Health Technology, Digital Healthcare
Article | September 8, 2023
Dialysis providers face many of the same financial and operational pressures that affect other provider organizations, including flat or reduced reimbursements, chronic staffing shortages, and increasingly complex insurance requirements. Dialysis centers, nephrologists, and renal pharmacies also grapple with the impact of a growing shift in dialysis care to the home setting.
End-to-End Automation Can Reduce Denials, Improve Cash Flow
The good news is that despite these challenges, dialysis providers can sustain strong cash flow, reduce costs, and mitigate denials by applying advanced technology to the revenue cycle.
Here are six ways technology can help strengthen the dialysis center revenue cycle in the today’s difficult operating environment:
Identify undisclosed insurance coverage
Because patients often present as self-pay even though coverage exists, determining their true insurance status can be challenging. Yet failure to identify existing insurance can result in significant write-offs.
That’s why renal providers need technology solutions that can uncover patient coverage information before care is provided. Change Healthcare’s Coverage InsightTMsolution provides an expansive network and search-and-matching capabilities necessary to identify and confirm patient coverages at the outset of care.
The solution uses machine learning algorithms—coupled with access to vast stores of available third-party-data—to develop robust patient profiles, which can then be linked to potential funding sources. Notably, it identifies a variety of indicators, including high probability of disability, income levels and financial status, insurance sources, and other actionable information to help you verify coverage and recover revenue.
We can help identify undisclosed coverage for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients through Medicare/Medicaid, Disability/SSI, third-party liability, commercial insurance, state and county programs, social programs, and charity.
Expedite seamless prior authorizations
Streamlining the prior authorization process is essential to help ensure optimal reimbursement for renal care rendered, particularly with commercial insurance and Medicare. But traditional prior authorization processes are frequently time-consuming and labor-intensive and can delay necessary care.
Our Clearance Authorization software addresses the chronic problem of prior authorizations with automated functionality that can determine if prior authorization is required and on file with the payer. The solution also will automatically check medical necessity requirements at the time of registration and electronically submit requests to integrated payers.
Change Healthcare’s Connected Authorization Services go a step further by deploying pre-authorization experts to handle routine authorizations quickly using intelligent technology while working complex cases by exception to improve authorization efficiency and accuracy.
Speed adjudication with electronic attachments
As claims management processes have grown more numerous and complex, providers have struggled to ensure that the correct information is provided to the payer at the appropriate time. The result can be delayed, denied, or rejected claims.
Assurance Attach AssistTMcontributes to faster reimbursement and reductions in denials, organizational expense, and administrative burden by automating the attachments process to meet payers’ increased demands for additional documentation. Attachments are automatically delivered and matched to the appropriate claim, and once the claim is released, claim and attachment status can be easily tracked.
Expedite claims workflow for recurring services
Creating claims for ongoing ESRD care requires repeatedly documenting the same details on each claim. Revenue Performance Advisor, an end-to-end medical billing platform, provides automation that allows dialysis staff to save time by quickly replicating unchanged data from prior visits while updating date-of-service and other information to expedite claims processing.
Revenue Performance Advisor also includes eligibility and benefits verification and automated claims scrubbing that flags incomplete or incorrect claims prior to submission, resulting in a first-pass clean claim rate of 98%.
Accelerate your Medicare claim cash flow
Medicare is one of the largest payers of dialysis services, so ensuring a problem-free and expedited Medicare claims submission process is essential to strong cash flow.
Our Assurance Medicare Direct EntryTMsolution provides a single system for the real-time submission and processing of Medicare claims. It can help expedite reimbursement, reduce AR days, and speed your Medicare primary claim cash flow by at least one full business day.
Assurance Medicare Direct Entry also checks your Medicare claims for eligibility errors using the CMS eligibility transaction system (HETS). Claims needing attention are flagged and posted in Assurance Reimbursement Management for editing. You can quickly correct errors within the system before transmitting the claim directly to Medicare for validation and payment processing.
Optimize patient liability
Making it easy for patients to receive, understand, and pay their portion of the medical bill is key to ensuring a healthy revenue cycle, mitigating the need for collection services, and improving patient goodwill.
