In short? Yes, there most certainly will. Or, looking at it from another perspective, there might not be a second wave as the first one won’t end. In any case, which scenario is more probable depends on your country’s leadership and decisions and whether people will be compliant enough to go along with the restrictions. Because how governments are preparing for it over the next few weeks will be crucial in the fight against the pandemic.

Ready access to patient data has been a common roadblock for providers and this issue has been especially apparent during COVID-19.

To lessen this burden, HealtHIE Nevada, the state’s health information exchange (HIE), wanted to give clinicians full access without barriers to patient data. Michael Gagnon, executive director of HealtHIE, and his team decided to give this access to providers who had not yet signed up for the service.

Because the statewide HIE had recently connected to the Southern Nevada health district and to the Nevada State Public Health Lab, HealtHIE had the ability to incorporate the health district’s reporting, as well as getting COVID-19 tests from the Nevada State Public Health Lab.

“We thought that having that information would be very valuable to providers,” said Gagnon in an interview with EHRIntelligence. “We offered it as somewhere between 90 and 120 days and we would give free access to up to five people per site. It’s been quite successful and it’s worked out quite well.”

By taking advantage of text messaging, the small critical access hospital and its associated clinics improved quality, reduced no-shows, decreased staff burnout and boosted revenue.

July 15, 2020 - For most healthcare organizations, reporting and finding all the necessary information about a new case of a reportable disease can be a burdensome process that could take up to two weeks to fully process, and sometimes it can get lost in the shuffle.

It begins with the laboratory faxing a report to the health department. Then the health department follows up with the clinic to get a more detailed report. If the detailed report does not come back right away, an administrator would have to follow up with the clinic again.

With more cases piling up over the course of a week or two, the health department could be forced to close the case and move on if they did not receive the detailed report from the clinic.

Because of this manual process, Brian Dixon, PhD, director of public health informatics at the Regenstrief Institute, and his team of experts knew they needed to automate disease tracking and surveillance in the state of Indiana.

Government officials in the U.S., U.K. and Canada issued a joint advisory Thursday warning that a Russian hacking group is targeting various research organizations

COVID-19 contract-tracing applications that help monitor individuals’ possible exposure to those who have tested positive for the virus present a variety of privacy issues that must be addressed, says regulatory attorney Nancy Perkins.

For example, if employers were to mandate that employees use these apps to help prevent the possible spread of the virus, organizations could face a balancing act between safety and privacy, she notes.

“It’s a very tough choice for employers, particularly requiring employees to use these apps … in light of guidelines for employers having a safe workplace,” Perkins says in an interview with Information Security Media Group. Employers need to “think hard” about how they approach employees about the use of the apps, she stresses. If app use is voluntary, “then there can’t be arm-twisting about it in the workplace,” she says.

The owner of a telemedicine company and the operator of a durable medical equipment firm have pleaded guilty in connection with a nationwide telemedicine fraud conspiracy that federal prosecutors allege has racked up $480 million in fake Medicare and Medicaid billing. So far, 26 individuals have been charged in connection with the massive case.

As the world contends with the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare industry is expected to see a significant drop in growth.

Digital pharmacy startups taking on industry giants CVS and Walgreens are securing sizable sums of money from investors.

New York City-based Medly Pharmacy scored a $100 million series B funding round co-led by growth equity firm Volition Capital and venture capital firm Greycroft with participation of Horsley Bridge and Lerer Hippeau.

Founded in 2017, Medly touts itself as a full-service pharmacy that provides on-demand, same-day prescription delivery and also validates and files insurance claims and works directly with patients to manage adherence to medication and refills.

Medly currently works with five pharmacies across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Miami. With the investment, the company plans to expand to most major metropolitan cities in the next 18 months and will continue to invest in its technology, according to Chirag Kulkarni, Medly co-founder and chief marketing officer.

Since its inception, Medly has grown 100 times in revenue, added 15,000 providers and 50,000 patients, and delivered over 500,000 prescriptions.

COVID-19 brought to light the value of telehealth and no one wants to go back to a pre-telehealth world, claim Corey Scurlock, MD, medical director of Westchester Medical Center, and Wendy Deibert, VP of Clinical Solutions at Caregility.

