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While the CMS chargemaster requirement may have been well intentioned, many find it impractical to implement. What’s worse, it’s not solving the patients’ price transparency problem. Learn from innovative CIOs to see how augmenting your core EHR can streamline the process to meet the requirements and patient needs.

Download this whitepaper to learn more about:

• Secure momentum within your organization to drive the patient personalization & transparency conversation
• Gain critical lessons learned so you can develop a straightforward, efficient integration with your EHR.
• See how 2 leading providers innovated beyond the chargemaster requirements to meet the overwhelming patient demand for REAL transparency through self-service tools that reduced costs and increased overall collections.

Today, providers are experiencing increasing denials, underpayments, and plan complexity, and decreasing allowed charges, reimbursements and payor accountability.

Potentially millions are being left on the table every day. The complexity of plans and the claims system as designed by the payors makes it difficult if not impossible for providers to collect the reimbursements they are entitled to from the payor and to clearly understand if they are accurate.

A robust A/R management, payor collections, and revenue integrity program is the key to ensuring that your payors are reimbursing at the appropriate and fair rate.

Read the 8 Keys to Success and learn how you can be successful with payor reimbursements by:

• Understanding how to optimize your payor reimbursement and AR Management functions
• Reducing both your days outstanding and your A/R balances
• Establishing a program to reduce denials, underpayments and payment delays

The Surgicalist Group evaluated the effect of implementation of a Surgicalist staffing model at a community hospital.

Under the Surgicalist staffing model, they were able to increase the urgent case volume from 0.8 to 1.83/day. Index cholecystectomy capture rose from 0.26 to 0.8/day and their LOS decreased from 2.1 to 1.7 days. Complications requiring a readmission were decreased by over 30%. ED physicians satisfaction was drastically improved with the Surgicalist model regarding their interactions with the surgeon on-call as well as their confidence patients were getting proper care.

Over $2.4 million additional hospital income was captured off cholecystectomies alone because of the Surgicalist model.

Learning Points:

• The Surgicalist staffing model can increase the volume of surgical case captured via the Emergency Department
• Simply having “call coverage” does not guarantee good patient care
• The Surgicalist model significantly decreases length of stay for the most common urgent surgical procedures
• A dedicated team of Surgicalists improve Emergency Department Physician satisfaction and confidence in regarding patient care

For the healthcare industry to achieve widespread success in aligning care quality with reimbursement to improve outcomes and ultimately lower costs, health plans and providers need to work together. The success of one Hawaii health plan provides an example of what can be achieved if providers and health plans collaborate like partners instead of quibble like adversaries.

This white paper examines the success of Hawaii Medical Service Association's unprecedented payment program. The program was the result of 18 months of planning and collaboration, during which physicians directly informed the health plan about the quality measures most meaningful to them.

Key learning points include:

• How HMSA created a quality bonus program that engaged physicians
• How HMSA achieved consensus buy-in among physicians and stakeholders
• How HMSA supports provider investment in technology

Hospitals and health systems are constantly challenged to grow revenues and reduce costs. At the same time, they must meet the differing demands of fee-for-service and value-based environments. To be successful, it’s critical for providers and administrators to have effective systems to measure, standardize and align physician performance with their business goals.

This white paper shows how an enterprise-level platform that integrates with multiple EHRs to readily capture, share and analyze clinical, financial and operational data can deliver measurable ROI no matter the setting. Executives from a variety of healthcare organizations share how they’ve benefited from delivering actionable data in real time to physicians and executives.

You’ll see how intelligent data and platforms can:

• Seamlessly connect data throughout the system and care continuum
• Optimize provider workflows to reduce administrative burdens and improve productivity
• Maximize fee-for-service revenue while supporting value-based initiatives

Using the case study of Blockbuster and Netflix, Regent Surgical Health examines healthcare parallels in a new white paper. The story of these competitors offers six key “lessons learned” that have relevance today for health systems looking to leverage new technology, data, customer preference, and care delivery models to lead healthcare into the future.

Learn:

• How to avoid penny-wise mis-steps that cripple customer satisfaction
• How business strengths can drive innovation complacency
• About a new technology poised to propel ASCs beyond the tried-and-true

Learn how a VP of Operations and the system VP of IS teamed up with HR and nursing to standardize staffing practices enterprise-wide. By changing how they staffed and better leveraging workforce management technology, Memorial Hermann was able to ensure that staff were working up to their commitments and reduce their dependency on agency staff. Now, nurses appreciate more scheduling equity and a better work/life balance.

With 3,000+ physicians, four acute-care hospitals and over 30 outpatient centers and clinics, San Diego-based Scripps Health continually examines its workflows and information exchanges to uncover operational efficiencies and grow revenues. This focus is critical in an era of shrinking reimbursement and regulatory uncertainty.

