John Andrews
Now that the healthcare industry has an extra year to implement ICD-10, providers should take advantage of that time to properly prepare for implementation in Oct. 2014, coding professionals say.
Like it or not, a new healthcare landscape is taking shape that runs counter to just about every convention the industry has ever known.
When it comes to implementing environmentally-sound practices in healthcare, there is philosophy and there is reality. Philosophically, proponents believe that recycling, reusing and reducing emissions are the right things to do. In reality, implementing environmentally-friendly practices can be expensive, difficult and subject to pushback.
While the massive, monolithic hospital isn’t a relic of the past, real estate investors don’t see it as the wave of the future, either. Not when emerging payment models favor outpatient over inpatient care, they say.
The proliferation of mobile devices in healthcare has been a boon for medical professionals as the portability of smart phones, tablets and laptops keep them connected from wherever they might be at any given time. This convenience has allowed clinicians to correspond, check patient statuses and review vital data to make critical decisions while at home, in transit or at a remote site.
The highest level of healthcare consolidation since the turn of the millennium occurred during 2012 and it is expected to continue - if not accelerate - going forward, a new report from Chicago-based Fitch Ratings contends.
Materials management is no longer simply a product purchasing function - it has gone beyond procurement and into analyzing how products are being used and just as importantly, where the products are at any given time.
The concept of revenue integrity holds contrasting-but-compatible views on the same subject: One lens is a micro view of the little details while the other lens is a macro view of the landscape. Together, they form a panoramic picture showing an end-to-end revenue cycle with all the pixilated points along the way. At least that is the financial community's vision of it.
From intake to the back end, healthcare providers need a revenue cycle management system that will provide a seamless workflow for each episode of care. From the moment a patient registers in the facility, it is imperative that the correct information follow along each point of care so that accurate billing information can be processed and sent, RCM vendors say.
Healthcare ventures outside the hospital walls appear to be the favored target of investors looking for new opportunities, financial specialists say. Driving that interest is a vision of community-based care sites through accountable care organizations, healthcare reform, evolving private pay models and an industry-wide initiative to bring down costs.