We had the opportunity to discuss the value impact of CX-focused tools in healthcare with Marcus Garcia, the Regional VP of healthcare at NICE. Marcus’ insights led us into the intricacies of patient-provider interactions and the need for AI-led automation that does not leave out human intuition and touch in NICE CXone.

Achieving PX is a Subtle Balancing Act!

Patient experience (PX) is a relatively new dimension in healthcare, driven by rising patient expectations. Marcus explains, “Patients now expect the same ease, convenience, consistency, and transparency they experience when booking a flight or ordering a product.” While digital interactions are becoming the norm in patient-provider communication, optimizing voice interactions remains critical.

“Patients also expect a seamless experience across digital, contact center, and mobile touchpoints, even though these systems are often managed separately,” Marcus adds. This complexity creates a need for a cohesive digital interaction strategy that balances automated and personal interactions to meet patient expectations.

“For tasks like booking, rescheduling, or canceling appointments, patients want fast and easy communication options,” Marcus continues. However, when the issue is more complex, patients often prefer speaking with a human agent to have a detailed conversation. “By automating repetitive tasks like appointment scheduling, contact centers can save valuable time, allowing agents to focus on meaningful, personalized interactions with patients,” he concludes.

CXone Mpower, NICE’s flagship platform, ensures all patient interactions, whether through voice, digital messaging, chatbots or live agents, are integrated in a single unified and scalable platform. When all interactions are handled from a single place, there is no need to manage multiple tools or platforms, there are no more silos between front and back office operations so customer queries move seamlessly across departments, and the system is continuously self-optimized – learning from past interactions to fine-tune future ones with maximum effectiveness and efficiency. CXone Mpower empowers healthcare organizations to deliver personalized self-service experiences, orchestrate human and AI agents in one place with bi-directional learning, and enhance the day-to-day performance of contact center.

CXone is built on the vision of helping hospitals and healthcare providers elevate patient centricity by transforming the way healthcare services are delivered.

In summary, CXone Mpower automates straightforward, repetitive patient interactions and enhances those requiring human involvement. This approach significantly improves patient engagement and experience, reduces friction, improves agent satisfaction, and ultimately leads to better patient outcomes.

Platforms Built for Positive Healthcare Outcomes

CXone is built on the vision of helping hospitals and healthcare providers elevate patient centricity by transforming the way healthcare services are delivered. By leveraging technologies and understanding the role of stakeholder challenges, NICE helps augment experiences that translate to positive healthcare outcomes through its platforms. Marcus helped us delve into each of these facets:

1. Self-Service Tools: In today’s digital-first world, consumers expect the convenience of managing various aspects of their lives through their personal devices. This includes making or rescheduling appointments and accessing test results at their convenience. The strategic use of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) can significantly reduce administrative burdens and streamline processes both before and after care. This involves offering self-service options for routine tasks such as scheduling and managing appointments, requesting referrals, refilling prescriptions, reviewing bills, and making payments. Studies suggest that 30 to 50% of interactions involve simple queries about scheduling, rescheduling, or canceling appointments—tasks that can be easily automated. By deflecting these to self-service, healthcare providers can focus on more complex interactions without the need for additional staff.
2. Proactive Customer Care: NICE’s proactive outbound AI communication engages patients early, automating their journey while addressing potential issues before they escalate into larger problems. Rather than reacting to patient calls or emails, our tools take the initiative to start conversations, anticipate questions, resolve concerns, and ensure patients enjoy a smooth and seamless experience throughout their care journey.
3. Analytics and AI: Leveraging insights from phone calls and digital interactions across all touchpoints is invaluable for any organization. It enables providers to apply analytics to understand the entire patient journey and identify areas for improvement. Combining this with post-care survey data provides a clearer picture. A comprehensive understanding of the patient journey requires a unified solution to measure and analyze customer experience and feedback data. This holistic approach helps identify opportunities for automation and self-service, further enhancing the patient experience.
4. Augmenting the Agent Experience: The agent experience is central to the patient experience. As routine tasks become automated, the skillset required for agents will evolve, emphasizing human intuition and empathy. We provide tools to augment agents’ capabilities, including real-time guidance, insights, and instant access to up-to-date knowledge articles, ensuring they always provide accurate and effective answers. Our tools also automate interaction summaries, allowing key points to be documented quickly and accurately, enabling agents to move seamlessly to the next interaction. With these tools, agents can assist patients efficiently without placing them on hold or transferring them. These insights are continuously refined as the system learns from prior interactions, driving ongoing improvements in agent efficiency and effectiveness.

One Medical’s AI and Human-led Experiences

To explain how NICE’s CXone platform addresses the challenges faced by most primary care providers, Marcus recounted One Medical, which bought the CXone platform. The customer aimed to improve the workforce, quality, performance, and after-call feedback management.

CXone tracked their inbound call volumes and call intervals. Using an IVR system, they observed trends and challenges in patient interactions. By leveraging interaction analytics, they were able to unlock insights to make their contact center services available 24/7 with the current staff and to expand their business. One Medical plans to expand with CXone and enable NICE’s GenAI capabilities with Copilot, Autopilot, and AutoSummary, all under a unified platform.

HOMELINK’s Efficient, Error-free Patient and Provider Experience

“There’s also another case study with HOMELINK. They were exploring ways to improve efficiencies to serve their customers better. They adopted NICE’s AI-driven proactive customer engagement technology,” Marcus adds. It helped their patients stay on top of their health plans with a multi-channel outreach campaign including text, calls, and email between patients and care providers for seamless communication. Previously, it involved many manual touch points with a high scope for errors, leading to no-shows and failure to follow up on patient appointments.

NICE’s proactive journey automation allowed HOMELINK to listen, identify, and start conversations while understanding when to bring in a human agent and update the data/feedback back to the systems. This resulted in improvement in efficiency and productivity for their patient engagements. “Nearly 9 in 10 users reported being able to report their updates in real time. HOMELINK also recorded a 30% increase in productivity per hour per employee,” Marcus shares.

Paving the Way Forward with PX

NICE’s platforms’ success is attributable to underlying technologies such as cloud, advanced analytics, digital tools, and AI. “It is a balancing act. NICE’s cutting-edge tools are also well-aligned with providers’ needs and recent regulatory standards.”

Behind NICE’s new product launch and product enhancement lies the company’s R&D teams’ effort, where they invested nearly $346 million and hold more than 529 patents. It proves NICE’s strong foundation in IP for leading breakthroughs across AI-driven healthcare tools, patient-centric workflows, and secure and compliant digital engagements.

Marcus also spoke about NICE’s most awaited developments in 2025, which include the latest enhancements to the AI-driven features for proactive patient outreach with reminder notifications. NICE’s strategic partnership with EPIC helps deliver seamless workflows and a centralized view of patient interactions to providers. This will help achieve the company’s goal of pushing the boundaries of what healthcare organizations can do to enhance patient experiences and outcomes.

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The Combined Forces of VRI and Higi Power Modivcare’s Monitoring Platform

Modivcare is a provider of innovative community and home monitoring solutions that leverage devices, digital tools, non-clinical, and clinical resources to efficiently and effectively engage populations in their care. The platform brings together two leaders in the monitoring space, combining the unique assets of each to create one powerful platform. VRI offers personal emergency response systems (PERS), vitals monitoring, and data-driven patient engagement solutions. While Higi brings forward its community network of Smart Health Stations and its telehealth-enabled Health Station model, digital engagement tools, and a national clinical network that powers its clinician-led home monitoring solution. This integrative solution suite offers a risk-appropriate service that evolves with the member over time to meet each member’s health and social related needs.

