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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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/the-pros-and-cons-of-ehr-clinical-decision-support-alerts
The Pros and Cons of EHR Clinical Decision Support Alerts
Clinical decision support alerts are often helpful to EHR users, but they are also primarily linked to clinician burden and alert fatigue.
April 16, 2021 - Clinical decision support (CDS) alerts may not seem significant on the surface, but these alerts have the potential to save patient lives.
CDS alerts permit clinicians to access real-time patient data, ideally resulting in enhanced patient safety and medication accuracy. CDS alerts can also notify clinicians about potential patient warnings to prevent errors and additional adverse drug events from occurring.
While EHRs are directly associated with clinician burnout, CDS tools aim to aid clinicians.
According to researchers, CDS is an essential aspect of EHRs that is “not merely the use of technology; it uses technology to find meaningful information to make clinical decisions and provide the best possible patient care.”
But while healthcare stakeholders often view CDS alerts positively, alerts can also result in treatment delays, clinician burden, and even carry potentially deadly consequences.
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Three strategic tech priorities for digitalising the NHS in 2021
With the NHS approaching its 73rd birthday, Satpal Biant, head of public sector at SAP, explores what should be the health service’s top tech priorities.
DHI News Team – 15 April, 2021
Next July the NHS will celebrate its 73rd birthday. Further distribution of Covid-19 vaccines will make it a less gloomy occasion than last year’s, but there can be no doubt that the forces unleashed by the pandemic – most importantly digitalisation – will continue to reshape the institution.
Digitalisation is causing upheaval across society – from videoconferencing disrupting traditional ways of working to the rise of dark kitchens in hospitality and the boom of ecommerce overtaking high street shops. And as identified by the 2020/21 NHS People Plan, this digital disruption has gone right to the heart of the NHS as well.
The impact of the disruption will last beyond the pandemic. Of course, digitalising an institution like the NHS is even more difficult than a retail chain. The past year has shaken the healthcare sector – but 2021 will be the year in which the NHS can regroup, adapt, and plot a path to the future. To get there I believe there are three key technological priorities the NHS should focus on for the next 12 months – coordination and interoperability; cybersecurity; and innovation and intelligent automation.
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https://www.digitalhealth.net/2021/04/nhs-app-e-referral-service-cuts-did-not-attend-rates-by-half/
NHS App e-Referral Service cuts ‘did not attend’ rates by half
Rates of ‘did not attend’ have been reduced by half for patients who book GP appointments and referrals through the NHS App.
Andrea Downey – 13 April, 2021
In October 2020, NHS Digital integrated the e-Referral Service into the NHS App to give patients more control over their appointments and save GPs time.
GPs can email appointment booking details for the NHS e-Referral Service directly with patients with an NHS Login. Patients are then able to securely access the NHS Manage Your Referral website directly from the app.
Research has shown that when patients book their own appointments, the ‘did not attend’ rate can reduce by up to half, according to NHS Digital.
Martin O’Keeffe, senior clinical lead at NHS Digital, said: “We’ve put the power back into patients’ hands, giving them another digital route to book and manage their own hospital appointments.
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‘Long Covid’ mystery sparks a research revolution
04/14/2021 10:00 AM EDT
The Big Idea
THE RACE TO SOLVE 'LONG COVID': Researchers racing to understand the lingering coronavirus symptoms collectively known as “Long Covid” face a crucial data problem: They don’t know exactly what they should be looking for.
Is it the lingering cough and shortness of breath? Persistent dizziness? Prolonged loss of smell and taste? Or maybe the long-term neurological or psychiatric effects? Entirely new symptoms could manifest months, maybe even years, after infection, and it’s not yet clear who’s most likely to experience them, experts say.
“We know very little, next to nothing, and that’s mainly because we’ve been — rightfully so — so concerned about the acute phase and how to treat people as they come down with Covid,” said Bryan Lau, who’s co-leading a Johns Hopkins survey on long-term effects.
Ken Mandl, who heads the Boston Children's Hospital's Computational Health Informatics program, said that “wiring up the health system to study postcovid syndrome” will be a massive undertaking. “We don’t know the extent of it, and how IT needs to change to understand it,” he added.
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Google Exploring Tool Designed to Help Patients Use Their Health Records
April 16, 2021
In recent times, Google has been working on a tool designed to help clinicians filter complicated patient information more quickly and view it in context. Now it’s thinking about doing the same thing for consumers.
Google began to test the professional tool, which it calls Care Studio, with small groups of clinicians in Nashville, TN and Jacksonville, FL affiliated with the Ascension system. A few weeks ago it announced that it is expanding the pilot to embrace additional physicians and nurses.
But the big G’s health data filtering efforts aren’t aimed just at doctors and nurses. According to a new piece appearing in Stat News, the search giant’s early in the process of putting feedback on how patients might want to see, organize, and share their own medical record data.
