Welcome to the weekly edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features. This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job.
News
CHIME has released this year’s lists of Digital Health Most Wired organizations. Seven of the 18 Level 10 acute care providers are based in Pennsylvania – UPMC, Geisinger Health System, affiliates of Jefferson Health, and the Lehigh Valley Health Network. The same is true for ambulatory care, where providers in Pennsylvania represent seven of the 17 organizations in Level 10. Meanwhile, all Mayo Clinic sites for acute and ambulatory care have achieved Level 10 status.
The sixth annual Patient Access Journey Report from Kyruus found strong interest in online research and comparison shopping among today’s patients. Among the patients surveyed, 93% are interested in digital self-service options for pre-appointment tasks, 61% research new providers online (with 80% of those patients consulting multiple information sources), and 40% prefer to book appointments online instead of calling. In addition, 87% of patients consider care costs when choosing a new provider, and half compare costs among providers before making a decision.
Research from conversational intelligence vendor Authenticx concluded that healthcare organizations spend $726,000 annually to resolve disruptions in the patient experience. These disruptions range from delays in receiving documentation (such as prior authorization) to receiving conflicting information from different sources to being stuck between the provider and another entity (such as a payer or pharmacy) trying to resolve a dispute.
An analysis from the patient safety organization ECRI revealed that the majority of safety incidents related to race in the healthcare setting target providers. The review of more than 500 incident reports found that 57% involve patients making inappropriate racial comments or engaging in racist behavior, with the remainder involving racist behavior or disparate care on the part of staff members.
Partnerships
- Patient communication company Kno2 announced a partnership with Alayacare, a home-based care technology provider.
- HSBlox has partnered with Apexon to integrate the company’s data visualization and analytics technology into the HSBlox value-based administration platform.
- Virtual reality companies XRHealth and HTC VIVE collaborated on a distraction therapy tool.
- Psychiatric care provider Talkiatry has integrated with Cedar, a post-visit patient engagement and payment platform.
- Digital perioperative service provider Pip Care has launched a pilot at three UPMC hospitals. Pip Care is the first company launched through the partnership between UPMC Enterprises and Redesign Health.
Products
- Quality management software provider Qualio released Validation Pack, a quality and compliance tool for life sciences, and announced ISO 9001 and 27001 certifications for its quality management and data security products.
- Precision medicine platform Feel Therapeutics received a patent for its emotion detection technology.
- Clinical workflow platform Wellsheet introduced Virtual Nursing Station to optimize nursing workflows within Cerner, Epic, or athenahealth.
- Payment and interoperability vendor Edifecs unveiled its Payer-to-Payer Data Exchange and Member App for FHIR products.
- Credentialing software provider Sutherland received NCQA certification for its Sutherland SmartCred platform.
- GE Healthcare has received more FDA authorizations for AI-enabled medical devices, with 42, than any other company. The FDA has issued 510(k) clearances to more than 500 devices in all.
Sales
- Physician-owned Advocare announced $1 billion in collections using eClinicalWorks Revenue Cycle Management.
- OSF HealthCare selected Lightbeam Health subsidiary CareSignal for remote patient monitoring as part the health system’s Medicaid Transformation Project.
- Community-based providers TPC selected SHOAR Health and Automation Anywhere as revenue cycle management partners. Both vendors are subsidiaries of Windham Brannon.
- Cloud service provider Gainwell Technologies implemented the Medicaid administration platform for the state of Kansas.
If you have news that you’d like us to consider for a future edition of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features, please submit them on this page. Please include any relevant links and let us know if news is under embargo.
