Readers Write: The Advantages and Misconceptions of Being a 1099 Contractor in Health IT

The Advantages and Misconceptions of Being a 1099 Contractor in Health IT
By Eric Utzinger

Eric Utzinger is co-founder and chief commercial officer of Revuud.

Are you a health IT professional who is debating between the freedom of being a 1099 contractor and the stability of a W2 employee? Understanding the nuances can make all the difference in your career path.

Each option offers distinct advantages and misconceptions, particularly within the healthcare industry. I will delve into the specific benefits and clarify common misunderstandings about being a 1099 contractor compared to a W2 employee in health IT.

Advantages of Being a 1099 Contractor in Health IT

• Flexibility and control. Health IT contractors enjoy unparalleled flexibility. They can set their own schedules, choose projects that are aligned with their expertise, and often work remotely. This autonomy is invaluable for navigating the demanding schedules that are often required in healthcare settings.
• Potential for higher earnings. 1099 contractors in health IT frequently have the potential to earn more than their W2 counterparts. They can negotiate competitive rates that are based on their specialized skills and experience without the constraints of a fixed salary. Additionally, deductible business expenses can significantly lower their taxable income.
• Diverse opportunities. Working as a 1099 contractor in health IT allows professionals to diversify their experience across various healthcare organizations. This exposure to different systems, workflows, and clinical environments enhances their skill set and professional growth.
• Tax benefits, Health IT contractors can leverage substantial tax deductions, including expenses that are related to home offices, travel, professional development, and health insurance premiums. These deductions provide financial advantages that are not typically available to W2 employees.

Misconceptions About Being a 1099 Contractor in Health IT

• Lack of Stability. It’s often assumed that 1099 contractors lack job stability in health IT. However, skilled contractors can maintain a steady stream of projects by establishing relationships with multiple healthcare facilities or organizations. The demand for specialized health IT expertise ensures ongoing opportunities.
• No benefits. Contrary to common belief, 1099 contractors in health IT can access benefits like health insurance and retirement plans, albeit through individual arrangements. They can purchase health insurance through marketplaces and establish retirement accounts such as IRAs or Solo 401(k)s, ensuring financial security.
• More taxes. There’s a misconception that 1099 contractors in health IT face higher tax burdens. While they do pay self-employment taxes, the ability to deduct business expenses often offsets these taxes. With strategic tax planning, contractors can effectively manage their tax liabilities.
• Isolation. Some perceive health IT contractors as isolated due to their independent work status. However, technological advancements and collaborative platforms enable contractors to engage in virtual healthcare teams, participate in professional networks, and attend industry conferences, fostering connections and support.

Advantages for Health Systems

• Flexibility in scaling workforce. Health systems benefit from the flexibility of engaging 1099 contractors, allowing them to scale their workforce based on current needs without being bound to a set number of hours. This adaptability helps save time and money, ensuring that resources are used efficiently.
• Improved workforce management platforms. The rise of 1099 arrangements has driven the development of marketplace platforms that offer better workforce management solutions for clients. These platforms often take on and manage risks similarly to staffing companies, providing a reliable and streamlined process for hiring and managing contractors.
• Fair and efficient time tracking. Unlike traditional staffing models, 1099 contractors are not always pushed to work a standard 40-hour week. This ensures that contractors only track and bill for actual hours worked, leading to fairer time management and cost savings for healthcare organizations.

Evolving Trends and Future Outlook for Health IT Contractors

• Increasing demand for specialized expertise. As healthcare systems continue to adopt advanced technologies and digital solutions, the demand for skilled health IT contractors is expected to rise. Contractors with expertise in areas such as electronic health records (EHR), telemedicine, cybersecurity, and data analytics will find ample opportunities in the evolving healthcare landscape.
• Embracing remote work and virtual collaboration. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of remote work and virtual collaboration across industries, including healthcare. Health IT contractors can capitalize on this trend by offering remote services and supporting healthcare providers with virtual solutions that enhance patient care and operational efficiency.
• Shifting regulatory landscape. Healthcare regulations and compliance requirements are constantly evolving. Health IT contractors must stay abreast of these changes and offer solutions that ensure data security, patient privacy, and regulatory compliance. Contractors who can navigate and adapt to regulatory shifts will remain in high demand.

Conclusion

Choosing between being a 1099 contractor and a W2 employee in health IT hinges on personal career goals and preferences. Both options offer unique advantages and challenges within the healthcare industry. By understanding these nuances and dispelling misconceptions, health IT professionals can make informed decisions that align with their professional aspirations.