Google is apparently recruiting about 300 patients for the health record study, drawing on community health facilities academic medical centers in California, Atlanta and Chicago that use Epic as their EMR vendor. Patients can only participate if they use an Android device.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2021/04/16/insights-for-cios-from-the-chime-spring-forum/
Insights for CIOs from the CHIME Spring Forum
April 16, 2021
As I participated virtually in the CHIME CIO Spring Forum, I asked a bunch of people to share their thoughts on the following question:
“What’s one thing healthcare CIOs should be thinking about right now and why? And what’s a practical step they can take?”
No surprise, I got a wide variety of answers which I think could be helpful for CIOs to consider in the context of their own organization. Here’s a roundup of the various responses I received:
CIOs Should Consider What Strategic Initiatives They Should Proactively Accelerate Coming Out of the Pandemic and Being Able to Compete with New Entrants
Ed Gaudet, CEO & Founder at Censinet, said, “CIOs must consider the learnings from the pandemic. We accelerated strategic initiatives such as telehealth and work from home. But these “happened” to us. CIOs must consider accelerated strategic initiatives proactively, specifically how do we reimagine care – in the same way work will be different – in a way that keeps our health system relevant over the next decade and enables us to stay ahead of what Amazon will do. I just asked this question in a breakout and one of the CIOs suggested what Amazon is doing in healthcare is only with their employees. Amazon aggressively tests markets before they go all in. They have been testing healthcare over the last few years. While they will start with their employee base, they have 1.3 MILLION EMPLOYEES!! This is larger than most healthcare systems patient populations.”
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/ehr-vendors-talk-covid-19-lessons-learned-health-it-future
EHR Vendors Talk COVID-19 Lessons Learned, Health IT Future
Leaders from Epic Systems, Cerner, and MEDITECH led a keynote discussion about how COVID-19 impacted health IT and how it will look moving forward.
April 15, 2021 - The most prominent EHR and health IT leaders across the country said a crisis, such as COVID-19, accelerated trends that were already playing out, ultimately leading to improved patient care.
“I was in Washington DC on September 11, 2001, and what I see playing out on provider healthcare right now is similar to what we saw with the transportation sector coming out of September 11th,” Don Trigg, president of Cerner, said during the CHIME21 Spring Forum opening keynote.
“Provider organizations have shone brightly over the last 12 months and I think they are seen as a critical infrastructure for how we define and think about the supply side.”
On Wednesday, Trigg joined CEO and founder of Epic Systems, Judy Faulkner, and MEDITETH CEO, Howard Messing, on the opening keynote panel, hosted by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), to talk about what they learned about health IT during COVID-19 and what’s next for health IT and healthcare.
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5 Guidelines to Establishing a Post-Pandemic Telehealth Strategy
Telehealth adoption has soared during the coronavirus pandemic, and it will be part of the process once the crisis is over. Medical practices need to develop a strategy now that mixes in-person and virtual care.
April 15, 2021 - Healthcare providers have, for the most part, enjoyed success in adopting – and adapting to – telehealth during the coronavirus pandemic. And many are planning for a post-pandemic future that mixes virtual visits with in-person care.
But just because a practice might be Zooming with patients or diagnosing over the phone now doesn’t mean they’ll be able to do the same thing once the public health emergency ends. Many federal and state regulations regarding telehealth access and coverage have been relaxed to help providers adjust to COVID-19, and some – if not all – of those freedoms will end with the PHE.
Medical practices need to think now about adjusting their workflows for a post-pandemic landscape, so that both providers and patients understand and benefit from telehealth.
With help from Relatient, a Tennessee-based developer of patient engagement services, here are five steps that medical practices should take to establish an effective post-pandemic hybrid healthcare service.
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COVID-19 Vaccine Cold Chain Entities Remain Key Spear-Phishing Target
IBM X-Force released an update of its December COVID-19 Vaccine Cold Chain attacks, finding additional spear-phishing attacks targeting global entities.
April 15, 2021 - Threat actors are continuing to target the COVID-19 vaccine cold chain, the means of delivering and storing vaccines at safe temperatures, with spear-phishing campaigns that leverage pharma and biomedical lures, according to a new IBM X-Force report.
The prime targets of the campaign are the transportation, healthcare, and IT and electronics sectors. Researchers also found the attackers targeting government agencies and vendors that support public health entities, among other targets.
The new research is an update of a December IBM X-Force report that shed light on widespread phishing tactics leveraged by cybercriminals against vaccine supply chain organizations and other healthcare entities.
IBM X-Force established a cyber task force at the beginning of the pandemic to track cyber threats targeting critical infrastructure organizations.
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https://www.techradar.com/news/apple-watch-6-could-one-day-help-detect-covid-19-if-this-trial-works
Apple Watch 6 could one day help detect Covid-19, if this trial works
By Hamish Hector 14 April 2021
It’s a very smart watch
The Apple respiratory study is now recruiting participants to determine if the Apple Watch 6 can detect Covid-19 symptoms. Apple announced it would be working in collaboration with the Seattle Flu Study and University of Washington late last year as part of the Apple Watch Series 6 reveal event.
