Whitepapers & E-Books

When building or renovating hospital sterile processing departments, the importance of uptime and sterility assurance cannot be overlooked. Implementing the STERIS Mobile SPD, a mobile sterile processing solution, helps hospitals eliminate phases of construction in the sterile processing environment without restricting designs, increasing risk of contamination, or interrupting care.

Whether it's in a single hospital or in a large health system, on average the healthcare workforce accounts for more than 54 percent of operating costs. These dynamics have spurred organizations to focus on strategies to optimize their workforce to reduce costs and enhance productivity.

The pandemic has highlighted how critical a real-time communication tool like text can be, especially in getting out urgent messages to huge numbers of patients.

Think phone calls are the way to go? The response rate for text messages is 209 percent higher for text messages than phone calls.
That's just one reason to consider texting your patients.

Since 2015, the average hospital turned over 89 percent of its workforce, according to an analysis of industry data conducted by DailyPay. Market analysts say that healthcare's turnover is second worst, only to hospitality.

Read the guide to learn:

• How you can improve attrition in the healthcare industry
• The true cost of turnover and staffing gaps
• An overview of a payment tool designed to fight turnover

Stronger, more resilient care organizations can respond faster, adapt easily and provide higher-quality care to more people both virtually as well as inside hospital walls. This is a critical moment in our nation's history. To help people stay healthy, prevent illness and receive care when and where they need it, hospitals — the foundation of our healthcare system — must extend care beyond their walls.

Patient communication has changed dramatically since the onset of the pandemic. Relying on call centers to answer patients' questions and reschedule appointments isn't adequate in the quickly changing environment of COVID-19. New workflows have emerged to reach patients, and have been validated by leading hospitals.

In this report you'll learn how to:

• Enable touchless patient intake through a virtual waiting room
• Automate telehealth appointment coordination
• Reach chronic care patients to reduce gaps in care and improve outcomes

During the summer of 2020, a handful of major drugmakers caused upheaval in the pharmaceutical industry when they announced changes to their participation in the 340B Drug Pricing Program, eliciting condemnation from providers and their allies.

Key learning points:

• Recent changes to drugmakers’ participation in 340B Drug Pricing Program
• The role of contract pharmacies in 340B
• The consequences of cutting out contract pharmacies

The current dynamics in healthcare have organizations focused on strategies to optimize their workforce. Forward-thinking health systems — such as Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Spectrum Health and Durham, N.C.-based Duke University Health System — understand that workforce management strategies should apply not only to nursing, but to every department and group, for a standardized approach.

This case study looks at how some organizations are containing costs, impacting staff engagement and positively impacting patient care, by taking an enterprise-wide approach to workforce management.

• An enterprise-wide approach to Workforce Management
• Increases visibility to key data
• Impacts the ability to optimize resources
• Improves efficiencies

Initial surges of COVID-19 in spring 2020 put many of the nation's health systems on their heels — supply chains were disrupted, staff were spread thin and budgets were upended by halted elective procedures and facility transformations to make room for novel coronavirus patients.

Elective services and nonurgent surgical procedures have since resumed at most hospitals and surgery centers. This is good news for patients and hospitals, but it's not indicative of a return to normal. Surgical care has been transformed by new safety concerns as hospitals work to offer extra layers of protection amid the pandemic.

How health systems were navigating the surgical backlog and the industry's new normal was the topic of a Becker's advisory call conducted in conjunction with Intuitive in August. The following e-book is based on a conversation of seven hospital and health system leaders.

Organizations represented on the call were:

• HSHS Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire, Wis.
• Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health System
• Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare
• Houston Methodist
• Hackensack (N.J.) University Medical Center
• M Health Fairview in Minneapolis
• Milwaukee-based Advocate Aurora Health

To better understand healthcare leaders' approaches to change management amid COVID-19 and the potential lasting changes the pandemic could have on the healthcare operations, Becker's Hospital Review convened a group of hospital and health system executives for an advisory call in September.

Organizations represented on the call included Akron, Ohio-based Summa Health System, The HSC Health Care System in Washington, D.C., and University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System, among others.

