Healthcare Business Today

Your leading source for best practices across the healthcare spectrum

The Continuing Quest to End Pain

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Pain is perhaps the most universal medical symptom. More conditions are identified by pain than by perhaps any other factor, and management of pain is typically more important to patients than any other relief strategy.

We often assume that the arsenal of weapons against pain is already complete, that there are no new opportunities on the horizon. However, that assumption is inaccurate.

Pain relief is certainly achievable with the complement of drugs currently available, but not every case of pain is ideally managed with those drugs. The fact is that many drugs are not perfect, but they are the best available, so we proceed with them. As a result, business and government continue the pursuit of ever-better pain medications, addressing several problems with existing drugs.

Reducing Side Effects

There is no such thing as a drug with no side effects. There are some that have minimal impact and some that don’t impact every patient, but it takes only a glance at the label to know that the potential is there.

Research is trying to overcome this and help to build drugs that don’t carry a risk of damage to the heart, liver, kidneys, or other organs. Because so many drugs are taken over a long period of time, this research can take years, requiring a series of researchers and an effective means of biobanking that allows samples to be stored and tracked for many years. The complexity of that process alone sheds light on why these drugs take so long to develop. [Read more…]

How to Effectively Market Your Practice

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Thriving and maintaining a competitive edge in the healthcare industries requires active marketing on one’s part. A person would be mistaken to assume that it is beyond their scope, but with the information outlined here, adoption of the same will likely attract much-needed traffic to social sites and increased conversion rates. For one to thrive, it is crucial that they excel in their practice- word of mouth remains to be one of the most effective marketing tools today.

Create and regularly updates social sites

Whether a person is a doctor of osteopathic medicine (D.O) or in a specialized field at Regulatory Affairs Consultant New York-based office not being online means an individual or practice is losing business. A majority of persons first conduct an online search of a brand before interacting with them. One, therefore, fairs well ahead of the competition they have a website and social media channels they can disseminate information. These mediums should, however, remain updated and provide content valuable to their demographic; constant sales content proves to work against companies as it negates the human experience people wish to have with a business.

Open a blog

Blogs prove to be useful as they allow for the generation of content that patients and others find helpful. Posting once weekly information that patients receive once a week can ask as a reference point for them when discussing with others their learnings. Ultimately, blog posts improve search engine rankings especially when the same is shared on social media channels. Always remember, as in all your content, to use keywords and phrases patients tend to search. However, overdoing it would lead to search engines labeling the content spam. [Read more…]

Understanding the Thriving World of Telemedicine

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Getting to the out-patient waiting lounge unwell and realizing there is a long queue ahead of you is a familiar feeling that perhaps most of the world’s population shares. It is for that reason and others that the adoption of telemedicine is gaining traction. It gives medical practitioners the ability to evaluate a patient based on symptoms, diagnose and treat them, all without the need of seeing them in person. It sounds like a dream come true for many you’ve spent hours on end in hospitals as they are shuffled around various waiting rooms.

Telemedicine is not entirely a new phenomenal; what changed was the mediums with which it took place. Telephones and telegraphs allowed for these events to take place at the turn of the century though it was restricted to those with the means. Three types of telemedicine exist: interactive, patient monitoring and store-and-forward.

In the interactive format, doctors and patients engage in real-time conversations through approved Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act regulations video conferencing software and via telephone. Here, the patient is at their home. With remote patient monitoring (or telemonitoring) the doctor monitors patients with chronic diseases in their homes. Here, mobile medical devices collect relevant data that can be shared with and reviewed by the physician. Store-and-forward (asynchronous) takes place among doctors as they would when referring a case. [Read more…]

It’s Time: Shaping the Health Ecosystem for Systemic Impact

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By Ralph Welborn

 We face a paradox within Public Health. We’re fantastic at insight, or surveillance, of outbreaks and rapid response. Look no further than the global public community’s accomplishment around Ebola and Zika a few years back, and Cholera and Diabetes in an ongoing manner. Sure, it took time to mobilize to scale for each of them. And, for all of them, many challenges were faced and lessons are still being learned. However, the point is that the global community responded.

 Yet we’re not as good at building enduring systemic impact in the environments that required the mobilization. Again, look no further than the examples cited. We respond, then move on to the next significant health challenge — or “shiny object” as someone once put it — tackling the first hard problem, which is the response, but not the second, which is building local capabilities to lessen the likelihood of it occurring again. 

The challenge? Crossing the chasm between strategic intent (of responding quickly to a specific disease outbreak) and building enduring impact. The result? The chasm, in which lives are lost.  [Read more…]

The Future of Electrical Power in Healthcare Facilities

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By Cliff Weinstein

As our world advances into the digital age, our physical structures are becoming increasingly outdated. A prime example of this is in hospitals: one of the organizations we depend on most as a society. A recent report cites that today’s hospitals are, on average, two decades old. Aging hospitals and healthcare facilities, alongside progressions in technology quickly creates a gap in what facilities are able to support with existing infrastructure and without expensive electrical retrofits.

Essential to healthcare are the digital devices that doctors and nurses use to care for and monitor patients — and without the proper infrastructure to support the electrical demands, power is distributed dangerously and inefficiently in hospitals. According to data collected by the U.S. Fire Administration, 22 percent of unconfined, larger and more serious fires in hospitals over a span of three years were caused by electrical malfunctions. Consider the following components of healthcare facilities as areas of improvement in charging technology. [Read more…]

How To Choose Home Healthcare Loans To Take Your Business To The Next Level

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If you want to expand your home healthcare business, there are some special loans created exactly for this purpose. Home healthcare is a really fast-growing industry in the US, with annual growth being constant, at around 5%.

The problem is that home healthcare businesses do need to deal with various different expenses as growth is happening. This includes buying businesses, spending time to meet working capital, hiring new employees or entering a brand new geographic territory. Fortunately, the loans are now available. You basically want to decide which one is the best in a similar way to what you do with the auto title loan. Make sure you always think about the following as you make your choice: [Read more…]

Beyond the Big Three – What’s Next for Hospital-Based Telemedicine?

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Hai Tran is COO/CFO of SOC TelemedBy Hai Tran

The simplest way to define telemedicine is the delivery of remote healthcare services using technology. It’s no mystery that telemedicine has enabled hospital systems to advance access to care, deliver measurable patient outcomes, and optimize organizational efficiencies.

Specifically, telemedicine platforms have allowed patients and providers alike access to specialty physicians they may otherwise never have. Services such as teleNeurology, telePsychiatry, and teleICU are becoming a common part of the patient care continuum. Driven by physician shortages, geographical barriers, and financial obstacles, telemedicine is now everywhere.

This begs the question: What other challenges can telemedicine help overcome for hospitals, providers and even patients? [Read more…]