This Week Health: Newsroom
951 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 days ago - ★★★★★ - 5 ratings“This Week Health: NewsRoom” showcases our commitment to transforming healthcare one connection at a time, providing a dedicated space for timely discussions on industry news. Featuring programs like Today in Health IT, Newsday, UnHack (the News), and This Week Health: Live; this channel caters to healthcare professionals who face the constant challenge of staying informed despite their demanding roles. Guided by the seasoned insights of CEO and Host Bill Russell, and co-hosts Drex DeFord and Sarah Richardson—all of whom have firsthand experience in the trenches of health IT leadership—this channel delivers concise updates and expert analysis to keep you informed in the rapidly evolving world of health technology. Subscribe today for a reliable source of current information, accessible wherever you listen to podcasts.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Provider Led Decentralized Care Comes of Age
May 14, 2021 14:00 - 8 minutes - 6.13 MBHome, the final frontier, these are the voyages of the modern day health system, to boldly go where no health system has gone before. I know hospital at home has been around, but now it has been done at scale and is ready to scale even further. FTA Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente are investing in Medically Home to expand access to its virtual and in-person care model. - Medically Home is a virtual and physical delivery model that includes a 24/7 medical command center staffed by clinici...
Boost Mobile adds Telehealth as Signup Perk
May 13, 2021 08:00 - 6 minutes - 4.32 MBWhy would Boost Mobile be in Telehealth? FTA "Boost Mobile truly prioritizes its customers and is creating solutions to meet their needs," A significant portion of Boost Mobile’s customers are low-income and may struggle to get access to affordable healthcare. The company’s CEO sees this partnership as a way to provide healthcare to people who need it the most. "Boost Mobile customers are disproportionately affected by rising health care costs. Boost Mobile is bridging the gap by providing ...
VCI Demonstrates Patient Centric Interoperability
May 12, 2021 08:00 - 8 minutes - 5.62 MBIs Patient Centric Interoperability possible? Can we get the full medical record into the hands of the patient? It would seem that Vaccine Credential Initiative has demonstrated the potential of such an approach. FTA In the U.S., the VCI will issue FHIR-enabled COVID-19 vaccine certificates on iOS and Android phones and digital wallets – and paper-based copies with QR codes to help ensure health equity. He noted that it's "important to describe what VCI is, and what it is not." It is a vo...
Walmarts Back! Did They Ever Leave Healthcare?
May 11, 2021 14:00 - 8 minutes - 5.64 MBWalmarts Back! Wait, did Walmart ever leave their healthcare ambitions? What are their healthcare ambitions? No need to guess, they say it in every press release. FTA “Telehealth offers a great opportunity to expand access and reach consumers where they are and complements our brick-and-mortar Walmart Health locations. Today people expect omnichannel access to care, and adding telehealth to our Walmart Health care strategies allows us to provide in-person and digital care across our multipl...
What's Hiding in Your Unstructured Data?
May 10, 2021 08:00 - 7 minutes - 5.52 MBUnstructured data, just sounds like a junk drawer doesn't it? Well it can be and it might be time to become more clear on what resides in your unstructured data. FTA Unstructured data is information that does not have any predefined data models or schemata, so it can be difficult for an enterprise to locate and digest. Examples include physicians' notes in EHRs, emails, text files, photos, videos, call transcripts and recordings, and business chat apps. Unstructured data can make up upward...
Helping Write the Job Req for the Next Cerner CEO
May 07, 2021 15:00 - 11 minutes - 7.63 MBWhat would you add to the job description for the next Cerner CEO? They may not be asking, but let's go ahead and give them anyway. FTA Cerner Corporation on Wednesday announced that it will begin the process of looking for a new chief executive officer, more than three years since current CEO Brent Shafer succeeded the health IT giant's late founder Neal Patterson. As for Cerner's ongoing electronic health record projects with the U.S. Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, Schafer ...
Low Code Democratizes Programming and Unlocks RPA for Healthcare
May 06, 2021 14:00 - 7 minutes - 4.94 MBRPA represents a significant opportunity to drive a higher level of automation in healthcare. That automation can take mundane tasks and increase the accuracy and efficiency of the process by an order of magnitude while freeing up staff to focus on higher order tasks. Once you adopt RPA the next step will be to open up the organization to the citizen programmer. The word programmer in the traditional sense is probably not entirely accurate but it will be process owners creating workflows fo...
