Welcome to our Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup. Each week, we’ll be providing a look back at the articles we posted and why they’re important to the healthcare IT community. We hope this gives you a chance to catch up on anything you may have missed during the week.
Doctors Love Alerts – Until They Don’t. The idea behind the alerts to help doctors get the information they need quickly to improve patient care. The problem is that EHR alerts are great until doctors stop looking at them – and with hundreds of alerts streaming into the average EHR every day, John Lynn said he’s worried the EHR may soon look like the email inbox with 10,000 unread messages. Read more…
Is Disruptive Innovation Really Such A Good Thing? It’s been 25 years since Clayton Christensen first described disruptive innovation. Anne Zieger reflected on the limitations of disruptive innovation in healthcare – namely, the long and slow path of wearable and telemedicine adoption despite years (if not decades) of hype – and called on innovators to instead focus on healthcare’s more pressing problems. Read more…
How Greenway Health’s EHR Addresses Health Equity. Colin Hung sat down with Greenway Health CMO Dr. Michael Blackman about new EHR features that capture and display health equity information at the point of care. The EHR can recommend food assistance programs if a patient lives in a food desert, for example, or suggest virtual visits if transportation to in-person appointments may be a barrier to care. Read more…
A Look at the Fall Health IT Conference Season. John and Colin have been out and about this conference season. With seven events down and five to go, John offered some perspective on which types of in-person conferences seem to still be attracting attendees – along with who is (and is not) showing up. Read more…
The Benefits of RCM as a Service. At the recent eClinicalWorks National Conference, John spoke to Todd Mallon of Advocare about the health system’s transition from in-house revenue cycle management to RCM as a service, due in part to staffing issues. They also talked about how capturing more revenue has helped the system in its efforts to expand. Read more…
The CIO’s Role in RCM. In the latest CIO Podcast, John spoke with Donald McGruder at South Shore Hospital Chicago about technology’s role in improving RCM, especially when it comes to process automation. McGruder also discussed the security challenges of a broader risk surface due to more remote work and more connected devices. Read more…
How CIOs Can Help with Clinician Retention. Colin shared insights from a eBook co-authored by CareAlign on helping clinical staff amid the one-two punch of the pandemic and the workforce shortage. The best thing CIOs can do is to keep simple tasks simple so staff have the cognitive load to focus on important clinical tasks. Read more…
Tech’s Role in Supporting the Physician Practice. With physician practices struggling amid the shift to digital health, can technology help practices make the transition to new care models? More than a dozen members of the Healthcare IT Today community offered their thoughts, with suggestions ranging from task automation to online scheduling to EHR optimization. Read more…
Twitter Roundup: Epic Delays, Value Based Care, and Amazon Drug Delivery. Every once in a while, Healthcare IT Today provides some commentary on interesting posts making the rounds on Twitter. John reacted to news about EHR implementation delays, a modest proposal for value-based care progress, and the impact of Blues plans using Amazon for drug delivery. Read more…
Featured Health IT Job: Hospital Network & Systems Engineer at Natividad, just east of Monterey Bay in California, posted to Healthcare IT Central.
Funding and M&A Activity:
- Behavioral health integration technology vendor NeuroFlow secured $25 million in growth capital.
- Specialty practice management software maker Nextech acquired TouchMD, which provides marketing and in-clinic engagement software for plastic surgery, dermatology, and ophthalmology practices.
- Practice management software vendor WELL Health acquired EMR and billing software from CloudMD, along with three primary care clinics in British Columbia.
Thanks for reading and be sure to check out our latest Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundups.
