Whitepapers - Now Available for Download

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.

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 whitepaper 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 encourage prompt patient payments

Significant gaps in expected revenue are the ultimate “pain point” for hospital and health system executives, and revenue cycle leaders are no exception. Understandably, their focus is naturally drawn to immediate, bread-and-butter solutions like reducing avoidable write-offs and bad debt, and improving timely billing and follow-up.

A recent survey of revenue cycle leaders demonstrates growing attention to longer-term transformation beyond these basic metrics. As providers are coming to realize, they need to deal with immediate shortfalls in a way that also establishes the infrastructure — organizational as well as technological — for deep, strategic, sustainable change.

Key learning points:

• The top five pain points for revenue cycle executives — the electronic health record (EHR), patient engagement, clinical integration, managing cost and scale, and revenue rebalancing — are also opportunities for higher-level strategic change.
• The revenue cycle is in a unique position to contextualize and drive that change.
• Revenue-cycle-driven exercises like revenue rebalancing require a holistic understanding of the health system’s strengths and weaknesses and an awareness of the disparate processes that impact those areas. Better coordination of those processes translates into a smoother, more seamless patient experience, as well as improved performance.

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.

As cyberthreats grow, patient data requires more than a single layer of password protection. Yet adding more log-in points will only add to administrative burden — Physicians already log in and out of networks and applications up to 70 times per shift. Today, hospital CIOs and CISOs need a detailed and sophisticated identity and access management strategy. This means knowing who accessed protected health information and whether they had the proper permissions. It means managing those provisions across thousands of employees with different levels of access. It also means adding security without hindering people who need access to hospital networks to do their jobs. It's time to make your identity and access management strategy secure and seamless.

Fill out the form to download a report on how to:

• Manage staff access rights to networks and applications
• Improve security without adding more passwords
• Simplify the authentication process for clinicians

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.

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.

Ineffective workforce management policies can reduce employee engagement and increase turnover. A survey of 76 healthcare nursing and human resources leaders found that the biggest dissatisfiers for staff were unsustainable and/or unbalanced workloads and work/life balance.

This whitepaper examines five workforce management strategies that can boost staff engagement and have a positive impact on cost and quality metrics.

For hospitals and health systems, healing is the mission and patient safety is priority No.1

Some significant challenges to patient safety and optimal outcomes include infections, patient falls, distracted providers and expedited stroke care. Mortality from sepsis increases 8 percent every hour treatment is delayed. Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. fall in the hospital each year, and a third to a half of those falls result in injury. Distraction has been shown to play a role in nearly 75 percent of medical errors. About 700,000 people in the U.S. have a stroke each year, and 24 percent of them die.

Read our eGuide to find out how mobile care teams can strengthen patient safety.

You'll learn how to:

• Keep sepsis alerts from dead-ending in the EMR
• Make bed exit alarms a more effective tool for fall intervention
• Help clinicians stay focused during critical patient care activities
• Allow a stroke team to be ready with the right intervention before the ambulance arrives

Annual emergency department visits in the U.S. reached 145.6 million in 2016, a 20 percent increase in just ten years. By addressing utilization rates and optimizing workflows, emergency departments can increase throughput, improve efficiency, and avoid preventable visits and admissions — ultimately saving on care costs and increasing revenue while providing better quality care.

Providers across the country are reducing ED utilization up to 81 percent by coordinating with behavioral health programs, redirecting low-acuity 911 calls to more appropriate providers, and tracking opioid misuse—among other tactics.

This whitepaper contains success from several provider organizations, including:

• Torrance Memorial Medical Center (Calif.)
• Mount Vista, Wash.-based Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center
• The Portland Clinic (Ore.)

Almost 7 million people in America are living with a nonhealing wound right now. The same population is dealing with three to four additional chronic conditions on average, complicating their care. As hospitals and health systems work to improve the health of patient populations and ease the burden of chronic illness in their communities, leaders should consider partnering with a wound care team to help identify and deliver additional medical services to patients in need.

Read the study to learn how outpatient wound care centers are helping providers create healthier communities and reduce amputations by identifying and engaging patients in need of advanced treatment.

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.