Read the E-book to learn about:

• 3 pivots made by health systems during the early months of the pandemic
• 3 2020 healthcare transformations likely to last into the future
• 3 unanswered questions related to the use of technology solutions in a post-pandemic future

Gastroenterologist and ASC owner Jeff Williams shares six ways professionalized anesthesia management helped his fast-paced surgery center improve efficiency, volume, and revenue – and eliminate costly and frustrating staffing headaches.

Learn how professionalized anesthesia management adds value to both the internal anesthesia team and to the surgery center as a whole through:

• Recruiting expertise
• Clinical strength & alignment
• Physician control
• Financial metrics
• And much more

"Business as usual" is a thing of the past.The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted businesses, professionals and consumers worldwide. No single industry has proven immune, and organizations now face new operating processes, safety protocols, public health guidelines, and federal and state regulations. 

As COVID-19 cases continue to surge in most parts of the country, health systems are faced with dual short- and long-term threats related to their supply chains, operational resiliency, remote work and infrastructure. Their reality is the ultimate juggling act: Meeting the virus' demands on the system and keeping employees and patients safe, while also assessing whether they have the critical information, assets and processes in place to best respond to current and future crises.

This e-book explores the critical role of information in health systems' pandemic response: Is it accurate and trustworthy? Is it secure? Is it easily accessible? Does it provide insight to inform decisions? Successful organizations can answer "yes" to all of these questions. If yours cannot, this e-book just became a must-read. 

Properly managing and tracking patients after death, often referred to as decedent management, is a highly complex and challenging process. Key tasks include properly tracking and transporting deceased patients; communicating with internal and external stakeholders; supporting deceased patients' loved ones; and ensuring no errors occur.

In this whitepaper, decedent management experts from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville VA Medical Center, and more, share how hospitals can quickly and easily optimize their decedent management processes and reduce their risks.

Key takeaways include how to:

• Eliminate errors in processing patients after death
• Improve relations with deceased patients’ families
• Increase organ and tissue donations and autopsies
• Easily create more efficient, optimized workflows
• Enhance compliance with city, state, federal, and Joint Commission requirements

American healthcare is undergoing a transformation. Changing demographics, technological development and new policy measures have all affected the way we deliver and pay for care. Perhaps nowhere are those changes more evident than in the practice of surgery.
Operating rooms have long been a major source of revenue for healthcare providers. Yet, as the economics of healthcare shift, health systems have experienced shrinking margins.

This whitepaper explores key benefits of partnering with vendors by identifying four key trends affecting hospital performance and by analyzing how third-party service providers can help hospitals adapt to those trends. The findings reflect the experience at two health systems, Erlanger Health System and Baystate Health, where healthcare teams benefited from implementing contract service solutions, the results of which are profiled as case studies in this whitepaper.

Although proper dose adjustments for kidney function is well-recognized as an important issue, drug dosing is often not as straightforward as it seems. It must be tailored to each patient’s condition, age, renal and hepatic function, comorbidities and concurrent medications. Good references for dose adjustments tailored to kidney function are lacking, so care teams must make decisions without reliable guidance. A one-size-fits-all standard medication dose that fits all patients doesn’t exist.

Key takeaways:

• The danger of incorrect medication and dosing decisions
• Why half of patients in ICUs need medication dose adjustments
• How care teams can safely adjust drug doses
• What the Lexicomp editorial team is doing close the gap in dosing recommendations

Learn how we worked with this fully-integrated healthcare system to deliver a whole-person approach to care for its employees and spouses with chronic conditions.

Results include:

• A coordinated experience across conditions for people living with both diabetes and hypertension Multiyear impact on clinical diabetes measures, including reduced HbA1c levels and a fewer hypoglycemic readings
• Measurable impact on systolic and diastolic blood pressure rates among those with uncontrolled hypertension
• Reduced spending incurred through medical care, emergency room visits and pharmacy costs associated with managing chronic conditions, resulting in a positive ROI

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, emerging data suggests that glycemic control for patients with and without a previous diagnosis of diabetes is a critical component for managing the care of critically ill patients.