Cyber Carriers are Parked off the Coast and They are Attacking Healthcare
May 05, 2021 05:00 - 7 minutes - 5.3 MBCyber Carriers are Parked off the coast and they are attacking healthcare. It might be a provocative statement if it weren't true. Consider.. What would we do if a foreign or even domestic group or person were to walk into a hospital or group of hospitals and walk down the hall to the HIM department and set fire to all the records completely destroying them. How about once they were done they where to head over to the data center and kick on the sprinkler system making the computers nothi...
An Alternative Perspective to Solve Patient ID
May 04, 2021 16:00 - 16 minutes - 11 MBI may not own my patient record legally, but I want joint custody. I want to be able to decide who has it, where it is stored, who can use it on my behalf and who can sell it, anonymized or not. Am I being unreasonable? National Patient ID is another step away from this IMHO. Don't worry your little head, we will take care of your medical record for you. FTA Patient ID Now, a coalition of more than 40 healthcare organizations, released a framework this week aimed at creating a national str...
An Altnertive Perspective to Solve Patient ID
May 04, 2021 11:00 - 16 minutes - 11 MBI may not own my patient record legally, but I want joint custody. I want to be able to decide who has it, where it is stored, who can use it on my behalf and who can sell it, anonymized or not. Am I being unreasonable? National Patient ID is another step away from this IMHO. Don't worry your little head, we will take care of your medical record for you. FTA Patient ID Now, a coalition of more than 40 healthcare organizations, released a framework this week aimed at creating a national st...
FCC Telehealth Funding Deadline is May 6th, Apply Yet?
May 03, 2021 09:00 - 5 minutes - 3.59 MBRound 2 of the FCC Covid-19 Telehealth Program makes an additional $249.95M in funding available to healthcare organizations for reimbursement of telecommunications services, information services and connected devices enabling telehealth expansion. The first thing you need to know is that the window to apply for the funding this go-round is a short one. You must apply by May 6, 2021. Today, all you need to know to get going.
FCC Telehealth Funding Deadline in May 6th, Apply Yet?
May 03, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 3.59 MBRound 2 of the FCC Covid-19 Telehealth Program makes an additional $249.95M in funding available to healthcare organizations for reimbursement of telecommunications services, information services and connected devices enabling telehealth expansion. The first thing you need to know is that the window to apply for the funding this go-round is a short one. You must apply by May 6, 2021. Today, all you need to know to get going.
Teledoc Q1 Revenue - a Model for Healthcare
April 30, 2021 09:00 - 4 minutes - 3.43 MBIs Telehealth fading? The numbers for health systems show that telehealth has reached a new plateau which is far above what is was pre-COVID and fare below what is was during Q2 of 2020. So we are establishing a new norm, but in what direction is that norm going? FTA Teladoc's first-quarter revenue reached $454 million, jumping 151% from $181 million a year ago. Despite a historically weak flu season, the telehealth giant delivered 3.2 million virtual visits in the first quarter of 2021...
RIP Price Transparency, We Barely Knew You
April 29, 2021 16:00 - 10 minutes - 7.32 MBWho wanted to know how much their healthcare was going to cost or quality before they had a procedure? RIP, price transparency for healthcare? Although the article says the Biden admin won't pull the plug on price transparency, it essentially says, he's pulling the plug on price transparency. FTA And while the Biden administration will continue price transparency initiatives, they probably won't drive its healthcare agenda, experts said. Biden's administration is likely more willing than...
Getting to 80% Vaccination will Require a Marketing Overhaul
April 28, 2021 16:00 - 15 minutes - 10.9 MBSo what is the problem with our marketing? Our message is confusing. We have the wrong messengers - many of which have chosen to side with political objectives which are divisive in today's environment, and we have don't speak with respect to certain parts of our community. But let's get real for a second, we aren't answering the buy questions. People want to know why to buy coke and pepsi, and they want to know why to get a vaccine. Because we said so is the worse way to get a child to...
EHR Sharing Data with Insurance Co - Who Owns My Medical Record?
