Category Archives: Information Technology

A resurgent interest in outsourcing

Posted on by • Posted in Core Services, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Information Security, Information Technology, Non-Core Services, Outsoucing, Population Health, Vendor Relationship Management • Leave a comment

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Unsurprisingly, given the mounting economic pressures many health systems are facing, we’re beginning to hear more discussions among executives about outsourcing non-core services as a way of containing costs. Whether it’s contracting with an outside company for things like laundry and dietary services, or more extensive outsourcing to vendors for revenue cycle and IT services (such as the much-ballyhooed partnerships with Optum that have grabbed headlines recently), we’ve seen a resurgence of interest in finding ways to offload key areas of non-clinical operations.

In some ways it makes sense: we’ll stick to our knitting, and let someone else handle areas that they’re probably better at. But a recent comment from one system CEO captured our concern about the outsourcing trend. “For us, outsourcing is like Lucy and the football…we’ve been here before.

What we’ve learned is the complexity of managing the vendor relationship often outweighs any potential cost savings. And in the end, we never seem to garner enough savings to make it worth the effort.” 

As to the broader “partnerships” around revenue cycle, IT, and population health, she added, “We’d never give up control of those aspects of the business—they’re too important. Plus, I’m not sure how you’d ever unwind it once you’d let your own staff become employed by a vendor.” We’ll be keeping a close eye on these outsourcing deals as the year goes on, and we’d love to hear your experience with the strategy as well.

Bright Health exits nine more states

Posted on by • Posted in Consumer-Centric, Consumerism, Digital Health, Dismal Performance, Disruption, Disruptive Technology, Health Insurance Startups, Information Technology, Initial Public Offering (IPO) • Leave a comment

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Coming off a $1.2B net loss in 2021, Minneapolis-based insurtech Bright Health announced this week it will stop offering commercial and Medicare Advantage (MA) plans in all states except Florida and California, where it will solely offer MA plans. In its remaining markets, the company plans to focus on its care delivery and provider support business, NeueHealth. Bright has reportedly struggled to contain its medical spend, due to rapid growth and COVID-related costs; its claims processing backlog also earned a $1M fine from the Colorado Department of Insurance last April. Once valued at over $11B, Bright’s stock has lost 95 percent of its value since going public in June 2021. 

The Gist: The largest digital health IPO to date is now rapidly shrinking, not even two years later—and Bright is not alone amongst its peers. After years of hype, most insurtechs still have minimal market share, and most have yet to turn a profit. With a market cap now under $1B—and dropping by the day—Bright could be an easy pickup for an established health plan interested in its consumer-centric technology, though given reports of dissatisfied beneficiaries, the value of that technology is still unclear.

Healthcare hacking on the rise

Posted on by • Posted in Cybersecurity, Data Breaches, Data Privacy, Data Security, Health System, HIPAA, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Information Security, Information Technology, Internal Audit, Internal Control, Legacy Technology, Privacy, Rev Cycle Management, Revenue Cycle, Risk Management, Risk Mitigation • Leave a comment

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From the largest global meat producer to a major gas pipeline company, cyberattacks have been on the rise everywhere—and with copious amounts of valuable patient data, healthcare organizations have become a prime target.

The graphic above outlines the recent wave of data attacks plaguing the sector. Healthcare data breaches reached an all-time high in 2020, and hacking is now the most common type of breach, tripling from 2018 to 2020. This year is already on pace to break last year’s record, with nearly a third more data breaches during the first half of the year, compared to the same period last year.

Recovering from ransomware attacks is expensive for any business, but healthcare organizations have the highest average recovery costs, driven by the “life and death” nature of healthcare data, and need to quickly restore patient records. A single healthcare record can command up to $250 on the black market, 50 times as much as a credit card, the next highest-value record. Healthcare organizations are also slower to identify and contain data breaches, further driving up recovery costs.

