Here are a few I came across last week.
Note: Each link is followed by a title and few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.
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Predictive Analytics Offers Insight into COVID-19 Spread, Disparities
A predictive analytics tool leverages demographic data and cellphone location information to reveal trends in COVID-19 spread and disparities.
By Jessica Kent
November 12, 2020 - A predictive analytics model examined human mobility patterns in major cities across the US and revealed that non-residential locations – such as restaurants, gyms, and cafes – account for high rates of COVID-19 spread, according to a study published in Nature.
The study also revealed that because minority or low-income people leave home more often for their jobs and tend to shop at smaller, more crowded establishments, these population groups are contracting the virus at higher rates, leading to exacerbated health disparities.
Researchers developed the model by collecting data for ten US cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Philadelphia, and others.
The team received data showing which of 533,000 public locations people visited each day, for how long, and the square footage of each establishment so that the group could determine the hourly occupancy density.
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NHS withstands hundreds of cyber crime incidents relating to Covid-19
The National Cyber Security Centre has fended off around 200 attacks related the UK’s Covid-19 pandemic in the past eight months.
Andrea Downey – 9 November, 2020
In its annual review, published on 3 November, the agency reported on its handling of 723 cyber security incidents between 1 September 2019 and 31 August 2020, with particular focus on bolstering the NHS in the wake of the pandemic.
More than 160 “high-risk and critical vulnerabilities” were shared with NHS trusts to raise awareness of threats, while 230 victims of Covid-19-related incidents, many impacting the NHS, were supported.
The health service was the authority’s “top priority” during the pandemic to “keep the system and its staff secure and resilient to cyber threats”, the review stated.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) deployed analysts to look at NHS threat data to strengthen the the health service’s resilience against attacks.
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Required Actions to Prevent Common Ransomware Exploits, Access Points
Healthcare is leaving out the proverbial welcome mat for hackers, failing to address key vulnerable endpoints, which later become top access points and exploits for ransomware attacks.
November 09, 2020 - Threat actors have made it clear: healthcare will remain a prime target for ransomware attacks, extortion demands, phishing, and whatever nefarious scheme they can use to ensure a successful payday. But just what makes the healthcare sector rife for attacks? And what prevention steps are needed to close off the flow of attacks?
Currently, the healthcare sector is dealing with a wave of imminent cyberattacks, with four providers continuing to operate under EHR downtime procedures after falling victim to ransomware. The joint alert from the FBI and Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services warned providers must be on alert and quickly take steps to prevent falling victim.
Many outlets have raised the alarm on ransomware, noting the sophistication of attacks and its impact on patient care. Concernedly, however, there are serious similarities between the industry’s response to the latest alert to the initial launch of ransomware attacks on healthcare in 2016.
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https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-11-11/covid-19-risk-thanksgiving-2020-what-to-expect
Now you can see the COVID-19 risk anywhere in the country, in real time
By Deborah Netburn Staff Writer
Nov. 11, 2020 7 AM
How likely is it you’ll encounter at least one person who is infected with the coronavirus if you go to a bar in Denver? What about a 100-person wedding in Baltimore? Or a Thanksgiving dinner with 25 guests in Los Angeles?
The answers to these questions — and many more — can be found on the free, intuitive and now peer-reviewed COVID-19 Risk Assessment Planning Tool. Built by a team of researchers at Georgia Tech, the tool is designed to help policymakers, event planners and individuals easily grasp the risks associated with gatherings of different sizes throughout the United States and, increasingly, across the world.
Top of Form
The COVID-19 Risk Assessment Planning Tool was conceived in March by Joshua Weitz, a quantitative biologist at Georgia Tech who wanted an easy way to quantify the risk of attending events of various sizes in different locations.
The first iteration was a graph that took into account the number of infections per capita in any given county, along with the size of a proposed event. Later, that same information was overlaid on a map to make it even easier for users to understand.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/real-time-clinical-decision-support-tool-helps-reduce-mortality
Real-Time Clinical Decision Support Tool Helps Reduce Mortality
A real-time clinical decision support system analyzes EHR data to identify patients at risk of deteriorating.
