Why Would a Large Hospital Offer Telehealth Services for Its Employees
In a recent blog note, I discussed howTampa General Hospital was deploying advanced versions of telehealth kiosks in the hospital for its employees (see:Improvements in Telehealth Kiosks; Tampa General Deploys New Version for Employee Health). In response to the note,Dr. Brian Jackson, Medical Director, Business Development, IT, and Support Services atARUP submitted the following comment:This sounds like great technologies for locations where it wouldn't be cost-effective to put human providers.But this is in a hospital for heaven's sake! Why doesn't Tampa General just staff a walk-in clinic for employees? We d...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 26, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Diagnostics Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Innovations Hospital Executive Management Population Health Public Health Telemedicine Source Type: blogs
Improvements in Telehealth Kiosks; Tampa General Deploys New Version for Employee Health
in a recent note, I discussed the cost savings associated with telemedicine using data collected byAnthem (see:Anthem Citing the Cost Savings of Providing Telehealth Services for Members). I want to follow up on this with reference to a recent article about the increasing sophistication of the telehealth kiosks that are being deployed by Tampa General internally for use by employees (see:Tampa General, OnMed launch telehealth station that can diagnose patients). Below is an excerpt from it:Staff atTampa General Hospital (TGH) now have a new way to access instant healthcare services via a self-contained telemedicine station...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 24, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Testing Diagnostics Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Medical Consumerism Medical Research Point-of-Care Testing Quality of Care Telemedicine Test Kits and Home Testing Source Type: blogs
Health Systems Hiring Chief Digital Officers; How Does This Effect the Current C-Suites
During my career in healthcare IT dating back to the early 1980s, I have seen one major change in the executive leadership in hospital IT. This was the creation of thechief information officer (CIO). Prior to this time, the key IT position in hospitals was the HIS manager who reported to the CFO. This was logical because the major functions of the HIS (hospital information system) at that time were billing and tracking patient admissions and discharges (i.e., patient management systems). About ten years later, hospitals began to appoint chief information officers (CIOs). This c...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 23, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Source Type: blogs
Anthem Citing the Cost Savings of Providing Telehealth Services for Members
As the popularity of telehealth visits increases rapidly (see:Telehealth use surged in 2017), better data is being acquired about the advantages of this approach to healthcare, particularly the cost savings. A recent article addressed this issue with an excerpt below (see:Telehealth eliminates time and distance to save money):In the argument of whether telehealth increases or decreases utilization,Anthem is squarely on the side of the latter and has been ramping up its efforts to expand virtual services to members. Employers want it because it saves money and telehealth can keep employees on the job rather than leavi...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 21, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Cost of Healthcare Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Insurance Medical Research Public Health Telemedicine Source Type: blogs
Amazon Pays Costs for Its Employees to Seek Specialized, Early Cancer Care
Employers are becoming increasingly active in providing special health services to their employees. Such an employee/employer cohort is being called a aSmart Health Community, the activities of which are beneficial to both parties (see:Smart health communities and the future of health). Now comes news that Amazon is assisting its employees in getting high quality cancer care from a specified cancer hospital (see:Amazon Joins Trend of Sending Workers Away for Health Care). Below is an excerpt from the article:Employers are increasingly going the distance to control health spending, paying to send workers across the co...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 17, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Cost of Healthcare Diagnostics Healthcare Innovations Medical Consumerism Public Health Radiology Source Type: blogs
Using Analytics at Johns Hopkins to Prevent Patient Flow Bottlenecks
An interesting question, given all of the current hype about analytics, is where and how algorithms can be deployed to improve healthcare and the patient experience. For my money, one answer to this question was presented in a recent article inFortune about the digital health revolution (see:Prepare for the Digital Health Revolution). Below is an excerpt from it:GE Healthcare and the Johns Hopkins Hospital [have] launched a fully digital hub to better manage everyday operations.The Judy Reitz Capacity Command Center gets a constant influx of data about important events at the hospital; it receives about 500 messages ...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 16, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Cost of Healthcare Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Hospital Executive Management Medical Research Predictive Analytics Quality of Care Source Type: blogs
Ranks of NPs and PAs Expanding; Will Increasingly Dominate Primary Care
I have blogged extensively lately about the future of primary care, suggesting that NPs and PAs will dominate the professional ranks of this first tier of healthcare. NPs in particular are at the core of the staffing for the CVS and Walmart walk-in clinic facilities (see:Retail Drug Stores Emerging as Healthcare Hubs for First-Tier Primary Care;Walmart Shapes Its Own Primary Care, Unbundling Strategy;Defining and Delineating the Changing First Tier of Healthcare). Physicians, of course, will still play a critical role in primary care, consulting for the more complex cases and assisting in the referral of patients to ...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 14, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Innovations Medical Consumerism Population Health Public Health Source Type: blogs
Cerner Leveraging Amazon's Cloud Storage and AI for Increased EHR Functionality
In two recent notes, I opined that two major EHR vendors, Epic and Cerner, could not successfully graft large-scale analytics capabilities onto their current, installed EHR platforms (see:What Is Digital Health and How Does a Health System Get There?; Consideration of the Organizational and Personal Digital Health Managers of the Future). Relevant to this discussion is a recent article that quoted Cerner's CEO Brent Shafer about how the company intended to leverage Amazon's cloud storage fromAmazon Web Services (AWS) and offer"intelligent predictive insights" to its EHR customers (see:Shafer: Amazon...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 10, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Diagnostics Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Hospital Executive Management Medical Research Population Health Predictive Analytics Preventive Medicine Quality of Care Source Type: blogs
Consideration of the Organizational and Personal Digital Health Managers of the Future
In a recent note (see:What Is Digital Health and How Does a Health System Get There?), I began a discussion about the medical information systems of the future which I am callingdigital health managers. This note was grounded in the"what" question of digital health. In today's note, I want to explore the"how" question. In my opinion, there will be two separate but interconnected digital health platforms:the personal health manager(PHM) and theorganizational health manager(OHM).PHMs will resemble the current Apple health ecosystem (see:Using the Apple Ecosystem to Support Health Research ...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 7, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Diagnostics Electronic Health Record (EHR) Health Wearable Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends Medical Consumerism Medical Research Point-of-Care Testing Predictive Analytics Public Health Qua Source Type: blogs
What Is Digital Health and How Does a Health System Get There?