With our Patient Billing and Statements solution, Change Healthcare serves as your strategic communications partner, delivering multi-channel, personalized print and digital statements to help expedite patient payment collection.
The solution is designed to provide fast, effective statement and invoice processing, printing, and mailing—cutting your costs and getting you paid sooner. Our advanced statement printing allows you to bypass conventional and time-consuming folding, stuffing, and stamping.
SmartPayTMconsolidates each step of the billing and payment process into one place, enabling you to collect more patient payments, get paid faster, reduce your collection costs, and lower patient write-offs. With multiple payment channels, including online, mobile, telephone and via mail, SmartPay helps expedite patient payments before, during, and after the encounter.
A single, trusted partner
Change Healthcare’s deep knowledge of the renal care landscape and our development of disruptive technologies to overcome traditional revenue cycle barriers can help dialysis centers achieve unprecedented revenue cycle excellence.
And unlike many point solutions that only address a specific revenue cycle issue, Change Healthcare’s technologies are part of a comprehensive approach delivered through a single, trusted vendor. That translates into improved process integration and continuity, as well as simpler overall accountability.
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Digital Healthcare
Article | November 29, 2023
The pandemic-fueled technology adoption has enabled the healthcare industry to address the challenges, including cybersecurity, telehealth, invoicing and payment processing, patient experience, effective payment model, and big data. The responses to the unusual COVID-19 pandemic has sped up the adoption of new digital technologies in the industry. It has also fueled advancements in health technology. From the start of 2020, these advancements transformed the healthcare industry into a next-gen one by accelerating digitization of their internal and external operations by two to three years.
This surprising impact of technology in the healthcare industry has brought out unexpected competition between the key players in the B2B healthcare market. Whatever the field, adapting yourself to modern changes is the best strategy to thrive. Get yourself updated according to the changes or get yourself outdated is the new norm in the healthcare industry.
The following trends and advancements in technology in the healthcare industry due to the pandemic in 2020 show that healthcare providers are always searching for new ways to improve their productivity, performance, and efficiency. These were the need of the hour during the pandemic, for them to surge ahead of their competitors.
• Telemedicine
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare
• The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
• Supply chain management technology
• Privacy issues
• AR/VR/MR in Healthcare
• Blockchain
• Digital marketing trends in healthcare
This article looks into the major innovations, advancements, and trends brought out by the global pandemic in 2020 in the healthcare industry.
Pandemic-fueled Advancements
One of the biggest challenges faced by the healthcare industry in the US today is its digital capacity to effectively engage consumers and make them stay healthy. This can include helping people to prevent getting infected by various diseases such as COVID-19 and effectively managing various other chronic conditions. This is where technology in the healthcare industry has a major role to play.
Due to the latest advancements in technology, the healthcare industry was already evolving but the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this transformation dramatically. McKinsey reports that US$250 billion was spent on technology in the US healthcare industry to shift the industry into a virtual care model in the wake of the pandemic. Also, a study by FAIR Health, a non-profit group, says the increase in telehealth claims in the US is 4,000% in 2020.
Here’s a detailed look into the above-mentioned advancements, innovations or trends brought out by the pandemic in the industry.
Telemedicine
Had the world ever thought that it would be possible one day for doctors to remotely examine the health of patients via a smartphone or a computer? Telemedicine, a new trend in technology in the healthcare industry, addresses many challenges in the industry. Improved technology in the industry has made telemedicine easier, even for people, who are not computer savvy. Telehealth services are now provided through different telemedicine apps.
In the light of the pandemic, rather than in-person visits, 43.5% of primary medical visits were done using telehealth methods in April 2020 in the US. The major benefit of telemedicine is that it reduces contact between healthcare workers, patients, and other patients. This reduces the chances of the spread of infectious diseases.
Reports say that 71% of Americans considered telemedicine useful at the beginning of the pandemic. This trend is expected to continue in the coming years too. With the pandemic, telemedicine saw an immediate boom compared to previous years. This boom in telehealth is projected to break US$185.6 billion by 2026.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare
Artificial intelligence, a new trend and advancement in technology in the healthcare industry, had a critical role in fighting the pandemic. AI played a major role in areas such as pandemic detection, vaccine development, facial recognition with masks, thermal screening, and analyzing CT scans. AI is becoming the new operating technology in the healthcare industry.