Readers Write: Why RCM is the Most Interesting Opportunity in Healthcare

Why RCM is the Most Interesting Opportunity in Healthcare
By Kim Waters

Kim Waters, MBA is principal advisory at CereCore.

Revenue cycle management (RCM) isn’t for everybody, but it certainly is for me. I actually enjoy talking to someone about their revenue cycle plans and opportunities. In fact, I maintain that RCM is the most interesting opportunity in healthcare. If you can’t relate, perhaps the reasons I’ve listed below will convince you. If you agree, I hope that you will share new reasons to add to my list.

Research supports RCM opportunities. In a 2023 study, HFMA reported on the rising cost of claims, with as much as 60% of claims not resubmitted and the average denial rate’s total percentage of gross revenue at 11%. What’s more is that they found that the cost per claim appealed is $118 and the denial rate is increasing 20% year over year. In an era when budgets are tight and margins are lower, organizations need to improve on these numbers to survive and eventually thrive.

Opportunities for improvement can be easy to see. Reconsider any processes or solutions that:

• Are still accomplished on paper.
• Involve a fax machine.
• Have not changed in the last five years.
• Are repetitive.
• Don’t involve peer or higher-level review.
• Consistently receive low engagement scores.
• Are not documented.

Every organization has opportunities for quick wins, while other areas for improvement may not seem so obvious but are just as promising.

Reporting is key. The best RCM decisions are made based on actionable data. On average, healthcare organizations use around 30 vendors across the revenue cycle. Disparate data sets complicate clear, actionable reporting and limit the ability to see patterns and identify areas of opportunity. RCM leaders need effective reporting and road mapping tools to tell their story, presenting a fresh vision around the use of technology and resources and the impact they can make.

Important processes are up and downstream from revenue cycle. From patient access, financial clearance, provider documentation to discharge and final payment for services, RCM processes run through the entirety of a patient’s experience and involve touchpoints with all the departments that a patient’s care requires. This presents complexity and opportunity for RCM, starting with adoption of a unified vision and strategy, change management practices, governance policies, and system interoperability development.

Each organization holds different improvement opportunities. The areas to focus on are a matter of an organization’s current state, their strategic goals, the needs of their community, and their competitive position. That’s what makes it fun. No two systems are alike, but sound revenue cycle management processes can support any endeavor and improve financial performance. In turn, improved financial performance is fundamental to realizing improved quality, outcomes, and all the meaningful reasons we chose healthcare in the first place.

The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) recently released the Revenue Cycle Technology Adoption Model (RCMTAM), a benchmarking framework to help healthcare’s financial leaders design a personalized RCM modernization roadmap, with the goal of correlating technology improvements to financial performance. RCMTAM is specifically for healthcare and is providing much-needed insight and direction for uncovering and addressing opportunities.

RCM calls for compassion. Working on improvements to revenue cycle management processes looks and feels like improving cash flow, increasing reimbursement rates, reducing denials, and enhancing overall performance. All of the above play a part in the delivery of care to the people who entrust their care to your organization. What’s a more interesting opportunity than that?

Readers Write: Healthcare’s Biggest Hidden Asset

Healthcare’s Biggest Hidden Asset
By Aasim Saeed, MD, MPA

Aasim Saeed, MD, MPA is founder and CEO of Amenities Health.

Health systems across the US continue to grapple with a host of financial challenges, from staffing shortages to lower reimbursement rates to increasing competition from new players in the market. However, most organizations have an unused resource at their disposal that is worth significant value and that is not leveraged to its full potential: MACC credits.

Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) credits are pre-purchased credits that health organizations commit to spending on Microsoft’s Azure cloud services over a specific time. If you remember the old cell phone plans before rollover minutes were introduced, you understand how these “use or lose” benefits work. It’s like buying a golf club membership that requires a minimum purchase of food or drink at the clubhouse.

MACC agreements allow customers to commit to a minimum level of Azure consumption in exchange for discounted pricing and additional benefits. But they are lost if you don’t consume the benefits within a year. You can’t carry them over.

In my opinion, these agreements are probably one of the most underutilized IT resources in healthcare. Many IT and innovation teams have forgotten about them, or don’t even know that they exist. As a result, few are using all the capacity that they paid for. We’re now six months into 2024, and chances are most MACC credits are still sitting, gathering dust. Given the financial strains facing the healthcare industry, technology teams need to use these funds before they expire at the end of the year.

Accessing a third-party app is one of the easiest, but often overlooked, ways to accomplish this. Many valuable third-party applications are available via the Microsoft Azure Marketplace. If healthcare organizations have MACC allocations that are at risk of going to waste, they can adopt these applications at no net new cost. For instance, a hospital might fold a new chatbot application, advanced online scheduling, or billing software into its MACC agreement.