In this executive summary, you'll learn:

• The striking mortality results of recent COVID-19 research about patient outcomes related to hyperglycemia
• How hyperglycemia in COVID-19 patients impacted length of stay
• Best practice for inpatient glycemic management and what you can do now to improve glycemic management for your patients

As a result of COVID-19, the future of healthcare has arrived earlier than anyone expected. Healthcare consumers are suddenly experiencing new technologies like telehealth and online appointment-setting on a regular basis.

One domain of the industry, though, still lags behind: patient feedback. It’s long past time for health systems to bring their feedback operations into parity with the rest of their consumer experience.

In this whitepaper, NRC Health shows leaders how. They’ll learn:

• How to update survey methodologies to maximize response rates
• How to use open-ended questions to explore consumer sentiment in depth
• How to use this data once they’ve acquired it

Before COVID-19, the opioid epidemic was the nation's most consequential public health threat. The pandemic has magnified the impact of the opioid crisis on communities as unemployment, homelessness and behavioral health disorder rates soar.

Learn how eight organizations across the country have used technology and collaboration to achieve the following:

• 61 percent reduction in opioid prescriptions
• 32 percent reduction in opioid deaths
• 50 percent decrease in emergency department visits for patients with high utilization patterns
• $34 million in cost savings

This downloadable whitepaper will cover:

• Four proven strategies for addressing the opioid epidemic on an organizational and community level
• Statewide efforts to reduce opioid prescribing and use, including implementation of seven best practices for prescription opioids
• How collaboration helped achieve measurable results outside opioids — including decreased ED visits and significant cost savings

Did you know that Houston-based Memorial Hermann Health System named David L. Callendar, MD, as their new president and CEO and that Kaiser Permanente appointed Prat Vemana as their chief digital officer, a newly created role in August 2019? There were also a handful of unique positions filled this quarter!

The second quarter of 2019 continued to have exciting healthcare executive moves, including more than 50 CEOs and presidents who stepped into new roles, retired, or resigned during the quarter. Altogether, at least 122 hospital and health system C-suite executives were on the move during this time of the year.

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

Even though hospitals were slow to adopt technologies designed to transform clinical care and the patient experience before the pandemic, virtual care has proved essential amid the greatest public health crisis in more than a century.

Download this whitepaper to gain insight from five of these leaders from leading hospitals and health systems about their organization’s responses to initial surges of COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the "business as usual" mentality in healthcare. No longer can hospitals tolerate the operational inefficiencies that have plagued the industry for years, and most organizations are already sitting on the key to their salvation — data.

Articles include:

• Proactive security in action: How health systems demonstrate the ROI in risk prevention
• Pragmatic innovation: CIO Dr. Andrew Rosenberg's approach to new tech investment
• The modern CIO's challenge: More tech spending without adding to overall organizational costs
• During the coronavirus pandemic, 'innovation isn't optional, it's required': Key insights from UPMC Enterprise President Tal Heppenstall
• HBR: Relying on data will improve decision-making — 10 steps to foster a data-driven culture
• Healthcare CIOs in 2020: 3 key priorities & how the role is evolving
• Keck Medicine of USC's IT investment strategy: Key thoughts on taking risks and big opportunities in 2020
• The IT roles health systems added in 2020 and the focus for next year
• Health IT one year from today: 8 CIO predictions  

Data breaches that stem from third parties, vendors, or contractors are on the rise. In fact, the increase in third-party data breaches is due to the industrialization of the cybercriminal ecosystem and innovations such as ransomware, which makes cybercrime much more profitable and easier to carry out. Plus, the tools used for remote access, like virtual private networks (VPNs), aren’t properly secured to keep your network (and your company) safe from bad actors. This eBook covers the ins and outs of third-party data breaches including the attack methods, the most common phases, and the importance of a vendor access management platform.

Download this comprehensive eBook to learn:

• The most common ways hackers use third-party access, like VPNs, phishing, ransomware, and privileged credential use.
• The top breaches that stemmed from a vendor or third party, like Target, Hancock Health, and the auto industry.
• About the top 5 phases: Investigation, attacking the vendor, spreading the attack, movement of the attack, and the finale.
• How to lower the risk from cyberattacks that stem from a third-party.
• Strategies to reduce impacts from those attacks.