Major AI healthcare applications
Healthcare providers will benefit a lot from AI-driven tools as AI technology in the healthcare industry has become a transformational force. Machine learning algorithms and software in AI will revolutionize the use of technology in the healthcare industry and the science of healthcare in the coming years too. AI will unify machines and humans through the brain. Some of the AI technologies in the healthcare industry, which are very relevant, are machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), rule-based expert systems, physical robots, diagnostic and treatment, patient engagement and adherence, and administrative applications.
Benefits of AI in healthcare and statistics
AI addresses many challenges that present technology in the healthcare industry cannot tackle. Better data-driven decisions, increased disease diagnosis efficiency, reduced treatment time, easy integration of information, reduced costs, increased patient satisfaction, fewer errors, and easier payment options are some of the benefits AI-assisted technology in the healthcare industry can provide.
According to an analysis by Accenture, by 2026, clinical AI health applications are expected to create approximately US$150 billion for the US healthcare economy as annual savings. Also, the US AI health market is expected to reach around US$6.6 billion by 2021.
The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
Nowadays, medical interactions involve some sort of equipment or device; it can be a glucose monitor, blood pressure monitor, or even an MRI scanner. It may not be a surprise now that, according to a 2020 Deloitte report, the available number of medical technologies are around 50,000. The internet-connected devices, which are known as IoMT tools, are transforming the healthcare and technology in the healthcare industry.
What Is IoMT?
The connected infrastructure of software applications, medical devices, and health systems and services are the IoMT. This has emerged by combining IoT development with telehealth technologies and telemedicine.
Potential of IoMT in healthcare and statistics
Lower costs for care, fewer mistakes, and more accurate diagnosis are the potential capabilities of IoMT. IoMT paired with various smartphone applications allows patients to send information regarding their health to doctors and get treated for diseases. This type of technology-driven healthcare not only improves patient experiences but also reduces the cost. IoMT, the new trend in technology in the healthcare industry, also has a positive effect on drug management.
According to Goldman Sachs, IoMT will save US$300 billion annually in the healthcare industry. AllTheResearch expects that the global IoMT market value will reach US$254.2 billion from US$44.5 billion in 2018.
Supply chain management technology in the healthcare industry
Utilizing advanced supply chain management technology in the healthcare industry enables healthcare providers to reach the right patients with the right product at the right time. Digitalized supply chain management also makes healthcare organizations improve provider-patient connectedness, data flow and analytics, regulatory compliance, and asset tracking.
A range of challenges faced by healthcare providers prompts you to digitalize supply chain networks, using the latest technologies in the healthcare industry. Advanced supply chain management technology will help you optimize costs, reduce unnecessary variation due to error and variability, enhance patient care, engagement, and delivery, and address new value-creation priorities.
According to reports from market researchers, global healthcare supply chain management technology is expected to reach US$3.3 billion in 2025 from US$2.2 billion in 2020.
Privacy issues
Privacy is a serious concern in technology in the healthcare industry, especially because of HIPAA compliance in 2020. Although data and information of patients can be efficiently stored and retrieved through cloud computing, complying with the strict electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) is difficult.
While electronic health records and sensor networks, and advancements in other technologies in the healthcare industry will surely improve the quality of healthcare by reducing medical errors and costs, associated security and privacy are challenges to be addressed. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association estimated that stolen or lost PHI may cost the US healthcare industry approximately US$7 billion annually.
To solve these issues, hospitals, and other healthcare providers have to stop using outdated technology and adopt state-of-the-art technologies without violating HIPAA. Encryption technology in the healthcare industry is the best option and healthcare providers should start using it to ensure the privacy of patients.
AR, VR, and MR in Healthcare
Virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are important technologies in the healthcare industry to enhance and ensure the quality of telemedicine, especially during the period of the pandemic. The pandemic has made these technologies more popular and the trend is expected to continue in the future too. Both of these technologies in the healthcare industry are used to enhance patient and provider visits and even to educate medical students.