The marketplace is also designed to streamline the contracting process. It allows healthcare systems and other organizations to transact automatically without having to complete a bunch of paperwork on the back end. Rather than getting bogged down in the contracting process, healthcare systems can purchase the applications directly through Azure, install them immediately, and use them to improve their operations.

Another option is to use the credits to build cloud environments. All MACC agreements come with cloud support built into the offering, which presents an opportunity for health systems to migrate some of their on-premises resources to the cloud, helping them eliminate some of the capital costs that are associated with data center refreshes. Also, the cloud presents an opportunity for hospitals to pilot new tools, paying only on a per-user basis rather than making the serious capital investments that are frequently associated with on-premises solutions.

Healthcare organizations should carefully prioritize their technology needs when using resources under their MACC agreements. This involves weighing the potential impact of new applications against factors like ease of implementation, necessary training, and ongoing management. It’s crucial to begin with a comprehensive evaluation of the organization’s overarching digital transformation goals and how cloud services can effectively align with these objectives.

By increasing awareness of their Azure commitments and actively taking advantage of these hidden assets, healthcare systems can enhance and streamline their technology environments without any additional costs to their technology budgets.

Readers Write: Revitalizing Healthcare’s Backbone by Empowering Nurse Leaders

Revitalizing Healthcare’s Backbone by Empowering Nurse Leaders
By Russ Richmond, MD

Russ Richmond, MD is co-founder and CEO of Laudio. 

Nursing remains one of the most challenging parts of the healthcare ecosystem. Frontline nurses who are contending with understaffing and concerns for patient care continue to raise alarms and exit their roles.

Beset with high turnover and burnout rates, nurse managers constantly grapple with handling high spans of control and associated challenges without sacrificing patient care, quality, and organizational outcomes. A recent report noted that 20% of nurse managers are contemplating leaving their positions, and that the average nurse manager stays in their role for just two years. These figures point to deeper structural issues with the current state of nursing leadership roles and the overdue need to bring technology to these problems.

Another recent report that was co-published by the American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL) noted that the median span of control for nurse managers is 46 direct reports, making genuine engagement with team members on a day-to-day basis nearly impossible. Even more startling, 25% of all inpatient nurse managers have over 78 direct reports, further hindering meaningful manager-employee engagement.

The report also drew a direct correlation between nurse managers with large spans of control and higher rates of burnout, turnover, and incremental overtime on their teams. These consequences have real financial implications for health systems, especially as staffing costs and turnover continue to be some of the largest detractors from financial and organizational stability in healthcare. Better support for nursing leaders results in higher engagement scores among their teams and reduced turnover, both of which are targets of numerous initiatives among health systems.

As an industry, we frequently discuss transformation in healthcare, especially in a post-COVID environment, and how we need to work differently to improve outcomes for our patients and organizations. Yet the people who have the most direct impact in linking C-suite goals with frontline action are often overlooked. Few tools exist today to directly enable frontline nurse leaders to handle increased workloads while maintaining strong connections with their teams, which drives positive outcomes across the board. The same report referenced above noted:

• A strong correlation between the number of purposeful leader engagements (e.g., regular check-ins, recognition, celebrations) with team members and crucial metrics like higher team retention.
• A lack of span-breaking assistant managers with roles that are designed to share administrative burdens and support people processes.
• An absence of deep HR, IT, and nursing department partnerships to enable nurse leaders with the right tools to achieve broad job responsibilities.

To date, innovation in nursing has primarily centered on clinical areas, with novel technologies like virtual nursing and remote monitoring of patients taking priority over investments that enable leaders to propagate broad operational and people-based positive change within their teams. This focus must expand and transition to a holistic approach that is aimed at easing the burden frontline nurses and their leaders face today.

A few examples of how organizations can use new approaches to create a broad positive impact across nursing teams include:

• Use intelligent technology to automate much of the rote people work that frontline leaders perform today to allow them to their time where it matters most – on purposeful engagements with their teams.
• Automate clinical documentation wherever possible to reduce administrative burden through solutions that simplify EHR workflows.
• Introduce innovative leadership models to reduce spans of control and enable leaders to have more humanizing relationships with their team members and the work they do (e.g., dividing large departments into multiple parts, leveraging assistant nurse managers to break spans of control, utilizing nurse educators to lead professional development activities and continuing education around the nursing profession).
• Allow flexibility for team members by implementing new and improved staffing and scheduling practices that center on team member preferences and wellbeing needs versus long-standing industry norms.
• Build the right programs that frontline leaders can use to guide team members through established career paths and advocate for the professional development and skill expansion of team members.