Modern surgical excellence is less the product of virtuoso talent than it is the collective efforts of a team that not only includes individual clinicians, but also operational administrators and executive-level, decision-makers all aligned under the tenets of the Quadruple Aim.

• Key learnings include:
• The three pillars of surgical excellence
• Insights on measuring clinical and economic performance
• A breakdown of a cohesive surgical ecosystem
• Looking at the total cost of care

As consumerism in healthcare continues to grow, digital engagement with patients has taken on greater importance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, digital engagement has become an even higher priority, as patients and providers have turned to telehealth and other digital technologies to support care delivery.

This white paper examines digital engagement at Cincinnati-based Bon Secours Mercy Health and Birmingham-based Pack Health, a digital health coaching company focused on chronic care support. This white paper contains best practices for creating a digital engagement strategy and deploying the technology backbone necessary to support this type of transformation.

Download this white paper to learn:

• Best practices for digital engagement
• How to evolve a fully integrated patient access and engagement platform
• How COVID-19 has altered the digital engagement landscape

The latest data from the Change Healthcare 2020 Revenue Cycle Denials Index shows denial rates are climbing, up 23% over Change Healthcare’s 2016 Denial Index. The report analyzed over 102 million hospital transactions across more than 1,500 U.S. hospitals from July 2019 - June 2020 and found that while denials continue to climb, the majority are avoidable and revenue loss that is occurring is preventable.

Read the 2020 Denials Index eBook to learn about:

• Denial rates in each region of the country
• Trends during the pandemic
• Denial root causes and where in the revenue cycle most denials are occurring
• Which denials are potentially avoidable and not recoverable
• Strategies to help you better prevent and manage denials in your organization

 

Healthcare organizations rely on vast amounts of data, capturing information on everything from patients' clinical interactions to payer behaviors. This surplus of data has driven the industry to adopt smart devices. The potential benefits to patients and providers are extraordinary.

Leading hospitals and health systems have been working to crack the code on consumerism and chronic disease management by delivering a holistic experience for patients, and interconnected technology is essential to these efforts.

Key Learning Points:

• Interconnected care technology
• The rise of ransomware
• Business email compromise
• The IoT ecosystem
• The mobile threat landscape
• Supporting a cyber secure home
• Focusing on the fundamentals

Community healthcare providers have always played a special role in serving their populations — and faced unique challenges in delivering that support. The effects of COVID-19 have made these providers even more crucial to community health.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a tipping point for telehealth adoption. Amid initial surges of novel coronavirus, providers all over the nation rapidly integrated virtual care technology to reach patients from a distance.

This white paper comprises an overview of emerging virtual care solutions and telehealth use cases. Key learning points include:

• Insights into telehealth usage for hospital-based care and post hospital-based care
• The benefits of cloud-based communications for telehealth services
• An overview of telehealth market drivers

As health systems continue fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, labs have increasingly turned to IT tools to help meet challenges. Adopting an add-on laboratory support solution from an enterprise-wide EHR vendor may seem like the simplest choice, but best-of-breed solution providers that are solely focused on labs are actually best suited to deliver on both immediate and evolving lab needs.

This whitepaper’s learning objectives:

• Understand how best-of-breed technology is helping labs respond quickly and efficiently when faced with challenges
• Examine the benefits and value gained from a best-of-breed laboratory technology solution as opposed to the hidden costs and challenges associated with an enterprise-wide vendor solution
• Review five key areas of laboratory workflow for which IT support has been critical in the management of COVID-19

With the OLAH Enterprise Archiving Solution™ (EAS), organizations consolidate access to legacy data with less time, costs and resources than traditional methods. Find a 2 minute video introduction to OLAH EAS at olahht.com.

This white paper debunks three common myths with these truths and insights.

• Legacy system failure is a major threat for data breaches, exposure and expense.
• Archiving legacy systems can be done with greater cost efficiencies, little disruption and shorter transitions. Aging legacy systems are a significant compliance and security risk.

Despite concerted efforts to improve patient safety over the past 20 years, patients continue to experience high-severity injury outcomes. Analyzing a decade of claims data, this new report from Coverys raises vital questions and renewed areas of focus.

