Whitepapers - Now Available for Download

The landscape of healthcare revenue appears bleak: costs and expenses are rising, while reimbursements decline. Traditionally, solutions focus on preventative measures, yet costly write-offs remain ever-present. This is especially true with respect to commercial claims, where denials are plentiful and appeals complicated and labor intensive.

How, then, can you mitigate loss without straining your resources? One answer is claims appeals through the Federal ERISA process. Through specialization in Federal ERISA Law, the experienced staff of ERISA Recovery can collect on aged claims without undue burden on your systems.

This whitepaper gives an overview of the benefits provided by ERISA Recovery, including:

• How focusing on denied, aged commercial claims can impact revenue
• Why Federal ERISA appeals are the ideal solution for such claims
• How ERISA Recovery can work without affecting your existing processes

Gone are the days when patient billing was primarily a back office process between healthcare providers and payers. With patients now shouldering more of the cost of their care, providers' financial health is more closely tied to patient out-of-pocket payments. Given the shifting financial realities of revenue cycle, innovative providers are adopting new consumer-centric strategies to optimize their collection rate and lower costs. By offering modern, easy-to-use tools to engage directly with patients on administration, billing and payment, these providers are simultaneously enhancing the patient experience and improving key financial results.

Download this whitepaper to:

• Understand the four major barriers to a better patient financial experience
• Learn how leading providers are leveraging technology to enhance and personalize the patient financial experience
• Uncover the best ways to get started with adopting a patient-centric financial engagement process

Health leaders must understand the benefits of their investments in performance improvement projects and the impact on the organization. The traditional approach is most often to measure ROI (return on investment) and, while clearly measurable, is most often related to cost savings or increased revenue and can leave you with an incomplete story. Incorporating VOI (value on investment) enables you to quantify the intangible benefits of your projects and activities making the combination of the two a more robust indicator of project success.

Healthcare data can be ten times more valuable than credit data on the black market. This makes hospitals and health systems prime targets for cyberattacks. According to HHS, there were 477 healthcare data breaches reported in 2017 — more than one per day — impacting 5.579 million patient records. The problem has only intensified. In the first half of 2019 alone, cybercriminals breached 32 million patient records.

This whitepaper explores the greatest threats to healthcare data security, evaluates the pros and cons of the top compliance technology, and what details steps your hospital can take to reduce exposure.

Key learning points include:

• Tips for identifying data vulnerabilities in technology, processes and staff training
• The four primary options to protect credit card data

When surgical care is delivered in the ASC, both payers and patients win. Surgery patients tend to have better experiences when treated in an ASC, and the price tag on these procedures is generally lower than it would be if performed in a hospital. The bottom line: payers reimburse less for procedures in the ASC, and patients have higher satisfaction with the care experience.

However, as ASCs deliver care at a lower cost, it's important for these organizations to ensure bills are accurate and that claims go out clean and garner fair, timely reimbursement. Payer reimbursement for medical procedures is highly dependent on detailed clinical documentation. The list of possible Current Procedural Technology (CPT) variations can appear endless, even for a single type of operation.

During an executive roundtable at Becker's ASC Review 26th Annual Meeting: The Business and Operations of ASCs in Chicago in October, two Nuance CMIOs and the CEO of Greensboro (N.C.) Specialty Surgical Center, discussed how ASCs can enhance documentation workflow, increase the specificity of clinical documentation and optimize the billing cycle. This whitepaper is based on that conversation.

Clinicians shouldn’t have to adapt to their digital tools. When digital tools are created through a proven user-centered design program, the result is a product that meets user needs and achieves their goals. Allscripts developers follow a rigorous user-centered design process, which enables them to understand clinicians' key concerns, create innovative solutions and measure the results.

A rigorous user-centered process asks, “What would make this the most helpful for the user?” The answer fuels innovation and goes beyond delivering merely a usable solution, but one that actively helps the user.

A human-factors approach considers how humans interact with technology and seeks to improve HIT usability. Clinicians and human-factors scientists alike recognize how taking this approach to software development can improve patient care.