By Jessica Kent
November 12, 2020 - A real-time clinical decision support system issues alerts to specially trained nurses when patients are at risk of deteriorating, potentially leading to lower mortality rates, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The Advance Alert Monitor (AAM) uses machine learning algorithms and data from more than 1.5 million patients to predict the probability that a hospitalized patient is likely to decline, require transfer to the intensive care unit or emergency resuscitation, and benefit from interventions.
The model uses severity-of-illness and longitudinal comorbidity scores, vital signs and vital signs trends, neurological status checks, and laboratory tests. The alert system scans hospitals’ EHRs on an hourly basis. If a patient’s score is above threshold, which indicates a significant risk of decline over the next 12 hours, the system issues an alert.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/ai-models-mount-sinai-can-predict-critical-covid-19-cases
AI models from Mount Sinai can predict critical COVID-19 cases
Researchers say the new tools, developed using EHR data from the pandemic's first wave, can forecast short- and medium-term risks for patients over the course of their hospitalizations.
By Mike Miliard
November 13, 2020 11:31 AM
Researchers at Mount Sinai in New York see promise in new machine learning models they've developed that can assess – within key windows of time – the risk of certain adverse clinical events in some COVID-19 patients.
WHY IT MATTERS
Research published earlier this month in the Journal of Medical Internet
Research describes how the algorithms are enabling better
insights into potential risks for a diverse group of COVID-19 patients.
Researchers at Mount Sinai's Icahn School of Medicine and Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health gathered electronic health record data from more than 4,000 adult patients admitted to five Mount Sinai Health System hospitals from this spring, during the pandemic's first wave.
Clinicians from the Mount Sinai Covid Informatics Center analyzed characteristics of COVID-19 patients – looking at past medical history, comorbidities, vitals and labs – to help predict the risk of mortality, or critical events such as the need for intubation, within clinically relevant time windows.
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Cerner, Epic, NextGen lead in making outside patient data usable, says KLAS
A report on interoperability this week gave high marks for how those vendors handle outside data, progress notes workflow and other key usability metrics.
By Kat Jercich
November 13, 2020 02:55 PM
A report released from KLAS this week ranked NextGen Healthcare, Cerner and Epic highly on measures of usability of shared patient data from outside sources.
The report specifically focused on acute and ambulatory electronic health record vendor adoption and usability of national interoperability networks Carequality and CommonWell Health Alliance.
"Based on the expectations healthcare organizations reported in early 2019, KLAS had expected to see progress from a larger number of vendors. However, little has changed for customers of Allscripts, athenahealth, CPSI, eClinicalWorks, Greenway Health, or MEDITECH," wrote report authors.
As KLAS researchers noted in a parallel report also released this week, the CommonWell-Carequality connection has mostly been used by acute and ambulatory care health systems since it was established in 2018.
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Patient Experience Better When Patients Visit Docs of Same Race
Patients were more likely to give a high patient experience score for a physician of the same race than one outside their own race, data showed.
By Sara Heath
November 11, 2020 - Patient experience scores tend to be at their highest when patients visit a physician who is the same race as they are, underscoring one way race plays a factor in patient experience, according to researchers out of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
The study findings, reported in JAMA Network Open, also highlight a need for health systems to address racial implicit bias in medical settings, the study authors concluded.
“What it comes down to is that patients who see physicians of their own race or ethnicity are more likely to rate their physicians higher than patients who see physicians of a different race or ethnicity,” study corresponding author Junko Takeshita, MD, PhD, MSCE, an assistant professor of Dermatology and Epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.
The researchers looked at just under 120,000 patient experience survey scores for an urban academic medical center, zeroing in specifically on the “likelihood to recommend” domain. The survey asks patient respondents to rate each domain on a five-point scale, with one representing little likelihood to recommend a provider to family or friends and a five representing high likelihood to recommend.
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Google Cloud unveils AI tools to help healthcare analyze unstructured medical text
Now available in public preview, the offerings are designed to help organizations and individuals pull clinically-relevant insights from large volumes of free text housed in medical records.
By Dave Muoio
November 11, 2020 01:55 pm
Google Cloud pulled back the curtain yesterday on two artificial intelligence tools designed to help healthcare and life science organizations scan and analyze large volumes of unstructured text, the Healthcare Natural Language API and AutoML Entity Extraction for Healthcare.