Read the whitepaper to learn:

• Existing safety vulnerabilities across different specialties
• Where proactive steps can be taken to prevent adverse outcomes
• How to examine similar occurrences in your own organization and use data to drive change

This four-step guide explains best practices to create a telehealth business model to reach rural patients, so they can access healthcare in a way that's convenient and cost effective, and providers can keep and even add more patients.

Key learnings include:

• Tips for selecting telehealth technology
• Details for the effective promotion of telehealth services
• Tips for evaluating the success of telehealth services

Healthcare is rapidly evolving with technology that puts patients, and the caregivers that serve them, first.

Read this report for insights on how telehealth is becoming:

• More effective by connecting providers to patients via remote access, helping ensure more convenient care with better outcomes
• More efficient with mobile solutions for home healthcare workers, which helps with HIPAA compliance and streamlines data collection
• Technology-driven with cellular-enabled tablets, mobile hotspots and electronic visit verification to help staff provide better care

2020 has solidified healthcare's digital future and accelerated the adoption of new technologies. Still, providers aren't operating with cash surpluses — leaders have to invest in new technologies and processes wisely and take a pragmatic approach to innovation.

These 11 articles contain real-world insights from healthcare leaders on the future of healthcare and the most effective ways to get the best results from technology investments.

Topics include:

• EHR burnout prevention
• 20 bold predictions for health IT in the next five years
• CommonSpirit and SSM Health execs on the next frontier in healthcare innovation

Consumer telehealth adoption increased nearly threefold in 2020, driven largely by restrictions on in-person care during the COVID-19 pandemic. But what began out of necessity has solidified into a preference, and members are expressing newfound interest in a wide variety of virtual care options — from simple prescription refills to follow-up care after surgery.

Read the findings from Amwell’s 2020 Physician and Consumer Telehealth Survey for a deeper look into the changes brought about by the pandemic, including insights on interest in leveraging technology for primary care and a range of other routine care.

Download the eBook to learn more about these findings, including:

• The proportion of members interested in different types of virtual care
• Member preference for seeing their existing providers virtually
• Varied openness to virtual primary care, broken down by age and payer type
• Expected telehealth usage among members moving forward

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the healthcare industry’s implementation of telehealth, quickly breaking down barriers to adoption and ushering in widespread usage by both consumers and providers. There was a distinct shift in how telehealth was being used by both parties, signaling an industry-wide transition toward a hybrid care model. Providers, payers and innovators will need to think differently about how they integrate these a hybrid care models.

Amwell’s 2020 Physician & Consumer Telehealth Survey provides a deeper look into the quickly evolving role telehealth will play in healthcare, including insights on how consumer and physician experiences, behaviors and expectations have shifted.

The ebook includes insights on:

• How COVID-19 has accelerated hybrid care models that combine in-person and virtual care
• The importance of usability in adoption of telehealth technology
• How consumer telehealth access and the know-how to leverage it remain highly uneven
• How, when and how much consumers and providers plan to use telehealth in the future
• Strategic questions organizations should consider to influence telehealth’s future trajectory

If COVID-19 has a silver lining, it might be this: telehealth use has skyrocketed. Widespread adoption of remote care is a win for both providers and patients, but in many cases a remote visit takes as much time and effort as an in-person visit, which means we still haven't addressed healthcare's most pressing challenges: patient access, provider burnout, and ever-decreasing margins for health systems.

Heading into 2021, will you implement a robust digital care strategy that puts you in a leadership position?

In this white paper, you will learn:

• The three fundamental steps of every patient encounter, and how digital tools can streamline them
• How to scale your most important (and expensive) resource: physicians
• The importance of engaging patients online, or risk losing them to DTC apps or retail health

Driven by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth and virtual care utilization is booming nationwide—and is expected to continue. Explore telehealth trends in a new ebook, Activate Your Telehealth Strategy: Achieve Effortless Interoperability With Change Healthcare APIs.

Learn how the deployment of APIs can help providers integrate common healthcare workflows into their applications to support each stage of the virtual care visit. Find out how APIs can be used to save time and expenses as developers work to improve existing solutions and create innovative new ones.

