August, 2022

article thumbnail

The Pandemic Policy Excuse of ‘Meeting People Where They Are’

Bill of Health

By Daniel Goldberg. Too often throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers have justified controversial policy choices by stating that the world is not arranged in a way to make certain actions feasible. While practical difficulties matter, permitting such difficulties to exhaust the scope of our ethical obligations is a grave mistake that moves us farther away from a just and equitable world.

article thumbnail

No ‘slam dunk fix’ in HIPAA privacy law to protect abortion patients

Healthcare Dive

In an increasingly murky legal environment, providers should focus on minimizing and protecting the data they collect, while keeping abreast of shifting abortion legality in their state, experts said.

HIPAA 342
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

How health IT can advance health equity for transgender and nonbinary patients

Healthcare It News

The Biden Administration recently issued an executive order advancing LGBTQ+ health equity. Health IT experts contend that technology can advance health equity for the transgender patient population, as this group has traditionally been marginalized by the healthcare industry. In fact, evidence shows transgender people experience much higher rates of chronic health conditions compared with the general population – and discrimination and stigma impacts their physical and mental health.

article thumbnail

Why telehealth is more than just a pandemic trend

Healthcare IT News - Telehealth

The COVID-19 pandemic brought telemedicine technology and services to a mainstream audience – like it or not. As it turned out, studies have shown that a great many patients and providers like the flexibility that telemedicine affords. Liz Fobare is vice president of product management at Kareo, a vendor of cloud-based clinical and practice management software for independent healthcare practices and billing companies.

article thumbnail

Your HIPAA Compliance Checklist: Easily Find Out Your HIPAA Requirements

This checklist is your best free resource for assessing your current HIPAA compliance status. Including all of the components of an effective compliance program, you’ll be sure you’re not missing a single piece of compliance. HIPAA is a complex law - protect your organization from financial and legal ramifications by ensuring your compliance program has all of the proper elements in place.

article thumbnail

Climate Change Is Not Good for Health and Living Things

Health Populi

There is an image from my childhood, drawn by Lorraine Schneider, which reads “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” As I read through a paper published this week on climate change’s contribution to the burden of chronic disease, I couldn’t help but conjure up Lorraine’s observation from my little girl memory bank.

More Trending

article thumbnail

No Take-Backs: Moderna’s Attempt to Renege on its Vaccine Patent Pledge

Bill of Health

By Jorge L. Contreras. On October 8, 2020, Moderna, the maker of one of the first mRNA-based vaccines for COVID-19 and the recipient of billions of dollars of U.S. government funding, announced that it felt “a special obligation … to use our resources to bring this pandemic to an end as quickly as possible.” As a result, it publicly promised that “ while the pandemic continues, Moderna will not enforce our COVID-19 related patents against those making vaccines intended to combat the pandemic.

article thumbnail

Texas judge blocks HHS guidance on emergency abortion care

Healthcare Dive

The ruling, which sets back the Biden administration’s efforts to protect abortion access nationwide, comes just days before Texas’ trigger ban will go into effect, toughening abortion penalties in the state.

334
334
article thumbnail

Leveraging the cloud and AI to transform the patient experience

Healthcare It News

Whether they are about mental health, COVID, general health concerns or any number of other issues, healthcare provider organizations constantly are managing droves of calls from patients. Vendors of cloud technologies are aiming to tackle the issue of high call volumes while at the same time helping healthcare call centers reimagine the patient and employee experience.

HIPAA 330
article thumbnail

How Intermountain Healthcare gets top marks for virtual care

Healthcare IT News - Telehealth

Telehealth has been operationally implemented within Intermountain Healthcare since 2015, with pilots running for several years prior. As a centralized service, it was possible to engage with a broad consortium of departments such as legal, finance, marketing, compliance and physician affairs to develop models, learn about the nuances of implementing telehealth as an embedded service and engage with clinical leadership on the opportunities.