Supporting nurse leaders has a quantifiable impact on organizational outcomes. Senior leadership teams have the opportunity to significantly improve metrics around nursing engagement and retention through purpose-built innovation. Moving the needle at the highest levels requires change that starts at the foundation – supporting, enabling, and empowering nurse leaders with the right processes and resources to drive success. Technology has the ability to redefine work and to scale the impact of leaders on organizational outcomes. Our nurse managers need these solutions now more than ever.

Readers Write: The Role of Human-Centric AI in Virtual Patient Observation

The Role of Human-Centric AI in Virtual Patient Observation
By Christine Gall, RN

Christine Gall, RN, DrPH, MS is chief nursing officer at Collette Health.

The integration and expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare has certainly seen its fair share of controversial conversations. Discussions about the potential benefits of utilizing AI to mitigate healthcare worker burnout, improve workflow and process efficiency, and enhance patient safety are met with reservations about the impact of AI being used carelessly or without precision.

Human-centric AI can address some of the concerns related to the algorithmic nature of task automation in traditional AI. The industry has seen a strong shift towards human-centric AI in hospitals for the purpose of prioritizing human needs and augmenting human capabilities rather than replacing them. The nursing community is eager for technology that supports the top priority of nurses — providing excellent and safe care to their patients.

In recent years, AI has enabled the healthcare system to implement revolutionary advancements for the betterment of both frontline healthcare workers and patient safety, particularly in the arena of patient observation.

Continual patient observation is an important tool to enhance patient safety for at-risk patients. Nurse staffing shortages, paired with ever-rising patient acuity, makes continual observation nearly impossible without the help of technology. Many patients in acute care settings are at high risk for falls and accidental self-harm. Human-centric AI-powered virtual patient observation is designed to sharpen the focus of the virtual observer to patients who begin to demonstrate risky behaviors so they can redirect the patient or call for assistance to prevent these events from happening.

A recent study from the American Organization for Nursing Leadership Foundation’s 2024 Longitudinal Nursing Leadership Insight Study found that 20% of nurses want to see an increased utilization of virtual nursing. Virtual patient observation specifically is driving a lot of innovative care practices. The end goal is to leverage human-centric AI to ensure patients’ and clinicians’ safety and well-being, as well as bolster the support systems for caregivers to optimize operational efficiency.

Imagine if hospitals could place a nurse in every single hospital room for an entire shift. That would be wonderful if it was possible. Hospitals have started gravitating towards human-enabled digital innovations that can provide a virtual observer in patient rooms. Virtual observation stations can be placed in rooms, hallways, and main corridors for seamless line of sight of the patient by the virtual observer, and human-centered AI is able to proactively signal subtle changes in patient activity that might lead to patient injury if not redirected. Human-centric AI enables technology to augment and enhance clinician capabilities by extending their reach with the virtual observer, allowing them the reassurance that all of their patients remain in a safe environment even when they are not physically present.

With the application of human-centric AI, providers and nurses can gain insight into overall patient well-being, including sleep patterns, movement, and state of repose. Proactive alerts, enhanced workflows, and intelligent video management provide nurses and caregivers with greater time to practice at the top of their knowledge and expertise, as each patient is continually monitored by virtual colleagues. The insights gained, paired with the uninterrupted observation, is a game-changer not only for hospitals but for the nurses who are caring for patients day in and day out.

Built-in AI tools have been developed to strengthen the impact of virtual observers. Presence detection features alert observers who may look away from their screens for too long and guide them back to focus through increasingly prominent alerts. This technology ensures that the attention of virtual observers remains on their patients, improving patient safety. This feature also supports improved buy-in from hospital leaders with the assurance that the virtual observers are always attentive to their patients.

One of the most important aspects of healthcare is the communication between patient and healthcare provider. Virtual observation powered by human-centric AI is designed to improve contact and communication between the patient and their entire healthcare team. When patients are at their most vulnerable, continuous observation and contact promote patient safety and security. Additionally, nurses and healthcare workers benefit from extended connection to their patients, with virtual observers providing an environment of safety. Patients experience more interaction with the virtual observers, which can enhance their positive perceptions of care.

It is an unfortunate reality that nurses face increased violence in the workplace. A recent National Nurses United report found that 8 in 10 nurses (81.6%) have experienced at least one instance of workplace violence within the past year and nearly half of nurses reported an increase in workplace violence in their unit. Healthcare workplace violence ranges from physical abuse to verbal threats. Virtual observation solutions can improve security for staff as well as patients by utilizing security staff trained in violence mitigation. They can alert a nurse that a patient is exhibiting signs of escalation prior to the nurse entering the patient’s room so that they may execute de-escalation tactics to prevent a violent encounter.