AR and VR also have the potential to help stroke victims overcome deficiencies, assist in robotic surgeries, educate patients before surgeries, facilitate easy surgical planning, help patients with PTSD, and reduce anxiety in children during a painful procedure or blood tests. Mixed reality (MR) is the mixed use of both VR and MR in a patient’s healthcare process and is also gaining popularity.
Blockchain
Blockchain is a trend which is expected to revolutionize technology in the healthcare industry. Using blockchain or digital ledgers will enable you to securely distribute transaction records to patients with improved data security. Along with other trends such as cloud computing and IoMT, blockchain also offers portability, accessibility, and high security. One of the greatest benefits of blockchain technology in the healthcare industry is interoperability.
As blockchain provides full visibility through a digital ledger, it improves integrity and transparency. Blockchain technology in the healthcare industry is beneficial to handle clinical study information, patient wearable data, and patient records.
Scope of blockchain technology in the healthcare industry
Various statistics on blockchain technology in the healthcare industry expect a wide scope for this technology. The global blockchain technology market in the healthcare industry is projected to cross US500 million by 2022.
Digital marketing trends in healthcare
Digital marketing technology in the healthcare industry has been revolutionized as new trends were set by the pandemic in 2020. As the world shrunk to online mode during the pandemic period, the following healthcare digital marketing trends emerged.
Content marketing
The smartest way to attract new patients to your service is content marketing and educational content. 2020 is the time where the content truly emerged as king. Educational content is vital in the healthcare space because everyone always tries to learn new things. It can be a trick or tips about the latest technological advancements, general industry news, or new diagnostic options.
Mobile responsive websites
Another important digital marketing technology in the healthcare industry is making an attractive website, which also must be mobile responsive. In this modern world of technology, everyone wants to access every facility at their fingertips. So, if your website is not mobile responsive, you won’t get traffic to your website easily.
Along with these two trending digital marketing technologies in the healthcare industry, some of the other trends are:
• Video marketing
• Multichannel initiatives and customer touchpoints
• Online reputation
• Powerful presence on social media channels
• Location-based SEO
The essential trends and advancements in technology in the healthcare industry depicting the future of healthcare are machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science along with a focus on effective healthcare digital marketing technology and strategy. The pandemic fueled B2B healthcare technology will make the industry evolve every year and go on resolving new challenges that arise.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is technology important to the healthcare industry?
Integrating technology with healthcare industry will improve quality of life. Also, the use of digital technology in the healthcare industry will increase efficiency, quality, and patient experience.
What is new technology in healthcare?
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many trending technologies are used in healthcare. The new technologies in the healthcare industries are AI, blockchain, chatbots, voice search, and virtual reality.
What are the negative impacts of medical technology?
Medical technology can have some negative impacts on patients such as impersonal or minimized care, negative health effects, increased patient costs, inappropriate use, and invasion of privacy.
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Healthtech Security
Article | November 29, 2023
Contents
1. Knowing The Basics
2. Importance Of EHR In A Rural Setting
3. Features That An EHR Must Have In A Rural Area
Today, we will discuss the crucial featuresof electronic health records (EHR) in rural hospitals. However, before listing out the key components, let us first understand what EHR is and how it can help the smooth functioning of medical treatment in a rural setup.
1. Knowing the Basics!
As the name suggests, an electronic health record is a computer file that stores a patient’s medical history, such as diagnosis, treatment, test results, etc. In short, an EHR is a digital version of a patient’s paper health record. It also includes previous appointments, billing details, and other general documentation. The need for an EHR popped up due to its easy and secure availability compared to patients' paper files. In addition, patients and doctors can easily access lab reports through an EHR that is updated in real-time and downloaded on any device with an internet connection.
2. Importance of EHR in a Rural Setting!
Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) defines EHR usability as “The effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which specific users can achieve a specific set of tasks in a particular environment.' In essence, a system with good usability is easy to use and effective. It is intuitive, forgiving of mistakes, and allows one to perform necessary tasks quickly, efficiently, and with a minimum of mental effort.”