April 27, 2021 09:00 - 6 minutes - 4.64 MBCerner Corporation will provide life insurers access to 54M+ patient records via MIB. Outraged? But before we do that, let's check out a few lines from the article to figure out who we should be outraged at. FTA MIB was already offering access to patient records via Epic and Meditech, said the company. MIB's EHR partnerships aim to allow life insurers to accelerate policy underwriting for applicants who give express consent, according to the company's website. The new partnership fol...
Information Blocking - Is October 2022 on your Calendar Yet?
April 26, 2021 15:00 - 11 minutes - 7.87 MBIs October 2022 on your calendar yet? Beyond being my birthday month, it is also when the Information Blocking rule goes to the next set of data, unstructured data. FTA As of April 5, 2021, healthcare providers, certified health IT developers, and health information exchanges (HIEs) needed to abide by the information blocking regulations. Yet, Tripathi wants healthcare organizations to look at the larger picture, with several compliance dates on the horizon within the next 18 months. In 18 ...
Innovation Theatre and Death by Pilot
April 23, 2021 15:00 - 12 minutes - 8.3 MBHave you seen innovation theatre? Have you participated in Death by Pilot? I believe this is prevalent in healthcare. Today we look at two stories. Livongo founder says the time for 'piloting' is over - HeatlhcareITNews Innovation theatre killed my company: lessons from Ernit - Sifted.EU FTA The way Tullman sees it, we're at a pivotal moment in digital health. "I believe the next 18 months will define the next five years," he said. "If you're not moving now, you've got to stop piloting. You...
Nurses Give EHR Usability an F in New Study
April 22, 2021 09:00 - 7 minutes - 5.16 MBWhat score do your nurses give for EHR usability? What works? What doesn't Work? FTA A study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that more favorable electronic health record usability scores are associated with lower odds of burnout – and those usability scores have tanked. Researchers found that among 1,285 nurses who responded to a November 2017 survey about usability and burnout the mean nurse-rated EHR usability score was 57.6. ...
Optum and United Health signal Telehealth Future Post Pandemic
April 21, 2021 09:00 - 7 minutes - 4.9 MBWaiting for reimbursement at parity for Telehealth to be extended? Optum and United Health aren't. Kaiser isn't. Amazon Care isn't. Is it time to explore a model that will sustain this essential part of the care delivery model? FTA: UnitedHealth subsidiary Optum has launched a new virtual care product. OptumHealth's CEO says the software, Optum Virtual Care, is now live in all 50 states. According to a transcript of an April 15 earnings call, executives from both UnitedHealth and Opt...
Rolling Out an EHR with 1,000 Owners
April 20, 2021 09:00 - 9 minutes - 6.57 MBCan you imagine doing an EHR rollout with Government oversight? The job is hard under normal circumstances, this places the project in the difficulty level of double black diamond. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs rollout is taking a pause to evaluate first site challenges. This is normal operating procedure. Do a site, evaluate, start the optimization of the build and training to address first site shortcomings. What were some of the challenges? FTA Complaints included prescription...
CMS Clarifies Expectations on Price Transparency
April 19, 2021 09:00 - 7 minutes - 4.9 MBWhat do you think it communicates to patients when their health system tries to hide the price of care? Just curious. CMS issued new guidance on Price Transparency. FTA Hospitals are required to provide "clear, accessible pricing information online," according to CMS, and the Hospital Price final rule mandates all machine-readable files and their contents be "accessible without barriers" and "searchable" for consumers. On the new guidance released on Github, CMS says they expect hospital...
Just the Numbers, Pandemic and Vaccination Update
April 16, 2021 09:00 - 11 minutes - 7.87 MBA brief summary of this episode
Mayo is Building the Future of Medicine
April 15, 2021 09:00 - 7 minutes - 5.18 MBLet's pretend that healthcare is a consumer business. What do we want from a healthcare provider? I'm an employer who offers insurance to my staff. Here is what I think would be interesting. A Health Partner. Someone that can provide me access to a clinician 7x24x365 via telehealth within 60 minutes with escalated service available. I want someone that is going to actually put my medical record to work for me and take in additional data from whatever devices we determine make the most s...