Using the Apple Watch 6’s blood oxygen sensor and heart rate monitor, the study hopes to see if there is a link between changes in those levels and early signs of respiratory illnesses, such as Covid-19. Apple hopes to launch studies in the future that will see if these features could also detect early signs of asthma attacks and heart failure.
If you are interested in getting involved and fulfill the study’s criteria - which includes being 22 or over and living in Seattle in the US - then you can visit the Apple respiratory study page to see if you qualify.
Could the Apple Watch detect Covid-19 specifically?
In short, no. Unless the Apple Watch starts taking swabs like current Covid-19 tests we’re fairly confident it won’t be able to determine the exact illness you have, though it may still be able to detect if you are experiencing some of the symptoms and provide you with guidance on what to do.
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65% of hospitals in APAC are increasing spending on digitalisation, says report
The report includes data from hospitals in Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand.
April 15, 2021 02:30 AM
A majority of hospitals in the Asia-Pacific region are planning to increase their spending on digitalisation in the next three years to minimise medical errors and raise patient satisfaction, a regional survey found.
The survey conducted by L.E.K. Consulting with over 400 hospital executives identified trends that are defining APAC hospitals’ priorities and how they have adapted during COVID-19.
WHY IT MATTERS
One of these trends is the accelerating adoption of digital health solutions, which are primarily used to strengthen doctors’ services. For example, one in four hospitals in Australia, China and Singapore are already employing digital health solutions, the top two of which are remote consultations (25%) and robot-enabled surgery (21%).
In Japan, four in 10 executives say digital health solutions such as digital wound management are not a priority or they are unaware of them. Still, around half are found to be trialling or interested in such solutions.
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Patient surveillance system helps reduce sepsis-related mortality by 53%
Tift Regional Medical Center aims to use the technology to save lives and significantly reduce costs.
By Bill Siwicki
April 15, 2021 12:01 PM
Sepsis is the deadliest and most expensive condition treated in hospital critical care units, with septic shock carrying a 34% mortality rate. Early sepsis detection is critical to saving lives and decreasing the cost of care.
THE PROBLEM
In absolute terms, hospital admissions for sepsis outnumber admissions for stroke, acute myocardial infarction and trauma combined, so creating more integrated sepsis and infection-prevention programs is an ever-present challenge.
As with many hospitals, for Tift Regional Medical Center in Tifton, Georgia, the incidence of sepsis is much higher in the intensive care unit and the emergency department than in other parts of the hospital. The hospital needed to find a way to re-energize its attack on sepsis in these areas in order to improve its nurse protocols and overall bundle compliance, and reduce the human and financial costs.
PROPOSAL
"Our goal is to improve the care and outcomes of patients with sepsis," said Dr. Cameron Nixon, chief transformation officer at Tift Regional Medical Center. "To do so, our organization sought a solution that uses natural language processing to analyze EHR patient data and unstructured text such as those in clinical notes."
This is critical for accurate identification of patients that need attention, and to ensure the hospital's clinical team can respond consistently with the right care to the right patient at the right time, he added.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/strengthening-patient-care-as-a-rural-health-information-exchange
Strengthening Patient Care as a Rural Health Information Exchange
Montana’s statewide health information exchange launched just a few months ago and its leaders are leveraging outside solutions to improve patient care in the rural state.
April 14, 2021 - It’s hard for providers in remote locations to deliver high-quality and coordinated patient care without a rural health information exchange (HIE).
HIEs are crucial for connecting communities and ensuring patient medical records are available at all times. While interoperability remains a significant issue for HIE implementation, HIE connectivity is becoming more prevalent across the country.
According to the 2019 American Hospital Association IT Supplement published by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT, there was nearly a 40 percent increase in the proportion of hospitals that used a national network to find patient data between 2018 and 2019.
On the other hand, state, regional, or local HIEs were the most common method utilized by hospitals to find patient data from outside providers, jumping from 46 percent of providers using a smaller HIE in 2018 up to 53 percent that did in 2019.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/microsoft-nuance-news-may-signify-next-era-of-ai-in-healthcare
Microsoft, Nuance News May Signify Next Era of AI in Healthcare
The nearly $20 billion acquisition represents a rise in voice recognition technology and artificial intelligence in healthcare, potentially leading to reduced clinician burnout.
By Jessica Kent
April 14, 2021 - Artificial intelligence in healthcare has mostly existed in the realm of the hypothetical. Clinical use cases for AI algorithms permeate the research sector, while rarely infiltrating real-world care settings.
With the recent news of Microsoft’s pending acquisition of Nuance Communications, experts believe AI may be on the verge of breaking into front-end care delivery – likely in the form of voice recognition and virtual assistant technologies.
Nuance is a leading provider of conversational AI and cloud-based ambient intelligence for healthcare. The two companies will focus on using AI to listen in on consultations between patients and providers and incorporate that information into the EHR, which could help reduce administrative burdens and burnout among clinicians.