A patient's electronic health records can be beneficial in an era of digitization. It can improve patient care by minimizing the chances of medical errors, reducing test duplication, and making doctors and patients well-informed by fetching medical records anytime, thereby reducing delays in treatment.
3. Features That an EHR Must Have in a Rural Area
EHRs can prove beneficial in all areas situated far off by accessing the real-time, up-to-date data of patients’ health records and making timely decisions. When the distance between the clinics and specialists is more, an EHR report can easily be sent to look into a patient’s history before delivering treatment.
In a rural setup, EHR helps promote health awareness as patients' data can be monitored without needing to be physically present. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Solutions can be easily deployed in places with slow internet and help maintain a lightweight EHR that can support immediate patient care and easy documentation.
Next comes the option of configuration over coding. At the Rural Health Clinic (RHC), an EHR that the local IT team can handle would be of more use than one that may require a specialist’s check or additional coding. An EHR, equipped with the ability to configure and customize as per the clinic’s workflow, will give more control to the RHCs and enable them to function efficiently.
Another significant point of an EHR in a Rural Health Clinic will be the inclusion of applications that support instant communication, like Telehealth and patient portals. These applications enable direct consultation and virtual care of patients and specialists located far off, thereby reducing the dependency of RHCs on city or urban-based facilities.
When we are discussing rural hospitals, we need to look for an application that is both affordable and functional, as rural areas mostly struggle with problems regarding budget and resources. Hence, keeping this in mind, RHCs should install a cloud-based EHR that does not require buying servers or employing IT staff.
RHCs must use an EHR application with innovative analytic tools to access and develop reports for quick patient care decisions. In addition, the system must be able to pull large chunks of data and generate reports daily.
Enjoyed reading this? Want to read more related articles? Click the link for more information!
https://healthcare.report/trending-news/electronic-health-records-ehr-software-market-2019-foreseen-to-grow-exponentially-by-2026
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Article | February 4, 2021
It is not an easy task to engage decision-makers in hospitals, insurance providers, health systems, and private practices. These high-powered directors, managers, and executives are busier than ever. This makes the process of health tech marketing difficult. Apart from overwhelming job responsibilities, these healthcare professionals are also inundated with ads, emails, and phone calls. So rather than sending them messages randomly, it is important to help your prospects when they are free from their daily disruptions and have time.
Inbound marketing, a new form of marketing, lays out various effective healthcare marketing techniques, tricks, or tactics. These health tech marketing techniques or methodologies are helpful in the three stages of your health tech client journey:
Awareness Stage: This is the stage where they do not know they have a problem, but you make them aware of the fact that they have a problem.
Consideration Stage: In this stage, they are aware that they have a problem and consider finding a solution from you or your competitor.
Decision Stage: This is the final stage, where prospects make a decision.
Here are some effective health tech marketing techniques to engage new health tech marketing prospects online all through these stages.
Offer Entertaining and Informative Blog Content
Content is king. Roper Public Affairs, in their research report, say that around 80% of B2B decision-makers prefer to gather information from articles and blogs over ads. According to the research done by HubSpot, companies that publish blogs frequently get 4.5x more leads. Engage your health tech prospects with regular content that can address their interests and the problems they face.
However, it is a mistake to focus only on your health tech company’s benefits, features, or sales pitches in your blogs. This may make your prospects think you are just after their money. One of the best health tech marketing techniques to engage your prospects online is to provide answers to the challenges they face.
You can even ask and encourage your clients to contribute success stories or guest posts. These posts will have more value and the chances of them being shared are high. It is also better to create a strategy to make sure the health tech marketing content you make is valuable and relevant to your potential clients.
Encourage Social Media Feedback and Blog Comments
Providing great and prospect oriented health tech marketing content is just the beginning. You can solicit reactions from your audience. Asking questions at the end of blogs and social media health tech messages is a great way to collect reactions from the audience. It is good to thank them for responding when they leave a comment. Also, give them a comprehensive answer.
This will help build your credibility and make the clients come back. Sometimes, you may get spam comments, which are not connected to your post. Weed them out to make all comments relevant to the post. This health tech marketing technique will make your potential clients stay engaged in what you post online.