As more hospitals and health systems gravitate towards virtual patient observation solutions, the overarching objective is to improve care delivery for caregivers and enhance safety for patients. Human-centric AI technology can extend the reach of caregivers with continuous virtual observation of patients, ultimately protecting their safety and improving their experience.

Readers Write: How to Re-Imagine Clinical IT Support

How to Re-Imagine Clinical IT Support
By Chris Wickersham

Chris Wickersham is assistant VP of customer support at CereCore.

No one would argue that achieving provider satisfaction is a top goal for those of us who work in healthcare IT support. We also know that when employees on your IT support teams are happy, they provide better, higher quality service.

This led me to consider: how could I achieve both clinician satisfaction and employee satisfaction? What if a slightly different approach to IT service desk operations could lead to more efficiency and productivity for my help desk analysts and their satisfaction?

I began my career working as a healthcare IT analyst and have walked the halls of care settings providing support during go-lives. I have experienced first-hand how minutes matter when troubleshooting IT issues and that streamlined clinical workflows allow care teams to deliver higher quality patient care.

My quest to rethink IT support has been evolving over the past several years and has led to the creation of a clinical service desk. We implemented this service desk model with Epic-based facilities at HCA Healthcare. The results have been a win for clinicians and providers because they have been getting their issues resolved more quickly, and my analysts are working at the top of their license, especially those providing level 2 Epic support.

How is this possible? Here’s a peek into the building blocks of my IT support model.

First, spend time analyzing your organization’s goals for IT support and identify common challenges. I wanted to baseline provider, clinician, and even patient satisfaction as it relates to IT issue resolution and the effects on hospital operations. For example, if the hospital routinely experiences issues with printing discharge instructions, that will impact the timeliness of patients being discharged, patient and clinician satisfaction, and the efficiency of patient throughput.

We analyzed metrics from a variety of perspectives. What were the high-volume issues reported by providers, clinicians, and revenue cycle employees? Did we have recurring workflow challenges or training opportunities? What about EHR-build related incidents?

One of the toughest parts for healthcare IT support can be getting back in touch with a provider or clinician for additional information and follow-up. So, we examined the issue intake process for data quality and efficiency. Was enough information or the right type of information being collected during the first call? If we had had better data to begin with, could we have resolved the issue more quickly for a busy provider or clinical staff?

Next, we evaluated the tools and training. Looking at our high-volume issues in particular, would additional analyst training have helped with resolving the issue at the first point of contact? Would a different level of access enable the level 1 analyst the ability to resolve the issue sooner? Did we have an effective IT service management tool that allows for next-level analysis? Were there configuration, knowledge base, or workflow improvements within the ITSM that could help analysts resolve more issues during the first contact?

Healthcare IT is a team sport. That’s why we took a hard look at our culture and looked for ways to encourage more collaboration among all levels of our analysts. In fact, one of the key drivers in the evolution of our clinical service desk for Epic support has been the focus on “shifting left” the issues handled by our level 2 and level 3 analysts.

Our level 2 and level 3 application support and clinical informatics resources were finding it difficult to focus on project work. Their bandwidth for heads-down time to make progress on Epic initiatives often was limited because they were pulled into resolving support issues.

We began finding opportunities to cross-train and collaborate more. We also developed a training program to bolster application and workflow understanding. We made a significant investment in training our analysts through the Epic certification process, focusing on key workflows where we needed to increase our knowledge base and pairing the interests of service desk analysts with Epic certification opportunities. This training and collaboration have been key to making our shift left strategy a reality.

Finally, we established key performance indicators (KPIs) and reporting metrics to measure the effectiveness of training, analyst access changes, and process improvements. I focus on quality measures, such as first-contact resolution and customer satisfaction and the ability to shift support work left from level 2 to level 1.

If your organization is building an internal clinical service desk, prepare for the significant and intentional investment required, along with a willingness to let go and trust the process of building your own talent pipeline. Be ready to measure results so you can ensure you’re reaping the benefits of your investment and configuring your resource model appropriately.

When executed thoughtfully, the benefits of long-term operational efficiencies, improved clinician satisfaction, and happy employees are well worth the effort.

Readers Write: Healthcare’s Digital Leap: The Game-Changing Benefits of Online Marketplaces

Healthcare’s Digital Leap: The Game-Changing Benefits of Online Marketplaces
By Eric Utzinger

Eric Utzinger is co-founder and chief commercial officer of Revuud.

