Know Your Data and How You ’ ll Use It
Many healthcare organizations are taking a fresh look at their data, hoping to exploit it better for both clinical outcomes and operations. To the experts at Clearsense, the problems are not so much the shortage of data experts or lack of motivation, but rushing to use data without preparing it adequately or knowing what your business needs are. Charles Boicey, Chief Innovation Officer at Clearsense, calls on organizations to base decisions not just on traditional clinical data, but “everything that puts out a signal within the health care organization,” including devices, information from the home, and even so...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - March 8, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: John Lynn Tags: Analytics/Big Data C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Charles Boicey Clearsense Health Data Analytics Health Data Cleaning Health Data Quality Healthcare Analytics Healthcare IT Video Intervie Source Type: blogs

Myocarditis update from Sweden
BY ANISH KOKA The COVID19/vaccine myocarditis debate continues in large part because our public health institutions are grossly mischaracterizing the risks and benefits of vaccines to young people. A snapshot of what the establishment says as it relates to the particular area of concern: college vaccine mandates: Dr. Arthur Reingold, an epidemiology professor at UC-Berkeley, notes that UC also requires immunizations for measles and chickenpox, and people still are dying from COVID at rates that exceed those for influenza. As of Feb. 1, there were more than 400 COVID deaths a day across the U.S. “The arg...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 27, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Medical Practice Anish Koka covid19 myocarditis Sweden Source Type: blogs

Retrieving Billions in Overpayments by CMS
This article focuses on the relatively young technologies that enable CMS to uncover overbillings, whether they be errors or fraud. The article is based on an interview with Kel Pults, chief clinical officer and vice president of MediQuant. A future article will explain how Medicare Advantage plans are trying to improving data collection and reporting, and how AI helps. Challenges of Investigating Overpayments Undeserved payments are needles lurking in the haystack of 135 million Americans enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). But the needles pile up fast. Improper payments f...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 17, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: AI/Machine Learning Analytics/Big Data Health IT Company Healthcare IT Regulations Revenue Cycle Management #COVID19 CMS COVID Reimbursement Healthcare AI Healthcare Analytics Kel Pults MAOs Medicare Advantage MediQuant Overp Source Type: blogs

All Three Legs of the Obamacare Stool Are Working Well – Part 2
BY GEORGE HALVORSON 2022 Medicare Advantage data gathering process change made last year just made upcoding for plans irrelevant and impossible, but the critics do not accept that it happened.  CMS just ended that upcoding debate for 2022 by completely killing the coding system for the plans, effective immediately. The plans can’t code risk levels up because the coding system was eliminated entirely for 2022. RAPS is dead. The payment approach for Medicare Advantage now has no upcoding components and the government just used their new and more accurate numbers to create the 2023 payment level for the pla...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 17, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Affordable Care Act Medicaid Medicare Medicare Advantage Obamacare Source Type: blogs

Case of the Week 710
 This post is in recognition of Valentine ' s day while also keeping in our theme of parasites in muscle. The organ of interest this week is the heart of course! The following objects were seen in a endomyocardial biopsy from a patient with unexplained heart failure. What is your diagnosis?    (Source: Creepy Dreadful Wonderful Parasites)
Source: Creepy Dreadful Wonderful Parasites - February 14, 2023 Category: Parasitology Source Type: blogs

Bonus Features – February 12, 2023 – Epic tops Best in KLAS for 13th straight year, 89% of healthcare finance leaders remain confident in 2023, and more
This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job. News The Biden Administration announced the latest initiatives in the reignited Cancer Moonshot program. One initiative of interest to the healthcare IT community is CancerX, a public-private innovation partnership to develop to...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 12, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: Healthcare IT AdvancedMD Alloantibody Exchange Beacon Health System Best in KLAS Biden Biofourmis Brooke Bowers Cancer Moonshot CareCloud CHG Healthcare CIvitas Clean Air CMS Complete Care David Feinberg DexCare DrFirst Source Type: blogs

COVID-19 myocarditis illusions: A new cardiac MRI study raises questions about the diagnosis
BY ANISH KOKA One of the hallmarks of the last two years has been the distance that frequently exists between published research and reality. I’m a cardiologist, and the first disconnect that became glaringly obvious very quickly was the impact COVID was having on the heart. As I walked through COVID rooms in the Spring of 2020 trying to hold my breath, I waited for a COVID cardiac tsunami. After all social media had been full of videos from Wuhan and Iran of people suddenly dropping in the streets. My hyperventilating colleagues made me hyperventilate. Could it be that Sars-COV2 had some predilection for heart...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 7, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Medical Practice Anish Koka COVID-19 Misinformation myocarditis Vaccine Source Type: blogs

