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By Bill Siwicki | 02:08 pm | March 01, 2016
Oracle Healthcare Foundation provides organizations with a consistent and complete view of their clinical, financial and genomics data across an enterprise.
By Bill Siwicki | 12:57 pm | March 01, 2016
Company says up to 20 percent of claims across the United States are still denied or delayed, so while ICD-10 didn’t hurt, it also didn’t help.
By Bill Siwicki | 12:43 pm | March 01, 2016
CIOX Health launched Tuesday at the HIMSS16 Conference and Exhibition with the vision of advancing the way health information is managed. The company, created by the 2015 merger of HealthPort, IOD Inc., Care Communications Inc. and ECS, offers a variety of services in release of information, record retrieval and health information management, and serves more than 18,000 provider sites, 100 health plans and 1 million unique requesters of patient information, the company said. [Also: See photos from Day 1 of HIMSS16] “CIOX Health is the single largest nexus for meaningful health information in the country,” contended Vishal Agrawal, chief growth officer and president of health plan solutions at CIOX Health. “As a technology-enabled services company, we are uniquely positioned to bring consent-driven access to all those who need it—regardless of location, EHR or health system affiliation.” CIOX Health offers products and services that assist in the management and exchange of health information with the aim of increasing efficiency, speed, quality and security, and positively impacting the bottom line. The company delivers expertise in information exchange, workflow, coding, and audit management technology and services. “We’ve unveiled a new name and brand because we’re the combination of four best-in-class companies, and we are driving a transformation in the way health information is managed,” said Matthew Bennett, CIOX Health CEO. CIOX Health is demonstrating its technology in booth #6021 at the HIMSS16 Conference & Exhibition. Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.
By Henry Powderly | 11:20 am | March 01, 2016
As the way hospitals and other healthcare providers get paid undergoes dramatic changes under value-based reimbursement, there is growing importance surrounding the revenue cycle operations. On Monday, HIMSS Media held its third Revenue Cycle Solutions Summit, hosting a standing-room-only crowd at the HIMSS16 conference, Below are some of the insights shared on Twitter during that event. Revenue Cycle Summit Twitter: @HenryPowderly This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.
By Bernie Monegain | 10:53 pm | February 29, 2016
The vendors, as well as organizations like HIMSS and AHIMA, will support standardized APIs and will make patient access easier, the HHS secretary says.
By Mike Miliard | 09:32 pm | February 29, 2016
Single points of failure could open the door for hackers to take out significant portions of a hospital's medical network, expert at HIMSS16 says.
By Bernie Monegain | 09:20 pm | February 29, 2016
The forum brought together women in various management, technology and clinical roles to discuss how best to create community, resources and content to address the interests of women.
By Beth Jones Sanborn | 09:09 pm | February 29, 2016
LAS VEGAS -- Healthcare teams are striving to work as teams but in many cases, they lack the technology to communicate as a team. That was the message delivered by Neha Patel, MD, director of mobile strategy and applications, and director of quality for Penn Medicine in a HIMSS16 educational session Driving Value from Technology. Patel told her audience at HIMSS16 that a few years ago she was compelled to look at her system as whole, focusing on activity that wasn’t helping quality. In her search for areas to improve, she ended up honing in on communications. Specifically, she discovered providers were struggling to communicate easily and automatically with each other because they lacked the technology. [Also: Aledade CEO Mostashari: 'We have to create lasting clinical change'] Ineffective communication can lead to errors, she said, and there are dollars and losses that can be ascribed to that ineffective communication as well as operational inefficiencies. For example, patients weren’t leaving when they were supposed to, or as quickly as they could, because each team member wasn’t coordinating their care. “Most importantly, it leads to a culture of low expectations within your healthcare system where people get used to functioning at certain level where they’re not on the same page,” said Patel. In an effort to address this issue, she decided to see what secured messaging would look like among physicians, nurses and house staff in their three general medical units and one surgical unit. “What we figured out is when you give providers a tool that they actually can use to provide better care for the patients they’re gonna use it. You won’t have to force them” said Patel. And use it they did. Patel said after one year staff were sending messages, including group messages. So it was enabling staff to really communicate as a care team. Many were reading messages quickly. 54 percent were reading their message in one minute attending and nurses showed only a slightly lower percentage. Patel said her team also asked how much time they had saved using the messaging technology. Attendings and residents said they saved they saved hours a day, and nurse gave similar feedback. She also said significant improvement in length of stay was byproduct as well, as many of the messages had to do with discharges and coordinating care Patel said with technology like this, you’ll want to decide where it will be best used and integrated into operations, like EHR, mobile apps with clinical data, directory/scheduling. You also need to think about policies pertaining to users bringing in their own devices. Most of all, you have to figure out how to measure success. “That’s how you’re going to get funding for some of these resources. You really have to be able to track what your solution was meant to do,” said Patel. Twitter: @BethJSanborn This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.
By Mike Miliard | 08:47 pm | February 29, 2016
The new software combines analytics, patient outreach, telehealth and administrative tools to help providers adjust to new reimbursement reality with a 'lifecycle' approach to value-based care.
By Jessica Davis | 08:27 pm | February 29, 2016
LAS VEGAS - As healthcare moves into a more globally connected environment and government programs, such as those from CMS determine what costs should be for providers, organizations must look toward non-labor needs to improve care outcomes and reduce costs, according to Mark Ziemianski, vice president, Business Analytics at Children's Health System of Texas. "In the past, companies have always looked at labor first because it's easier when addressing cost reductions," Ziemianski said. But to make sure patients are efficiently served and reduce redundancies, services must be aligned to meet the patient's needs. When it comes to improving quality, Pamela Arora, senior vice president, CIO at Children's Medical Center of Dallas said, "You get what you measure. "When we look at serving our community, we have to aggressively manage our costs," she added. "But at the same time, we're looking at how our models work in the community." And reducing costs doesn't necessarily mean cutting back. "It's a matter of figuring out where we need to re-channel resources," Arora said. "Quite frankly - high cost doesn't equal quality." Children's Medical Center of Dallas is a nonprofit, academic healthcare institution in Dallas-Fort Worth, made up of two full-service hospitals and is the seventh-largest pediatric healthcare provider in the country. Children's has been updating its care models over the past few years. Arora said they found analytics have improved patient care, by providing a visual to the community about quality and improvements. Instead of focusing on spending and how to reduce redundancies, Arora said executives need to go to the staff on the front lines to ask about their needs. In doing so, it can empower the staff and make them more open to change. [Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook] "What we're trying to do is increase value and reduce redundancies," Ziemianski said. "We're no longer just looking at what we've done well, we're looking at everything. We took all of our staff and brought everyone back to fundamental training to improve care." "We saw real benefits on all accounts; including staff who could do their jobs better because they had more knowledge," he added. Contributing to the successful cost reduction and its acceptance within the organization, Ziemianski said was making it easier for staff to track their performance using analytics tools designed and implemented by Children's. Twitter: @JessiefDavis This story is part of our ongoing coverage of the HIMSS16 conference. Follow our live blog for real-time updates, and visit Destination HIMSS16 for a full rundown of our reporting from the show. For a selection of some of the best social media posts of the show, visit our Trending at #HIMSS16 hub.