Weekly Roundup – November 19, 2022

Welcome to our Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup. Each week, we’ll be providing a look back at the articles we posted and why they’re important to the healthcare IT community. We hope this gives you a chance to catch up on anything you may have missed during the week.

eClinicalWorks, the Cloud, and Medical Practice Expansion. John Lynn recently wrote about how eClinicalWorks has invested heavily in Microsoft Cloud Services. It’s a good strategic move for the EHR vendor, but it also benefits eCW customers, as John found out when he spoke to Bryant Stetz at Rothman Orthopaedic Institute and learned that hosted EHR helped can help practice expand their national footprint since they don’t need to find new physical data center. Read more…

Patient Empowerment Is About Understanding Information, Not Just Accessing It. The 21st Century CURES Act gives patients the right to immediate access to their info – but fast access to data like radiology reports may only lead to confusion and anxiety. Colin Hung took a look at SCANSLATED, which helps patients read their test results in plain language (and pictures). Read more…

Regulators Need to Pay More Attention to Long-Term Care. The digitization wave triggered by the HITECH Act and the ACA has yet to hit long-term care, John learned in his conversation with Bill Charnetski at PointClickCare. Bill said long-term and post acute care need the same types of government incentives to implement EHRs that acute care got – and they need to be included in conversations about interoperability regulations. Read more…

How Health Research Can Benefit From Synthetic Data. Health research depends on deidentified data, but data transformation can get complicated quickly. Andy Oram talked to David Singletary at Subsalt about the benefits of synthetic data, which models a real data set without actually disclosing real information, for both research and analytics purposes. Read more…

Talking Trends on the Healthcare IT Today Podcast. John and Colin debated some hot topics in health IT, including whether big tech is interested in acquiring a payer or provider or whether EHR vendors are making enough strides to make pure-play analytics vendors obsolete. Having spent some time on the conference circuit, they also discuss whether attendance has reached its low point. Read more…

Dealing With Duplicate Patient Records. If disk space is so cheap, is “note bloat” really that bad? Yes, according to the experts Andy interviewed. Duplication in patient records leads to inconsistent data, which can impact treatment decisions. Education, automation, and deduplication can help to solve the problem. Read more…

HLTH Bonus Features from November 15 and HLTH Bonus Features from November 17. Brian put together two special editions of Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features with news, product launches, partnership announcements, and awards from HLTH in Las Vegas. Amazon, Epic, Google, MEDITECH, and Microsoft all made headlines at the event.

Automation’s Role in Proactive Capacity Management. Hospitals that struggle to manage capacity and staffing risk bottlenecks, which hinder access to care and negatively impact patient outcomes. Jason Harber at Hospital IQ discussed how AI-enabled automation helps hospital leaders see current and projected upcoming demand, allowing for better resource alignment. Read more…

3 Digital Innovations That Transformed Healthcare. Today’s advances in patient engagement owe a thank you to three foundational innovations, Medical Advantage’s Chad Anguilm said. Fewer barriers to patient data and expanded telehealth and remote monitoring have all helped bridge the gap between patients and providers. Read more…

Reducing Confusion Eases Medical Billing Stress. The average Explanation of Benefits is crammed with so much information that most people don’t understand them. Brian Marsella at HPS/Paymedix pointed out that EOBs can include much less unnecessary info and still comply with HIPAA and COBRA – and these documents make it a lot clearer what patients owe, too. Read more…

Lessons From an International Telehealth Deployment. MobilTEK’s Sara Hendren described the company’s first telehealth deployment in Bolivia, which is focused on understanding how telehealth addresses the distance gap between specialist and patients in rural locations and whether telehealth impacts existing flows of patient care. Read more…

Featured Health IT Job: Epic HIM Analyst for a three-month, remote engagement with Stoltenberg Consulting, posted to Healthcare IT Central.

Funding and M&A Activity:

Thanks for reading and be sure to check out our latest Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundups.

About the author

Brian Eastwood

Brian Eastwood is a Boston-based writer with more than 10 years of experience covering healthcare IT and healthcare delivery. Brian also writes about enterprise IT, consumer technology, corporate leadership, and higher education for a range of publications and clients. He got his start as a professional writer as a community newspaper reporter in 2003.

When he's not writing, Brian is most likely running, hiking, or cross-country skiing in Northern New England. When he needs a break from cardio, he's usually reading a history book.

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