Many large health systems like Scripps rely on outside partners to help deliver quality care and optimal financial performance. However, finding trusted, long-term technology partners who deliver on their promises is rare in today’s healthcare environment.

That’s why the Scripps partnership with Ingenious Med® is so noteworthy. In this case study, you’ll learn how the collaboration:

• helped Scripps transition to an integrated electronic workflow with uniform data and analytics throughout the care continuum
• drove strong fee-for-service revenue growth while supporting value-based initiatives
• used intuitive reports to accelerate performance improvement across locations and providers

Managing patient flow is a growing and complex challenge for hospitals and healthcare systems of all sizes.

Typically, the problem isn’t that hospitals lack enough beds, staff or data. Rather, the challenge is their inability to match their capacity and workforce to anticipated patient demand. The issue isn’t insufficient resources; it’s insufficient resource management.

In this whitepaper you will learn how predictive and prescriptive analytics can:

• Be used to align capacity to true demand and better manage length of stay.
• Empower front-line decision makers to commit to continuous process improvement.

A successful population health strategy is built on a solid foundation of data. While the rapid digitization of healthcare ensures the proliferation of data across the enterprise, providers must still figure out how to glean actionable insights from large repositories of information. This critical need has inspired the development of numerous solutions produced in a highly competitive and crowded health IT marketplace. In this market, providers must learn how to assess product functionality and vendor capabilities, making IT purchasing decisions complex and drawn out.

In our white paper, “Considerations in Selecting a Population Health Management Solution,” we highlight the top six capabilities to look for when assessing population health technology vendors. Topics discussed include: Security standards, adaptability and value-added services, among others.

The consumerism revolution in healthcare continues well into the new year. With the recent CMS price transparency rule and increasing out-of-pocket costs for patients, innovative health systems are realizing the need to create a consumer-centric patient financial experience to respond to the rapid changes.

Patients want and expect an easy-to-use and easy-to-understand solution when it comes to paying their healthcare bills. St. Luke’s University Health Network recognized they needed to strive for a patient financial experience that met the standards that Amazon and other major online retailers have trained consumers to expect. This motivated St. Luke’s to invest in their patient financial care, which in turn resulted in positive results in collecting, building patient loyalty, and overall long-term organizational growth.

Download this whitepaper to learn more about:

• How to address the critical challenge of healthcare affordability
• Enhancing the patient financial experience through easy-to-use and easy-to-understand solution that drives results
• Empowering patients by providing access and tools

Patients are increasingly behaving like consumers in a healthcare setting. As a result, they expect enhanced services and experiences when engaging with providers and health systems. How can health systems engage patients in an integrated effort that aligns with strategic goals to improve patient outcomes, improve efficiencies, reduce costs and enhance patient satisfaction?

This white paper examines important conditions and trends driving consumerism, evidence of the economic and reputational value of a positive consumer experience, examples of health systems successfully improving the patient experience, and a Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies approach to working with health systems to embrace the new era of consumerism.

HIMSS Analytics (part of Definitive Healthcare) surveyed 323 clinical and IT leaders at HIMSS19 and online to find out how prevalent clinician cognitive overload is, which healthcare technologies are contributing to it most, and how to solve the problem.

In this report, you’ll learn:

• Signs and symptoms of clinician cognitive overload healthcare leaders are observing most frequently
• Technology-based tasks that contribute most to the problem
• Technology improvements leaders say would help the most to reduce clinician cognitive burden

Leading hospitals are improving patient care quality and ED patient experience while relieving overcrowding.

Innovation and transformation don’t just happen. To improve the way acute care is delivered, high-performing EDs are turning to a new approach that employs three innovative solutions:

• Telehealth: Expand service offerings by making specialists available via telehealth platforms.
• Integrated Teams: Increase throughput efficiency by integrating emergency and hospital medicine teams.
• Urgent/Teleurgent Care: Relieve pressure on the ED by directing patients with less severe conditions to urgent or teleurgent care services.

Every healthcare organization has a similar set of goals: Improve the coordination of care to enhance the patient experience and patient outcomes, while reducing costs. It’s similar to any industry - make the best product possible. Provide better service than your competitors. Increase margins and revenue. Healthcare differs slightly, at least, in the non-profit sector, where maximizing profit is not a primary goal - but working to maintain a viable margin is important, and challenging.

What organizations from other industries have learned is that new processes only take you so far – success requires a high-performance culture. Healthcare is unique in that organizations readily share their strategies and keys to success. So why can’t every organization replicate that success and why hasn’t the entire healthcare system made more progress? Is culture the barrier?