The combination of these two assets provides a glimpse into the company’s transformative vision and commitment to delivering meaningful engagement, data-driven insights, and compassionate care.

With proven outcomes aligned to member satisfaction, gap closure, and reduction in total cost of care, Modivcare’s monitoring platform proactively removes barriers to enable access for vulnerable populations by engaging with members in the ways that matter to them.

Modivcare’s Vision

Modivcare’s approach brings forward a new modality to support both rural and underserved populations who may lack access to traditional care settings, and who are more likely to suffer from adverse outcomes. The community screening platform can shorten the distance to healthcare, offering self-service vitals monitoring, risk assessment tools, and a platform to engage in virtual care. As risks and care needs are identified, home-based programs support a regular cadence of data collection, proactive monitoring of biometrics, clinical guidance via the clinical network, and access to support at the press of a button through PERS, text, or phone call.

The combined platforms offer an ideal complement to propel Modivcare’s vision forward. VRI’s incredible strength and legacy in PERS and vitals monitoring brings a strong history routed in outcomes tied to core customer objectives like driving member satisfaction, closing HEDIS care gaps, and reducing total cost of care, especially for the costliest members. Higi adds its clinical network to further strengthen the organization’s capabilities in alignment to its customers – a vision realized by Modivcare’s President and CEO L. Heath Sampson.

“We acquired Higi both for its Smart Health Station technology and network and its clinical network that serves as a backbone to care delivery offered by the newly imagined combined organization. Our strategy is to broaden our reach and deepen engagement with our members to meet their diverse needs,” Sampson says.

Mr. Sampson finds immense opportunity in rethinking how benefits historically considered to be supplemental can move the needle on important clinical measures that impact health plan outcomes, quality measures, and member satisfaction. Before becoming CEO, Sampson served as Modivcare’s CFO and led the business to focus on innovative healthcare offerings – specifically supportive care services.

Modivcare’s monitoring services are accessible to state agencies, Managed Care Organizations, Medicare Advantage Plans and care partners, with a special focus on helping its customers address vulnerable and underserved populations. The leadership team’s efforts to simplify healthcare for these communities through non-emergency medical transportation solutions (NEMT), in-home personal care, virtual and remote care, and integrated supportive care services are designed to positively impact their physical, emotional, and social wellbeing.

Member-Centered Care

Core to this vision is E3, another unique feature of the platform designed to enhance connections to care by prompting actionable steps and removing barriers for members. It fosters active participation by providing dynamic education tailored to each member’s health needs. By identifying individual needs and challenges, E3 empowers members to take control of their health.

The E3 platform evolves with members, adapting to changes in their health status and care requirements with continuous data collection that allows for proactive management and timely interventions. By integrating technology with personalized guidance, E3 sets a new standard in member-centered care, effectively prompting action and addressing barriers to health.

Impacting Members, Caregivers, and Healthcare Partners

The Modivcare monitoring team is consistently inspired by its mission to provide access to the care that matters for those who need it most. From digital experiences to human-touch, every interaction is a cause for inspiration that keeps teammates engaged in their work.

VRI’s in-home Vitals Monitoring Program serves as a powerful tool that provides a more complete picture of a member’s health and social needs, leading the provider to treat the patient more effectively resulting in better outcomes. In a study completed by Modivcare spanning 10 years of data, members with hypertension received an in-home blood pressure cuff that was monitored by VRI’s Care Center. The program included daily blood pressure monitoring, reminders for missed readings, 24/7 triaging for abnormal readings, and escalation reports to providers as appropriate. Results showed 52% of initially uncontrolled participants were within HEDIS control in six months.

Modivcare’s clinician-led service that collaborates with a member’s primary care provider, in partnership with the Michigan Center for Rural Health and three rural, critical access hospitals in Michigan, provided virtual care over the course of 18 months. Through clinician-led in-home monitoring and coaching with a dedicated nurse care manager, the number of individuals with controlled blood pressure readings doubled, increasing from 39% at the start to 78% by the end of the pilot period. Patients with previously uncontrolled hypertension experienced an average reduction of 27 mmHg systolic and 11 mmHg diastolic, achieving blood pressure readings in the normal range. In addition, many participating patients also improved their blood glucose and weight.

Modivcare’s self-guided monitoring services empower users with timely access to tools and information that makes a tangible difference. From the pregnant user who accessed a publicly available Higi Station to measure her vitals when something didn’t feel right – following the digital prompts to get to care immediately and ultimately crediting the platform with saving her baby’s life – to the platform user living alone who found comfort and reassurance in being able to regularly monitor their health, having access to self-screen and following actionable digital navigation made all the difference.

Modivcare remains deeply committed to its mission of delivering care that makes a tangible difference in the lives of those who need it most. By blending cutting-edge digital tools with compassionate human touch, Modivcare’s monitoring services empower individuals to take control of their health while fostering meaningful connections that inspire both patients and care providers. Each success story fuels Modivcare’s drive to expand access to care and redefine healthcare delivery for all.

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The company’s mission statement underscores its commitment to superior and smarter diagnostics for improved health outcomes. QuidelOrtho was the first to receive approval from the US FDA for an antigen-based test to aid in the detection of the coronavirus!

In 2024 and beyond, QuidelOrtho is exploring opportunities to add new tests to diagnose other health conditions and diseases to its Savanna® Real-Time PCR Testing Platform. This addition would address a critical need and open new avenues for building intelligent solutions. 

QuidelOrtho’s robust and integrated platforms provide comprehensive diagnostic insights beyond simple test results. These platforms enable healthcare providers to deliver more personalized care and make optimal patient-care decisions.

Start of the Innovation Journey

QuidelOrtho was born from the merger of two great industry pioneers, Quidel Corporation and Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, in 2022. Both companies embarked on a shared vision of serving patients fully by transforming diagnostic data into actionable insights. They shared a common legacy of innovation and excellence and combined these strengths to redefine possibilities in diagnostics.

Today, QuidelOrtho offers solutions that help serve the healthcare ecosystem, from small- to medium-volume/high-complexity hospitals to point-of-care settings in clinics and home use. As a unified company, QuidelOrtho boasts stronger innovation capabilities and leverages decades of expertise in the in-vitro diagnostics industry. Since healthcare diagnostics is the cornerstone of adequate healthcare, the company strives to keep up with the demand for patient- and customer-centric solutions. Their leadership and teams of dedicated researchers and scientists, with their unique experiences, build strategies and direction to advance as diagnostics innovators.

Being at the forefront of innovation in diagnostics allows us to contribute to a future where every individual has access to the best possible care.

Brian J. Blaser, the President and CEO of QuidelOrtho, also spoke about his role in driving a meaningful change in healthcare. He says, “Being at the forefront of innovation in diagnostics allows us to contribute to a future where every individual has access to the best possible care.” He believes the journey has been enriching, seeing how QuidelOrtho’s solutions positively impact lives around the globe and across the healthcare continuum.

QuidelOrtho’s innovation strategy is built on three core pillars: Cutting-Edge Technology, Collaborative Research, and Continuous Improvement. The company invests in advanced diagnostic technologies, such as molecular diagnostics and immunoassays, to develop products at the forefront of innovation. Its collaborative research with leading academic institutions and healthcare providers helps address emerging trends and clinical needs with relevant and practical solutions.