A new report from Fitch Ratings finds cyberattacks may soon threaten hospitals’ bottom lines, especially if they affect a hospital’s ability to bill patients when systems become locked or financial records are compromised. The rise in healthcare hacking is shining a light on many health systems’ lax cybersecurity systems, and use of outdated technology.

And as virtual delivery solutions expand, health systems must double down on performing continuous risk assessments to keep valuable data assets safe and avoid disruptions to care delivery.

Top 20 smart hospitals in the world, ranked by Newsweek

Posted on by • Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Digital Imaging, Electronic Health Record (EHR), Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Information Technology, Robot-Assisted Surgery, Smart Buildings, Smart Hospital, Telemedicine • Leave a comment
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/rankings-and-ratings/top-20-smart-hospitals-in-the-world-ranked-by-newsweek.html?origin=BHRE&utm_source=BHRE&utm_medium=email&utm_content=newsletter&oly_enc_id=2893H2397267F7G
World's Best Smart Hospitals 2021

Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic was named the best smart hospital in the world in 2021 by Newsweek.

For the list, the magazine partnered with consumer research company Statista to find the 250 hospitals that best equip themselves for success with technology. Newsweek said the hospitals on the list are the ones to watch as they “lead in their use of [artificial intelligence], robotic surgery, digital imaging, telemedicine, smart buildings, information technology infrastructure and EHRs.”

The ranking, published June 9, is based on a survey that included recommendations from national and international sources in five categories: digital surgery, digital imaging, AI, telehealth and EHRs. 

The top 20 smart hospitals in the world:

1. Mayo Clinic

2. The Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore) 

3. Cleveland Clinic

4. The Mount Sinai Hospital (New York City) 

5. Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston)

6. Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Boston)

7. Cedars Sinai (Los Angeles)

8. Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset (Solna, Sweden)

9. MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston)

10. Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin

11. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York City)

12. Houston Methodist Hospital

13. Sheba Medical Center (Ramat Gan, Israel)

14. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (New York City)

15. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston)

16. Boston Medical Center 

17. Abbott Northwestern Hospital (Minneapolis)

18. Stanford (Calif.) Health Care

19.  Aarhus Universitetshospital (Aarhus, Denmark)

20. AP-HP-Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou (Paris)

Baylor Scott & White to cut, outsource 1,700 jobs

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Baylor Scott & White Health To Outsource, Eliminate 1,700 Positions – CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

Dallas-based Baylor Scott & White Health will outsource, lay off or retrain 1,700 employees who work in information technology, billing, revenue cycle management and other support services, according to The Dallas Morning News. 

The health system said outsourcing the finance and IT jobs and other support services will help it improve efficiencies and focus on reducing costs in noncore business areas.

About two-thirds of the 1,700 employees will be joining third-party RCM, IT, billing or support staff vendors. About 600 to 650 positions will be eliminated. 

Baylor Scott & White said that employees whose positions are being eliminated will be invited to participate in retraining programs. 

The retraining program would allow the employees to remain employed at the health system and receive the same pay or higher, depending on their role, according to the report. Some of the retraining programs that will be available are learning to become a certified medical assistant or learning a job in patient support services.

“In no case — in no case — is anyone going to miss a paycheck,” Baylor Scott & White CEO Jim Hinton, told The Dallas Morning News. “We can afford to make these commitments, and we want to do the right thing for the great employees of Baylor, Scott & White. They’ve really done everything we’ve asked and more during this last year.”

This is the third time Baylor Scott & White has announced cost-cutting initiatives related to its workforce since the pandemic began. Last May, 930 Baylor Scott & White employees were laid off, and in December the health system said it would lay off employees and outsource 102 corporate finance jobs. 

Mr. Hinton said that Baylor Scott & White has 2,000 clinical positions open, and it is investing in a new regional medical school campus and a joint venture to improve care for the underinsured. 

“This is a transition to a new business model, a transition to a new way of working,” Mr. Hinton told The Dallas Morning News. 