Digital marketplaces have become a transformative force across various industries, redefining how people transact and interact. From Uber to Airbnb, these platforms have revolutionized sectors and sparked trends like the gig economy and micro-entrepreneurship. 

The healthcare industry is experiencing its own revolution. Just as Uber changed transportation and Airbnb altered accommodation, digital marketplaces are shaking up healthcare. With over 150 online marketplaces today, while the concept isn’t entirely new, its application in healthcare is innovative. 

These platforms simplify the process of buying, selling, and hiring healthcare resources, transforming how doctors, nurses, medical equipment, medical coding, and IT services are managed. Let’s delve into how these marketplaces are enhancing healthcare’s efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and accessibility.

Boosting Access to Talent: Doctors and Nurses

• A bigger talent pool. Finding the right healthcare professionals used to be a local affair, often limited by geography and specific recruitment agencies. Enter marketplaces like LocumTenens.com and Vivian. These platforms expand the reach, allowing hospitals and clinics to connect with specialists and nurses from all over the country, or even the world. This broader talent pool ensures they can find the perfect fit for their needs.
• Faster hiring. In healthcare, time is of the essence. Traditional hiring processes can be slow, involving multiple steps and heaps of paperwork. Digital marketplaces streamline everything, providing robust platforms where job openings can be posted, and qualified professionals can apply directly. With features like instant messaging and credential verification, hiring becomes much quicker and more efficient.
• Flexibility and scalability. Marketplaces offer unmatched flexibility. Healthcare facilities can easily find part-time, temporary, or per-diem staff, allowing them to scale their workforce according to patient volume and seasonal demand. This adaptability helps manage operational costs and maintain high standards of patient care without the burden of overstaffing.

Revolutionizing Medical Coding

• Access to specialized coders. Accurate medical coding is crucial for billing and regulatory compliance, but finding specialized coders can be challenging. Marketplaces like The Coding Network connect healthcare providers with experienced coders who specialize in various medical fields, ensuring accuracy and compliance.
• Cost savings. Marketplaces offer competitive pricing for coding services, often cheaper than traditional staffing agencies. This cost efficiency is achieved through dynamic matching of supply and demand, reducing the overhead costs associated with conventional hiring processes.
• Scalability and flexibility. Medical coding needs can vary, especially with changing healthcare regulations or peak periods. Marketplaces provide the flexibility to scale coding services up or down as needed, allowing healthcare providers to manage their workload efficiently without long-term commitments.

Advancements in Healthcare IT Services

• Access to specialized IT talent. The digital transformation of healthcare requires specialized IT skills, from electronic health record (EHR) management to cybersecurity. Traditional hiring methods can limit the search for such talent. Marketplaces offer access to a pool of IT professionals with the expertise required for healthcare projects, ensuring providers find the right match for their highly technical needs.
• Cost efficiency. Hiring IT professionals through marketplaces often leads to significant cost savings. These platforms eliminate many overhead costs associated with full-time hires, such as benefits and long-term contracts. Healthcare providers can hire IT experts on a project basis, paying only for the services they need.
• Agility and speed. The rapidly evolving landscape of healthcare technology demands quick, agile responses. Marketplaces provide an efficient way to bring in IT professionals for short-term projects or to address immediate issues like system upgrades or security breaches. This agility is crucial for maintaining the integrity and functionality of healthcare IT systems, allowing organizations to scale their IT departments up or down when needed.

Conclusion

Digital marketplaces are revolutionizing healthcare by offering a more efficient, cost-effective, and flexible approach to managing resources. From doctors and nurses to medical equipment, coding, and IT services, these platforms provide numerous benefits over traditional methods. They democratize access to talent and resources, enhance transparency, and streamline processes, ultimately leading to improved patient care and operational efficiency.

As healthcare continues to evolve, embracing the advantages of marketplaces will be key for providers aiming to stay competitive and deliver high-quality care.

Readers Write: Strengthening the Net: The FTC’s Expanded Reach on Health Data Protection

Strengthening the Net: The FTC’s Expanded Reach on Health Data Protection
By Chris Bowen

Chris Bowen, MBA is founder and CISO of ClearData.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently finalized changes to the Health Breach Notification Rule (HBNR), signaling a move from fragmented, independent privacy and security measures towards a unified, collaborative defense. This new rule puts patients and consumers in the driver’s seat of their privacy and serves as a call to action for companies that create, collect, manage, and use health information, providing a potent deterrent against vulnerabilities that could expose their data.

Understand this: The FTC’s stance is unwavering and authoritative. It demands not mere compliance, but the utmost adherence to rigorous standards of care and caution in handling confidential health information.