Solutions Impacting the Entire Care Continuum

When asked to talk about a flagship solution, Brian added that it is not about having just a single solution. QuidelOrtho’s innovations span centralized to decentralized areas, reference labs, regional reference labs, and up to at-home testing. Brian mentioned that the Sofia® 2 Platform is one of QuidelOrtho’s most recognizable solutions. It is a rapid immunoassay platform that epitomizes their commitment to impact the entire healthcare value chain.

The Sofia 2 platform is designed to provide rapid, accurate diagnostic results at the point of care using advanced fluorescence technology. This enables healthcare providers to make informed, timely decisions across the healthcare continuum – from large hospitals to physician office labs or pharmacies.

QuidelOrtho’s high-volume clinical laboratory solution delivers quality and efficiency when labs need them most. The Vitros® XT 7600 Integrated System and assays lead the industry in Six-Sigma-defined world-class or excellent quality. The Six Sigma classification on Vitros XT 7600 system creates quality assurance, enabling labs to deliver the right result the first time.

The system leverages Vitros MicroSlides, which incorporate dry-slide technology with no requirement for water and drains, making our solution flexible and easy to install.

Hospitals, especially small- to medium-volume ones, are segments where QuidelOrtho has successfully established its robust presence and value-add. This is a strategic position, as hospitals and hospital systems increasingly become the central hubs of healthcare delivery, responsible for a broader spectrum of care. They now own physician groups, urgent cares, and retail pharmacies, serving the entire continuum of care. Their solutions are integral in supporting these expanding needs, providing the right intelligence at the right time.

Beyond Diagnostic Results

Additionally, QuidelOrtho’s expertise is beyond delivering diagnostic results. The company also provides the intelligence that labs and doctors need to support their communities. QuidelOrtho’s solutions for lab professionals are designed to enhance workflow efficiency, reduce errors, and improve overall lab performance. By integrating advanced analytics and automation, these products help lab professionals deliver the highest levels of care with accuracy and speed, as demonstrated by our Vitros Systems, which can increase testing volume and improve turnaround times.

Staffing and labor shortages are significant challenges in the healthcare industry. QuidelOrtho’s products, designed for ease of use, reliability, and efficiency, help address these issues by reducing the need for highly technical labor. This allows existing staff to focus on tasks utilizing their expertise, knowledge, and skills, optimizing workforce productivity and enhancing overall healthcare delivery.

A Dependable Way of Infectious Disease Management

When asked about a notable use case, Brian mentioned an incident where the client needed help enhancing infectious disease management.

In a world still feeling the effects of the pandemic, a prominent healthcare provider network faced ongoing challenges with infectious disease outbreaks. They needed a swift and dependable way to identify and manage these cases to protect their patients and staff.

The Sofia 2 rapid testing platform provided an ideal solution. Its quick and accurate diagnostic results available at the point of care enabled the healthcare provider to swiftly identify and isolate affected individuals, preventing further spread within their facilities.

The Sofia 2 platform delivered the speed the provider needed to make prompt decisions with diagnostic results in minutes, not hours. It also provided accurate and reliable patient management results and offered the precision to effectively contain and treat infections. The platform’s flexibility helped the provider adapt to different settings, from emergency rooms to clinics. Also, the Sofia 2 platform was easy to integrate and use across various environments.

It helped deliver faster results with 80% reduced diagnostic turnaround time, allowing quicker interventions. The healthcare provider experienced improved accuracy rates, which led to fewer false results, facilitating proper patient management. Moreover, rapid, precise diagnostics meant timely treatments, reducing the impact and spread of infections. Overall, the improved efficiency allowed better resource use and eased the burden on the medical staff.

By utilizing QuidelOrtho’s advanced diagnostic tools, the healthcare provider improved its approach to managing infectious diseases, resulting in better patient care and a healthier community overall. This use case highlights how QuidelOrtho’s solutions empower healthcare providers to deliver top-tier care, making a tangible difference in public health.

The Way Forward

For the rest of 2024 and beyond, QuidelOrtho is focused on bringing forward several key assays that it believes can be game-changers in the industry. The company is expecting the launch of a new respiratory assay that could broaden the placement and accessibility of its molecular diagnostic tools. QuidelOrtho is also prioritizing the launch of sexually transmitted infections (STI) and gastrointestinal (GI) panels. The company sees a substantial opportunity to make a difference and drive growth in these areas.

The post QuidelOrtho Advancing Diagnostics for a Healthier Future appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.

The dynamics of hospital profitability encompass a multitude of factors. On the frontline, patient experience and clinical expertise drive brand loyalty and case volume. Equally critical is back-end operational efficiency, from perioperative utilization to compliance reporting and revenue cycle management (RCM), where even the smallest missteps can cascade into significant financial impacts.

Just as medical innovation opens new opportunities for clinical care, new technologies can help hospitals optimize operational performance to achieve better outcomes. One obstacle is that healthcare providers often lack the change management expertise, sophisticated technologies, knowledge capital, and bandwidth to implement new systems that create process improvement. For example, as some hospitals bring their medical specialty workforces in-house, they may struggle to manage all the specific nuances inherent in the complex quality reporting metrics required for reimbursements by CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) and private insurers. Even with the right tools in place, without the right experience, the substantial learning curve will be costly.

Similar problems affect RCM. In the anesthesia specialty, for instance, highly specialized billing and coding requirements include procedure type, duration, and complexity; patient diagnosis, and provider type(s). For hospitals that employ their anesthesia providers and try to handle anesthesia RCM in-house, coding errors may correlate to decreased revenue, while improving net collections by even a few percentage points can translate to capturing millions of dollars.

A new MSO solution

North American Partners in Anesthesia (NAPA), the nation’s largest single-specialty anesthesia management services organization, has partnered with healthcare providers since 1986 to provide patients with excellent experiences. Over nearly 40 years, NAPA has earned a reputation for being innovative, nimble, and a proactive catalyst for change.

Now, the company is deploying nearly four decades of anesthesia and change management expertise to provide certain health systems with an alternative for managing the business of anesthesia. Leveraging its leadership, scale, and robust IT resources, NAPA has introduced a Management Services Organization (MSO) solution with turnkey services for hospital clients who choose to convert or employ an in-house staffing model and seek a better way to manage certain support services, such as anesthesia billing and coding, payments, quality reporting, leadership development, transitional management, and other non-clinical services like anesthesia clinician recruiting and retention. NAPA’s MSO services can be tailored to support an institution’s unique perioperative success goals.

Rafael Cartagena, MD, NAPA CEO, says, “As a clinician-led company, the decision to launch a non-clinical MSO service line reflects NAPA’s long and successful track record in driving change management.” He notes that NAPA pioneered technologies for collecting and reporting quality analytics decades ago, and now maintains the nation’s largest anesthesia outcomes database, advancing clinical care with metrics from the two million patients it serves annually.

He adds that over the past decade, NAPA built a national infrastructure to support its approximately 400 healthcare facility partners in 22 states with senior clinical and business leaders at the local level. It invested in a digital and corporate transformation that revolutionized IT systems and streamlined processes in Quality Improvement, RCM, and OR Staffing and Utilization across the enterprise. Further investments in its People and Organization functions, including Talent Acquisition and Onboarding; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Human Resources Service Delivery; and Marketing and Communications, have focused on making NAPA the destination of choice for anesthesia clinicians, resulting in industry-leading retention rates.