Key learning points:

• View recent telehealth claims information
• Learn a model for applying APIs throughout the virtual care journey
• Discover how you can explore APIs that suit your needs

Recent studies indicate a ten-fold increased risk of hospital readmissions for patients who fail to see a physician within 30 days of discharge. Yet, one-third of primary care physicians are never notified that their patient was hospitalized.

Read this paper to learn how once in force, electronic alerts admissions, discharges and transfers should result in:

• Up to an 18 percent reduction in preventable hospital readmissions
• A concerted effort to prevent relapses after discharge
• Quicker and more effective care coordination between medical teams and healthcare providers

Realizing the inefficiencies of their dated paper-based informed consent process, a large university medical center in the South removed paper from the process. The old error-prone process was negatively impacting patient experience, cost, productivity, OR utilization and risk management.

By switching to an electronic informed consent solution, the medical center’s clinicians aren’t interrupted in their workflows, patients are more satisfied, compliance becomes almost guaranteed, and procedures aren’t delayed due to lost paperwork.

This report sheds light on:

• How a paper-based informed consent process can negatively affect patients and staff, and put your system at legal and financial risk
• The cost and productivity benefits of a mobile informed consent process
• The ways in which a mobile informed consent solution enhanced interoperability and streamlined clinician workflows at the health system
• How the university medical center utilized their database of procedures to implement one standardized form for electronic consent, with the ability to quickly and easily customize the form per procedure to include associated information, risks and benefits

The financial pressure on hospitals prior to the COVID-19 pandemic was already intense. Now, after the pause in elective surgeries and added costs for treating patients with the virus, U.S. hospitals may have lost more than $200 billion over the span of a few months, according to estimates from the American Hospital Association

In the months and weeks to come, hospital leaders focused on financial recovery will work to get the most out of their organization's surgical service lines. With the Quadruple Aim as their guide, healthcare leaders can recalibrate their organizations' surgery lines to safely and efficiently deliver patients the care they need.

This whitepaper assesses the three cornerstones of surgical excellence and details resources available to hospital leaders that can further support excellent surgical care amid the current public health crisis.

A better patient access experience means a stronger revenue cycle. Experian Health’s Patient Access Survey — with responses from providers and patients — offers a glimpse of what the digital front door may look like in 2021 and beyond. But are providers and patients on the same page?

The importance of understanding the current marketplace and types of creative transaction structures that are available to healthcare providers cannot be overstated. In our current landscape, by coordinating messaging and strategy among transaction assets (e.g. real estate, practice, surgery center, etc.) physicians can better position themselves and their Practices for success long-term while maximizing value. Whatever strategy is decided upon, it is essential to consider the options and advocate for consistent communication between transaction advisors, whether they be investment bankers or healthcare real estate transaction specialists.

Key points:

• Macro economic trends are allowing physicians to consider a coordinated transaction strategy among their most valuable assets.
• Coordinating transaction messaging and strategy across assets (real estate, practice, surgery center, etc.) is ideal for long-term success and maximizing value.
• A sale-leaseback allows physician partners to monetize all or a portion of their real estate while securing long-term sustainability for the practice.

The economic landscape of the healthcare market has been forever altered by the COVID-19 crisis. Existing challenges have intensified, and the pace of change is accelerating, raising the bar for organizations to adapt strategically and quickly.

Download the e-book to learn more about how health leaders can ready their organization for growth with forward-thinking strategies that include:

• Meeting the consumer on their terms
• Adapting to new competition
• The growing role of strategic partnerships
• Mastering the new indicators of growth
• Tracking the spend of the health care dollar

While the pandemic has taken a significant toll on many lives and livelihoods, it has also highlighted what is possible in healthcare when roadblocks to innovation are lessened and cooperation becomes the norm.

Facing unprecedented financial and operational pressures, healthcare organizations have changed care models, altered revenue cycle practices and expanded the use of digital technologies to deliver care while prioritizing patient and staff safety. The financial components of the patient experience have become key areas of focus as the pandemic’s economic fallout left many families on unstable financial ground.

