 50,000 connections. With its News Blog, Podcast Blog and Sharing Mayo Clinic, a blog that enables patients and employees to tell their Mayo Clinic stories, Mayo has been a pioneer in hospital blogging. MayoClinic.com, Mayo's consumer health information site, also hosts a dozen blogs on topics ranging from Alzheimer's to The Mayo Clinic Diet".

The stats on application of social media in hospitals/healthcare providers look very impressive:

1,188 Hospitals have adapted social media and following is the channel-wise distribution:

·         548 YouTube Channels

·         1018 Facebook pages

·         788 Twitter Accounts

·         458 LinkedIn Accounts

·         913 Four Square

·         137 Blogs

There are close to 4000 hospital social networking sites.

(Source: ebennett.org, data as on June, 2011)

The future of social media application in healthcare is definitively very promising and some of the very obvious benefits of application of social media in hospitals include:

Improved doctor - patient interaction

Connect                     

Collaborate/Co-Create

Collective Wisdom                                       

Patient Centric care

Community/Forum

 

We have to wait and watch the revolution happen in healthcare industry through application of social media tools and techniques.

Posted by Raghavendra Hunasgi at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

My earlier blogs, part 1 and part 2 detailed the key concepts influencing the success of ACOs and the need of a change management strategy enforcing stakeholders acceptance of ACOs.

Continue reading "Promoting Accountability in ACOs - Part 3" »

Posted by Radhabaran Mohanty at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"To be or not to be" seems to be a burning thought in almost every provider these days and this is towards deciding whether or not it is sensible for providers to establish an ACO or join an ACO.

Continue reading ""To be or Not to be in an ACO...too early for Providers to decide"" »

Posted by Dr Suman De at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It is quite amazing to see the reaction to the health insurance/benefit exchanges that have been mandated by the health reform bill, to be created and maintained by each state to manage its uninsured population. There were 7 states/coalitions that had received the early innovator grants, ranging from just above 6 million to MD, all the way in excess of 50 million to OK. Now that is some range of innovation, I must say. But I deviate. The point is that two of the top 3 grantees have since returned the grants, OK and KS. And by the looks of the conversations we have been hearing in the corridors of power, there may be others who are contemplating a similar response. On the other hand, the second round of grants provided additional funding to the smallest grantee MD, in excess of 20 million dollars.

Read the complete post at my blog space in Health Data Management.

The link below:

http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/blogs/health_care_technology_news-43121-1.html

Posted by Rajiv Sabharwal at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)