Microsoft Acquires Nuance - Great for Healthcare
April 14, 2021 09:00 - 7 minutes - 5.29 MBIs this good for healthcare. Let's see. 1. The number of vendors I have to deal with is one less. 2. Nuance has the money to develop clinical vocabularies quicker. 3. Microsoft adds a power set of capabilities to it's cloud offerings 4. Both are already good partners in healthcare and understand the business. Only downside I can come up with is that the annual Microsoft Licensing costs are going up. Perhaps I'm not seeing the whole picture, but I really like what I am seeing. What is y...
Global Chip Shortages Threaten Healthcare Projects
April 13, 2021 09:00 - 4 minutes - 3.12 MBHow important are chips to healthcare? It turns out, pretty important. We are starting to hear of lead times increasing significantly for all sorts of chip based equipment. While the article isn't healthcare specific, the situation will not be isolated. FTA Broadband providers are seeing delays of more than a year when ordering internet routers, becoming yet another victim of chip shortages choking global supply chains and adding challenges for millions still working from home. Their sup...
Google's Latest Healthcare Moves
April 12, 2021 14:00 - 8 minutes - 5.78 MBWhat is Google doing in Healthcare? Google appears to be trying to make sense of the medical record for clinicians and patients. Making it more accessible and usable. FTA After 13 years, Google is coming back for patient health records. The tech giant has launched an early user feedback program aimed at exploring how patients might want to see, organize, and share their own medical record data. The work could inform the creation of a consumer-facing medical records tool along the lines of...
Ignorance of Information Blocking Rule
April 09, 2021 15:00 - 10 minutes - 7.34 MBDo you know what Information Blocking is in context of the 21st Century Cures Act? Is your health system compliant? If this recent survey is any indication, you don't and you may not even care. FTA 70% of participants in the Life Image survey said they were aware of the rules going into effect, up to half reported noncompliant practices – including charging patients fees to obtain records or sharing records via paper or CDs. Nearly half of respondents said they had either not made any chan...
Apple's New Privacy Settings Explained
April 08, 2021 09:00 - 7 minutes - 5.34 MBWe all know our iPhones are tracking us right? Well, this Wall Street Journal article explains how and the changes to iOS 14.5 bring those activities out of the dark. FTA Wait, apps are tracking me? Oh, yes, apps have been tracking you. You know how you may search for something on one website and then the ad for that product can follow you around the web? Well, instead of using web-browser tracking tools like cookies, iPhone apps tend to use a secret string of numbers on your phone. It’s ca...
Mapping Amazon Care's Next Move Based on History
April 07, 2021 07:00 - 6 minutes - 4.28 MBHistory reveals the next move for Amazon Care. I read some research by Chilimark yesterday that would be spot on if Amazon Care was going direct to consumer. Here are some of their findings. FTA Today, Amazon Care is surprisingly limited. To really dominate the space, Amazon needs to take a cue from Teladoc and other virtual care platforms offering comprehensive remote monitoring and health coaching. Amazon is betting consumer experience will be enough to bring in users. The telehealth...
Increasing Vaccine Uptake in Diverse Communities
April 06, 2021 16:00 - 16 minutes - 11.6 MBThe Health Evolution Forum has put out a document on increasing vaccine uptake in diverse communities that is worth a look. FTA Based on early data from 26 states, Black and Hispanic Americans are getting vaccinated at approximately half and one-third the rate of white Americans respectively. This is true even after controlling for the demographic makeup of health care workers, who were first in line to receive the vaccine. Meanwhile, Black, Indigenous, and (other) people of color (“BIPOC”...
Happy Information Blocking Day, Let the Innovation Commence
April 05, 2021 10:00 - 12 minutes - 8.73 MBI believe that patient initiated interoperability will be the single biggest driver of innovation. That starts today with the advent of the information blocking rules. Innovators that can gather consumers and provide them a valuable service that utilizes their health record will be granted access to that information by the patient. The health systems and payers in the future will have to comply or risk significant fines. What will the patient do? What will the innovators come up with...
