Most Read Healthcare IT Today Articles in 2020

One of my favorite things to do as we move on to a new year is to look back at the past year.  Needless to say, 2020 has been a crazy year that will never be forgotten here at Healthcare IT Today.  While everyone shifted gears, we took the ambitious effort to do 100 Interviews in 100 days in what we called the #HealthIT100in100.  In many ways, it was our way to give back to the health IT community that really did everything they could to help healthcare organizations that were dealing with COVID-19.

In 2020, we also did a big Pay-HIT-Forward effort where for every ad package that was bought on Healthcare IT Today, we’d give a free ad package to a healthcare IT company in need.  We were lucky to have the support of some extraordinary companies.

While 2020 was a trying year, it also was one of the biggest years in the history of Healthcare IT Today.  Thank you to all of you who read and support what we do here.

As we put 2020 behind us, I thought it would be fun to take a quick look back at the top health IT articles based on views in 2020.  Many of these articles were published years ago, but they still made our top 50 articles by pageview for 2020.  Here’s a look at our top 50 articles of 2020 and a few comments about the top articles.

  1. #HIMSS20 Coronavirus Cancellations and President Trump Keynote Update – It probably won’t come as any surprise to those in the health IT community that this article was so popular.  March was a weird time with everyone trying to figure out what was going to happen.  I think we’ll all remember the experience of HIMSS being cancelled.  Let’s hope the environment improves and we can have a great HIMSS21 in August.  I miss seeing so many of you in person.
  2. More COVID-19 Cartoons – Fun Friday – While we were all suffering through the pandemic, I’m glad to see that people were still looking for a bit of comedic relief.  I hope we never forget the memory of how much healthcare workers have sacrificed for us all.
  3. List of Free COVID-19 Health IT Products and Services – This list will really stand as a testament and a reminder to me of how much the health IT community rallied together to help healthcare organizations amidst COVID.  I’m sure we’ll hear an occasional story of bad behavior by health IT companies, but I can say that putting this list together I mostly saw health IT companies using what the skills and technology they had available to help.
  4. HIPAA Penalties Suspended for Telehealth During COVID-19 National Emergency – While I know that government organizations were bound by legislation in ways they wish that they weren’t, I applaud OCR, CMS, FCC, HHS, etc, for doing everything they could possibly think of doing to relax regulations in ways that would make things easier for healthcare organizations during the pandemic.  The suspension of HIPAA penalties during the pandemic was a great example of this effort.  We have more changes to HIPAA coming very soon, but these regulation relaxations really illustrated how much can be done to improve and streamline healthcare regulation.
  5. FREE COVID-19 Motivational Posters – Thanks to Mike Semel for sharing this simple, but beautiful idea.  We need these messages as much now as when he shared them.
  6. Facebook in Healthcare – This is the first non-COVID entry and is an article that was published back in 2014.  What’s unfortunate is that I think Facebook has falling woefully short of what they could have accomplished for patients and patient communities.  They still have that opportunity, but I’m not sure they’ll take it.
  7. Judy Faulkner and Epic’s View on Patient Engagement and MyChart – Everyone seems to want to know what Judy is thinking.  Plus, a lot of people have dealt with the challenges of engaging with MyChart.  I still believe Epic has an opportunity to do so much more when it comes to engaging patients.  Although, I do also recognize that their customers need to ask for it and implement it when it’s offered.  Otherwise, it’s a hard thing for Judy to push forward.
  8. What the EMR Industry Can Learn From Facebook – I guess I didn’t realize how much people cared about Facebook on this site.  This article is way back from 2012.  A few things have changed since then, but I imagine the EMR industry could still learn a lot from Facebook.  I may have to revisit this idea in a future article.
  9. Coronavirus Cartoons – Fun Friday – More COVID-19 entertainment.  I wonder what our kids wil think of these cartoons 20 years from now.
  10. Epic’s Efforts to Return to Work Hits Mainstream Media – This decision by Epic was one of the most tone deaf decisions I saw during the pandemic.  I literally couldn’t believe that they made this decision.  I haven’t seen any follow up on this, so I wonder if Epic has gone back to the office now.  My guess is they probably have, but hopefully they had some compassion on people who felt that the risk of returning wasn’t worth it.  No doubt the discussion of remote work and office work is going to be a hot topic going forward.
  11. Is Epic Building Its Own Telehealth Solution Using Twilio? – This wouldn’t have been as big of news if it weren’t for COVID.  However, Epic already had a number of relationships with telehealth companies, so the fact that they decided to integrate with Twilio and compete with those telehealth companies is a big deal.  This move was no doubt the start of a big battle that’s brewing between EHR vendors and telehealth vendors.