In this issue of Next Now, Allscripts explores the latest thinking in HIT software usability, takes a look at what experts in the field have to say about the impact of human factors, and outlines how Allscripts is examining its approach to usability.

The digital transformation is great, but is it working for healthcare? Decades into the digital age, healthcare data still isn't living up to its promise. But it could.

In this e-book, we’ll show you how Health Catalyst has developed a new model for its Data Operating System (DOS™) to bring healthcare organizations the benefits of a more flexible computing infrastructure in the Microsoft Azure cloud.

• This e-book outlines next-generation best practices:
• Identify the levers for improved healthcare data analytics
• Learn seven key capabilities to maximize your analytics investment
• Understand the questions you need to ask to assess your current data analytics capabilities and determine the best next steps

Also, see how Queen’s Health Systems used data analytics to better identify at-risk patients.

Netsmart, one of the longest-standing healthcare IT companies in the country, designed an electronic health record (EHR) to address substance use disorders, specifically opioid addiction. Netsmart partnered with American Well to integrate telehealth into this substance use-specific EHR. Through this integration, providers can initiate virtual visits within the EHR via on-demand or scheduled visits.

Read this case study to learn how this integration:

• Provides health systems with better access to psychiatrists and addiction specialists
• Allows ED physicians to make better decisions regarding substance use and behavioral health
• Helped a health system reduce ED wait times, achieving a 33% reduction in costs for consumers
• Combines telehealth, opioid registries, and quality indicators to meet the payment of value-based care for opioid addiction

A study conducted at a Texas hospital showed how EHR-integrated digital whiteboards in patient rooms outperform traditional marker boards in effectiveness, efficiency and experience.

This whitepaper gives an overview of the intended uses and perceived challenges of in-room patient whiteboards, as well as:

• How whiteboards with integrated technology provides advantages in accuracy, time savings, satisfaction, education outcomes and value
• Why handwritten marker boards can negatively affect quantifiable outcomes and qualitative patient and staff feedback
• What should be considered for a successful deployment of a digital whiteboard solution

Taking notice of the high costs related to their informed consent process, Springfield Medical Center (pseudonym) – a large health system located in the South – decided to split with the status quo.

Building off their past success with their electronic signature technology partner, the health system turned to a mobile electronic consent solution to create a more streamlined, reliable, and consistent informed consent process to enhance their EHR.

You’ll Learn:

• How a paper-based informed consent process can negatively affect patients and staff, and put your system at legal and financial risk
• The benefits of a mobile informed consent process and the ability to address issues mentioned above
• The ways in which a mobile informed consent solution can enhance interoperability and streamline clinician workflows
• How Springfield 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 drive towards greater penetration of machine learning in healthcare is being accompanied by increased calls for machine learning and AI based systems to be regulated and held accountable in healthcare. Explainable machine learning models can be instrumental in holding machine learning systems accountable. Healthcare offers unique challenges for machine learning (ML) where the demands for explainability, model fidelity and performance in general are much higher as compared to most other domains.

While healthcare ML has demonstrated significant value, one pivotal impediment relates to the black box nature, or opacity, of many machine learning algorithms. Explainable models help move away from the black box nature.

In this research paper, KenSci:

• Explores the impact of Explainable or Interpretable Machine Learning Models in Healthcare
• Review the notion of interpretability within the context of healthcare, the various nuances associated with it, challenges related to interpretability which are unique to healthcare and the future of interpretability in healthcare.
• Demonstrates how the user can understand the arrival of predictions by the ML models

Nitin Patel, MD, chief digital officer of Prisma Health, a nonprofit health system based in Columbia, S.C., believes print can play an active and critical role in workflow, patient care, outcomes and healthcare costs. In this whitepaper, Dr. Patel discusses three ways advanced printing technology can support clinical goals in a value-based care environment.

The American healthcare system is at an inflection point. Care costs and patients' out-of-pocket expenses are rising, reimbursements are declining, and a presidential election is on the horizon. What the future of healthcare will look like, from a regulatory standpoint, is deeply uncertain.