This paper briefly explores what we mean by culture, and why healthcare organizations find it difficult to create the culture they envision. We’ll also provide practical advice from leaders working on the front lines of building new, high-performance cultures for their organizations you can use today.

Key Takeaways:

• Why you should care about building a strong culture
• Why culture change is difficult in healthcare
• Practical advice from leaders driving culture change in their organizations

*From meeting higher patient expectations to balancing patient trust with personalization, discover new findings on the trends redefining healthcare and life sciences marketing.

Salesforce Research surveyed over 300 healthcare and life sciences marketing leaders worldwide to discover how:

• Cross-functional dynamics are shifting to satisfy customer and business demands
• Data is transforming how marketers operate
• Personalization is becoming more refined at the crossroads of intelligence and trust
• New standards of engagement are inspiring and challenging marketers

When endoscopes are in need of repair, surgery centers risk disrupting patient and procedural flow. Third-party endoscopy repair services offer surgery centers an alternative to OEM services and provide high-quality repairs up to OEM quality standards. In this whitepaper you will learn about Total Scope, an ISO-13485-certified endoscope repair company and how your center can benefit from utilizing a third-party repair service.

Learning Objectives:

• How third-party endoscope repair services work
• The benefits of ISO-13485 certification
• How your center can realize cost savings

For ASC administrators looking to bolster their organization's bottom line, the supply chain remains an ample target for process improvement efforts. While many administrators have been working to improve supply chain efficiency for years, a wealth of opportunities for cost savings remains untapped in this space.

This must-reads roundup features 10 articles that offer insights into supply chain optimization.

Key learning points include:

• 3 strategies for operating room inventory reduction
• 3 ways surgery centers can reduce the burden of high drug costs
• The 3 most cost-effective tools to improve supply chain efficiency

As the healthcare industry shifts from fee-for-service to value-based payment models and operating margins tighten, it's becoming increasingly important for hospitals and health systems to fully understand their costs and repeated causes of revenue loss. Using a combination of education, training and technology, some hospitals are beginning to see the benefits of value-based payment arrangements.

Download this white paper to learn about:

• The challenges hospitals must overcome to shift from fee-for-service to value-based care
• Why relevant, timely cost data is critical to driving margin improvements and delivering value
• How cloud technology supports the transition to value-based care

The methods employed by high reliability organizations (HROs) provide an orderly approach to managing complex, high-stakes issues that are unique to hospitals.

Becoming an HRO decreases variability through attention to detail in daily operations. This becomes the foundation for improved clinical outcomes and cost-savings in the form of greater efficiencies, increased staff satisfaction, and reduced waste.

Nexera posed 28 questions to assess nurses’ general understanding of HRO principles and their perception of how their facilities have put those principles into action in the OR. Nexera’s goal was to find common opportunities for improvement and determine if there is a connection between identified pain points and process gaps.

In this white paper you will learn:

• how nurses perceive HROs versus how they put HRO principles into practice
• what nine practices can be employed to achieve high reliability in the perioperative suite
• the top pain points identified by nurses and the top five areas in which they feel their organizations need to improve in order to become an HRO.

Did you know that Catholic Health Initiatives named a new COO of their Texas Division, Liz Youngblood, while John Doyle, President of Ascension Holdings announced his retirement in June? There were also a number of unique positions filled this quarter including a chief pharmacy officer, chief patient safety officer and chief equity and inclusion officer.

The first quarter of 2019 was abuzz with healthcare executive moves, including more than 50 CEOs and presidents who stepped into new roles, retired or resigned during the quarter. Altogether, at least 126 hospital and health system C-suite executives were on the move during the first month of the year.

Keep track of all the 2019 first quarter C-suite executive moves with this report.

In today’s competitive market, it is more critical than ever to attract and retain top talent.

Read the article to learn key strategies on reducing the staffing burden, including:

• Talent acquisition
• Retaining and engaging rehab talent

Social determinants of health (SDoH) are all the rage these days. That’s because researchers believe social determinants drive more than 80 percent of health outcomes. And in a value-based care world, it’s critical to identify and manage patient social challenges.

In this white paper, Social Determinants of Health: From Insights to Action, you’ll learn:

• How physicians and care managers use SDoH data to improve the care and outcomes for populations while
  personalizing healthcare for individuals
• How technology and analytics are making SDoH initiatives scalable
  What’s next in SDoH

With more consumers covered by high-deductible health plans, patient payments represent a higher percentage of your revenue. And the primary tool for collecting those payments is patient statements. How well are yours working for you? This white paper explores how Experimentation enables providers to create statements that drive engagement, collections, and patient satisfaction.