NAPA has also earned some of the nation’s leading honors. In March 2022 and 2024, NAPA achieved HITRUST Certified status for its proactive approach to cybersecurity, data protection, and risk management. In 2022, the innovative Anesthesia Risk Alert (ARA) program, created under NAPA’s Patient Safety Organization, received the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Award from the National Quality Forum and The Joint Commission. In 2023, the American Society for Health Care Risk Management also recognized the ARA program with its Patient Safety Award. These coveted recognitions place NAPA in an elite group of organizations, assuring clients of exceptional IT security and clinical quality outcomes.

NAPA’s results in the change management, leadership development, RCM, recruiting, and quality arenas show that we do anesthesia better than anyone else. — Rafael Cartagena, MD, CEO, NAPA

Best-in-class

Dr. Cartagena says, “A big differentiator for our MSO clients is we use the same proven tools and change management processes that we use for NAPA’s own anesthesia RCM, recruitment, quality, and operations. As the leader in single-specialty anesthesia, we do anesthesia and change management better than anyone else. We prove our expertise through unmatched, transparent data and reporting.

NAPA’s powerful RCM engine delivers results for hundreds of healthcare clients. Many clients benefit from NAPA’s 95%-96% collection rate, often representing a 5%-20% improvement as compared to the rates produced by in-house RCM services. NAPA clients receive best-in-class metrics in measurable components, such as the regionally specific collection rate, charge lag, speed to collect, and denial rates.

NAPA recognized the need for this new MSO solution through observations of how health systems and academic medical centers struggled to adapt to evolving market pressures. Dr. Cartagena says that NAPA’s Client Services teams witnessed hospitals migrate to in-house staffing models without optimized payor contracts, maximized credentialing processes, the ability to collect and report anesthesia-specific quality data, or a robust administrative infrastructure required to convert to a sustainable in-house managed model.

Lacking experience in the business of anesthesia, healthcare facilities that excelled at anesthesia care delivery were challenged by change management in these specialized areas of anesthesia billing, value-based care metrics, and anesthesia-specific recruitment in a highly demanding labor market. In the anesthesia space, these functions are unique and complex for hospitals with in-house multi-specialty RCM and billing departments, recruitment teams, and quality improvement-focused resources

Dr. Cartagena explains that with a customized MSO contract—depending on the institution’s specific needs—NAPA can facilitate change management with quality metrics, or manage professional fee collections, for example, without the hospital losing revenue while its in-house RCM team gains proficiency the intricacies of anesthesia billing and coding.

What’s powering NAPA’s RCM?

NAPA achieves industry-leading RCM results through an innovative service platform, utilizing advanced technologies with proprietary rules engines developed and managed by highly experienced RCM and IT teams. Encompassing reconciliation, coding, data entry, eligibility and insurance verification, claims scrubbing, billings and collections, payment posting, balance management, patient balance billing, and payment acceptance, every service offering is designed for accuracy and acceptance across the revenue lifecycle. The company’s strategic investments in sophisticated tools and highly talented billing specialists deliver proven results through an integrated process that maximizes client reimbursements.

Additionally, NAPA’s MSO cutting-edge reporting package provides real-time key performance indicators (KPIs) monitoring, delivering insights into the health of an institution’s revenue cycle to help optimize workflows. This advanced reporting system allows for real-time analysis of leading and lagging indicators that can be easily reviewed through a user-friendly dashboard with the push of a button.

Prioritizing the patient experience

The clinicians who founded NAPA built the organization on a patient-first philosophy that still imbues its clinical and corporate operations from coast to coast. Thus, as the company developed its MSO services, it did so while recognizing that both hospitals and healthcare customers demand seamless change management and payment experiences. This becomes even more critical in the current competitive healthcare marketplace, because while patients who are highly satisfied will likely return to a hospital, dissatisfied customers often have many options to pursue care elsewhere—and are increasingly willing to share negative experiences online and in the media.

NAPA’s new MSO service provides clients with the same prioritization of patient-friendly experiences as the company uses for its own RCM. Features include a state-of-the-art patient billing experience that delivers diverse payment acceptance methods and allows for mobile and online omnichannel options, including the acceptance of most debit and credit cards, ACH/EFT, ApplePay, and GooglePay. NAPA’s understanding of how the total patient experience impacts satisfaction (and brand loyalty) is one of many reasons why the independent Black Book Survey has ranked NAPA #1 for “Anesthesia Management Services” for seven consecutive years.

Dr. Cartagena says the bottom line is this: “NAPA can provide white glove change management, leadership development, and other added value features for institutions who choose to keep their clinical autonomy. It is an elegant solution for health systems that don’t have the experience or resources to optimize anesthesia management. Through an MSO, we are consulting and managing the institution’s pain points—which could be recruitment and retention, revenue cycle, analytics and quality, HR capabilities, or building anesthesia leadership and perioperative culture. Our motto is Patients First, Partners Always. This new service is yet another way our healthcare partners can benefit from NAPA’s vast single-specialty anesthesia business experience.”

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Helping Hospitals Get Measurable ROI from Technology

Ascom’s expertise focuses on improving workflows in acute care hospitals and long-term care facilities. The company’s products are used in more than 46% of teaching hospitals in the U.S., and Ascom systems handle more than 800 million alerts every day. The Ascom Healthcare Platform (AHP) encompasses four key areas – nurse call, mobile devices, software and professional services. When customers standardize on the AHP portfolio, they realize the compounded benefits of Ascom’s comprehensive solutions, which are configured to their unique needs; however, being vendor neutral, the AHP also offers the flexibility for customers to integrate Ascom with other vendors’ solutions. Ascom’s solutions enable customers to implement important capabilities, from clinical surveillance with medical device integration (MDI) and clinical decision support, to remote patient monitoring of medical devices, and smart alarming and alerting.

David Gutillo, Director of Field Marketing Innovation in Healthcare at Ascom Americas, believes Ascom and its products are poised to become the enabling platform to which medical devices and systems in a hospital connects, and this will help shift the model to proactive, predictive care.

“We’ve designed our solutions and services to be highly configurable while also supporting standards and best practices to help hospitals meet their goals, whether it be increasing quality of care, reducing nursing turnover, improving patient outcomes or otherwise.”

We bring data to life. Every single second, Ascom systems generate 1.3 million data points, so making sense of all that information is extremely important for clinicians.

Powering Clinical Insights with Ascom Clinicians

The Ascom Healthcare Platform provides the clinical communication and workflow orchestration tools needed to meet a variety of challenges. Our team of veteran clinicians working directly with hospital staff in designing and optimizing workflows, makes a difference in deploying effective solutions that are truly force multipliers. Ascom Americas’ Clinical Application Specialist Kenneth Catoe states that the clinical data analytics team helps hospitals better understand the information their technology is generating by analyzing it and consulting with customers to improve care quality. Because hospitals are dynamic environments this service helps them manage the changes with actionable and goal-oriented insights.

“We bring data to life. Every single second, Ascom systems generate 1.3 million data points, so making sense of all that information is extremely important for clinicians”, Catoe shares. He goes on to add, “When we’re consulting on workflow design, we’re trying to look at the entire picture, from the data our systems are generating and taking other data into account too. Then we combine data analysis with what we’ve seen and learned onsite along with our clinical expertise to provide recommendations for improvements.”

Fellow Ascom Americas clinician Huyen Cam notes that, “This process of identifying areas for continued improvements helps hospitals meet their KPIs, whether it’s being more efficient with nurses working at their top of license to discharging patients faster and increasing throughput.”  