Reimagining Medicaid on a Unicorn, Olive AI Platform
April 02, 2021 09:00 - 7 minutes - 5.3 MBIs there a non-EMR centric approach to designing and building a Unicorn in Health IT? Sean Lane with Olive would like to find out. This has been the premise of the Olive leadership for a while. Well, now they've raised 50 million to find out if it will work. There isn't much information out there on Circulo the startup that will live on Olives tech, share a CEO and have as its mission to change the way payers, providers, patients and taxpayers experience Medicaid. It's a greenfield app...
Google Acquires Epic or Managers are Key to Hybrid Work
April 01, 2021 13:00 - 12 minutes - 8.4 MBOf course Google didn't Acquire Epic. It's April 1st again, time for marketing departments around the world to do their best to exercise their talents of "Made you look" which they almost perfected on the playground as 8 year olds. Today we continue on with our look at changing work trends and what managers have to do to adjust to the new reality of hybrid work. This is a great article from the Microsoft people team. It covers what is working and what isn't . It covers onboarding and h...
Are we Ready for Hybrid Work?
March 31, 2021 09:00 - 8 minutes - 6.17 MBAre we ready for Hybrid work? Is this what disruption looks like. FTA With 2020 behind us, we’re on the brink of a disruption as great as last year’s sudden shift to remote work: the move to hybrid. Remote work has given employees more flexibility and created job opportunities in new locations. But there are also challenges ahead. Teams have become more siloed and digital exhaustion is a real and unsustainable threat. With over 40 percent of the global workforce considering leaving thei...
Cerner and NY Life Arrangement , Good or Evil?
March 30, 2021 15:00 - 7 minutes - 5.27 MBCerner and NY Life Deal, Good or Evil? Seemed like a good topic for a show. FTA Electronic health record vendor Cerner announced on Wednesday that it was collaborating with New York Life to provide secure access to EHRs. The partnership represents a move into the life insurance industry from Cerner Corporation, aimed at accelerating underwriting decisions and simplifying the application process. The collaboration aims to support New York Life Insurance Company in accessing hospitals' EHRs i...
Workforce Expections Have Shifted, Has Your Organization Adjusted?
March 29, 2021 15:00 - 7 minutes - 5.47 MBThis is the most significant shift in work arrangement that we've experienced since the introduction of the laptop or mobile phone. What is important to you as a worker right now? Comment below. FTA: Pre Pandemic Confidence in Sr. Leadership Ability to give employee clear direction Currently Sense of belonging Continually improving how work gets done Confidence in leadership Demonstrated collaboration amongst managers --------- Do employers get this shift? Are they in tune with how work...
Large telehealth study provides insights into rapid adoption
March 26, 2021 15:00 - 9 minutes - 6.25 MBTelehealth is here to stay. No kidding. Now let's explore how and where. A new study of 35M people gives us some insights into where telehealth was used. FTA: - researchers found that virtual care use rates were higher in the most "socially advantaged" neighborhoods versus the least socially advantaged neighborhoods. - Rates were also higher in states with high rates of COVID-19 during the study and in urban locations. - "Age and disease burden appear to be associated with telehealth up...
Retail Clinics Grow - Is Your Tech Ready for Retail
March 25, 2021 15:00 - 10 minutes - 6.99 MBI'm fascinated by the potential for changing buying habits of the healthcare population. Will the pandemic change our focus to delivering care in the home and retail clinics? Modern Healthcare did a piece on this on March 20th. Health systems revamp their approach to retail clinics FTA: The story on retail clinics Opportunities: Low-acuity care costs around 30% and 80% less than similar treatment at physician offices and emergency departments, respectively Number of retail clinics incre...
Standing up Your Hospital at Home Initiative
March 24, 2021 16:00 - 12 minutes - 8.88 MBAmazon Care, Ascension, Intermountain, Mayo, CMS reimbursement and even some state legislation moving forward for Medicaid reimbursement in CA and MA. Have we hit an inflection point in Hospital at Home? How would you rate your health systems readiness for this next move in healthcare?
Companies Wrestle with Hybrid Work Plans, Awkward Meetings, Crowding
March 23, 2021 15:00 - 9 minutes - 6.53 MBWhat would be your ideal working situation once offices begin to reopen? Specific number of day in the office by week? by month? by year? Type of office setup? Makeup of project teams? Project interaction? Will you miss the impromptu lunch? Birthday celebrations? Happy hour? Companies are wrestling with remote work plans. This is something you have to get right or you may find yourself on the losing end of the talent competition. Consider that this may look different depending on yo...