Hospitals 196
article thumbnail

HIPAA: Why It Matters to Your Practice

85% of practices are not complying with the government’s HIPAA standards. The large majority of practices are likely trying to protect patients’ information, but they may not be doing all that they need to meet government requirements. Not complying with HIPAA has definite drawbacks, with one major one being massive fines. The government can fine up to 1.5 million dollars for a single HIPAA breach incident - an amount that would put most small practices out of business.

article thumbnail

Virtual Care and Mental Health Top of Mind for Employers’ Workplaces in 2023

Health Populi

The concept that all companies are “health care companies” takes on greater import in the wake of the pandemic. The 2023 Large Employers’ Health Care Strategy and Plan Design Survey from the Business Group on Health (BGH) found that two in three large employers see their health and well-being strategy as an integral part of their overall workforce strategy.

COVID-19 157
article thumbnail

Study: Symptom checkers' diagnostic, triage accuracy is low

Mobi Health News

A review of studies published in npj Digital Medicine found diagnostic and triage accuracy varied but was generally low, raising concerns about using symptom checkers as patient-facing tools.

142
142
article thumbnail

Another Legislative Attempt to Revive Gene Patenting

Bill of Health

In its unanimous 2013 decision in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics (569 U.S. 576) the U.S. Supreme Court held that naturally occurring genomic sequences are not eligible for patent protection. Not surprisingly, some representatives of the biotechnology industry, and many patent lawyers, reacted negatively to the decision, and have steadily lobbied Congress to restore patent protection for isolated and purified genomic sequences.

article thumbnail

Amazon Care to shut down by year’s end as corporate customers don’t see value

Healthcare Dive

The demise of Amazon Care — a month after Amazon announced plans to acquire One Medical for $3.9 billion — signals that the tech giant has again succumbed to inherent challenges facing outsiders in the healthcare space.

331
331
article thumbnail

HR and Employee Healthcare Reform: Keys to Increasing Employee Wellness and Retention

Speaker: Mallory Herrin, CEO & Principal HR Consultant at HerrinHR

Your employees are your most valuable resource. If you want to retain employees and keep them happy, you want to make the incentives more valuable. With a full-stack employee experience, culture, health, wellness and benefits navigation solution, you can provide employees with the wellbeing support they need. The results? Employees who are happier, healthier, and more engaged, as well as a business that is thriving both internally and externally, every day.

article thumbnail

Athenahealth adds automated patient engagement feature to help with medication adherence

Healthcare It News

Whether it’s due to high out-of-pocket costs, concerns about side effects, procrastination or other factors, 20-30% of patients don’t act on their new prescriptions, while others do not take medications as prescribed. WHY IT MATTERS. By partnering with Watertown, Massachusetts-based athenahealth, the system’s 145,000 providers can now access automated messaging within their established prescribing workflows to help drive better adherence to prescribed treatment plans.

296
296
article thumbnail

AI-powered telehealth improves PT care at Essen Health Care

Healthcare IT News - Telehealth

Essen Health Care, a medical group in New York City, has a Center of Excellence for Pain with physical therapy, pain specialists, neurology and orthopedic specialists. It serves patients with acute and chronic issues in need of physical therapy. In addition, it serves many elderly house call patients, due to pandemic restrictions, who have functionally deteriorated due to a lack of physical activity.

article thumbnail

Using Data-Driven Fintech Tools to Tackle the Healthcare Affordability Crisis

Healthcare IT Today

The following is a guest article by Chiranjib Gupta, Chief Risk Officer at PayZen. We are witnessing a healthcare affordability crisis in America. Reading the headlines, it doesn’t take long to encounter some horror story of medical costs running rampant: an uninsured woman saddled with bills in the tens of thousands for a complicated birth, a life-saving medication costing a patient hundreds of dollars per vial, the list goes on.

article thumbnail

Amazon Care to shut down at the end of 2022

Mobi Health News

Neil Lindsay, senior vice president of Amazon Health Services, said the telehealth service was "not a complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting, and wasn’t going to work long-term.