While healthcare leaders may have substantive disagreements about the best ways to meet these challenges, few, if any, would advocate for the status quo. Big change is coming to healthcare — that much is certain. The question is which stakeholders are going to be the primary drivers of that change: providers, disrupters, regulators, or some amalgamation of these entities?

During a Becker's advisory call in October, several healthcare executives discussed the need for price transparency in healthcare, the lessons traditional provider organizations can learn from retail healthcare and what the future of healthcare delivery could look like.

This ebook is based on insights and ideas shared during the discussion.

While transactional businesses like retail focus on winning a single sale with a customer, healthcare is a "relational" industry where long-term relationships with customers are essential. And, in today's device-driven world, health systems need a comprehensive digital strategy to establish relationships with patients that extend beyond the four walls of a hospital.

At Becker's 5th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference in Chicago in October, leaders from Navigant, a Guidehouse company, led healthcare executives in a roundtable discussion on how hospitals can enhance their digital presence to improve revenue cycle management and consumer engagement.

Key learnings include:

• The benefits of robotic process automation
• The growth of consumerism and the importance of consumer contact centers
• Using technology to address challenges beyond the revenue cycle

Pediatric Associates, the largest privately-owned primary care pediatric practice in the country, cares for more than 500,000 patients—55% of whom are in risk-based contracts under Managed Medicaid. The organization found that many of its patients were utilizing the emergency department for low-acuity conditions that could be better treated either in a primary care office or through telehealth.

In this case study, Pediatric Associates discusses how it integrated telehealth into its triage line to divert unnecessary care from the ED and improve access.

Read the case study to learn how Pediatric Associates:

• Conducts more than 3000 telehealth visits per month with existing patients
• Uses telehealth to decrease patient wait times by 75%
• Reduced ER use by 60% among high ER utilizers for low-acuity conditions
• Expanded beyond its triage line to care for pediatric patients across Florida

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts launched its telehealth program, Well Connection, in 2016 by offerings its members access to both medical and behavioral health services. The health plan quickly found that Well Connection was being underutilized by its network of behavioral health providers.

In this case study, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts reveals its strategy for engaging its network of behavioral health providers in telehealth to address member access issues and increasing demand for mental health services.

When examining innovation in healthcare delivery, the perspective of community hospitals can be overlooked. While they may not have the largest footprint, small to midsized community and critical access hospitals are essential to in the U.S. healthcare system. Fourteen percent of Americans, or approximately 46 million people, live in rural counties, according to the Pew Research Center.

In October 2019, Allscripts hosted a private summit in Chicago at the Becker's Hospital Review 5th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference for leaders from hospitals with 100 or fewer beds to discuss opportunities and challenges in the rural healthcare landscape, including innovation, clinician burden, population health and variation in clinical care and practice.

This whitepaper revisits the event and details actionable insights to help hospital leaders support the clinical care patients deserve and generate the ROI their organizations need.

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.

It’s unfortunate but true that today’s surgeons are more prone to burnout and its effects than other physicians. It takes its toll on surgeons both at home and work, and many healthcare organizations have made it a priority to alleviate the administrative burdens that contribute to burnout. Although there are many approaches based on each organization and each surgeon, computer-assisted physician documentation (CAPD) solutions purposefully designed and built for the ways surgeons work is one such way.

Download the whitepaper to discover:

• 10 ways CAPD technologies drive surgeon satisfaction
• How to bring order to a disorderly surgical documentation process
• How artificial intelligence applied to surgical documentation workflow allows surgeons to better reflect the delivery of patient care

Every day patients are becoming more engaged in making healthcare decisions and managing the costs of their care. Core to this responsibility is understanding what they owe for services, and why, which can be difficult if they’re receiving numerous bills from multiple providers for a single care event.

Consumers may be driving the need for consolidated statements, but the end result also benefits providers by helping to drive patient satisfaction, collections, and cost savings via less paper, printing, and postage.