Empowering Customers with Solutions That Make a Difference

Ascom solutions are making a difference for customers. For example, RiverSpring Living, a senior living facility in New York, is using the complete AHP, beginning with implementing the Ascom nurse call system. Staff use an Ascom Myco smartphone to receive alerts from Ascom’s Unite software, so as soon as a resident presses the nurse call button, staff can respond immediately. During the first year of operation, RiverSpring Living processed more than 90,000 alerts and answered 95 percent of calls in less than two minutes. This ROI is making a difference in both resident and nurse satisfaction. 

In another example, Ascom’s Unite software solution helped a Southern California Hospital experience a 32% reduction in alarm notification messages sent to caregivers through basic filtering rules. By using a 10-second alarm filtering delay, the hospital saw a 38% reduction in alarm notification. This improvement resulted in smoother, more efficient workflows and made alarms more actionable and relevant.

A Complete Provider for Clinical Workflow Solutions

Ascom offers a full range of services through its network of more than 150 partners and 2,000 technicians to help hospitals realize the benefits of Ascom solutions. Technical services include plans for hardware repair, software upgrades and technical support as well as remote monitoring of a customer’s IT infrastructure connected to the AHP.

Delivering Continuous Innovation and Sustainability

A five-point strategic plan guides Ascom Americas and its regional leadership team, consisting of Kelly Feist, Managing Director; Corrado Grieci, Vice President of Sales; Tom McKearney, SVP Business Development and Marketing; Michael Augusti, Head of Market Innovation; Nancy Duffy, Finance Head; Robert Wittwer, SVP Professional Services and Chris LaFratta, SVP, Customer Success. For the near term, Ascom is delivering against four strategic pillars to accelerate growth and performance. Continuous innovation underpins this focus to further embed Ascom as a critical infrastructure at the center of delivery of care in the acute care environment. Over the longer term, many of Ascom’s solutions will continue evolving to become a cloud-native platform while enhancing MDI, alarm management, clinical collaboration, and augmented intelligence capabilities. Smart Nurse Call will evolve with enhanced software and hardware capabilities, and better designs will streamline installing and configuring them. With the Ascom Healthcare Platform, the future for clinical workflow technologies that help hospitals solve some of their biggest challenges looks bright and laden with opportunity.

The post Ascom Americas Powers Clinical Efficiencies & Quality of Care appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.

Additionally, the platform allows early recognition of patient deterioration and improvement to enable clinical teams to optimize the patient journey across the care continuum, which can reduce length of stay (LOS) and help address overflow in critical care units.

The comprehensive AI-driven platform is used in 100+ ICUs worldwide and has demonstrated clinical outcomes, like decreased hospital lengths of stay, decreased ICU re-admissions, and reduced time on mechanical ventilation and other invasive treatments, such as vasoactive support. The outcomes impact not only the quality of patient care but also curb medical staff burnout.

The advanced AI algorithms powering the Etiometry platform provide early warning signs of clinical deterioration to prompt care teams to escalate and de-escalate care. These risk indices can interact with the platform’s clinical pathway automation capability, which essentially automates the hospital’s specific workflows or protocols.

Keeping Chaos Out of the ICUs

“The ICU is the most complex, expensive, and unpredictable care setting in healthcare, requiring rapid decision-making, often using snapshots of information,” says Shane Cooke, Etiometry’s President and CEO. Etiometry’s technologies and its team are driven by the passion for improving the lives of patients and their caregivers. Shane’s vision fosters a culture where customers are partners to the company. And working closely to understand their specific clinical situations helps identify ways to enhance their clinical and operational workflows. It helps optimize the care team’s communication.

For a decade, Etiometry’s cutting-edge platform has been a game-changer in the industry. The platform has secured nine FDA clearances, supported more than 150 clinical studies and provided unparalleled insight into patient physiology to help clinical teams deliver care that enhances quality and reduces costs.

Shane has over two decades of experience working with large enterprises and start-ups. He leads a diverse team at Etiometry, which includes software engineers, data scientists, ICU clinicians, and medical device and software industry veterans. Collectively, they work towards Etiometry’s core business philosophy and development efforts to automate the care escalation and de-escalation workflows. The most recent research and development initiative involves workflow automation, starting from patient admission to discharge, to provide the best-in-class clinical decision support.

Unlike conventional patient health monitoring modalities, Etiometry provides in-depth information on longitudinal trends using patient physiology to enable a personalized and proactive approach to clinical decisions. Coupled with the chaos in the ICU environment and typical hospital resource constraints, including staffing, critical care units are at risk of suboptimal care and patient outcomes. The overarching goal of Etiometry is to replace chaos with important data elements and in-depth, real-time insights into patient physiology.

Driving Outcomes with Interlinked Systems and High-fidelity Data

For a decade, Etiometry’s cutting-edge platform has been a game-changer in the industry. The platform has secured nine FDA clearances. To date, it has been deployed across 150 clinical studies. Additionally, the platform uses algorithms that allow early risk detection or patient conditions to support care decisions. These FDA-cleared algorithms, or risk indices, were developed utilizing more than 150 million hours of de-identified patient data. The indices guide treatment to help clinicians get ahead of patient deterioration, by providing an objective data-driven continuous assessment of the risk of patient deterioration, facilitating both efficient escalation and safe de-escalation decisions.

In addition, the Etiometry Quality Improvement App (QIA), is a tremendous value-add to clinical researchers and quality improvement professionals. It provides high-fidelity data for studies to improve patient care. The QIA is a separate API providing very detailed data in which researchers can assess outcomes for patients and evaluate adherence to important protocols. It also helps test clinical hypotheses. Moreover, the QIA is a searchable, normalized database that supports both single-center and multi-center research. Etiometry has supported more than 150 clinical studies to date.

Elaborating on the functionality within the Etiometry platform, Shane highlighted its improved representation of clinical data compared to EHR data. The features enable seamless extension of the EHR for effective patient care in high acuity settings. The feature allows integration of high-frequency device data and EHR information to provide a single source of truth about patient information for the clinical teams. Bridging the information gap between bedside monitoring and EHR powers the clinical decision support with high-fidelity data.

Building A Pathway for Successful Clinical Outcomes

One of Etiometry’s customer success stories involves the automation of an extubation readiness protocol. The result was that it led to a 19% reduction in hospital length of stay and a 22% reduction in time on ventilation. A typical extubation process is challenging and driven by several clinical factors. Additionally, respiratory therapists at the customer’s hospital had many patients to manage and detailed protocols to follow to determine the right time for patient extubation. When combined, these factors tend to result in patients remaining on ventilators longer than needed. Etiometry worked with an ICU to assess its current extubation protocol by retrospectively analyzing the data collected for thousands of patients. Based on this analysis, changes were made to the protocol parameters, and a real-time alert was developed to flag patients for extubation readiness tests and to track compliance with the chosen criteria.

The Etiometry platform was used to identify patients with active alerts for being ready for an extubation test and to quickly assess the outcome of the test to make more informed ventilation decisions. This automated pathway was utilized with ~750 patients.

After driving several advancements and innovations in the realm of critical care, Etiometry is poised to invest the current year in development efforts to expand its waveform functionality, as well as its automated clinical pathways to cover more disease states and patient populations. In 2024, Etiometry will continue to enhance EHR integration with more hospital systems and platforms to aid informed clinical decisions in hospitals and critical care units.

The post Etiometry: Pioneering the use of AI in Health Tech – A Trailblazer Before AI Became Mainstream appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.