Transcarent, Changing the Way Employers Experience Healthcare
March 22, 2021 16:00 - 8 minutes - 6.04 MBAre you happy with your employers healthcare experience? I'm not. I've never really been happy with it. I experience every silo, every failed handoff, every clunky technology tool that has been conceived in a vacuum. and... My cost goes up every year. When people talk about broken healthcare, this is what they are talking about. This has to be solved across the Payer, Provider and PBM. It can't be solved in any one silo. The employer tries to solve it by knitting together a set of negotiate...
What We Can Learn from Following Optum's Acquisitions
March 19, 2021 16:00 - 11 minutes - 7.97 MBOptum is fun to watch. They are quickly becoming the New York Yankees of healthcare. They are buying capabilities. Much like baseball you still have to integrate those acquisitions into a whole in order to get to the objective. Optum is acquiring physicians, data, and capabilities to deliver into every growing number of venues. Today we take a look at what some of these acquisitions mean for healthcare providers.
Price Transparency reveals consumer centric healthcare organizations
March 18, 2021 15:00 - 5 minutes - 3.49 MB2/3 of large hospitals in a recent study were found to be non-compliant with the Price Transparency Rule. What is holding us back?
Amazon Care in 50 States, Getting More Real
March 17, 2021 09:00 - 11 minutes - 7.98 MBIn November of 2017 I wrote this about what Amazon might do next... FTA Amazon Health is a mobile application that each of my staff has. They can link to Apple Health and Google Fit to pull in their tracking information. This allows for health-based competitions with one another (who got in more steps today?) as well as with other companies. This becomes a great way for us to develop an even closer relationship with our clients. For the first time, I’m able to see my insurance and medical in...
Vaccine Progress by the Numbers and Headlines
March 16, 2021 09:00 - 8 minutes - 5.77 MBI don't watch the news anymore, but I do peruse a lot of headlines. Here is what we are seeing. - The US Surpassed 100 million doses administered on March 12th. 13.5% of the Adult population. - 35 million people have been fully vaccinated. - Over 61% of people over the age of 65 have received at least one dose. - States announcing back to school plans include Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Mass, and Maryland. - There has been an 8 week downward trend in reported cases since Jan 11th in the U...
NY Times - 5 Trump Healthcare Policies that Should Continue
March 15, 2021 09:00 - 7 minutes - 5.3 MBElisabeth Rosenthal, MD and editor-in-chief for Kaiser Health News identified five Trump Policies she feels should continue. We cover them and discuss the IT implications.
Home Based Care Alliance Signals the Future of Healthcare Competition
March 12, 2021 16:00 - 11 minutes - 8.21 MBNew Health at Home coalition signals the future of healthcare competition. Do you see it? FTA A new advocacy group called Moving Health Home launched on Wednesday, Founding members of this coalition include Amazon Care, Ascension, Dispatch Health, Elara Caring, Intermountain Healthcare, Home Instead, Landmark Health and Signify Health. .. they want to effect a shift in thinking about treating patients at home, and want to adjust reimbursement models accordingly. Among the group's policy pri...
IT's Part in Returning to the Office
March 11, 2021 10:00 - 14 minutes - 9.95 MBThe vaccine is growing in quantity. New drugs are proving effective in treating COVID. Return to work is right around the corner. What do we need to consider. In this article, Paul C. takes a crack at the issues we might need to address. Topics FTA: Physical Workspace Requirements IT Organizations Role Equipment Issues Stipend Policy Software Licenses Work from Home Preferences Compensation and Team Culture -- In Today's show I provide my thoughts on these topics for Healthcare CIOS. W...
Amazon Care - Coming to a City Near You, Ready?
March 10, 2021 10:00 - 8 minutes - 6.2 MBHaven died, Did you think Amazon was going to slow down? I'll summarize the article for this one. Amazon's partner Care Medical field to operate in 17 more states. Do we know any more than that. Not really. Just that Amazon's Washington state employees have access to a concierge level medical service, with same day prescriptions and a digital tool that is the envy of every employer program. Will it lead to a direct to consumer play. I don't think so, I think it will lead to a direct ...