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 and Research
HCA Healthcare signed a new agreement for a large-scale deployment of MEDITECH Expanse, continuing a relationship with the EHR vendor that has spanned three decades and been recognized with the 2021 CHIME Collaboration Award. The 182-hospital HCA system will take advantage of new features in Expanse such as a customizable mobile user interface, embedded clinical decision support, and bedside surveillance. (The news comes at the same time that MEDITECH is continuing its push into the ambulatory EHR market, as Healthcare IT Today recently noted.)
A Qualtrics survey found that cost concerns have replaced COVID-19 as the top reason for deferring healthcare services. In 2020, the two factors were nearly even, with 28% of patients deferring care due to the pandemic and 27% deferring due to costs, but today 31% of patients are deferring care due to its cost compared to just 17% for COVID-19. More than one in three respondents (36%) have taken on debt to pay for healthcare, and 43% said they would be unlikely to seek care if it meant going into debt.
A survey from Podimetrics, which provides clinical and patient support services for complex diabetes care, revealed that 53% of patients with Type 2 diabetes are afraid they will die from complications of the disease. In addition, half of patients with Type 2 diabetes reported mental health concerns, 45% faced financial concerns due to the cost of care, and 32% said they didn’t trust the U.S. healthcare system to keep them healthy.
More than 80% of all claims denials are associated with Medicare, according to the latest annual benchmark report from RCM and auditing software maker MDaudit. Outpatient claims have a 77% accuracy rate, and fixing this would increase revenue as much as $5.5 million annually; for inpatient claims, which have a 90% accuracy rate, the revenue recapture potentials is $29 million per year.
While 100% of the 1,500 companies recently surveyed by cloud data management vendor Veritas Technologies said the public cloud brings benefits to their organizations, 94% of organizations spend more on public cloud services than they initially anticipated. Much of the additional spending stems from data protection, backup, and recovery – services that organizations often think a cloud service provider will offer for free.
Partnerships
- Real-world evidence provider Atropos Health is partnering with Syntegra to make its proprietary synthetic data available in Atropos’ point-of-care tools and real-world data sets.
- Pfizer is partnering with PointClickCare to to provide real world evidence into the population at high risk of age-related disorders. (Check out our recent coverage of the PointClickCare Summit and learn more about key trends in long-term and post-acute care.)
- VC fund Bioverge has teamed with CharmHealth, a provider of EHR and practice management software for independent practices, to launch their second annual innovation challenge and award $72,500 to early-stage startups.
- Clinical decision support system VisualDX is partnering with HHS division BARDA and The COVID Detection Foundation to develop AI-powered apps to detect symptoms of infectious diseases such as COVID-19, monkeypox, and smallpox.
Products
- Salesforce released several new features for Patient 360 for Health, with a particular focus on behavioral health, treatment centers, care managers, and medical device management. The company also announced Advanced Recovery Systems, bluebird bio, and John Muir Health as customers.
- DirectTrust announced that more than 208 million messages were sent and received on the DirectTrust network in Q3 2022. The all-time total number of messages is ow close to 3.5 billion.
- Paubox launched new intelligent drip campaign functionality for its healthcare marketing automation tool.
- Medical image sharing platform PocketHealth launched Record Retrieval to help providers automatically request records from legacy imaging sistems such as PACS and VNAs.
Sales
- Value-based care provider AbsoluteCare selected ZeOmega Jiva for care management, utilization management, and clinical assessment support.
- North Carolina-based Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital contracted with Oracle Cerner for its cloud-based EHR, CommunityWorks.
- Sydney, Australia-based cancer hospital Chris O’Brien Lifehouse implemented the Proximie platform to improve surgical and cancer treatment education.
People
- Operations automation firm Qventus appointed two new executives: Pat Saxman as Chief Growth Officer and Julie McCorkle as Vice President, People Operations.
- IT services firm HCTec named Mike Linville as president.
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.
See you at #HLTH2022!