Host Google Hangouts or Webinars
People love being visually engaged. So, webinars or Google Hangouts are powerful tools that allow real-time interaction with your customers. This helps you to establish a personal connection with your potential clients through video or audio. Various visual aspects, including slides, graphics, and live videos, make it easier for you to share your content with customers.
Being an interactive health tech marketing technique, at the end of webinar sessions or Google hangout, you can have a Q and A session to clarify any questions from the clients. Compared to merely writing blog posts and articles, this, as a two-way dialogue, and will help you a lot in building a strong relationship with your clients.
Create a Group or Community
One of the best health tech marketing techniques to engage new customers is to interact in online forums and communities. Your buyers can get added to your members-only group automatically and then these members can socialize with each other and discuss healthcare technology.
These forums can be used to share content that is not available to the public. To the members, you can also offer various discounts and special pricing. Your customers, being part of such a group, will feel special and increase the possibility of a repeat purchase.
Co-Create with Existing Customers
If you are planning to write an e-book, improve your website, or launch a new product, involve your existing customers by getting suggestions from them. For fostering loyalty, depending on the situation, it is very effective to make your customers involved in major decision-making processes. They will feel proud that they participated, at the end of the process.
This health tech marketing technique may even allow you to hold a contest to select an idea from your customers for your next design and offer rewards for the one which is selected. Rewards can be a special mention on your website, a discount, or a freebie.
Celebrate Together!
Another great health-tech marketing technique to build stronger relationships with your customers is to celebrate milestones with them. Any achievement, small or big, can be a milestone. Even, achieving an award for attaining a certain number of followers can be a milestone. Sharing such moments of success with your customers and social media followers may make them feel like they are part of your business and success.
It is also a good idea to give them a discount offer. Also, recognizing the success of your clients and featuring them will establish a good relationship with customers.
Monitor Social Media
The best place to engage your clients in conversations about your products and industry is social media. Selecting a topic that is trending in your industry may be a hot cake for you to have the conversation on your social media platforms. Tracking trending topics related to your industry will always give you an insight for your next blog post and social media posts.
By sharing, liking, and providing answers you can also take part in conversations. This will make you an authority and customers will feel good about your credibility. As a health tech marketing technique, monitoring social media will make you gain the trust of the customers and build your brand gradually but successfully.
Build a List of Leads and Nurture them
Email marketing, as a health tech marketing technique, is a very effective strategy to nurture B2B customer relationships. According to HubSpot, for business communication, 86% of people prefer emails. You will be in the minds of potential customers through your value-packed and attractive emails. They will remember you when they identify a requirement.
Through your emails, you can update and educate your potential customers about relevant topics and trends related to the health tech industry. A newsletter in a week will be fair enough to keep them engaged and updated about your brand and industry.
Summing up
The key to generating more qualified leads and increasing your brand recognition is engaging new prospects tough new and innovative health tech marketing techniques. This will make your sales team’s job easier; they can convert these leads into customers. The above-listed health tech marketing techniques to engage with your prospects can be effectively used with your well-crafted Inbound marketing strategy.
Doing all of these alone can be very challenging. We, at Media7, partner with healthcare technology companies and healthcare tech marketers to offer support, strategy, and extending help to implement these activities. Through the collaboration, we help health tech companies to attract more visitors to their websites, generate leads, convert, and make them your happy customers. For more details of our services, visit our website: https://media7.com/
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a health tech marketing strategy?
Health tech marketing strategy is a part of an inbound marketing process for marketing healthcare tech products. It uses resources that can trace various opportunities through lead generation and branding, and overcome threats of healthcare businesses, which is highly competitive.
What is the best health tech marketing technique?
The best health tech marketing technique is to generate leads through various content forms. Health tech Content marketing helps create awareness about the product and attract clients to it. Different forms of content can include blogs, articles, press releases, newsletters, and much more.
Where to start when creating your healthcare marketing strategy
The best way to start when creating your healthcare marketing strategy is to set your goals. This is because the success of your healthcare marketing strategy depends upon the goal you set for yourself when you start the business and the marketing for it.
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