To create a sustainable healthcare system of the future, healthcare providers are turning to vendor partners who can offer integrated tech solutions in the OR, aggregating huge amounts of data from different sources and modalities to provide insight. Data analysis, decision support, patient pathway planning, and OR workflow are key areas of interest, with outputs aimed to make surgeries safer and smarter. Caresyntax has created a new category of technology to address this challenge. The Caresyntax Data-Driven Surgery Platform enables health systems, payor partners, and industry innovators to aggregate and distill data from the massive surgical ecosystem, leverage data for insights, and innovate in ways to create a sustainable and resilient health system of the future.

The Caresyntax vendor neutral, enterprise-grade surgical technology platform delivers actionable insights through AI-powered software, devices, and clinical services, analyzing large volumes of clinical, operational, and financial data to improve patient outcomes and operational efficiency.

Clinical Benefits: Leveraging Technology for Optimal Surgical Workflow Efficiency at Every Step

Caresyntax is revolutionizing the surgical space by harnessing the power of data to drive excellence in every phase of the surgical journey. From preoperative planning to postoperative analysis, the vendor-neutral platform captures and returns useful information through the entire surgical process from all modalities: Electronic Health Records (EHRs), inventory & supply chain systems, financial records, and high-definition surgical footage. Assembling this data into a High-Fidelity Surgical Record, the platform utilizes Intel® Edge computing technology to return useful outputs to improve patient safety and improving clinical outcomes. Whether through industry-leading and clinically validated procedural assessments and surgical guides, or through real time AI-driven patient risk models, Caresyntax is focused on redefining surgical quality through continuous education, development, and improvement. And, with available telepresence add-on capability, Caresyntax can create a surgical education environment where surgeons can learn advanced techniques directly from the experts in their fields, fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement in surgical practices across geographic and socioeconomic barriers.

Safeguarding Data Collected for Enhancing Surgical Quality and Safety

Caresyntax, a recognized Patient Safety Organization (PSO) for Surgery, prioritizes the protection of surgical data collected across the care continuum. With robust anonymization and privacy controls, Caresyntax ensures the confidentiality of data used in surgical variation reduction, error reduction, and quality improvement programs.

Caresyntax’s commitment to data protection empowers healthcare providers to confidently pursue quality improvement initiatives, knowing their efforts and the generated data are safeguarded. Thus, Caresyntax is transforming healthcare from a culture of “blame and shame” to one of constant improvement and forward momentum.

Operational Improvements: Enhancing Operational Efficiency with Data-Driven Insights

The Caresyntax platform transforms perioperative efficiency by utilizing surgical data for real-time decision-making and remote collaboration. It enriches post-surgery analysis, enabling continuous improvement in surgical practices and resource management. This approach not only supports healthcare providers but also aids medical device manufacturers and insurers by offering insights derived from comprehensive risk assessments.

With the introduction of dynamic surgical scheduling solutions, Caresyntax is further optimizing operating room allocations, reducing scheduling conflicts, and improving patient flow.

Key features include:

• Empowerment of leaders with actionable insights for scheduling optimization, operational throughput, and cost efficiency.
• Data-driven optimization of OR team composition for enhanced procedure outcomes.

With Caresyntax’s data-driven insights, hospitals have experienced substantial improvements, such as:

• 39% increase in operation room scheduling block utilization
• 25% increase in billable minutes
• 40% decrease in after-hours cases

Maximizing Financial Outcomes: Expanding Surgical Services for Increased Volume, Reimbursement, and Profitability

Caresyntax significantly boosts financial performance in healthcare by leveraging surgical data to enhance growth, increase patient volume, improve reimbursements, and boost profitability. The Caresyntax platform offers a comprehensive suite of tools for hospitals and surgery centers, blending unstructured and structured data from various sources to provide a holistic view of surgical care. This enables proactive risk management and better negotiations for value-based contracts. Through advanced financial analytics and customizable tools, Caresyntax identifies cost-saving opportunities and supports service line expansion and marketing with real-world evidence. Additionally, it promotes the development of high-performing teams, facilitating the transition to value-based payment models and positioning organizations at the forefront of healthcare innovation.

Hospitals using Caresyntax have reported remarkable financial outcomes, including:

• Up to 1.5 more surgeries per day
• More than $300k additional revenue per OR
• More than $500 additional savings per OR case, based on better block time utilization.

AI-driven insights are transforming surgical care by enabling a personalized approach to patient treatment, enhancing safety, and care quality.

Pioneering Healthcare Innovation through with Insurers and Medtech Partners

The success of the Caresyntax platform is perhaps most well represented in its innovative partnership with Relyens, a European leader in insurance and risk management, to enhance surgical safety and efficiency through a category-defining Risk Management as a Service (RMaaS). RMaaS embodies a holistic approach to healthcare by combining risk management, Caresyntax technology, best practices, and insurance solutions, to improve patient safety and reduce costs and complications over the entire cycle of care.

And, with its newest offering, Clinical Data as a Service (CDaaS), Caresyntax now offers proven and scalable data collection and data science capabilities for industry partners to grow revenue, measure and improve value, and inform product development. CDaaS offers contextual data collection that is unmatched by current players, lower costs compared to traditional research organizations, and shortened timelines compared to in-house data collection teams.

About Caresyntax

Caresyntax is on a mission to make surgery safer and smarter by converging AI-powered software, devices, and clinical services to help customers improve surgical outcomes. Our vendor neutral, enterprise-grade surgical intelligence platform delivers actionable insights to improve patient outcomes by using proprietary software and artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze large volumes of video, audio, images, device data, clinical and operational data in and around the OR. This real-world evidence can be used by the care team live, during a procedure, and accessed by those outside the operating room via the platform’s dedicated telehealth link. After a procedure, the Caresyntax platform provides insights that help surgeons benchmark and improve their care, hospital administrators use surgical resources more efficiently, medical device companies advance better products, and insurance companies understand risk and devise more tailored policies. Headquartered in San Francisco in the US and internationally in Berlin, Caresyntax software is used in more than 3,000 operating rooms worldwide and supports surgical teams in more than three million procedures per year.

For more information on how Caresyntax can make surgery safer, smarter, and more profitable, visit www.caresyntax.com.

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In the rapidly evolving world of healthcare finance, Infinx Healthcare is emerging as a key innovator, helping transform revenue cycle management (RCM) through cutting-edge automation and AI technologies. Infinx’s journey began almost a decade ago as the founding team began building a tech-enabled, end-to-end RCM solution. “We believed technology could be a force-multiplier in achieving the desired healthcare outcomes for our clients,” reflects Infinx’s Chief Product Officer, Navaneeth Nair.

The Evolution of Infinx’s Healthcare Revenue Cloud ^TM

They set out to build a comprehensive, cloud-based platform to power their RCM service offerings and tackle the fragmented, burdensome aspects of the revenue cycle. Infinx chose prior authorization as its initial challenge, understanding that manual-only methods were insufficient for solving this complex problem. They soon realized the need for human involvement in any effective technological solution. This insight set the direction for their product development roadmap: to amplify and orchestrate human efforts with technology, rather than replace them. Nair shares, “Our objective was to assist our in-house specialists with technology, supporting and amplifying their capabilities.”

Simply automating tasks was not enough. It needed other components to adequately cover all that is required to truly overcome revenue cycle obstacles their healthcare clients faced. Over the years, the platform evolved to intelligently automate tasks and assign tasks efficiently when manual intervention is required. It continues to learn and predict. The platform displays relevant revenue cycle analytics, proactively assesses and suggests next steps. Critical for adoption and continued use by Infinx’s clients, interoperability with provider systems and connections with payers is prioritized. The platform’s foundation on secure AWS for Health cloud ensures HIPAA compliance and scalability, allowing providers, large and small, to scale their operations without needing additional hardware or licenses.