138
138
article thumbnail

The 2023 Behavioral Health Industry Report

This report explores current issues in the behavioral health industry in 2023. Topics covered include quantitative statistics describing the overall increase in behavioral health issues, the impact of psychologist and staff burnout, how HIPAA compliance is once again at the top of our minds & much more!

article thumbnail

A New Theory for Gene Ownership

Bill of Health

By James Toomey. The story of Henrietta Lacks is surely among the most famous in the history of bioethics, and its facts are well-known. Ms. Lacks sought treatment for cervical cancer. After conducting a biopsy on her tumor, her doctors learned that her cancer cells reproduced uniquely effectively. Without her knowledge or consent, her doctors derived from the cells the HeLa cell line — the world’s first immortal human cell line, worth billions and a driver of the biotechnology revolution.

Bioethics 258
article thumbnail

Healthcare cost growth trails overall price hikes amid record inflation

Healthcare Dive

Prices in the U.S. economy grew 8.5% in July compared to last year, while prices for medical care increased just 4.8%, according to a tracker from the Kaiser Family Foundation and Peterson Center on Healthcare.

328
328
article thumbnail

OptimizeRx AI pilot identifies non-adherence risks

Healthcare It News

Patients can experience unexpected access and affordability barriers that physicians lack visibility into, but by searching for the early indicators of non-adherence, physicians could act to help patients stay on their treatment plans. Rochester, Michigan-based OptimizeRx Corp., which provides care-focused engagement throughout patient journeys and connects more than 60% of U.S. healthcare providers to their patients, launched a pharmaceutical pilot to identify doctors whose patient treatment pl

article thumbnail

How telemedicine can leverage the shrinking number of physicians

Healthcare IT News - Telehealth

Physicians are burning out and leaving the front lines of healthcare in big numbers. The pandemic has aggravated this problem. Solutions to this critical problem are needed. Clinicians and other experts at telehealth technology and services companies across the country are raising their hands, saying they could be at least one part of the solution to physician burnout.

article thumbnail

Streamlined Compliance Facilitates Growth for Multi-Specialty ASC

Discover how MedTrainer solved an unmet need for SurgCenter of Western Maryland, reducing the time and effort it took to monitor and remind staff about crucial annual training. Learn how this intuitive platform helped increase training completion and save staff time, leading to increased efficiency, fewer human errors, and greater overall satisfaction.

article thumbnail

Clinically Validated Vital Signs for Mental Health

Healthcare IT Today

Remote patient monitoring is everywhere in healthcare today. We see that in our ever expanding list of remote patient monitoring companies. It’s not a reach to say that healthcare and startup companies are working hard to monitor every piece of your health remotely. Everyone sees the potential of having access to your health data in an ongoing basis in order to assess deterioration of your health or even recovery from a disease or surgery.

article thumbnail

Meta Facing Further Class Action Lawsuit Over Use of Meta Pixel Code on Hospital Websites

HIPAA Journal

Meta is facing another class action lawsuit over the unlawful collection and sharing of health data without content. The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District of California on behalf of plaintiff, Jane Doe. The lawsuit alleges Meta and its companies, including Facebook, have been collecting the sensitive health data of millions of patients without obtaining express consent and have used the information to serve individuals with targeted advertisements.

Hospitals 133
article thumbnail

An Ob/Gyn Reflects on Dobbs: ‘The Time Has Passed for Neutrality’

Bill of Health

By Samantha DeAndrade. Last week, in response to a petition written by myself and colleagues, the American Board of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ABOG), which is headquartered in Texas, reversed its decision to pursue in-person board certification exams. In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health , my colleagues and I held grave concerns about traveling to Dallas, Texas for this credentialing exam.

Doctors 258
article thumbnail

Hospitals have low level of accountability for connected device breaches

Healthcare Dive

Of the 43% of organizations that reported a data breach in the past two years, 88% said at least one connected device was a contributing factor to the breach, according to a new report.

Hospitals 324
article thumbnail

How to Battle Layoffs: The Career Star Accelerator Bootcamp

Facing layoffs in your organization? Support your team members' career transition with Career Star Accelerator Bootcamp: Custom Resume & LinkedIn Revamp + 6 Weeks of Career Coaching. Our certified resume writers will create job search-winning resumes and LinkedIn profiles while they work with a career coach to learn unique strategies to stand out, attract the right employers, automate their job search, and land their dream job.