Download the whitepaper co-authored by Ernst & Young LLP, to learn:

• A 4-step readiness plan to help you prepare
• Keys to success
• Selecting the right collaborator(s)

Consumer demands for a more connected experience are turning traditional care models upside down at a time when growth and margin compression are exacerbated by persistent reimbursement changes. Health system executives from across the country convened in Chicago in late 2019 to discuss these issues and suggested solutions at the third annual Guidehouse (formerly Navigant) CEO Forum.

Download the white paper to learn about the collective insights, lessons learned, and best practices from CEO Forum executives and experts on overcoming current and future healthcare pressures.

Key topics include how to:

• Translate consumer engagement strategies from other industries to healthcare
• Gain a competitive advantage with digital health strategies
• Overcome healthcare pain points, such as margin preservation and reimbursement obstacles
• Drive more value from EHRs and other advanced digital investments

Most health systems own more clinical assets than needed to meet patient demand. Several factors contribute to inflated clinical asset inventories, including equipment replacement prior to the end of its true useful life. In some cases, more replacement equipment is purchased than is needed because the capital planning process isn't based on an objective, data-driven evaluation of clinical assets.

In November 2019, at Becker's 8th Annual CEO & CFO Roundtable in Chicago, the clinical asset management provider TRIMEDX hosted an executive roundtable to explore how clinical asset management can reduce inflated equipment inventories and help boost a health system's bottom line. Attendee participants included hospital CEOs, chief revenue cycle officers and COOs, among other leadership roles. This whitepaper is based on their discussion.

Key learning points include:

• How to create better informed equipment replacement strategies with data.
• How to extend the useful life of medical equipment.
• How to improve patient safety, clinician satisfaction and equipment utilization through optimized clinical asset management.

The latest analysis by Premier Inc. on maternal healthcare highlights that excess hospital costs in labor and delivery are in part due to potentially preventable complications and pre-existing chronic conditions.

Key findings of this whitepaper include:

• Complications, including severe maternal morbidity (SMM) factors and chronic conditions, add on average 20 percent to the cost to hospitals to perform a vaginal delivery and 25 percent to the cost to perform a cesarean delivery.
• Women with SMM stay in the hospital 70 percent to 75 percent longer, on average, and their care averages 88 percent to 111 percent more in hospitals’ cost compared to uncomplicated deliveries.
• Behavioral health disorders that complicate childbirth add 27 percent and nearly 36 percent to the cost of uncomplicated vaginal and cesarean deliveries, respectively.

This whitepaper explores the opportunity to improve outcomes and avoid excess costs and longer lengths of stay by working across provider networks to ensure appropriate care prior to childbirth, and standardizing processes to identify and prevent labor and delivery complications.

Hospitals need disruptive thinking to survive. Operational spend is on the rise, reimbursements are declining and margins have never been tighter. Forward-thinking leaders know organizations must innovate to reduce costs while improving outcomes.

This guide includes three case studies that showcase cost-effective care models designed to transform hospitals.

• Rapid Medical Evaluation (RME)® prompted a 28-minute reduction in door-to-provider time.
• One ED Revisit Reduction Program saved a hospital more than $500,000 in unfunded ED and observation care.
• A Hospital Care Navigation Program lowered readmissions by 33% and reduced discharges to SNFs by 67%.

The primary care system is collapsing. There’s no influx of new primary care physicians preparing to enter practice and the gap between supply and demand is already at a breaking point. Health system leaders must find ways to employ technology that increases the ability to quickly deliver high-quality care to meet the growing needs of our patients.

Fill out the form to receive a report on:

• What’s driving the collapse of one of the most important segments of the healthcare industry
• The tools and technology that will propel primary care into the 21st century
• Actionable steps your healthcare system can use to meet the primary care needs of your current patients while attracting new ones

With no-show rates ranging from 10 to 30 percent in most specialties, getting patients to show up for scheduled appointments might be the single most important thing you can do to improve your bottom line. But there is a science to the success of reminders. Don't be fooled by others who say they have the answer. We analyzed 20 million reminders to learn the exact formula to get the most confirmations and the fewest no-shows.

Whether it's an unforeseen drug interaction, side effect or off-label indication, care teams need clinical information on drugs at their fingertips. The lack of a single, clear and evidence-based point of reference can create unwarranted care variation, costly disconnects between team members and even dissatisfied patients. To learn more about how to provide a concise, streamlined resource at the bedside, download the whitepaper.