The first of these two offerings looks to automatically extract common trends or other insights from medical records notes or other digital text that would normally require time-intensive manual review. According to the company, the machine learning tool discerns clinically relevant information based on the context of surrounding language, allowing the technology to, for instance, distinguish between past and newly prescribed medications.
The Healthcare Natural Language API can be deployed within a provider organization for analysis, or can be implemented within a range of health applications that support unstructured text, Google said. Potential use cases supplied by the company in a blog post include a telehealth app that stores transcribed conversations between the doctor and a patient, as well as clinical trials enrolling patients based on specific inclusion or exclusion criteria, AutoML Entity Extraction for Healthcare, meanwhile, seeks to lower the barrier to AI text data analysis for healthcare workers. According to the company, it provides an easier-to-use interface that helps less experienced users train their own machine learning analysis models. It has, for example, a tool that extracts information on patients' relevant gene mutations, or on socioeconomic factors.
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Banner Health reduces alert fatigue, doc burnout with help from Cerner tools
The huge health system reduced medication clinical-decision-support alerts by 6.2 million over the course of a year.
November 12, 2020
Banner Health is one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the United States, serving more than 8 million patients across six states in the Southwest. It has countless providers, all of whom are racking up normal levels of stress, combined with pandemic levels of stress.
THE PROBLEM
More than ever, providers are at risk for burnout, which can impact patient care and the lives of caregivers. To focus on provider burnout, Banner Health launched a multiyear strategy to support provider wellbeing called Cultivating Happiness in Medicine, or CHIM.
The strategy includes a comprehensive approach that addresses burnout and improves wellbeing from operational, leadership, organizational, individual wellness, community and second-victim perspectives.
“One of the first priorities for the CHIM initiative was addressing the pebbles created by the electronic health record, and, more specifically, alert fatigue,” explained Denise Erickson, PharmD, senior director, clinical pharmacy services, at Banner Health. “Our clinicians receive a staggering number of decision-support alerts, many of which are related to medications.”
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/former-trump-hhs-cto-weighs-covid-19-patient-data-reporting
Former Trump HHS CTO weighs in on COVID-19 patient data reporting
Ed Simcox, who left HHS in February, says it's time to create an information-sharing system that leverages modern technologies – before the next crisis hits.
By Kat Jercich
November 12, 2020 09:11 AM
This past summer, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services triggered alarm among public health advocates when it directed hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when reporting COVID-19 patient data.
President-elect Joe Biden's next moves regarding COVID-19 data reporting, and HHS as a whole, are still unknown. But the coronavirus crisis makes it clear that the huge gaps in information sharing in the United States must be addressed, says former HHS Chief Technology Officer Ed Simcox.
"My recommendation to HHS and Congress, and everyone else is: Now that the 21st Century Cures Act has been activated, that we step back and create a data reporting system that leverages these modern technologies," said Simcox in an interview with Healthcare IT News.
Simcox, now chief strategy officer at precision medicine company LifeOmic, left HHS in February – just before the COVID-19 pandemic walloped the United States. (HHS has not had a CTO since.) But, he says, HHS during his tenure began developing an All-Hazards Data Hub in cooperation with the CDC, aimed at streamlining public health reporting.
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Why Do Care Transitions Remain a Black Hole in Healthcare?
November 12, 2020
Care transitions between acute and post-acute organizations remains fraught with challenges. They can be inefficient, highly manual, and prone to errors. This has been known for years, yet remains an area that receives little attention and funding. Why is that?
This was the central question in a Healthcare IT Today panel discussion (recording available) featuring:
- Mary Kay Thalken, RN, MBA, Chief Clinical Officer at Ensocare
- Patrick Yee, Chief Technology Officer at Ensocare
- Mark Kestner, Chief Medical Officer at TractManager
Current state of care transitions
“Patient transitions today are very bumpy, at best,” stated Thalken. “The process for the staff handling transitions is largely manual. They are still using telephones, fax machines, and copiers. There are about 40 steps from the point where a case manager receives an order to find placement to that patient actually being placed in a post-acute care facility.”
Thalken estimates that today almost 50% of a case manager’s time is spent on non-value-added clerical aspects of patient transitions. This is very surprising given the pervasive use of EHRs at acute care institutions. With most patient information stored electronically, shouldn’t it be a fairly simple task to transfer that information to a post-acute partner? Not so, explained Kestner.
