It was another busy week in healthcare. But all the more reason to reflect! Let’s take a look.
Some of us pay our Macy’s bill online. Others bank. But pretty soon your doctor’s going to be able to submit his claims, and have them paid, by insurers – all online, which could save up to $9 billion over the next 10 years, HHS said this week. And make his life a whole lot less stressful, and maybe even, a better doctor. The goal is to reduce inefficient manual administrative processes for physician practices, hospitals and health plans, HHS added. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the new regulation also describes adjustments to claim payments. Doctors have long mourned the amount of time paperwork requires of them that could be better spent with patients.
Over the years, there have been many instances when healthcare changed forever. The polio vaccine, which eradicated this dreaded disease and the use of chemotherapy, beginning in the early 20th century, are just two examples. But nothing may change it – and the way it’s practiced – more than telehealth, which holds the promise of medical care dispensed remotely to allow patients more freedom and convenience, and to lower healthcare costs, according to a new report by healthcare sector experts at GlobalData.
You thought you’ve seen a wearable wireless device for every purpose out there – measuring your heartbeat after a run, how much and how well you sleep, even how high your grandma’s glucose levels are while she’s watching her soaps on the sofa at home. But Lucas Mearian reported at computerworld.com that the devices will grow from 14 million items this year to as many as 171 million in 2016. And by 2016, the market for wearable wireless devices is expected to achieve minimum revenue of $6 billion, according to new research from IMS Research, a subsidiary of HIS, Mearian reported.
Medicare fraud costs the U.S. more than $60 billion annually, and for years, the traditional way of catching it has been the "pay and chase" game, or trying to recoup losses after scam artists have already cashed in, according to a story by Kelli Kennedy and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar. Nearly 50 million Americans relied on Medicare for a cost of $557.8 billion in 2011 – an increase of 6.3 percent – and it’s only expected to go up with the aging of the Baby Boomers. But the U.S. is no longer standing back. The story noted that Medicare's investigators are going high-tech, with the opening of a $3.6 million command center that features a giant screen and the latest computer and communications gear to keep people working on the problem in touch around the world.
The health IT world changes exponentially each year, but not everyone keeps up. According to Sai Subramaniam, business head for life sciences and healthcare at Persistent Systems, health IT professionals need to focus more on coordinated care and “start thinking beyond traditional models of building and running applications, which tend to be ‘complex and expensive,’ as he told Michelle McNickle at healthcareitnews.com. One way is the use of predictive analytics and modeling tools, which provide “actionable” data for physicians to use in treatment and diagnosis. According to Subramaniam, these tools can be used to “‘stratify’ the population, identify at-risk patients, provide better provision screening tests, identify gaps in care, and facilitate better pre-care planning, McNickle reported. "It’s what we’ve all been hearing about, big data – with its immense amounts of information that can be sorted and organized with sophisticated software – and its growing application in healthcare. The health IT world changes exponentially each year, but not everyone keeps up. According to Sai Subramaniam, business head for life sciences and healthcare at Persistent Systems, health IT professionals need to focus more on coordinated care and “start thinking beyond traditional models of building and running applications, which tend to be ‘complex and expensive,’ as he told Michelle McNickle at healthcareitnews.com.