Revenue Cycle Automation Journey

Continuing with their philosophy of augmented human performance, Infinx developed its own robotic process and cognitive automation technology. Initially, they designed automations for activities requiring minimal cognitive effort. However, they noticed that when healthcare providers attempted to automate entire workflows, the automation would fail at some point, leading to backlogs as staff reverted to manual processes for task completion. Infinx’s approach aimed to create a system that would avoid such pitfalls​​.

In developing automations for specific workflows, breaking down tasks based on their cognitive requirements was essential. “We focused on automating ‘no reasoning’ tasks and combining automation with AI for ‘low level’ reasoning tasks, leaving clinical responsibilities and higher reasoning tasks to humans,” explains Nair. “These ‘digital workers,’ capable of operating unattended, transform the way routine tasks like eligibility and benefit checks, prior authorization initiation and follow-up and claim payment follow-ups are handled, reducing the need for human intervention in these areas.

For those tasks that required manual intervention, they created “human-in-the-loop” or attended automations, wherein bots executed mundane, repetitive tasks, while human expertise is utilized for critical clinical decisions and data input. “This synergy ensures not only efficiency and clinical accuracy but also compliance with healthcare regulations,” shares Nair.

As the number of automations developed increased, Infinx launched a standalone Revenue Cycle Automation platform. This platform enables providers to subscribe to a variety of pre-built automations, ranging from EHR and payer automations to claims management and credentialing, allowing clients to implement their automations within weeks.

Solid Artificial Intelligence Foundation

Early on, Infinx recognized the significance of a platform that evolves and learns over time. They formed a data science team to harness the wealth of data processed by their solutions, initially focusing on machine learning to decode payer behavior in prior authorization—a task traditionally handled by manually updated rules. Infinx’s AI dynamically adapted to the rapid changes in payer policies, enhancing decision-making accuracy and timeliness. Their engineers have also worked on bringing order to the unstructured data prevalent in revenue cycle processing. With much of this data still existing in paper form, they developed document capture AI technology to process it effectively.

Nair expresses his enthusiasm: “I’m most excited about the fact that every Infinx platform is going to be a self-learning platform. This means our solutions will continuously improve from human-data interactions, becoming increasingly intelligent in supporting and augmenting user work.”

Their central thesis revolves around the synergy of technology and team effort in executing revenue cycle functions. This is the essence of Infinx’s Healthcare Revenue Cloud ^TM  platform.

The AI functionality in Infinx’s Patient Access Plus platform is a testament to their commitment to continuous learning and improvement. Its machine learning algorithms evolve with each processed prior authorization request, becoming smarter and quicker. The AI assists in determining the necessity of prior authorization, predicts turnaround times, identifies gaps in required information, and drives regular follow-up for updates​​.

Infinx leverages AI in its A/R Recovery and Denial Management (ARDM) platform. By analyzing historical claims data, their algorithms quickly detect patterns and trends associated with claim denials, enabling better prediction and mitigation of future denials. Predictive analytics within the platform proactively adapt to payer behavior and policy changes, providing billing teams helpful information to optimize claim submissions to prevent denials.

A national radiology group streamlined over $100 million in accounts receivables, achieving a 28 percent increase in collections, reduced 120-day aging A/R by 60 percent and accomplished a 20 percent reduction in 90+ days aging A/R in just two months. Nair recalls, “These results demonstrate the power of our technology in transforming revenue cycle management. For this client, ARDM effectively identified A/R most likely to win reimbursement, proving to be a reliable tool for them to recoup earned revenue due to them.”

Robust Revenue Cycle Analytics

Despite so much data generated from revenue cycle interactions being available, providers continue to try to solve the same problems and rely on spreadsheets or out-of-box BI tools to make sense of the data. While EMR systems may show RCM data, it is difficult to drill-down to assess root causes and use that data to power optimization initiatives.

Infinx built its own analytics pipeline so they could take any data source and convert it into more actionable information for their users. Their robust analytics dashboards provide on-demand insights across all revenue cycle stages, enabling data-driven decision-making.

Optimizing Human and Automation Synergy with Intelligent Workforce Management

Infinx has seamlessly integrated intelligent workforce management on their platform, enabling effortless orchestration of human intervention and automated efficiency. Advanced work algorithms effectively identify the number of resources required and then dynamically assigns and manages work. Nair elaborates, “This system is designed to maximize resource utilization, enhancing both productivity and efficiency across workflows.”

Moreover, the platform enables providers to adapt to fluctuating case volumes or staffing challenges. This flexibility is important for their software-only enterprise clients, providing them with the ability to effortlessly scale their resources and manage workloads efficiently, with the ability to assign a subset of cases to Infinx’s specialists to work when desired.

Looking Ahead

While AI and machine learning-led solutions in the healthcare ecosystem have been gaining momentum, the prevalence of disparate, legacy systems and manual data entry lead to data siloes and human error challenges.

Infinx’s central thesis revolves around the synergy of technology and team effort in executing revenue cycle functions. This is the essence of their Healthcare Revenue Cloud ^TM platform. “This holistic approach positions Infinx as a forward-thinking, solution-oriented SaaS provider in the healthcare industry,” said Nair. “The integration of AI, automation, and human collaboration with enhanced interoperability between different systems will result in a more efficient, patient-centric healthcare system.”

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Telemedicine emerged as a tool to provide basic primary care services to rural/remote locations by conducting virtual visits via videoconference or a phone call. Before the onset of a global pandemic, the utilization of remote patient monitoring (RPM) was minimal. In recent times, telemedicine has become the limelight in healthcare practices. Its impact on the industry has been substantial and continues to grow. Barring all geographical restrictions, patients are now able to receive the care they need from their comfort zone, reducing the risk and overcrowding.

Telehealth enhanced chronic disease management (CDM) through frequent monitoring and communication between healthcare providers and patients with chronic conditions. This proactive approach leads to better disease management and improved patient outcomes. Telemedicine is immensely valuable for specialized services like psychiatry, dermatology, etc. With telemedicine, patients often experience shorter wait times for appointments as they can access care more quickly than traditional in-person visits. This is particularly important for non-emergency care. Virtual appointments are less likely to be missed by patients, leading to improved continuity of care and better patient adherence to treatment plans.

Telemedicine platforms include patient portal and educational resources, enabling patients to access information about their conditions and treatment options, fostering better health literacy.

Investments in AI are expected to grow as the health industry recognizes the value of AI in enhancing patient care, addressing some of the challenges faced in healthcare delivery.

Wearable medical devices and sensors play a vital role in telemedicine, providing continuous, real-time monitoring of vital signs, health metrics and activity levels. This continuous data stream allows for more comprehensive insights into patient’s health. These devices can detect subtle changes in the parameters, allowing early detection of potential health issues. Some wearables remind patients of their medications or dosage instructions. This improves medication adherence, and is of help for individuals, particularly with complex medication regimes.

With the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI), telemedicine revolutionized the way healthcare services are delivered, monitored and managed remotely. AI technologies are integrated into EMR to enhance accessibility, efficiency, accuracy and outcomes. AI can analyze data and trends for anomalies, allowing healthcare providers to intervene proactively in chronic disease management. Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms can transcribe and analyze during telehealth visits, reducing the provider documentation time and yielding appointment slots for more visits. AI is deemed to be promising in provider satisfaction by reducing administrative workload. Better financial outcomes can be fostered from more accurate documentation and coding.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic heightened the adaption of telemedicine as an initial encounter for patient screening, throughout the country, many health systems struggled with enabling their legacy EMR systems to provide telemedicine features. Practices experienced challenges procuring technology and changing their workflows designed for in-person encounters.