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https://patientengagementhit.com/news/inside-cerners-latest-venture-to-boost-patient-communication
Inside Cerner’s Latest Venture to Boost Patient Communication
The patient communication function will create a more streamlined consumer experience and allow for bidirectional interaction between patients and health systems.
By Sara Heath
November 11, 2020 - Health IT vendor Cerner Corporation has unveiled a new patient communication system that aims to improve and streamline the consumer experience through bidirectional and automated messaging.
This effort comes a little more than a year after Cerner launched the Cerner Consumer Framework, a digital desktop of sorts that lets provider clients plug in tertiary patient engagement apps into the patient portal.
“And that Framework is fantastic when patients were coming into the end of the app,” David Bradshaw, Cerner’s senior vice president for Consumer & Employer Solutions, told PatientEngagementHIT. “But as you know, not always do we end up going to the app. Sometimes we get that nudge on our phone that brings us into the app or tells us some critical piece of information.”
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Boston, NY Hospitals Collaborate on Telehealth Platform for COVID-19 Rehab
Health systems in Boston and New York have joined forces to develop a telehealth platform designed to improve clinical outcomes in COVID-19 patients recovering at home after a hospital discharge.
November 09, 2020 - A telehealth program created at Harvard Medical School has shown value in helping COVID-19 patients rehabilitate at home.
The platform, developed through a partnership with Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Irving Medical Center, may also offer a blueprint for remote patient monitoring programs that target pulmonary, cognitive or mobility issues. It is reportedly one of the first programs to show success in using telehealth to help previously hospitalized patients recover at home.
In a study published in October in the scientific journal for the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, the research team reported that physical therapy sessions conducted at home through connected health channels were “significantly better” than the standard of care, which often consists of unstructured exercise with little guidance.
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Zoom Reaches Settlement with FTC Over Misleading Security Practices
The use of Zoom videoconferencing skyrocketed amid the COVID-19 crisis, which spotlighted several security risks and concerns. The FTC settlement will resolve the misleading security practices.
November 10, 2020 - The Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with Zoom to resolve allegations that the company engaged in misleading security practices. The use of the videoconferencing platform skyrocketed during the pandemic, particularly in the healthcare and education sectors, which spotlighted its security risks.
The settlement requires Zoom to establish and implement a comprehensive security program and prohibits the vendor from misrepresenting its privacy and security, as well as other “detailed and specific relief to protect its user base.”
“The Commission’s complaint alleges that Zoom made misrepresentations regarding the strength of its security features and implemented a software update that circumvented a browser security feature,” according to the FTC majority statement. “The proposed order provides immediate and important relief to consumers, addressing this conduct.”
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/big-data-analytics-social-determinants-reveal-heart-health-risks
Big Data Analytics, Social Determinants Reveal Heart Health Risks
In two separate studies, researchers used big data analytics tools and social determinants data to gain more insight into heart health risks.
By Jessica Kent
November 09, 2020 - To learn more about how socioeconomic factors impact heart health, researchers are increasingly leveraging big data analytics technologies and examining social determinants data at the individual and population level.
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago recently developed a machine learning algorithm to accurately predict out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rates. The model uses neighborhood and local data in combination with existing information sources.
According to the American Heart Association, there are almost 424,000 EMS-assessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrests every year in the US, and most of them are fatal.
Researchers developed and tested the machine learning algorithms on nearly 10,000 cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests that occurred in Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods between 2014 and 2019.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/cleaning-up-the-ehr-master-patient-index-to-boost-patient-matching
Cleaning Up the EHR Master Patient Index to Boost Patient Matching
Integrating a simple spell-checking algorithm into the EHR could mitigate patient matching issues, especially during COVID-19.
November 10, 2020 - EHR master patient index (MPI) data errors, such as typing and formatting errors, are a leading cause of patient matching issues and user search inconsistencies. Data standardization, “deep cleaning,” and making EHR searching similar to internet searching could reduce EHR and master patient index (MPI) errors, according to a recent article published in the Journal of AHIMA.
MPI data errors, such as typing and formatting errors, are a leading cause of patient matching issues and user search inconsistencies, according to James Hoover, co-chair of the health data integrity committee at California Health Information Management Association.
