National Patient Recognition Week occurs each year during the first week of February, coinciding with another popular event — Groundhog Day. This year, we imagine that winter’s duration is probably not the first thing on the minds of providers and patients. They’re more likely to be asking how much longer the COVID-19 crisis will last!
In the last few years, we have seen dramatic shifts in how patients have interacted with technology and taken control of their own health during a global pandemic.
Given the challenges of COVID-19, we are indeed living in turbulent times. From lockdowns and mask mandates to the impact on supply chains and economic growth, societies around the globe are dealing with the kind of crisis most of us have never known.
An October 2021 report from Fitch Ratings found that since February 2020 — when the COVID-19 pandemic began — employment in the U.S. healthcare industry has declined by 524,000 positions.
While lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S., the death rate has steadily declined for more than 30 years, thanks to increased screening, early detection, and improvements in treatment.
It’s safe to say that no one knows what to do with 2,314 exabytes of new data. According to statistica.com, that is roughly the amount of new healthcare data generated worldwide in 2020.
But no one has to. After all, the EHR and related systems have given the thousands who work in healthcare the tools they need to stem the data tide.
But there’s a catch: Only a networked EHR is up to the job.
More than six months after the first reports of coronavirus began to circulate, medical providers across the nation largely adjusted to key changes in their workflows. Those changes include the rise of telehealth, stricter sanitation protocols, and prioritizing care to make the best use of resources.
You’ve heard it said you only get one chance to make a first impression. That’s true for things as trivial as trying a new restaurant and as important as meeting your spouse’s family for the first time. In healthcare, first impressions can have a long-lasting impact on patients’ perceptions of your practice — and your bottom line.
True invention is hard, but imagine transportation without the wheel, construction without nails, or literacy without the printing press. Each of those things was built on moments of inspiration, years of effort, and the slow accumulation of technology and knowledge. And the path to today’s technology-rich world is a very long one indeed, stretching from the alchemists of the Middle Ages to Benjamin Franklin’s kite to the integrated circuit.
As soon as the scale and seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic became clear in early 2020, talk began to focus on the challenges of developing vaccines. The past year has seen an unprecedented effort to develop and deploy safe and effective vaccines to control a virus that has now claimed 2.5 million lives worldwide — and more than 500,000 in the U.S. alone.
There are few things more personal and important to people than the relationships they have with their medical providers. But as central and important as the role that healthcare plays in our lives may be, medicine is subject to many of the same market forces as any other industry.
There are few things as satisfying as placing the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle in the correct spot.
January 29, 2021, is National Puzzle Day and even though finishing a jigsaw puzzle may be satisfying, solving unique problems specific to healthcare is another area worth celebrating.
On March 16, Internists Associates of Ridley Park, Pennsylvania closed their physical doors to the world. But that didn’t mean that the care ever stopped for the more than 8,000 patients who rely upon the practice.
From rural health centers to urban clinics and everywhere in-between, eClinicalWorks® and healow® are helping practices reinvent themselves to face emerging challenges and provide quality care to patients.
Even the best medical practices can struggle to provide great healthcare while keeping their practice operating in an efficient and sustainable way. One key to success is separating those things you can do something about from those that are beyond your control.