You’ll learn:

• Why patient statements are in the spotlight
• How consumer testing helps you create an effective statement
• How artificial intelligence and machine learning can automatically optimize to select the most effective prototype
• How Design Thinking is applied to patient statements to help encourage prompt patient payments

Even for the most developed nations, healthcare spend is finite. What’s most critical is the pursuit of more efficient and effective delivery of care, that leads to improved patient outcomes and experiences.

Clinical workflows have been shown to have a direct effect on efficiently transitioning patients through their care plan, ultimately delivering improved outcomes.

There are many technical aspects underpinning clinical workflows that warrant attention if they are to be improved.

Core areas of focus:

• Flexibility, intelligence and standardization
• Efficient use of time
• Interoperability, integration, and data mobility
• Security, risk and compliance

Lean Healthcare principles can be an invaluable tool in helping hospitals and health systems improve operational, financial and clinical performance. This is especially true in emergency departments that are often ripe with opportunities for process improvement that can enhance throughput, metrics, quality of care and patient satisfaction. Emergency department staffing and operational excellence have been cornerstones of TeamHealth’s services to hospitals since 1979.

This white paper will show you more about the ways TeamHealth worked with Montgomery, Alabama-based Baptist Health to use Lean Healthcare principles and tools to make dramatic improvements in emergency department clinical and operational performance.

Spectrum Health, an integrated health system headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, needed to improve care delivery for specialty consults. Through its telehealth program, Specialty MedNow, Spectrum Health launched more than 90 telehealth use cases across its system and saw impactful results, including:

• A 76 percent reduction in readmissions for Wound Care
• A reduced transfer savings of $345,400 for Infectious Disease
• More than $5 million in savings for its insurance arm, Priority Health
• More than 25,000 remote consults using American Well telemedicine carts

Case acceptance, especially for those patients facing complex procedures such as implant dentistry, is a major factor for many dental health professionals. However, the failure of patients to carry through with a recommended course of treatment is not an insurmountable problem. If your case acceptance rates are below 85%, you need to offer more financing options.

With LendingUSA Patient Financing, you get:

• Higher Approval Rates
• Loan Approvals Up to $35,000
• Lowest Merchant Fees in the Industry
• Promotional 0% APR on Loans Paid in Full Within 6 Months

The healthcare industry is facing major demographic and market changes that will dramatically impact which services are needed and how they are delivered. The organizations that put the consumer at the center of decision-making stand to be leaders in the new economy.

In this white paper, you will gain insights into how to:

• Start serving different consumers in different ways, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.
• Keep an eye toward creating a seamless delivery network through which patients can move.
• Forge strategic partnerships with technology disruptors - from integrators for patient/program matching, to reimbursable health tools, to predictive and behavioral analytics providers.

Hospitals have a responsibility to protect patients from harm, and as patients become more aware of their options when it comes to health care, they seek facilities that have a demonstrated commitment to patient safety. Lima Memorial Health System has made concerted efforts to expand on its infection prevention protocols since 2014, including the implementation of UVC disinfection.

In this case study, you will learn:

• How a community rallied together to protect patients
• Lima Memorial Health System’s approach to implementing and sustaining a successful UVC disinfection program
• Advantages of choosing the right UVC partner

Today’s OR leaders must ensure all workflows and equipment are delivering a positive impact in relation to efficiency, safety, cost, space and sustainability. These factors are especially important, and often overlooked, when examining surgical fluid collection and disposal systems.

Serres’ experience powering more than 40,000 cases each day has led us to develop updated solutions that vary based on the amount of fluid collected. Rather than use the same system for every case, we found that efficiency, safety, cost, space and sustainability are heightened when solutions are optimized specifically for the amount of fluid volume produced by each surgery.

Key Takeaways:

• Approximately 2/3 of all cases produce less than 2 canisters of fluid waste, and would be considered low fluid volume surgical cases. These cases require a closed collection and disposal process that is more efficient than a high volume disposal system.
• Many healthcare facilities are overusing fluid collection and disposal systems designed for high fluid volume cases, which is both costly and wasteful.
• Disposing of filled canisters as red bag waste can contribute to unnecessary costs and OR turnover inefficiencies.

With the surge in EMR usage, keyboards and PCs are used widely in clinical care settings. But unlike medical equipment and high-touch environmental surfaces, these IT devices are rarely subject to infection prevention standards.

There are steps you can take today to help prevent HAI.

Read guidelines on implementing proper healthcare disinfecting and cleaning practices developed by a team of board-certified infection preventionists working on behalf of APIC Consulting Services Inc (Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology).

Key Learnings:

• The risks posed by contaminated IT devices
• Their role in the transmission of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs)
• Targeted cleaning and disinfection protocols created by APIC Consulting Services