In 2019, approximately 18 percent of patient EHRs were considered duplicates. As a result, roughly one in five patients have incomplete health records.
Inconsistent patient matching creates a handful of problems for the patient and the provider. Although an error such as a misspelling or misheard word seems small, these errors could result in a duplicate record. During COVID-19, a duplicate record could mean a missing positive test result.
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https://www.medpagetoday.com/blogs/vinay-prasad/89564
Op-Ed: More Science, Less Speculation on COVID Long-Haulers
— We need more trials -- more clarity -- and not just for treatments
by Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH November 9, 2020
Every person who reports unpleasant or undesirable symptoms deserves the full sympathy of the medical profession. There is no doubt that the symptoms are real, and must be taken seriously. At the same time, two sets of questions emerge: What can be done to improve the symptoms? And what caused them in the first place?
Let's start with the issue of treatment. For the person suffering, what a doctor can do to make them feel better is often paramount and the reason the patient sought care. Some medical problems can be easy to solve. A dislocated shoulder, for instance; an anti-anxiolytic, a narcotic, and reset the joint. Voila! Other symptoms are challenging, and may not be meaningfully improved: symptoms like fatigue, memory loss, digestive problems, or the feeling of lightheadedness or dizziness are often hard to ameliorate.
The second question: "What caused this?" is important for two reasons. Knowing the cause may help clarify how to solve the problem. Additionally, many find intellectual and emotional satisfaction in knowing why they feel the way they do. But, here is the truth about figuring out causes: it isn't easy.
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COVID-19 Data Visualizations Shared on Twitter May Lack Reliability
Several common issues often arise when Twitter users develop and share COVID-19 data visualizations, including data mistrust and cognitive bias.
By Jessica Kent
November 10, 2020 - The majority of COVID-19 data visualizations shared by average Twitter users contained one of five errors that reduced their accuracy or reliability, according to a study published in Informatics.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people have taken to Twitter to share charts from news outlets and government organizations, as well as develop their own casual data visualizations about COVID-19 and posted them on Twitter.
Casual data visualizations refer to charts and graphs that rely on tools readily available to average users in order to depict information in a meaningful way. These visualizations differ from traditional data visualization because they aren’t from developed or distributed by trusted health information sources, such as the CDC, World Health Organization, or the media.
“Experts have not yet begun to explore the world of casual visualizations on Twitter,” said Francesco Cafaro, an assistant professor in the School of Informatics and Computing, who led the study. “Studying the new ways people are sharing information online to understand the pandemic and its effect on their lives is an important step in navigating these uncharted waters.”
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Vodafone releases report on how 5G and IoT technology can transform healthcare
The report surveyed 2,000 people on their attitudes towards advancing technology in health and social care and contains government recommendations.
November 11, 2020 03:43 PM
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vodafone has released a report on the potential of 5G and Internet of Things (IoT) technology in health and social care.
Better Health, Connected Health: How 5G and IoT Technology can Transform Health and Social Care found overwhelming support for the introduction and increase of digital technologies in the NHS, including 5G and IoT, as a way of streamlining healthcare and making it more affordable.
This could pave the way for smart buildings, which would be greener and save the NHS money; 5G-connected ambulances that link paramedics and clinicians to treat patients faster and more effectively; and even the roll-out of remote assisted surgery and training, saving time and potentially elevating the quality of care.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/mayo-clinic-sued-over-breach-patient-health-records
Mayo Clinic sued over breach of patient health records
The filing follows Mayo Clinic's announcement that a former employee had inappropriately accessed the information of more than 1,600 patients.
By Kat Jercich
November 11, 2020 12:07 PM
Patients filed class-action complaints against the Mayo Clinic this past week. They are accusing the system of violating the Minnesota Health Records Act.
Mayo Clinic said in a news release in October that a former employee had inappropriately accessed the health records of more than 1,600 patients. Now, multiple patients are seeking to have a class-action case declared against the clinic.
According to a complaint filed last week in Olmsted County District Court, Mayo Clinic told plaintiff Olga Ryabchuk that the potentially accessible data included her name, demographic information, birth date, medical record number and clinical notes.