Please fill out the form to download the whitepaper. 

When it comes to medical care, children are not just "little adults." The field of Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM) requires specialized knowledge, training and experience to effectively care for infants, children and adolescents.

In a study published from the US News & World Report in August 2019, researchers found critically ill children to be more than three times as likely to die if they are taken to a hospital poorly equipped to provide emergency pediatric care than if they visit an emergency department well-prepared for resuscitation of pediatric patients.

This whitepaper explores how PEM differs from adult emergency medicine and offers tips for hospital leaders to build, grow or strengthen their PEM service.

Patient falls that result in injury increase care costs by $13,806 per case and increase patient length of stay by 6.9 days, according to The Joint Commission. With 1 million patient falls occurring per year — 26 percent of which result in some form of injury — falls represent a significant challenge for health systems.

To address this issue, most hospitals assign staff to sit in high fall risk patients' rooms. Sitters have never been proven effective and no matter how plentiful the staffing budget, no hospital can afford one-to-one staffing for every high fall risk patient. Leaders at Norfolk, Va.-based Sentara Healthcare decided to deploy technology to address the issue. And it worked. Since using technology to monitor patients at high-risk of experiencing a fall, fall rates have declined by as high as 80 percent in some units, generating significant cost savings.

More than 1.7 million adults in America develop sepsis each year. Sepsis is the top cause of hospital deaths and is the most expensive hospital-associated condition. As the healthcare industry transitions to value-based care delivery and payment, health systems are seeking additional opportunities to optimize care, reduce costs and keep patients safe. Sepsis is a prime target for these efforts.

Premier analyzed data from 870 healthcare facilities compiled a three-year period and found that providers are making noteworthy strides with sepsis care, as the overall mortality, readmissions and incidence of hospital-associated sepsis have declined; still, patients who develop sepsis in the hospital are more likely to suffer from septic shock, leading to more than $1.5 billion in added costs.

The healthcare industry's transition to value-based care models makes it more important than ever for hospitals to work closely with post-acute care providers to improve patient outcomes and reduce readmissions. Many hospitals struggle to reduce readmissions due to a lack of real-time, actionable data from skilled-nursing facilities.

To gain access to the same data SNFs have in real time, many hospitals are turning to Real Time Medical System's platform and improving their clinical and financial performance as a result.

Download this whitepaper to learn more about:

• Common challenges hospitals face in managing a post-acute SNF network
• How hospitals are using real-time SNF data to reduce readmissions by 50 percent or more
• How a Pennsylvania health system achieved savings and reduced readmissions by building a program around real-time SNF data

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

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.

With more wireless devices being used in healthcare facilities and the proximity in which these devices are operating near medical equipment, it's imperative to consider how to best protect your patients from electromagnetic radiation. Additionally, U.S. smartphone penetration has hit 77 percent, meaning patients and their families are entering facilities with devices that contribute to the saturation of electromagnetic radiation. This proliferation of wireless technology increases the likelihood of a crucial medical device being exposed to electromagnetic interference.

Every year the FDA receives hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of reports of malfunctioning medical devices involving electromagnetic radiation. The majority of these involve active implanted devices such as defibrillators, pacemakers, neurostimulators and infusion pumps, which can cause irreparable damage to patients' health.

Read this whitepaper to learn how you can build a better defense and put the right solutions in place to protect your healthcare organization against EMI and electromagnetic radiation.

According to the CDC, there are nearly 700,000 hospital-acquired infections every year in the U.S. In 2016, Clearwater, Fla.-based BayCare Health System began trialing UVC disinfection technology at its community hospitals. The trial was a success.

In 2017, BayCare, which comprise more than 28,000 individual providers across the Tampa Bay area, implemented UVC disinfection technology systemwide. This case study details the BayCare infection control journey and features Suzanne Chandler, RN-BC, MSN, CIC, Director-Infection Prevention & Control for BayCare Health System. Read the case study to discover how the health system successfully rolled out its UVC program.