  12. COVID-19 Funnies – Fun Friday – I would have never predicted that Fun Friday entries would be 3 of the top 20 articles on Healthcare IT Today.  Although, we did get ranked well on Google for COVID-19 cartoons, so it does make some sense.  I love the cartoon in this article about who led digital transformation at your company?  COVID is the big winner here.
  13. Documentation by Exception is the Dredge of EHR Documentation – Another article from the archive, this one was published back in 2015.  Sadly, not much has changed in this regard.  We see a little movement here and there, but nothing major.  My hope in this regard now is ambient clinical voice technology.  It still satisfies the documentation needs for billing, but can also tease out the important parts of the narrative.  I still love the idea presented at the end of this article about a “billing note” and a “clinical note”.  They’d probably just be separate views.
  14. Healthcare Buzzwords That Should Be Retired in 2020 – I’m not sure any of these were retired in 2020.  Although, it is fascinating to see what we were thinking back in January 2020.
  15. Virtual Sitters Can Improve Patient Safety and Reduce Unbudgeted Hospital Costs – I loved this concept when I first saw it, and it’s only become more interesting during COVID when you wanted to decrease exposure.  Props to Wendy Deibert from Caregility for sharing this well before the pandemic.  Virtual sitters is a great idea!
  16. Publicly Traded Health IT Companies – This is another article from back in 2014.  Would be interesting to see what the list of publicly traded health IT companies would look like in 2020.  Quite a bit of consolidation in this time and quite a few new companies that have gone public.
  17. Epic’s Decision To Put Its Voice Assistant Front and Center Could Have A Big Impact – I’m not sure that Epic’s voice assistant has had the big impact that Anne suggested in this article.  It’s still early, but I haven’t really heard much about how this has impacted a clinician.
  18. Benefits of EMR or EHR Over Paper Charts – This was one of the first pages I ever created back in the EMR and HIPAA days for those that go back 15 years with us.  It’s kind of embarrassing that we never finished the page.  Although, in some ways, it illustrates a really interesting look back at how we thought about the benefits of EMR and EHR a decade or more ago.  I like to look at this page and be reminded of all the EHR benefits we now take for granted.  Maybe the update we need is a look at if these benefits were achieved.
  19. Featured Health IT Job: Epic Analyst – That job has certainly been filled, but head over to our Healthcare IT Central job board if you’re searching for an Epic or other health IT job.
  20. A Virtual Epic Go-Live – Congrats to Optimum Healthcare IT for sharing the first example of what a virtual Epic Go-Live is like.  Since then we’ve seen some really cool innovations on the virtual EHR Go-Live including the experience of ReMedi Health Solutions which they also outline in this Virtual EHR Go-Live whitepaper and the Atos Virtual Classroom for Go-Live Training.  Needless to say, the EHR go-live will never be the same.  I’m sure once it’s safe for us to be back in the office it won’t be 100% virtual like we had to do in 2020, but I also don’t think it will require all the onsite experts that it did pre-COVID.  That’s a great thing.
  21. Texting Patients Is OK Under HIPAA, as long as you…
  22. Live Video Telehealth Companies
  23. 100 Interviews in 100 Days – #HealthIT100in100
  24. Digital Twins in Healthcare – Insights from Atos Experts
  25. No Refunds from HIMSS 2020 Annual Conference Exhibitors Becomes Partial Credit Towards HIMSS 2021 and 2022
  26. Epic Heading Back to the Office, Eschewing Remote Work
  27. Hot 2020 Health Information Management and Health Information Technology Topics
  28. Microsoft to Integrate Epic EHR and Nuance Automated Documentation with Teams Tool
  29. How Pharmacy Automation Transformed Our Hospital’s Workflows & Bottom Line
  30. Overwhelming List of EMR Companies
  31. How Facial Recognition Software Is Revolutionizing Hospital Security, Care, Human Resources
  32. Smart Glasses Make a Return to Health Care with the Vuzix M400
  33. Advertise with Healthcare IT Today
  34. #HIMSS20 Mix Tape
  35. Epic Health Research Network – A Near Real Time Medical Journal?
  36. COVID-19 Humor – Fun Friday
  37. The Auto Documentation Telehealth Solution Will Be a Big Winner
  38. 10 Ways Many Dental Offices Are Breaching HIPAA
  39. Epic and Other EHR Vendors Caught in Dilemmas by APIs (Part 1 of 2)
  40. The Difference Between HL7 and APIs: What CIOs Need to Know to Succeed with the 21st Century CURES Act Final Rule
  41. COVID-19 Cartoons
  42. Telehealth Reimbursement Gets Really Hard Really Quick
  43. HHS Releases the Information Blocking and Interoperability Final Rule (21st Century Cures Act)
  44. Top Live Video Telehealth Companies List
  45. Examples of Virtual Telehealth Visit Growth Due to COVID-19
  46. Virtual EHR Training Cartoon and COVID-19 Humor
  47. $200 Million COVID-19 Telehealth Program from FCC as Part of CARES Act
  48. How to Avoid Multi-Million-Dollar HIPAA Phone & Data Penalties
  49. Medicare and Medicaid Allows Doctors to Practice Across State Lines
  50. Is Epic Poised To Own The Healthcare Voice Assistant Market? Not Quite.

That’s a look at our top 50 articles on Healthcare IT Today for 2020.  What’s your favorite article on the list?  Did you have a favorite article that didn’t make the list?  Let us know in the comments.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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