Download this whitepaper to learn:

• How to establish digital, frictionless billing and payment systems
• How to provide patients with proactive financial education and payment flexibility
• How to sustain collaboration and trust to improve future operations

Amid the transformation of 2020, it's worth remembering that change has always been one of the few constants in healthcare. The events of not just the last year, but the previous decade, are evidence of the adaptability and innovation of those who work in the healthcare industry.

As 2021 approaches, forward-looking healthcare leaders are doing what they do best — preparing their teams for what could come next. In October, Becker's Hospital Review and global consulting firm Guidehouse convened an advisory call with several leaders to discuss the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare. This e-book is based on their conversation.

Organizations represented on the call include:

• Tacoma, Wash.-based CHI Franciscan
• Scottsdale, Ariz.-based HonorHealth
• Sarasota (Fla.) Memorial Health Care System
• Flemington, N.J.-based Hunterdon HealthCare Partners

Insurance premium and deductible costs are both rising, imposing more of a responsibility on patients to pay for medical costs than ever before. As the 2021 implementation of the hospital price transparency final rule approaches, Waystar wrote a whitepaper exploring consumer experiences regarding healthcare billing and payment, giving insight on how patients approach medical bills, attempt to understand the cost of care and feel about the upcoming price transparency rule.

In this whitepaper, you will learn:

• How patients approach and interpret their medical bills
• What’s on the minds of patients regarding service estimates, out of pocket costs and shopping for healthcare
• How hospitals can create a better patient payment and consumer-centric healthcare experience

The 2020 VisitPay Report is based on survey responses from more than 3,500 patients. The report dives deep into current trends in healthcare finance and sheds light on the needs, motivations and behaviors of Americans.

You will learn:

• Why patients are facing an impossible decision
• The rising demand for billing transparency and digital solutions
• The seven patient audiences to address

In order for health systems to maximize revenue, they need to shift from a reliance on downstream income generated from third-party billing to identifying solutions that meet the needs and wants of today’s healthcare consumer. That begins with evaluating their primary care portfolio.

Highlights of the report:

• MDVIP uses proprietary tools to perform a comprehensive physician and capacity analysis that eliminates any upfront cost and risk for the system and gets them to market faster than if the system was to try to create a new offering on their own.
• Partnering with MDVIP to launch a successful membership-based practice model has worked for more than 1,100 practices for over 20 years.

Operating health systems and physician practices has always been hard, but COVID-19 has created extraordinary profitability challenges in 2020. Lower volumes, changing case and payer mixes and greater operating margin anxiety make revenue optimization more essential than ever.

We asked physician management and healthcare organization leaders to share their strategies for overcoming the considerable challenges of this altered landscape. They offer 10 strategies for using data and analytics to better manage capacity, coordinate care and optimize revenues, including:

• Tracking real-time practice COVID-19 volumes
• Managing productivity and modifying physician incentive compensation
• Capturing charges efficiently and accurately at the point of care
• Improving throughput across the continuum

The white paper features expert views from:

• Dennis Deruelle, MD – Executive Director of Hospital Medicine, American Physician Partners
• Andrea Funk, RN, MEd, CPHQ – Vice President of Integrated Acute Care Operations, US Acute Care Solutions
• Derick D. Perkins – Founder and Managing Partner, Metis Advisors LLC

COVID-19 has pushed healthcare delivery beyond its breaking point, heightening the urgent need for accelerated patient care, improved clinical efficiencies and secure clinical communication with real-time critical patient updates.

Before the arrival of COVID-19, specific environmental trends were challenging the healthcare industry, such as acquisitions of smaller health systems by larger health systems, clinician shortages and burnout. These trends had already created an urgent demand for clinical communication platforms (CCP) that would work securely across growing networks of diverse care provider organizations. The arrival of COVID-19 has applied untold new pressures to already strained systems.

In this white paper, you will learn about:

• The impact and cost of COVID-19 on healthcare
• How clinical collaboration platforms improved communication during COVID-19
• Where you will see cost savings from leveraging clinical collaboration platforms
• What to look for in a clinical collaboration platform in order to achieve savings
• How clinical collaboration platforms can help your organization increase efficiency and achieve return on investment

Today’s patients want to shop for medical services and compare quality of service. Federal and state governments are beginning to mandate price transparency. These forces present an opportunity for providers.