Some healthcare programs that swiftly enabled their practices with telemedicine, grappled with clinical staff adoption. A diminutive percentage of physicians remain conservative of the telemedicine practice compared with in-person care. Preeminent reasons are identifying patients for in-person versus televisit, low reimbursement rates for virtual visits, technological barriers etc. Telemedicine limits physician’s ability to perform physical examinations, which are crucial for diagnosing certain conditions. Physicians may need to rely on patients’ descriptions and observations, potentially leading to incomplete assessments.

The limitations of adaption of telemedicine are not only with practices, but also with patients. The barriers may not be the same as they were a few years ago, but they are still persistent among the patient demographics, technology literacy and financial circumstances. Especially in underserved and rural areas, patients may not have access to smartphones, computers or internet connections to utilize telemedicine. Older adults may lack the digital literacy skills needed to schedule appointments and utilize video conferencing.  Patients with disabilities may encounter accessibility issues with telemedicine platforms, such as screen readers, captions, or other assistive technologies. In addition, the providers and patients experience privacy and security concerns. Ensuring the security and privacy of patient information during virtual consultations is a significant affair. Physicians must adhere to the regulations and utilize secure communication tools.

To address these adaptation issues, healthcare organizations should offer training and support to the clinical staff as well as patients. Implement user-friendly telemedicine platforms, and ensure clear policies and procedures are in place. One strategy is to leverage super users along with providers for an effortless experience of virtual care encounters. The provider should be supported by technology platform experts readily available to troubleshoot any issues that emerge during the encounter. Another way is to engage patients via technology bar (Tech-Bar) during in-person visit and empower them with the tools they need to utilize telehealth services for better disease management.

Over time, as AI in telemedicine becomes more integrated into healthcare systems, it brings about a wide range of benefits and transformations. And as physicians gain experience, many of these challenges can be overcome, leading to more widespread acceptance and effective use of telemedicine in medical practice. However, it also brings challenges related to data privacy, ethics, and ensuring AI technologies are adopted responsibly and equitably across diverse patient populations. Investments in AI are expected to grow as the health industry recognizes the value of AI in enhancing patient care, addressing some of the challenges faced in healthcare delivery. These investments encourage innovations, driving research and development, and creating solutions that potentially benefit patients and providers.

The post The Role of Telemedicine in Healthcare and its Transformative Impact on the Industry appeared first on HealthTech Magazines.

The company’s services for hospitals, imaging centers, mobile imaging companies, and radiology medical groups are created with an exclusive vision of empowering healthcare structures to not sacrifice the quality of patient care.

Earl Maes, the CEO and Medical Director of Emergence Teleradiology, has over two decades of experience involving clinical medicine, radiology, and business leadership. His knowledge and awareness about the gaps between the patients and their radiologists gave him the opportunity to build solution offerings that better the radiology experience by making it more personal, reliable, and detailed.

Patient-friendly Diagnostics

From a patient’s standpoint, there are always questions about their health conditions, diagnostics reports, and treatment plans. Giving radiology departments the hands-on tools to answer patient queries with accuracy is a game changer in the healthcare field. “The primary objective of Emergence Teleradiology is to always advocate for the patient and provide them with the most insightful report,” says Earl. “Sometimes this means we recommend a patient not have contrast due to poor kidney function or perhaps we recommend a different type of exam altogether to better evaluate the symptoms the patient is experiencing.”

The primary objective of Emergence Teleradiology is to always advocate for the patient and provide them with the most insightful report.

Emergence Teleradiology leverages superior technology to improve efficiency within the hospital teleradiology service. That includes state-of-the-art security, redundant offsite storage of all images, reports in secure data centers, voice recognition and battle-proven templates, as well as customer service coordinators to directly link radiologists and all the company’s imaging customers.

Typically, most radiology programs need to be quite large in order to support radiologists sub-specializing in the many different areas of radiology. Emergence Teleradiology’s nighthawk radiology services can be tailored as per the customers’ needs. They can be scaled as desired due to the automated and expandable layered features. The nighthawk radiology services include final or preliminary radiology interpretations, specialty interpretation and more. Additionally, Emergence Teleradiology also provides patient billing and image storage.

Boosting Hospitals’ Radiology Efficiencies

Hospitals that do not have enough bandwidth to conduct health exams often hire an additional radiologist which ends up impacting them financially or would have to rely on their existing radiology staff. The latter situation leads to overworked staff in the radiology departments. When hospitals collaborate with Emergence Teleradiology, they help combine ‘the volumes of three hospitals’ and use one radiologist to cover those three hospitals. This makes a significant difference to the hospitals that end up with better cost savings. In addition, Emergence Teleradiology has specialists in areas such as pediatric radiology, neuroradiology, or orthopedic radiology, which a hospital-based may not be able to provide themselves.

“I enjoy the opportunity to work with hospital radiology departments to fine-tune their existing imaging protocols,” adds Earl. “Often, something as simple as changing the imaging plane on a reconstruction can greatly increase the sensitivity for making a particular diagnosis.”

Well-Rounded Team Equals Superior Offering

Behind Emergence Teleradiology’s customer success stories is its leadership team, which ultimately oversees the quality assurance program and provides recommendations for additional continuing medical education when deficiencies are identified. The team regularly meets with the radiology directors and ER directors at the hospitals to ensure the core objectives are fulfilled. The goals can range from turnaround times for stat exams, ensuring that critical results are called to the facility and documented in the reports. Additionally, they monitor Emergence Teleradiology’s stroke protocols that have been established to help patients as quickly as possible.

Since the company’s inception, Emergence Teleradiology has spread its operations from one state to 26 states across the nation. Emergence Teleradiology proudly offers HL7 interfaces to all our customers so that the radiology reports will seamlessly be directed into the hospital’s medical records.

“Because we provide this service ourselves and do not outsource it to a third-party technology company, we are able to establish these interfaces much quicker,” explains Earl. Emergence Teleradiology also is known for providing more customizations around this to their healthcare customers.

Channeling the AI Momentum  

For the road ahead, Emergence Teleradiology plans to provide more teleradiology coverage in the western states of the United States which is a relatively new market. When asked about their plans to integrate emerging technologies such as AI in radiology, Emergence Teleradiology, as a company, believes it as an efficiency driver. AI independently is not advanced enough to replace the indispensable role of a radiologist. But as a technology, it does help in adding the confidence, increasing the sensitivity, and drawing attention to findings that are often very subtle to the naked eye.

There have already been several industry-backed research and use cases involving AI deployed across medical imaging. The overarching goal has always been enabling radiologists to do more with less and speed up diagnostics exam throughput. With the demand for improved image quality, hospitals and healthcare companies look at taking a step further with better capability to organize and pull data for compliance and reporting. AI combined with the technological superiority of Emergence Teleradiology, the company has the potential to put an end to physician burnout and help offset issues with radiologist staff shortages in hospitals.

One of the significant areas where Emergence Teleradiology presently leverages AI is in detecting strokes with CT perfusion. This not only helps radiologists see the stroke, but also identify which parts of the stroke that are potentially salvageable when treated promptly.

Emergence Teleradiology plans to continue the adoption of AI-driven capabilities in its service offerings and roll out AI programs to improve radiologists’ interpretations and make the ever-challenging diagnosis more comprehensive.

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