Can Behavioral Health Be Objective and Data-Driven?
Before microscopes, doctors diagnosed as best they could using external symptoms. Now we test for the presence of specific bacteria, viruses, or lesions. Dr. Thomas Young, chief medical officer and founder of Proem Behavioral Health, is convinced that psychiatry and behavioral health are also entering an age where objective data collected from the body will drive diagnoses and treatment. Figure 1 shows some statistics about disorders tracked by Proem. Figure 1: Measures used by Proem Behavioral Health and their uses Two advances have come together over the past few years to enable better diagnoses and treatments: one in da...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 6, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: AI/Machine Learning Analytics/Big Data Clinical Health IT Company Healthcare IT Behavior Health Behavioral Health Research Dr. Thomas Young Healthcare AI mental health Mental Health AI Proem Behavioral Health Source Type: blogs

Bonus Features – January 29, 2023 – ONC says more than 70% of hospitals can use external data at the point of care, the 3 largest health info networks have indexed 90% of patients, and more
This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job. News and Studies HLTH Foundation formed the Techquity for Health Coalition, with a mission to help organizations consider health equity in health technology innovation and data practices. The group also launched a health equity ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 29, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: Analytics/Big Data C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System Interoperability AI Nexus Healthcare AiMed AvaSure BioDigital Biofourmis Brightside Health Brookhaven Heart CHIME Christine Buck C Source Type: blogs

Medicare Advantage UpCoding Has Been Eliminated by CMS Effective 2022
By GEORGE HALVORSON Medicare Advantage now enrolls almost exactly half the people enrolled in Medicare — and has both significant fans and hardline opponents in the health care policy circles who disagree about its performance. The biggest attack point that comes from the critics deals with the issues of coding accuracy by the plans. The payment model for the program is capitation — and that capitation is based on the average cost of fee-for-service Medicare in every county. The people who designed the model believed that the country should use the average cost of fee-for-service Medicare in every county as the b...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 23, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy CMS George Halvorson Medicare Advantage Source Type: blogs

The “open data” movement runs aground on FOURIER
BY ANISH KOKA Reanalysis of a trial used to approve a commonly used injectable cholesterol-lowering drug confirms the original analysis by accident. The open-data movement seeks to liberate the massive amount of data generated in running clinical trials from the grasp of the academic medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex that mostly runs the most important trials responsible for bringing novel therapeutics to market. There are only a few elite academic trialist groups capable of running large trials and there’s ample reason to be suspicious about the nexus that has developed between academia and the pharmace...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 19, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

The Open Data Movement Runs Aground on FOURIER
BY ANISH KOKA Reanalysis of a trial used to approve a commonly used injectable cholesterol-lowering drug confirms the original analysis by accident. The open-data movement seeks to liberate the massive amount of data generated in running clinical trials from the grasp of the academic medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex that mostly runs the most important trials responsible for bringing novel therapeutics to market. There are only a few elite academic trialist groups capable of running large trials and there’s ample reason to be suspicious about the nexus that has developed between academia and the pharmace...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 19, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Medical Practice Anish Koka FDA regulations Fourier open data Source Type: blogs

Shortening Hospital Discharges: Technical and Workflow Solutions
This article looks at some technical solutions. Ali Parsa, CEO and founder of Babylon, an AI and digital health platform, says discharge planning doesn’t require “massive amounts of technology” or “rocket science”; just good planning from the beginning of the stay. Indeed, one research study (suggested to me by Dr. Geoffrey Rutledge, Chief Medical Officer and co-founder of HealthTap) achieved a significant time saving through low-tech measures such as checklists. Other respondents, however, reported that their solutions were making a difference in discharges. Weaknesses of Current Technology W...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - January 18, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: AI/Machine Learning Analytics/Big Data Communication and Patient Experience Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System LTPAC ABOUT Ali Parsa AvaSure Babylon Cindy Gaines CipherHealth Cloudticity Cynthia Davis Da Source Type: blogs

An Easy Habit That Protects Against Heart Disease
A regular hygiene practice that could protect against arrhythmia and heart failure. (Source: PsyBlog | Psychology Blog)
Source: PsyBlog | Psychology Blog - January 13, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Mina Dean Tags: Heart Disease Source Type: blogs

One family ’s disastrous experience with a growth-driven long-term care company
by “E-PATIENT” DAVE DEBRONKART Continuing THCB’s occasional series on actual experiences with the health care system. This is the first in a short series about a patient and family experience from one of America’s leading ePatients. I’ve been blogging recently about what happens in American healthcare when predatory investor-driven companies start moving into care industries because the money’s good and enforcement is lax. The first two posts were about recent articles in The New Yorker on companies that are more interested in sales and growth than caring. I now have permission ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 10, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: The Business of Health Care ePatient Dave Patient Experience Respite care Source Type: blogs