STORIES & SOLUTIONS FOR THE MODERN BUSINESS USER

A recent POLITICO article describes how “virus hunters” (public health experts charged with tracking infectious diseases like COVID-19) are forced to use archaic, 20th century technologies to investigate cases and share their findings: fax machines and Excel spreadsheets. Granted, there is no mention of typewriters and rotary phones, but still, it’s reasonable to expect much better. So, what’s the problem? Why is it that we can withdraw money from an ATM anywhere in the world, but we can’t easily share COVID-19 lab results between hospitals located across the street from one another? In other words, why can’t healthcare information technology “interoperate”?

As a result of the COVID-19 public health emergency, many healthcare institutions are struggling with cash flow. Elective procedures have been postponed and non-critical patients are electing to stay home rather than seek treatment. Hospitals facing a cash crunch can maximize cash flow through their EHR and other operational initiatives. Here are six things you can do right now to improve cash flow during these challenging times.

I’ve been accused of being a geek. I’m not sure why. But anyway, last week I was listening to a podcast about emojis. You know – emojis (or emoji if you prefer that as the plural): those cute little cartoony characters that are typically used in texts to convey meaning. Instead of texting the words “Thanks so much,” you can simply text 🙏. In fact, it’s possible to string together a complete dialog with a series of emojis. Imagine that some patients get a 🦠 and have to take an 🚑 to go to the 🏥. There, the patient is taken care of by a ‍👩‍⚕️ and hopefully they’ll get better and go home following safe practices and looking like 😷.

So, You Implemented Telemedicine. Now What?

In partnership with Sonder Health, Avaap is providing a three-part series for healthcare organizations that rapidly moved to implement a telehealth solution at the onset of COVID-19 and have since dealt with a surge of virtual visits. Make sure to catch up on Part I and Part II of the series.  

So, You Implemented Telemedicine. Now What?

In partnership with Sonder Health, Avaap is providing a three-part series for healthcare organizations that rapidly moved to implement a telehealth solution at the onset of COVID-19 and have since dealt with a surge of virtual visits. Make sure to catch up on Part I of the series highlighting a few simple guidelines for starting your telemedicine program.  

With the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), American Medical Association (AMA), and other medical specialties recommending a halt on non-essential medical encounters, the adoption of telemedicine has shifted into over-drive. According to research from Frost and Sullivan, March telehealth visits surged 50 percent amid the pandemic. Analysts now expect general medical care visits to top 200 million this year, up sharply from their original expectation of 36 million visits for all of 2020.

As the coronavirus contagion continues to soar, physicians, nurses, and environmental service teams are fighting the war on the frontlines, struggling to both fulfill their duties and care for their families. In the back office, hospital IT teams are engaged in a similar battle. Healthcare workers and resources across the board are being reallocated, becoming increasingly expensive, are difficult to acquire, and in some cases, absent due to their own illness or home responsibilities.

Last week, I wrote about some of the things your healthcare information technology (HIT) folks are working on with respect to the novel coronavirus (aka SARS-CoV-2 or 2019-nCoV) and the disease that it causes (COVID-19). To summarize, we’re creating and loading the proper diagnosis codes so we can accurately report and create clinical decision support (CDS) tools. We’re building the new lab tests so once they’re available, our physicians will be able to order them in the electronic health record (EHR). We’re updating order sets and inserting the new tests as appropriate. We’re modifying the patient portal to ensure patients who are at high risk of disease aren’t exposed to other patients or clinicians who aren’t properly protected. I mentioned last week that travel screen is a bit passé at this point because we are well into community spread now (meaning it really doesn’t matter so much if you’ve traveled internationally or not).

If you’re reading this and you’re not aware of the novel coronavirus that’s either already causing a pandemic or is about to cause a pandemic, I suggest you go back to whatever you’re doing and enjoy the bliss that must be uniquely yours. For the rest of us, I thought it might be helpful to give a quick overview of what your healthcare information technology (HIT) team is likely feverishly working on behind the scenes.

Last month, UCSF researchers reported on a study wherein investigators modified the default dispense number for various ambulatory prescription opioids. The goal was to determine if researchers could adjust the prescribing habits of physicians via minimal changes in the electronic health record (EHR). And the results were . . . they could indeed modify physician prescribing trends!