Learning Points:

• Sustain/grow market share through improved patient satisfaction, reviews, ratings, and reputation scores.
• Improve cashflow by offering pre-procedure pricing to help reduce post-procedure self-pay, which can help lower the risk of bad debt.
• Optimize revenue through improved acquisition/retention, e.g., scheduling, referrals, etc.
• Increase patient satisfaction by creating a retail-like shopping experience for tests and procedures.
  Comply with CMS price transparency rules

Subjectivity can be counterproductive in a crisis. This spring, health systems scrambled to set up COVID-19 command centers, expand hospital capacity and ensure they had enough medical equipment to care for an influx of patients. For many healthcare leaders, the experience underscored the need for more objective data on their medical device inventories to better understand equipment volume, location and utilization.

While pediatric providers have not faced the bulk of the clinical burden created by the COVID-19 pandemic like their adult counterparts, it has still brought challenges. Many pediatric well-care visits were delayed or skipped in the early months of the pandemic, stalling vaccine schedules and delaying potential diagnosis of serious health conditions.

As pediatric hospitals begin operations in 2021, it is essential that they implement technology that aligns with their mission and goals, allows them to reach more patients and frees up clinical staff’s time so they can spend more of it caring for patients.

In this whitepaper, you’ll learn how to:

• Resume regular care while supporting both your clinical mission and their bottom line
• Take advantage of CMS’ increased reimbursement rates by expanding telehealth offerings
• Implement technology that allows clinical staff to spend more time with patients

Hospitals and health systems are among the most capital-intensive organizations in the healthcare sector and as such, capital needs have traditionally been significantly greater than available capital funds.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn why traditional investment yardsticks, like net present value (NPV), have limited utility in today’s dynamic healthcare landscape
• Discover why organizations that view capital allocation and operational execution as an integrated process drive increased value
• Learn how to integrate the five phases of the Clinical Asset Value Chain into your capital investment planning

The care delivery pendulum was already swinging toward more home-based healthcare before 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has since pushed the entire industry to take a fresh look at the safest and most accessible way to deliver care.

Report highlights:

• 72 percent of consumers prefer to recover at home versus a medical facility following a major medical event.
• 69 percent of consumers interested in regular, at-home check-ins with physicians.
• 97 percent of payer respondents agree the trend toward moving healthcare to the home is in the best interest of insurers and members alike.

Hospitals are fighting an ongoing battle against unrecognized patient deterioration, alarm fatigue, opioid-induced respiratory depression, sepsis, unplanned extubation and other preventable conditions. In this whitepaper, we will review the scope of these patient safety matters, inadequacies of current practices, the emergence of clinical surveillance and a strategy to implement continuous clinical surveillance that helps enhance patient safety and outcomes.

Key points that readers will learn include:

• The clinical and financial impact of alarm fatigue and these adverse patient conditions
• How continuous clinical surveillance is different from patient monitoring and alarm management and focuses on mitigating non-clinically actionable alerts and notifications
• Published results that hospitals have achieved with continuous clinical surveillance

Technology continues to make it easier for dentists to engage digitally with their patients, and recent stressors are prompting practices to adopt this technology faster than ever.

Among the key takeaways:

• Digital tools are transforming patient interactions, such as scheduling appointments and notifying patients when to enter the office.
• Organizational culture plays a significant role in determining whether a dental practice is receptive to digital tools.
• Culture change starts with buy-in at the top.
• Despite widespread acceptance of digital tools, some practices resist adopting new technology.
• Organizations that have adopted the use of digital capabilities attest to the positive responses from their patients.

Today's most significant business operation problem in dental offices is repetitive, consistent, and boring manual processes and tasks. DentalRobot solves this problem with its proprietary automation platform specially designed for dental practices, and its unique approach of Pre-Built Robots and Automated Workflows.

Regardless of how you built the processes in your DSO, MSO, or Group, DentalRobot provides a custom-fit automation solution that matches your current context and vision for operations and growth. We understand each specialty and its journey. We impact your organization's outcomes by rapidly automating every process from insurance verification or EOB posting to Accelerated Patient Scheduling or Customized Treatment Plan Follow-Ups.