The Health Breach Notification Rule mandates that vendors of personal health records and associated entities that are not covered by HIPAA must inform individuals in case of a breach with unsecured data. If a third-party service provider to these entities experiences a breach, it must inform the entity, which then notifies the individuals. The Rule also outlines the specifics of when, how, and what to notify in the event of specific breaches.

HBNR specifically applies to personal health record vendors and other entities that offer products or services through them, and third-party service providers to them. It covers a variety of platforms from health apps to wearable technologies. Unfortunately, 81% of Americans assume that all protected health data that is collected by digital health apps is protected under HIPAA.

In May 2023, the FTC proposed amendments to the Health Breach Notification Rule (HBNR) to clarify its scope regarding the collection of consumer health data by health apps and related technologies. The finalization of these changes is an unambiguous signal to the digital health ecosystem that the integrity of healthcare data is non-negotiable. No longer can firms hide behind the complexities or nascent nature of digital health technologies; the time to comply and protect is now, and the FTC has implemented rules that leave no uncertainty about the seriousness of the endeavor.

The updated HBNR ushers in several key shifts that set a higher standard for security and transparency. First among these is the expanded content required in a breach notification to patients. This move is not merely bureaucratic; it aligns with the growing demand for clarity and accountability that patients and providers alike require to maintain trust in the face of technological unknowns.

The Commission has made significant revisions and clarifications to the rules governing health apps and technologies that are not covered by HIPAA, enhancing the protection of personal health information (PHI). Among these changes are revised definitions to emphasize the rule’s application to health apps, clarification on what constitutes a “breach of security,” and a more precise scope for “PHR related entities” that includes those offering services via online and mobile platforms.

Additionally, the final rule expands the methods and content of breach notifications to consumers, including the use of electronic communication and detailed information on the breach’s impact.

It also adjusts the timing for notifying the FTC in the event of a breach, setting strict deadlines to ensure prompt action. These updates mark a significant step forward in securing PHI and underscore the importance of compliance and clear communication in the digital health space.

The FTC’s action demands not just compliance, but leadership — leadership in technological integrity, transparency, and fortitude in the face of cyber threats. Change will require investment, invention, and unwavering commitment, but the benefits extend far beyond mere regulatory peace of mind. In championing cybersecurity, we champion the future of healthcare, a future that is secure, trusted, and resilient. Digital health entities that fall short will find themselves lacking not just in regulatory compliance, but also in the trust and investment of a discerning public.

Consumer Protected Health Information is not just a term. It embodies the very essence of what is ours, our narratives of health, history, and future.

The time has come for a unified front in healthcare cybersecurity. We, the technologists, innovators, lawmakers, and guardians of the healthcare digital landscape, must rise to this challenge with unity and tenacity.

It is time for every digital health company, every healthcare professional, and every policymaker to reassess, reinvent, and redouble their efforts in cybersecurity. The FTC’s changes provide the roadmap. It is now up to us to ensure a future where patient data is as secure as the healthcare we strive to provide.

The stakes are too high, the threats too real, and the need for action too pressing.

Readers Write: Health Tech Innovation Requires Accurate Person Matching

Health Tech Innovation Requires Accurate Person Matching
By Jitin Asnaani

Jitin Asnaani, MBA is chief product officer of Rhapsody.

Elsevier’s “Clinician of the Future” report shows that nearly as many clinicians agree the widespread use of digital health technologies will enable the positive transformation of healthcare (70%) that believe digital health technologies will be a challenging burden (69%). This means health tech must innovate to maximize the positive while minimizing the burden.

The pressure is on to build solutions that capture the potential to revolutionize healthcare and address the increasing challenge of accurately managing and leveraging the data generated from these innovations.

Healthcare generates about 30% of the world’s data volume and is growing with a compound annual growth rate faster than any other industry. Sources for this data explosion are numerous and diverse, including primary care facilities, hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, consumer-generated data, plus IT systems such as EHRs, patient registries, radiology information systems, and medical devices. This brings an immense opportunity and challenge.

As health tech companies onboard data from this expanding number of sources, it becomes increasingly harder to confidently manage and reconcile identity data. In fact, studies indicate that errors in matching records to the correct person occur up to half of the time.

Correctly managing person data and tying the data together is non-trivial. To maintain trust in the data-driven solutions provided, clinicians and patients must be able to interpret and use all this data. Health tech companies are responsible for each piece of information they collect, regardless of where it’s generated. Consequently, internal teams and even customers are forced to spend time resolving duplicates, which increases total cost of ownership and reduces trust in data quality.