Digital health is a term being bandied about currently so I thought it would be a good start for this note to define it. Below is a paragraph that, while very broad, conveys the complexity of the pursuit of digital health (see:Digital Medicine: A Primer on Measurement):Digital medicine describes a field, concerned with the use of technologies as tools for measurement, and intervention in the service of human health.Digital medicine products are driven by high-quality hardware and software products that support health research and the practice of medicine broadly, including treatment, recovery, disease prevention, and healt...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 5, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Digital Imaging in Pathology Electronic Health Record (EHR) Health Wearable Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Medical Research Predictive Analytics Telemedicine Test Kits and Home Testing Source Type: blogs
Using the Apple Ecosystem to Support Health Research and Clinical Trials
In a recent note, I discussed how23andMe was beginning to recruit clinical trial subjects as a new business opportunity (see:23andMe Moving into Clinical Trial Recruitment, a Potential Source of New Income). I emphasized in the note that this was a lucrative new enterprise because drug companies offer high reimbursement for recruiting research subjects. Subsequent to posting this note, I came across another article that speculates that Apple has been eyeing the medical research market with the potential to radically change some aspects of it (see:Apple Is Going After The Healthcare Industry, Starting With Personal Health D...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 4, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Electronic Health Record (EHR) Genomic Testing Health Wearable Healthcare Information Technology Lab Industry Trends Medical Research Point-of-Care Testing Test Kits and Home Testing Source Type: blogs
Walmart Expands the Range of Services of Walmart Health
I have posted a number of recent notes about CVS' initiatives in primary care (see, for example:Push-Pull at Work in the Expansion of CVS Health into Primary Healthcare). Its major competitor in this space (i.e., healthcare offered in big-box and retail drug stores) is Walmart and a recent article discussed how the company is greatly expanding its range of services (see:Walmart tests dentistry and mental care as it moves deeper into primary health), Below is an excerpt from it:Walmart is opening up a new health clinic, calledWalmart Health, in Georgia....At the new clinic, the company will offer hearing tests, 60-minut...
Source: Lab Soft News - October 3, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Testing Cost of Healthcare Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Innovations Hospital Financial Medical Consumerism Public Health Telemedicine Source Type: blogs
23andMe Moving into Clinical Trial Recruitment, a Potential Source of New Income
I have been blogging about23andMe for about six years (see:Update on 23andMe; Time for a Review of FDA Definition of Medical Devices). During that time, I have seen the company evolve from the first major consumer genomics enterprise to a clinical laboratory authorized by the FDA to perform testing for ten diseases or conditions. These are the first direct-to-consumer (DTC) tests authorized by the FDA that provide information about an individual ’s genetic predisposition to certain medical diseases or conditions (see:FDA allows marketing of first direct-to-consumer tests that provide genetic risk information for ce...
Source: Lab Soft News - September 27, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Food and Drug Administration Genomic Testing Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends Lab Regulation Lab Standards Medical Consumerism Medical Research Pharmaceutical Industry Source Type: blogs
Amazon Launches Amazon Care, Providing Virtual Visits for Its Seattle Employees
Amazon is launching a virtual care (i.e., telemedicine) choice for its Seattle employees in collaboration withOasis Medical Group, a family medicine clinic in Seattle (see:Amazon launches Amazon Care, a telemedicine-driven care offering for Seattle employees). Here is an excerpt from the article:Amazon is launching Amazon Care, a virtual primary care offering for its Seattle-based employees....Amazon Care will include telemedicine, online chat with a nurse, medication delivery, and app-enabled house calls to the employee's office or home.Amazon is not employing any doctors; instead the company is contracting with...
Source: Lab Soft News - September 26, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Medical Consumerism Public Health Telemedicine Source Type: blogs
Resistance to PillPack's Requests for Prescription Transfers from Retail Drug Stores
In the earlier stages of the development of the web as a vehicle for transacting business, the termdisintermediation was often referred to. It's the process whereby the web provides a consumer direct access to a product, service, or information that would otherwise require a mediator. The classic example was the disintermediation of travel agents because consumers could book their own airplane reservations on the web. Amazon'sPillPack is trying to end run the major retail drug store companies like CVS and Walgreens but the company is experiencing some pushback. All of this was discussed in a recent article�...
Source: Lab Soft News - September 24, 2019 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Innovations Medical Consumerism Medical Ethics Quality of Care Source Type: blogs