Decision-making amid COVID-19: 6 takeaways from health system CEOs and CFOs

Posted on by • Posted in Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Communication, Crisis, Crisis Management, Decision Making, Decision Making Authority, Exit Strategy, Information Technology, Innovation, Investing, Investment, Investments, Leadership, Leadership Alignment, Pandemic, Problem Solving, Technology, Telemedicine, Transparency, Trust, Truth • Leave a comment

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/decision-making-amid-covid-19-6-takeaways-from-health-system-ceos-and-cfos.html?utm_medium=email

Alignment between CEOs and CFOs has become even more essential during the pandemic.

Many health systems halted elective surgeries earlier this year at the height of the pandemic to conserve resources while caring for COVID-19 patients. Now, in many areas, those procedures are returning and hospitals are slowly resuming more normal operations. But damage has been done to the hospital’s bottom line. Moving forward, the relationship between top executives will be crucial to make the right decisions for patients and the overall health of their organizations.

During the Becker’s Healthcare CEO+CFO Virtual Forum on Aug. 11, CEOs and CFOs for top hospitals and health systems gathered virtually to share insights and strategies as well as discuss the biggest challenges ahead for their institutions. Click here to view the panels on-demand.

Here are six takeaways from the event:

1. The three keys to a strong CEO and CFO partnership are trust, transparency and communication.

2. It’s common for a health system CEO and CFO to have different priorities and different opinions about where investments should be made. To help come to an agreement, they should look at every decision as if it’s a decision being made by the organization as a whole and not an individual executive. For example, there are no decisions by the CFO. There are only decisions by the health system. The CFOs said it’s important to remember that the patient comes first and that health systems don’t exist to make money.

3. Technology has of course been paramount during the pandemic in terms of telehealth. But so are nontraditional partnerships with other health systems that have allowed providers to share research and education.

4. When it comes to evaluating technology, there’s a difference between being on the cutting edge versus the bleeding edge. Investing in new technology requires firm exit strategies. If warning signs show an investment is not going to give the return a health system hoped for, they need to let go of ideals and stick to the exit strategy.

5. Communication and transparency with staff and the public is key while making challenging decisions. Many hard decisions, including furloughs or personnel reductions, were made this spring to protect the financial viability of healthcare organizations. These decisions, which were not made lightly, were critiqued highly by the public. One of the best ways to ensure the message was not getting lost in translation and to help navigate the criticism included creating a communication plan and sharing that with employees, physicians and the public.

6. The pandemic required hospitals to think on their feet and innovate quickly. Many of the usual ways to solve a problem could not be used during that time. For example, large systems had to rethink how to acquire personal protective gear. Typically, in a large health system amid a disaster, when a supply item is running low, organizations can call up another hospital in the network and ask them to send some supplies. However, everyone in the pandemic was running low on the same items, which required innovation and problem-solving that is outside of the norm.

 

 

 

Hackensack Meridian Health, Maimonides Medical Center pilot sensor-embedded clothes to remotely monitor COVID-19 patients

Posted on by • Posted in Cloth-Based Wearable Tech, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Information Technology, Nanosensors, Triage • Leave a comment

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Transforming Congestive Heart Failure Management with cloth-based ...

Hackensack (N.J.) Meridian Health and New York City-based Maimonides Medical Center are partnering with remote monitoring platform Nanowear to pilot cloth-based wearable tech that monitors coronavirus patients.

Nanowear’s undergarment wearable comprises nanosensors, which detect physiological and biomarker changes that indicate when a patient’s condition is worsening and the hospitals need to further intervene. When a patient wears the garment, physicians can remotely capture and assess vitals including real-time ECH, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, temperature trends, respiration and lung volume.

The garment can collect 120 million data points per patient per day across cardiac, pulmonary and circulatory biomarker data, which is then transmitted to clinical staff.

“Nanowear’s SimpleSENSE is giving us an exponential amount of relevant data metrics about the heart and lungs from an all-in-one product that should ultimately enable us to triage lower risk patients and stratify high risk patients,” said Sameer Jamal, MD, principal investigator of the collaboration and cardiologist at Hackensack Meridian Health, according to the July 22 news release.