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Canadian mHealth App Takes Aim at Preventing Deadly Drug Overdoses
A healthcare provider in Ontario is testing out an mHealth app that allows the user to activate an alarm after taking a drug, with the app automatically notifying emergency officials if the alarm isn't turned off.
April 14, 2021 - Healthcare providers in Canada are testing out a unique mHealth app designed to reduce overdose deaths among active drug users.
NorWest Community Health Centres in northwestern Ontario will be the first provider in Canada’s most populous province to pilot the Lifeguard app. Developed by Lifeguard Digital Health, the app is activated by the user before he or she uses a drug, and includes an alarm that grows louder from one to five minutes after activation. If the user fails to cut off the alarm, a text-to-voice call is sent to emergency medical dispatchers advising them of a potential overdose.
The connected health service takes aim at an issue that killed more than 2,000 people in Ontario in 2020, an increase of almost 60 percent over the previous year. The Ontario roll-out, coordinated by the District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board, is funded in part by a one-time grant from Ontario’s Ministry of Health through the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
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https://www.thecut.com/article/mental-health-therapy-apps.html
Mar. 29, 2021
The Therapy-App Fantasy
An overwhelming demand for counseling has spawned slickly marketed companies promising a service they cannot possibly provide.
The summer of 2020, recalls Hillary Schieve, was hard. The pandemic was bearing down across the country, protests over racial injustice were erupting, and her sister’s breast cancer had become terminal. Schieve moved her sister into her house to take care of her; at night, she would watch the news and wonder how she was going to keep it together. Then her sister died, and a few weeks later, Schieve’s brother unexpectedly died too.
“When my brother died,” she said, “that’s when I fell apart.” She was having anxiety attacks; she was crying all the time. She wanted to find a therapist to talk to, so she started making calls but no one could fit her in for weeks. She was frustrated and unsure of what to do next. “I’m sitting at my counter, and a commercial comes on with Michael Phelps,” she remembered. It was an ad for the therapy app Talkspace. “I was like, I don’t know, maybe I should try that.”
Talkspace is part of a growing field of services that promise mental-health care via smartphone. And unlike many of the problems tech start-ups have set out to solve, this one actually exists: It’s hard to find a therapist. Maybe you have insurance, so you look up a list of in-network providers, start cold-calling, and hope to reach someone with an opening. Maybe you ask for recommendations from friends and hope someone they know takes your insurance or has out-of-pocket rates you can afford. Maybe you don’t know anybody with a therapist and the prospect of getting one yourself seems risky or shameful. Maybe you don’t know anyone with a therapist because there aren’t any therapists around to see — approximately 33 percent of counties have no records of licensed psychologists.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/integrating-a-covid-19-discharge-pathway-tool-into-the-ehr
Integrating a COVID-19 Discharge Pathway Tool into the EHR
The COVID-19 discharge process can be complex, but a Colorado-based health system integrated an EHR tool to improve patient care and mitigate clinician burnout.
April 13, 2021 - An EHR-integrated COVID-19 discharge pathway tool can boost patient care and mitigate clinician burnout during the pandemic, according to a study published in the American Journal of Medical Quality.
Patients who tested positive for COVID-19 are especially vulnerable during the discharge process, which throughout the pandemic was fragmented. While some clinicians provided isolation guidance post-discharge, others focused on follow-up protocols.
The researchers integrated the COVID-19 discharge pathway solution at UCHealth system, including the University of Colorado Hospital (UCH) and 11 additional hospitals, to standardize the care transition process and improve patient safety.
The research group aimed to build consensus on discharge readiness criteria, collect and summarize discharge criteria for various discharge locations, and establish standard primary care provider follow-up protocols for patient monitoring.
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What's on the horizon for healthcare beyond COVID-19? Epic, Cerner and Meditech executives share their takes
Apr 14, 2021 12:08pm
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed major logistical challenges in healthcare as collecting and sharing medical data is still often a manual process.
The nation's public health reporting infrastructure needs to be modernized, and COVID-19 vaccine records need to be digitized, industry stakeholders say.
Howard Messing, CEO of Meditech, a company that provides software for hospitals to collect and store electronic medical records, saw this firsthand when receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.
"I had my vaccination a few weeks ago and it was a card table, next to a hot dog stand in Fenway Park, with not a computer in sight. Clearly, we’ve got to figure out how to do this better. We can’t rely on paper records anymore," he said.
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AXA and Microsoft join forces to build digital healthcare platform
The launch follows a successful pilot scheme in Germany and Italy.
By Tammy Lovell
April 14, 2021 01:40 PM
European insurance giant AXA has announced it is launching a digital healthcare platform in partnership with Microsoft.
The platform is available to AXA customers in Germany and Italy, following a successful pilot last year, which included a self-assessment tool, teleconsultation and medical concierge for appointment booking.
Roll-out is planned for the United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain and Switzerland by 2022, followed by other countries worldwide.
The platform will rely on technology in the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, including Azure API for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), which enables patient insights without compromising patient privacy.