Mayo Clinic also said that images of "private parts" of Ryabchuk's body had been accessed, the suit said.
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Cleveland Clinic Makes COVID-19 Risk Prediction Model Available Through Epic
November 11, 2020
Working in partnership with Epic, through which it will be delivered, the Cleveland Clinic has released a new COVID-19 risk prediction model drawing on both patient entered data and clinical information.
Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic developed and tested the model using clinical data from more than 11,000 of its patients. The Clinic used retrospective patient data from patients tested for COVID-19 at locations in Northeast Ohio and Florida. Data scientists then transformed the data into a statistical risk-prediction model.
When in use by a provider, the tool integrates both medical records drawn from Epic and patient information collected by the patient in MyChart (Epic’s patient portal). As part of the process, patients complete a short self-assessment in MyChart addressing symptoms they might have and their potential exposure to COVID-19.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-11-09/coronavirus-long-haulers-tell-us-their-symptoms-and-the-aftereffects-of-diseaseCovid Long Haulers Describe the Devastating Aftereffects of the Disease
The damage caused by the virus can be brutal. And the burden of care will weigh on countries for years to come.
By Jason Gale
November 10, 2020, 4:00 AM GMT+11
From New Economy
Eight months and more than 50 million documented cases into the pandemic, there’s still much we don’t understand about SARS-CoV-2. We do know that the majority of those infected with the novel coronavirus display no or mild symptoms. Worryingly, a not-insignificant portion of the 20 million people globally who’ve recovered suffer lingering effects, including lung, heart, and nervous system impairment.
Researchers are collecting patient data to determine the duration and depth of the health consequences. Meantime, post–Covid-19 clinics are opening to cater to an expanding population of so-called long haulers (survivors left with scarred lungs, chronic heart damage, post-viral fatigue, and other persistent, debilitating conditions), a sign that enduring disability will perhaps weigh on health systems and the labor force long after a vaccine becomes widely available.
The phenomenon of what’s known as “long Covid” isn’t unique; postviral syndromes occur after many infections, including with the common cold, influenza, and Epstein-Barr. What’s novel about SARS-CoV-2 is the broad spectrum of symptoms that are being reported and the duration of months, not weeks. The long-term, multiorgan effects may prolong the pandemic’s economic legacy, adding to its unprecedented global cost—predicted by Australian National University scholars to reach as much as $35.3 trillion through 2025.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/careful-ehr-nudges-help-opioid-prescribing-without-hits-to-workflow
Careful EHR Nudges Help Opioid Prescribing Without Hits to Workflow
Auto-filling opioid prescriptions in EHR nudges can reduce the number of keystrokes and ultimately, clinician burden.
November 09, 2020 - Auto-filling prescription forms with default guidelines can decrease the number of user EHR keystrokes and ultimately reduce clinician burden, according to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Opioid prescribing rates are a primary contributing factor to the opioid epidemic and high overdose rates, study authors said. Opioid overdose rates quadrupled between 1999 and 2015.
While initiatives such as prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) are more prevalent now, these are often the cause of clinician burden. The user needs to click outside of the EHR workflow to access the program.
Additionally, clinical decision support (CDS) tools enable prescribers to access real-time patient data, ideally resulting in enhanced patient safety and medication accuracy. CDS can also alert prescribers about potential patient warnings to prevent errors and additional adverse drug events from happening. However, CDS tools can also interrupt the user and can result in both alert fatigue and clinician burden.
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Columbia Asia Hospital group taps on DoctorOnCall to provide telehealth services for patients
Follow-up appointments for patients can also be carried out via this telehealth service, whenever appropriate.
By Dean Koh
October 30, 2020 04:13 AM
Malaysia-founded private healthcare provider Columbia Asia Hospital group, which operates 13 medical facilities in Malaysia, has launched a telehealth service in which patients can get the care that they need from their doctor via video call, receive medical advice and/or clinical management as well as drug prescriptions, at their own location and convenience.
This service utilizes a full digital platform via Malaysian telehealth provider DoctorOnCall that links Columbia Asia’s patients with their doctors. For those who have had surgeries at their respective Columbia Asia hospital, follow-up appointments can be carried out via this telehealth service, whenever appropriate.
