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Amy the Experienced Yet Frustrated Outreaching Flight Nurse; Soon She’ll Have The Book of Outreach 2019 to Help

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“I’m failing at this! I got into flight medicine to treat critically injured and ill patients. Now my base manager tells me I must do Outreach. She said that Outreach is the new ‘Enterprise Skill-Set’ critical to our success just like Safety/AMRM and clinical competency.”

“I understand why’s it’s essential. I know we need to have individuals at hospitals, EMS/Fire agencies, and Emergency Services Dispatch Centers making flight requests to us or there are no flights. If there are no flights, basically I’m out of a job that I worked long and hard to earn and one that I love. But I just can’t seem to get it.

Don’t I just pass out T-shirts, ball caps, lapel pins, pens, and pizza—tell people how great we are, do Outreach education then our helicopter and fixed wing will get all kinds of flight requests?” “Isn’t that Outreach? But I’m failing.”

These are the words of an experienced yet exasperated flight nurse, named Amy.

I motioned for her to stop.

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Home Tweaks for Senior Living is Not Just a ‘Phase’

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“Aging in style” could be a trend to lure seniors to premier living at Providence Point, yet, in reality, it is a movement for those headed to retirement. In fact, architects are creating smart home technologies that are assisting with convenience and health monitoring, as well as socialization support, which are becoming more needed for daily living.

Staff of RLPS Architects, a full-service architectural and interior design firm, are continually attending conferences, referencing industry publications, consulting with industry experts and even conducting focus groups as research for new design options and features to help seniors age in style. RLPS Partner and architect, Jodi Kreider is most proud of the direction for seniors to sustain future comforts of living.

“This is a specialized team who works on a number of design strategies to create specific senior-friendly residences to promote long-term independence without compromising the residential design aesthetic,” said Kreider. “Post-occupancy reviews have indicated that most people prefer future adaptability over obvious, built-in accessibility features.”  For example, rather than automatically equipping showers with grab bars, RLPS designs the walls with extra blocking to support the addition of grab bars if needed in the future.

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Moving the Needle with Personalized Patient Payment Plans 

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By David Shelton

When a patient presents an insurance card at registration, both the provider organization and patient assume they are past what has become one of the most difficult conversations in healthcare: how the bill will be paid. Unfortunately for many insured patients, especially those with serious illnesses, their financial troubles and the provider’s difficulties collecting may have just begun. 

The financial realities of serious illness 

Seriously ill patients often require multiple hospitalizations, frequent doctor visits, expensive medications and other support, making them the healthcare system’s heaviest users. Even if patients are insured, the costs of annual deductibles, co-pays, coinsurance, prescription medications and treatments not covered by insurance can be staggering. A study by NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research institution, showed more than half of Americans have gotten a medical bill they thought insurance would pay.   

In 2018, a poll conducted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, The New York Times and the Commonwealth Fund revealed just how much these costs can impact seriously ill patients and their caregivers. The key finding was that insurance alone is not enough to protect patients from the high costs of healthcare. Ninety-one percent of respondents had health insurance, yet 53 percent of this group struggled to pay their medical bills. More than one-third with insurance said they were forced to use all or most of their savings to pay for care. Some even faced the impossible choice of paying for medication or buying food for their families. 

The effect of healthcare costs on patients’ lives can be devastating, but the damage doesn’t end there. Patients’ financial obligations for care can also negatively affect the patient experience, hamper providers’ collection efforts and, ultimately, hurt hospitals’ and healthcare systems’ bottom lines.

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My New Best Friend is a Voice Assistant: Why Your New BFF will be a Bot

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By Antonella Bonanni

“I was so tired, I started talking to Alexa.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people refer to Alexa as something more than a digital assistant this past year. Many people are talking to and asking questions of voice-activated digital assistants and cognitive powered colleagues more often than ever before. Comscore reported nearly 19 million homes in the U.S. had a smart speaker. In four years, Juniper Research predicts more than half of all American homes will have and use a smart speaker. That’s a smart speaker in more than 70 million U.S. households by 2022 or 55 percent of all homes.

Already, Alexa has more than 1,000 healthcare-related “skills,” which allow users to make queries and, in turn, lets the bot respond. These skills let us ask about pharmaceutical-company sponsored prescription medications, yoga, disease questions and much more.

As smart speakers continue a steady march into our homes and lives, we’ll be doing much more than just telling Alexa we’re tired. 

Before diving into the ins and outs of smart speakers and healthcare, it’s necessary to understand how the devices work. It’s important healthcare consumers appreciate how and why we get the answers we do.

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Patient Advocacy: The Next Frontier of Provider-Pharma Collaboration

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By Miriam Paramore, President, OptimizeRX

The debate over prescription drug copay coupons continues to rage between pharmaceutical and insurance companies. While pharmaceutical companies offer brand copay coupons as a tool to offset patient out-of-pocket costs for name-brand drugs, insurance companies encourage the use of lower-cost generic medications as the right strategy for addressing spiraling prescription drug prices. 

Providers and patients often find themselves caught in the middle. And unfortunately, in tandem with the ongoing debate, the reality on the frontlines of care delivery is that patients need help affording their medications. 

The shift toward value-based care demands greater industry collaboration to bridge the healthcare gap and cut expenses without sacrificing quality. Medication affordability is a big part of this equation. When the right data-sharing and connectivity framework exists, pharmaceutical companies and providers can essentially work together to become patient advocates, empowering healthcare’s most important asset with resources for lowering costs and improving overall health in a sustainable way.

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Why You Should Expect More M&A in 2019

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By Amanda Baethke

While the trajectory of the healthcare sector is uncertain, pending the upcoming legislative changes, 2019 is expected to be laden with mergers and acquisitions as many of the driving forces that make the American healthcare market attractive to buyers and investors remain today. As aging in place and hospice care are expected to expand at a rapid pace, more businesses, both American and foreign, are capitalizing on new markets through investing in or partnerships with specialized care providers. 

The Rise in Foreign Investors 

As America’s largest population reaches retirement age, investors are predicting the healthcare spend will increase. The predicted spending boom coupled with competitive interest rates has led more foreign investors to invest in the American healthcare system.

Their intent to enter has led to an increased demand. Foreign entities are merging and acquiring companies to overcome one of the largest barriers of entry: insurance contracts. 

By merging with or acquiring businesses as a means to enter the market, foreign entities can build upon existing products and further research, develop, and launch their own medical equipment to address an influx of chronic diseases. 

The increased level of interest from local and foreign entities could mean the market should expect to see high valuations. 

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Google Fined €50 Million for GDPR Violations: What Does This Mean and What to Expect Next?

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By Matt Dumiak

What Happened?

France’s Supervisory Authority (CNIL) has fined Google $56.8 millions Euros for what the data protection watchdog believes is a violation by the multinational tech company on EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). After receiving complaints based on ‘forced consent’ by Google from La quadrature du Net, a French digital rights advocacy group, and None of Your Business, a nonprofit organization led by Max Schrems (known for previous campaigns against Facebook for privacy violation), the CNIL started its investigation.

On the basis of its investigation, the CNIL established two types of breaches of the GDPR by Google that occur when new Android users set up a new phone and follow Android’s onboarding process.

They claim that Google is making its data collection policies too difficult to access and that the company failed to obtain specific user consent.

The CNIL notes two specific reasons, later covered in this document:

  1. A violation of the obligations of transparency and information.
  2. A violation of the obligation to have a legal basis for ads personalization.
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