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How Healthcare Leaders Are Leveraging Existing Tech to Fight COVID-19 and the Lesson This Offers
April 14, 2021
When the pandemic first began to spike, many providers struggled to offer even the minimum of care to afflicted patients whose lives were in danger. Some doubtless chose to invest in new solutions to address the flood of COVID patients, but others hunkered down and used what they had on hand.
After a year plus of coping with COVID, however, healthcare leaders have had time to reflect on what they’ve done to date and what they should take away from the experience. One of the biggest lessons providers seem to have learned that in fighting this bug, they need to see their efforts as a marathon rather than a sprint. They’re getting a powerful reminder that tools in which they invest in today may be all that stands between them and catastrophic future events.
As they’ve gotten a better handle on the pandemic, health leaders have identified several technologies they have in-house that have helped them scale up for the longer term. For example, Drew Ivan, chief product and strategy officer and Sonal Patel, chief customer success officer at Lyniate, shared with us that customers are using their interoperability solutions to integrate telehealth with EHRs and billing tools within virtual care.
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/clinical-care/improving-interoperability
Improving Interoperability
Analysis | By PSQH | April 14, 2021
How physicians can support better technology development.
This article was originally published April 13, 2021 on PSQH by Megan Headley.
Healthcare technology innovation is moving faster than ever as technology companies push tremendous disruptions into this critical sector. However, these disruptions often fail to acknowledge existing workflows and how best to support clinicians. As every physician who has bemoaned the time demand of entering data into EMR systems knows, when technology solutions address a given need, they often create other challenges.
Often the blame goes to a lack of interoperability—the ability of information technology systems and software applications to communicate, exchange data, and put this exchanged information to use. Ideally, data exchange standards would allow data to be shared across clinicians, labs, and facilities, regardless of the application or software vendor.
“We see this phenomenon [of interoperability challenges] all the time, and the root cause is lack of communication,” says Dr. Jeffrey Zavaleta, a board-certified anesthesiologist at Cook Children’s and chief medical officer at Graphium Health, a software provider for anesthesia practices.
From Zavaleta’s perspective, a lack of communication is often due to siloed departments. While physicians, administrators, and IT professionals may be looking at the same problem, they are likely interpreting solutions through different lenses.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/how-to-enhance-ehr-use-measures-to-mitigate-clinician-burnout
How to Enhance EHR Use Measures to Mitigate Clinician Burnout
Scientifically tracking EHR use measures could improve clinician well-being and ultimately mitigate clinician burden.
April 13, 2021 - To effectively boost EHR optimization and reduce clinician burnout, healthcare stakeholders must develop EHR use measures that are actionable, usable, transparent, and trustworthy, according to a JAMA Network op-ed from American Medical Association and Yale School of Medicine leaders.
Scientific-based methods could effectively track EHR use and performance, op-ed authors Christine Sinsky from the AMA, and Harlan Krumholz and Edward Melnick, both from Yale, wrote.
Extended EHR use, documentation, excessive EHR inbox messages and notifications, and other EHR usability issues can result in clinician burnout. According to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), ambulatory physicians spend more than five hours on the EHR for every eight hours of scheduled patient time.
This EHR use study, plus many more, revealed EHR performance measures and variations that led health IT professionals and developers to increase focus on patient care and clinician burnout.
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https://healthitanalytics.com/news/how-a-unified-big-data-infrastructure-can-boost-population-health
How a Unified Big Data Infrastructure Can Boost Population Health
Lee Health is working to unify information from clinical systems, claims, labs, and more to build a big data infrastructure and enhance population health management.
By Jessica Kent
April 13, 2021 - For organizations seeking to improve their population health management capabilities, big data is a critical part of the journey.
Gathering information from different sources – such as claims, medical records, and lab systems – can help providers paint a picture of patients’ health, target resources to those who need them most, and measure health outcomes.
At Lee Health, leaders recognized the need for a solution that would help them build an infrastructure to unify data from these different sources, resulting in improved care management and population health management applications.
“We have been on a population health journey for about four years,” Robert Millette, executive director of population health at Lee Health, told HealthITAnalytics.
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Biden Administration to Lift Restrictions on Telemedicine Abortions
The administration has announced that it will allow healthcare providers to prescribe abortion-inducing drugs via telehealth without an in-person exam for the remainder of the public health emergency.
April 13, 2021 - The Biden Administration is supporting the use of telehealth to facilitate medication abortions during the coronavirus pandemic.
Acting US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Janet Woodcock told the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists this week that the agency would be lifting restrictions on prescribing abortion-inducing medications, allowing healthcare providers to prescribe mifepristone and monitor the procedure via telehealth.
“Those in need of an abortion or miscarriage management will be able to do so safety and effectively by acquiring mifepristone though the mail — just as they would any other medication with a similarly strong safety profile,” ACOG Chief Executive Officer Maureen Phipps told Politico, which broke the news on Monday.