A broad scope of medical specialists from Columbia Asia hospitals have onboarded this telehealth platform. Medicine will be delivered free of charge for medication costing more than RM50 within a 20km radius from each respective Columbia Asia Hospital.
THE LARGER TREND
Private healthcare providers in the Southeast Asia region have been pushing telemedicine services given the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, either through their internally developed apps or partnering with telehealth companies in the case of Columbia Asia.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/rapid-innovation-depends-patient-co-design
Rapid innovation depends on patient codesign
Panelists at the HIMSS & Cleveland Clinic Patient Experience Digital Series stressed the importance of patient engagement and community connection as part of a continued response to COVID-19.
By Kat Jercich
November 10, 2020 01:30 PM
The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated innovation throughout much of the healthcare sphere.
At the same time, said panelists at the HIMSS & Cleveland Clinic Patient Experience Digital Series this week, the quick pivot to new policies in response to the pandemic, and the speed at which new technologies were rolled out, carry the danger of leaving some of the most vulnerable people behind.
"We rolled so fast this year," said Adrienne Boissy, chief experience officer at Cleveland Clinic, speaking on the panel titled Setting the Stage: Redefining the Patient Experience.
"There is a call to sort of go back and say, 'Huh, it's great we pushed it out as fast as possible but it wasn't designed the way we would want.'"
One example of the consequences of haste, said Rick Evans, chief experience officer for New York-Presbyterian Hospital, was the complete shutdown of visitation for patients at the beginning of the pandemic.
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No Politics: HIMSS Outlines 3 Health IT Priorities to Guide the Nation Forward
By Mandy Roth | November 10, 2020
Traction is expected on a national patient identifier, and telehealth policies have bipartisan support; health IT will play a key role in a COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Currently stuck in the Senate, HIMSS expects movement forward on approving legislation related to a national patient identifier.
· Health IT is essential to effective rollout of a COVID-19 vaccination.
· Telehealth, data modernization, and interoperability also are critical to the nation's ability to move healthcare forward.
As a contentious election season ends and a new administration is poised to take office, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is focused on the role of healthcare IT in an era where healthcare plays an crucial role in the nation's ability to move forward.
"The last several decades there has been strong bipartisan support for health IT and how to use IT to improve care processes, control costs, and improve quality," said Jeff Coughlin, senior director of government relations at HIMSS during a post-election press briefing with members of the media. During the session, the organization's government relationships team explored a broad array of topics they expect to be addressed by the new administration and by Congress in the coming months. Following are highlights from the discussion:
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=bc7a6f9b-06fb-4a1f-b7ed-351350c9ce4b
California Voters Expand Consumer Data Privacy with Approval of California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act of 2020
California voters have approved Proposition 24, the California Privacy Rights and Enforcement Act of 2020 (CPREA). Although this controversial ballot measure was meant to expand and make permanent the consumer protections within the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA), privacy groups have expressed concern that the new law will place an unnecessary burden on businesses that are only now learning how to properly comply with the CCPA and that it may actually reduce consumer rights in important ways. Prop 24 was approved with 56 percent of the vote.
Given the essentially unlimited resources of large technology companies and other Silicon Valley–based opponents of the CCPA, the organizers behind Prop 24 feared that the California Legislature could weaken those protections in the future. The only way to reverse the voter-approved CPREA is through a future ballot initiative.
Among other things, the CPREA includes provisions that allow consumers to direct businesses not to share their personal information, remove the time period in which businesses can fix violations before being penalized and create a privacy protection agency to enforce the state's consumer data privacy laws.
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Regardless of the presidential election outcome, here are 5 health IT issues to watch
Nov 5, 2020 7:33am
Regardless of who wins the presidential election, healthcare IT leaders are setting their sights on key issues they want the federal government to take action on in the next four years.
The first priority: shoring up the nation's public health data infrastructure, a crucial step to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic, according to health IT groups.
"The pandemic has shown that gaps persist in the data that public health authorities receive, such as missing demographic or contact information that can aid in contact tracing efforts or identify hot spots. The government can take steps in January—and even before—to shore up those gaps and prepare the nation’s data infrastructure for an eventual vaccine," said Ben Moscovitch, project director, health information technology at The Pew Charitable Trusts.