Anthem has launched a digital tool that aims to allow public health officials and other health and community leaders to track and predict the impacts of COVID-19.

The insurer’s new C19 Explorer platform is available in a public version for free and a paid version that clients can use to build more personalized predictive analytic models based on internal data they upload into the system.

Never have telehealth services been more vital than during the coronavirus pandemic. In this guest post, Lawrence Kaelin, MD, Chief Medical Officer/Founder of a provider of health information exchange services, explains why telehealth is so important in today’s healthcare system.

Death rates from cancer are higher in rural America – in part because of reduced access to high-quality care.

Finding, accessing, and paying for healthcare in America requires so much work that half of consumers have avoided seeking care altogether, a new survey has found.

More than two-thirds of consumers said every step of the healthcare process is a chore. Most said they don’t know how much a treatment or visit costs until months later, and nearly all said they want shopping for healthcare to be as easy as shopping for other common services – including using it as a fully connected digital experience.

Activated and engaged patients are more likely to follow their treatment plans – and this could be a major benefit for healthcare providers as the use of telehealth tools continues to rise in the wake of the pandemic.

Plaintiffs allege that the telehealth giant contracted with a third-party telemarketer that violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the immediate challenge for Baltimore-based Kennedy Krieger Institute was shifting an almost-100% on-site outpatient workforce to an almost entirely remote one. (Its hospital has remained open, serving inpatients throughout the pandemic.)

Los Angeles-based AppliedVR’s virtual reality platform—which uses goggles and headsets to create an immersive, 3D virtual world—has been aimed at alleviating everything from labor pains during childbirth to the pain from burns to discomfort experienced undergoing infusions for cancer treatment.

In total, AppliedVR works with more than 200 hospitals to provide virtual reality therapy to help ease patients’ acute pain after surgery or during hospitalization.

The company also has teamed up with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to target and ease chronic pain in the comfort of patient’s homes. AppliedVR plans to pilot its immersive VR programs for palliative care and chronic pain with the VA and is also working on clinical trials with Geisinger and Cleveland Clinic to study VR as a replacement for prescription opioids.

Patients adopted virtual care during the COVID-19 pandemic out of necessity but now they want those services to stick around after the health crisis is over.

At least 60% of patients who used virtual care tools said that based on their experience during the pandemic, they want to use technology more for communicating with healthcare providers and managing their conditions in the future, according to a survey from Accenture.

“Many patients said they felt care was more personal, more convenient, and timelier,” said Brad Michel, who leads Accenture’s North America Life Sciences division, in a statement.

Surescripts has teamed up with public health officials and laboratories to accelerate case reporting on COVID-19 cases.

The electronic prescribing company has rolled out a clinical direct messaging service to support electronic case reporting (eCR) of coronavirus and other infectious diseases to the public health surveillance systems.

The service replaces the often burdensome manual process of reporting diseases to public health agencies.

An operating room isn’t exactly the easiest place to follow social distancing guidelines in the age of COVID-19.

Using 5G network technology, doctors in Italy recently demonstrated telesurgery could now be a valuable—and reliable—tool in allowing surgeons to do just that, according to a report published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

While the first telesurgery involving a human patient was done in 2001, the idea of telesurgery gaining traction has been stymied, in part, by the lack of fast and reliable network connections (as well as a dearth of robotic surgery technology in many hospitals.)

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented shift in the way consumers view and access a variety of goods and services—and healthcare is no exception. Recent studies show that many patients, including vulnerable populations like those living with cancer (PDF), are delaying recommended care and procedures—and will continue to do so for at least several months amid fears over the safety of in-person visits. In response, reports of providers adapting to offer care virtually are all the more commonplace, with almost half of physicians now treating patients through telemedicine platforms, up from just 18% in 2018.

We strongly believe that only digital health can bring healthcare into the 21st century and make patients the point-of-care.

Hospitals are still reeling from the impact of the coronavirus, and only time will tell if a second wave will hit and cause even more financial damage. In this guest post, Samir Panchal, a consultant for a healthcare management consulting firm, offers five must-do’s for hospitals to preserve long-term financial viability.