The announcement comes on the heels of a March ruling by the US Supreme Court that put back in place FDA guidelines that require in-person exams before providers can use telehealth to prescribe mifepristone. That ruling was in response to a July 2020 federal district court ruling that eliminated the in-person exam during the public health emergency, saying it imposed a “substantial obstacle” to access to care.
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Google Tiptoes Into Patient Data Access, Consumer Medical Records
The company is gathering user feedback about patient data access preferences, potentially for a second try in the medical records space.
By Sara Heath
April 13, 2021 - Google could be getting back in the medical records game, with the tech giant testing out key patient data access preferences potentially in hopes of building something akin to Apple Health Records, STAT first reported.
Specifically, Google is asking users how they would like to view, organize, and share their own health records. That type of user data could help inform future moves in the consumer medical records space.
The study will engage individuals receiving care from community and academic medical centers in Northern California, Atlanta, and Chicago. Participating healthcare organizations must use Epic Systems EHR and patient users must use Android phones.
In a statement obtained by STAT, Google said it is “running a user feedback program to test features that give users the ability to collect health information from their provider patient portals.” Google confirmed that it will encrypt all user feedback data and will not sell the data or use it for Google ads.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/ehr-adoption-barriers-facilitators-in-behavioral-health-facilities
EHR Adoption Barriers, Facilitators in Behavioral Health Facilities
A behavioral health-centered and well-designed EHR workflow could improve EHR adoption in behavioral health facilities.
April 12, 2021 - Behavioral health EHR developers and hospitals should recognize end users’ perspectives on specific barriers and facilitators before EHR implementation, according to a study featuring survey responses published in JMIR Publications.
For instance, enhanced EHR training and education are essential starting points. Survey respondents also wanted improved standard practices, such as behavioral health-specific EHR documentation and a seamless mental health workflow into the EHR system.
Mental and behavioral health are growing and essential fields of medicine. Roughly 25 percent of US adults report a mental health diagnosis, such as anxiety or depression, or experience emotional distress. Furthermore, the US has the highest suicide rate and second-highest drug-related death rate compared to other high-income countries, according to a recent Commonwealth Fund brief.
Nevertheless, although EHR adoption continues to climb across healthcare, behavioral health EHR adoption lags behind its counterparts. According to the ONC Health IT Dashboard, only 49 percent of psychiatric hospitals have certified EHRs compared to 89 percent of rehabilitation centers, 87 percent of children’s hospitals, and 59 percent of long-term care hospitals.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/biden-outlines-health-it-funding-priorities
Biden outlines health IT funding priorities
The extensive list includes billions in funding for public health data modernization, broadband and 5G expansion, social determinants of health, cybersecurity and more.
By Kat Jercich
April 13, 2021 02:08 PM
The Biden administration this past Friday released a letter outlining President Joe Biden's request for fiscal year 2022 discretionary funding in advance of Congress's annual appropriations and budget process.
The letter, addressed to Appropriations Committee Chair Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, along with several other top federal lawmakers, includes a range of proposals that reflect Biden's broader agenda.
"The consequences of this broad disinvestment are plain to see. We know that anticipating, preparing for, and fighting a global pandemic requires a robust public health infrastructure. Yet, going into the COVID-19 pandemic, funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 10 percent lower than a decade ago, adjusted for inflation," wrote Shalanda D. Young, acting director of the Office of Budget and Management.
"The President believes now is the time to begin reversing this trend – and the expiration of nearly a decade of budget caps presents a unique opportunity to do so," Young added.
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/technology/report-healthcare-hacking-incidents-rose-42-2020
Report: Healthcare Hacking Incidents Rose 42% in 2020
Analysis | By Revenue Cycle Advisor | April 13, 2021
The study found that hacking incidents increased for the fifth consecutive year.
Hacking incidents in healthcare increased dramatically as organizations dealt with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic throughout 2020, according to a recent report from Protenus, a Baltimore-based healthcare analytics company.
The 2021 Breach Barometer, which was published by Protenus in March, covers 758 health data breaches reported to HHS, the media, or other sources during the 2020 calendar year.
The study found that hacking incidents increased for the fifth consecutive year. Overall, 470 hacking incidents were reported in 2020, an increase of 42% from the previous year.
The data showed that hacking incidents against healthcare organizations have been steadily rising:
- 2016: 126 hacking incidents
- 2017: 178
- 2018: 222
- 2019: 330
- 2020: 470
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https://healthitsecurity.com/news/how-healthcare-must-handle-data-extortion-ransomware-attacks
Healthcare’s Data Extortion Problem, and How to Prepare for Ransomware
Data extortion attempts are now occurring in at least 70 percent of all ransomware attacks. How can healthcare providers best combat these pervasive tactics?
April 12, 2021 - Data extortion was once seen as a rare, or potential threat, rather than a pressing issue, while ransomware and subsequent downtime were greater concerns for healthcare cybersecurity. But attackers have since shifted tactics, leveraging data theft in the majority of ransomware attacks prior to encryption victims' data.