The federal government should help fill gaps in COVID-19 lab data to ensure that critical information like phone numbers, zip codes, race, and other data are shared with state public health authorities, he said. Second, the government needs to prepare for the rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine or vaccines. That will require tracking their distribution to ensure that each individual obtains the right dose or doses, Moscovitch said.
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https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/what-joe-bidens-presidency-means-healthcare
Nov 07 2020
What now for Joe Biden's presidency and healthcare?
Biden supports strengthening the ACA and public and private options in which public plans would compete with private plans.
Susan Morse, Managing Editor
Former Vice President Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election on Saturday after vote counts in Pennsylvania and Nevada put him over the top of the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
Results in North Carolina, Georgia and Alaska had yet to be decided as of Saturday afternoon, but even if President Trump were to win all three states, he wouldn't have enough to get to 270.
Recounts in close vote states such as Georgia and Wisconsin, and litigation from Trump's team, are expected.
Trump's attorney Rudi Giuliani, speaking at a press conference Saturday morning, said Trump won't concede when hundreds of thousands of votes are in question. Voter fraud will be investigated, according to Giuliani, who gave as an example a woman in Pennsylvania who apparently filled out and returned her ballot for Biden days after she died.
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Addressing the Fundamental Flaws that Have Broken Healthcare
November 9, 2020
The following is a guest article by Brad Bostic, CEO at hc1.
The fundamental problem with healthcare can be summed up in one sentence: We expect healthcare services that cater to our individual needs, yet the health care system operates under a one-size-fits-all, trial-and-error model. It is a model that results in missed diagnoses, protracted illnesses, and even premature death and wastes $765 billion annually.
The financial toll of this outmoded approach pales in comparison to the human toll. More than 128,000 people in the U.S. die each year from taking medications as prescribed—four times the number of people killed by prescription painkillers and heroin combined, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The dysfunction resulting from this model is on full display with the COVID-19 pandemic. The world’s wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation has struggled to produce accurate, timely risk insights. In the face of an unprecedented crisis, the U.S. has failed to reliably compile even the most basic information caregivers and public health officials require to inform an effective response. Rudimentary infection rate reports are published days or weeks after the fact, with questionable accuracy, precluding action ahead of surging localized infection rates.
A multi-faceted problem
It is human nature to want to place blame. But when it comes to the fundamental flaws in the nation’s healthcare system, there is no one place to point fingers.
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Artificial Intelligence Delivers $40M in Real Savings to Tampa General
By Mandy Roth | November 09, 2020
GE Healthcare's Command Center technology also helps eliminate 20,000 excess days and reduces average length of stay by half a day, the 1,006-bed hospital reports.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
In addition to $40M in savings, the technology helps the hospital operate at capacity and reduced emergency room diversion by 25% for its level one trauma center.
Plans to expand capabilities include serving the entire Tampa General ecosystem, including ambulatory care, acute care, and physician practices.
Two years after the 2018 soft launch of Tampa General Hospital's CareComm command center, which is fueled by GE Healthcare's artificial intelligence (AI) technology , the 1006-bed non-profit academic medical center says it has experienced $40 million in savings by reducing system-wide inefficiencies.
John Couris, president and CEO of Tampa General Hospital (TGH), also reports the system has made the hospital more efficient, eliminating 20,000 excess patient days and reducing average length of stay by half a day—from 6.0 days to 5.5 days last year. In addition, the hospital credits its CareComm capabilities for enabling it to operate at maximum occupancy and reduce emergency room diversion by 25% for the level one trauma center that serves the Florida's West Coast. These improvements equate to 30 beds of additional capacity, according to TGH.
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https://histalk2.com/2020/11/06/weekender-11-6-20/
Weekly News Recap
- Vermont sends a National Guard cyber response team to help University of Vermont Health Network check its computing devices for malware.
- Healthcare integration technology vendor Bridge Connector will reportedly shut down.
- Teladoc Health completes its acquisition of Livongo.
- SOC Telemed begins public trading following its merger with a special purpose acquisition company.
- The founder and former CEO of a patient-focused oncology technology company sues an investor who she says pushed her out and blocked an attractive acquisition offer.
- Hospitals shut down and beefed up their email systems in an effort to prevent ransomware attacks.
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Enjoy!
David.
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