The extortion technique was first popularized by the Maze hacking group, which had a penchant for targeting healthcare given its troves of sensitive data.
The hackers banked on providers needing constant access to their information and fear of potential data leaks in their efforts to make the most profit at their victims' expense.
The group has since disbanded but researchers believe the actors simply shifted to deploying the Egregor variant. Clop, Avaddon, Astro, DarkSide, and a host of other hacking groups are leveraging extortion in “secondary infections.”
In fact, VMWare researchers saw an increasing number of long-term cyberattack campaigns across the digital healthcare supply chain. The attacks are likely behind the surge in data extortion attempts, which is fueling the cybercrime market.
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Acute Direct-To-Consumer Telehealth Leads To More Follow-Up Care
Direct-to-consumer telehealth patients had 4 percent more follow-up encounters compared to patients who had initial in-person acute care visits.
April 09, 2021 - Patients who accessed care for upper respiratory infections through direct-to-consumer telemedicine platforms were more likely to have follow-up appointments than patients who had their initial visit in-person, according to a University of Michigan study that suggests potential setbacks of on-demand telemedicine.
The research, published in Health Affairs, questions whether shifting to direct-to-consumer telehealth services for initial care is successful in reducing acute care costs.
Researchers analyzed data from a large insurer for over 28,700 direct-to-consumer virtual visits and 57,400 in-person visits for acute respiratory infections from 2016 to 2019.
While most visits did not result in follow-up care, 10.3 percent of the patients first seen through a direct-to-consumer telehealth visit had a visit in the following week, compared to 5.9 percent of those whose first visit was in person.
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April 09, 2021
Primary care providers overestimate likelihood of disease before, after certain tests
By Janel Miller
Providers in the primary care setting often overestimate the probability of a diagnosis before and after testing, suggesting that many are “unaccustomed to using probability in diagnosis and clinical practice,” researchers said.
“This research grew out of seeing a clear disconnect between how we taught testing to medical students and how we practice clinically,” David J. Morgan, MD, MS, professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told Healio Primary Care. “We teach testing as math equations and 2x2 tables but that doesn’t translate to patient care.”
Morgan and colleagues surveyed 553 practitioners — including resident physicians (n = 290), attending physicians (n = 202) and nurse practitioners (n = 61) — and asked them to estimate the likelihood of disease in four clinical scenarios that are common in primary care: pneumonia, cardiac ischemia, breast cancer and UTI.
“Each scenario was created for a general situation but included essential details to calculate true risk for patients (eg, age and absence of any risk factors for breast cancer in mammogram screening questions),” the researchers wrote. “The primary outcome of testing questions was to accurately identify the probability that a patient had disease after positive or negative results.”
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/benefits-and-future-remote-patient-monitoring
The benefits and future of remote patient monitoring
A physician expert in RPM discusses why the technology is so important to patient care and outcomes, and describes what needs to happen to capitalize on its promise.
April 12, 2021
At the start of 2020, widespread adoption of remote patient monitoring was still in the distance. The technology was struggling to get off the ground despite it being available for years.
Most of the hesitancy on RPM implementation seemed to be because of limited reimbursement opportunities as well as lack of incentives for providers offering such services.
Then COVID-19 hit. The pandemic exposed the need for the rapid adoption of increasingly innovative digital health technologies. And while telehealth, a key component of this, has received much of the focus and spend, RPM has been gaining traction since the beginning of the pandemic.
Healthcare IT News interviewed Dr. Lucienne Ide, founder and chief health innovator at Rimidi, a cloud-based remote patient monitoring technology company, to gain her insights and expertise into the state of RPM – and where it goes from here.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/emea/european-digital-health-revolution-wake-covid-19
The European digital health revolution in the wake of COVID-19
As the region starts to take measures to build resilient health care systems in response to the pandemic, Healthcare IT News takes a closer look at the big digital health investments made in a few key markets.
By Sara Mageit
April 12, 2021 07:56 AM
Although European health systems have faced the most challenging public health threat they have ever experienced, the promising side effects have undoubtedly been the disruptions catalysed by digital health. During this time of crisis, digital health has stepped in to provide expedient health care services that offer effectiveness, safety and even humanity for patients suffering from chronic conditions or who need immediate health care. In recognition of this, the European Commission recently proposed the EU4Health programme as part of a COVID-19 recovery response programme. The initiative aims to raise €5.1 billion for the digital transformation of the EU health sector and ensure preparedness for future cross border health threats.
Germany
Germany has steadfastly remained at the forefront of the digital health transformation during the pandemic by continually innovating and adapting legislation accordingly. In 2019, DiGA Fast-Track was created by the Digital Healthcare Act (DVG) and various legislative changes, which meant that apps could be prescribed by doctors and costs are reimbursed through German health insurance. On 5 October, eleven months after the Germany federal government passed the DVG, two health apps officially became available for prescription.
However, the acceptance of digital health has not always been so widely present in Germany. Dr Susanne Ozegowski, head of corporate development and digitisation at Techniker Krankenkasse (TK) and HIMSS EMEA advisory board member, told Healthcare IT News: "In Germany, until three years ago, digital health didn't play a big role. There were a few fitness and wellness apps but hardly any digital health applications which had a relevant impact when it came to the diagnosis and treatment of diseases.
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Microsoft Accelerates Industry Cloud Strategy for Healthcare with the Acquisition of Nuance
April 12, 2021
Microsoft Corp (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN) today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Nuance for $56.00 per share, implying a 23% premium to the closing price of Nuance on Friday, April 9, in an all-cash transaction valued at $19.7 billion, inclusive of Nuance’s net debt. Nuance is a trusted cloud and AI software leader representing decades of accumulated healthcare and enterprise AI experience. Mark Benjamin will remain CEO of Nuance, reporting to Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Cloud & AI at Microsoft. The transaction is intended to close this calendar year.
Microsoft has accelerated its efforts to provide industry-specific cloud offerings to support customers and partners as they respond to disruption and new opportunities. These efforts include the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, introduced in 2020, which aims to address the comprehensive needs of the rapidly transforming and growing healthcare industry. Today’s acquisition announcement represents the latest step in Microsoft’s industry-specific cloud strategy.
Nuance is a pioneer and a leading provider of conversational AI and cloud-based ambient clinical intelligence for healthcare providers. Nuance’s products include the Dragon Ambient eXperience, Dragon Medical One and PowerScribe One for radiology reporting, all leading clinical speech recognition SaaS offerings built on Microsoft Azure. Nuance’s solutions work seamlessly with core healthcare systems, including longstanding relationships with Electronic Health Records (EHRs), to alleviate the burden of clinical documentation and empower providers to deliver better patient experiences. Nuance solutions are currently used by more than 55% of physicians and 75% of radiologists in the U.S., and used in 77% of U.S. hospitals. Nuance’s Healthcare Cloud revenue experienced 37% year-over-year growth in Nuance’s fiscal year 2020 (ended September 2020).
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The Art of the Practical: Five Lessons for Navigating the Journey to a Digital Hospital
April 12, 2021
The following is a guest article by Richard Scully from Atos.
While the vision of the Digital Hospital has been much talked about in health systems all over the world, relatively few organizations have yet realized it. Yet the realities of delivering a digital hospital are less about purchasing the high-tech of tomorrow, and more about harnessing what you already have today.
Rapidly evolving technologies, together with Covid-19, demographic and economic impacts, are changing hospitals all over the world. With ageing infrastructure in some countries and an almost universal demand for more beds, hospital executives and governments are rethinking their strategy and create hospitals without borders. Now more than ever, they need to find innovative ways to optimize inpatient and outpatient settings, connect with patients and citizens, and accelerate digital transformation.
What is a digital hospital?
Even the definition of a digital hospital can vary depending on who you ask. At Atos, we see the implementation of a digital hospital as follows:
- Optimize, redesign and/or build new provider processes, management systems and facilities by enabling an underlying digitized networking infrastructure of interconnected assets
- Orchestrate data and workflow via artificial intelligence to coordinate valuable services and insights which were not previously possible in order to meet the Quadruple Aim of delivering better patient experience, better health outcomes, lower costs of care and better staff experiences.
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AI Can Improve Clinical Documentation, Reduce Physician Burden
Analysis | By Scott Mace | April 12, 2021
AHIMA and 3M describe benefits of artificial intelligence in improving clinician workflows.
Healthcare systems can utilize technology to generate data integrity and data compliance, as well as improve workflows, and achieve value-based care models, according to a new white paper from American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and 3M Health Information Systems.
Following the direction of an expert group of clinicians and clinical documentation integrity (CDI) professionals, the resulting white paper, Elevating Clinical Documentation Integrity with Compliant Technology Adoption, describes the benefits of computer-assisted clinical documentation.
“When CDI is done well, it can lead to better patient care and reduced burden on physicians,” said AHIMA President Katherine Lusk, MHSM, RHIA, FAHIMA. “Artificial intelligence-supported technologies like computer-assisted physician documentation (CAPD) are game-changers for patients and providers alike, taking time-consuming work and processes and creating actionable information that can lead to improved health outcomes.”
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https://histalk2.com/2021/04/09/weekender-4-9-21/
Weekly News Recap
- KKR acquires a majority interest in behavioral health EHR/PM vendor Therapy Brands.
- Firefly Health raises $40 million.
- A magazine article questions the claims and effectiveness of behavioral therapy apps.
- Massachusetts General Hospital will collaborate with drug manufacturer AstraZeneca on digital health solutions for disease management.
- The Indian Health Service seeks help with developing a strategic plan for IT.
- Bright Health acquires Zipnosis.
- The federal government’s information blocking and EHR transparency rules take effect.
- A two-system study of EHR usage finds that ambulatory physicians spend five hours on the EHR for each eight hours of scheduled clinical time.
- Bank of America acquires AxiaMed.
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Enjoy!
David.
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