Consider the example of an at-home glucose monitoring device. To make the device data actionable, information must be obtained not only from the device but also directly from the consumer, the provider managing diabetes care, a pharmacy, and an insurance provider. Each source uses a different system with inconsistent data cleanliness.

Complicating this further, a person may be known by variations of their name in different systems –John, Jon, or Johnny, for example. The complexity in matching all data from various sources and formats into a single, clean record makes the potential for error and the strain on data stewards’ time extremely high.

Enterprise Master Person Index (EMPI) technology emerges as a critical element in overcoming these challenges. By offering a centralized repository for identity information that also adds a layer of science to improve match rates, EMPI facilitates accurate person matching across diverse systems while ensuring data integrity and interoperability. This centralized approach streamlines data management processes and enhances the reliability of electronic records, ultimately leading to better clinical outcomes.

Advanced EMPI solutions leverage AI and machine learning capabilities to further enhance data accuracy by automating the linking of person records. By mimicking human decision-making processes, these solutions reduce manual intervention, improve data consistency, and increase efficiency in data management workflows. This not only saves time and resources, but also enhances the overall quality of healthcare data.

For health tech companies building innovative technologies and data-driven applications, an EMPI is foundational to ensuring data accuracy within their solutions. This builds customer trust around the quality of information delivered by or powering, the product, especially when ingesting, integrating, and reconciling data across multiple sources.

When considering whether to buy or build an EMPI solution, health tech companies must weigh the benefits of leveraging a reliable EMPI partner against the costs and complexities of in-house development. Partnering with an established EMPI provider can accelerate time to market, ensure scalability, and mitigate risks associated with infrastructure development, allowing companies to focus on their core competencies and innovation.

Effectively managing person data is essential for driving innovation and improving patient outcomes. By leveraging advanced EMPI technology, health tech innovators can effectively manage person data and improve data accuracy and consistency, aiding their customers in enhancing the quality of care provided while maintaining trust in their data-driven solutions.

Readers Write: ATA 2024 Spotlights How Collaboration, AI, and Patient-Centricity Will Define Telehealth’s Future

ATA 2024 Spotlights How Collaboration, AI, and Patient-Centricity Will Define Telehealth’s Future
By Amy Window

Amy Window is vice president of strategic alliances at Infermedica.

The American Telemedicine Association’s (ATA) annual conference united experts to discuss how technology is transforming telehealth. While recognizing that technology is just one facet of the solution, attendees emphasized its vital role in improving care quality and access, with collaboration and AI adoption surfacing as central topics.

Among the themes emerging from ATA Nexus 2024:

• Technology-driven healthcare. While technology is pivotal to medicine’s future, it’s not a standalone solution but rather part of a comprehensive approach. To truly impact healthcare, we must look beyond the tech itself and consider how it interacts with evolving human behavior.
• Radical collaboration. Transforming healthcare demands collaboration rather than circumventing existing systems. Partnerships can align goals and uncover innovative solutions that enhance care quality and accessibility. Companies are increasingly joining forces to offer end-to-end telemedicine platforms spanning the patient journey, with health systems favoring unified solutions over piecemeal offerings.
• AI adoption. Integrating AI should be a top priority, given its potential to boost efficiency and predictive power in healthcare. However, maximizing its impact and ensuring adoption by professionals and consumers alike will require refined implementation strategies. Building trust and developing responsible AI practices were key topics at the conference.
• From patients to consumers. As telemedicine shifts to a consumer-centric model, understanding and catering to the choices and expectations of healthcare consumers is paramount. Empowered consumers demand personalized, convenient care options, and providers must rise to meet their evolving needs. This means treating virtual encounters with the same care and attention as in-person visits and offering a variety of care modalities. Virtual appointments are every bit as important as face-to-face visits.

Attendees stressed the importance of treating telemedicine with the same thoughtfulness as in-person care. To truly personalize and improve the convenience of care, providers must offer diverse care modalities, meet patients where they are, and let them choose their preferred methods. Seamless, patient-centric technology will be essential to achieving this.

The spirit of “radical collaboration” was palpable, with companies increasingly partnering to provide comprehensive telemedicine solutions across the patient journey. In some cases, this entails corporate mergers, but often it’s just good old collaboration. Health systems are abandoning point solutions in favor of unified platforms. Building trust and developing responsible AI practices were also major topics.

The well-publicized nursing shortage put virtual nursing in the spotlight. AI and video allow nurses to efficiently monitor more patients remotely, alleviating strain while enabling the delivery of high-quality care. AI is also being leveraged to reduce administrative burdens, enabling clinicians to focus on delivering exceptional care.

Additional growth opportunities include AI-powered triage in call centers, where non-medical operators use care navigation technology to appropriately direct patients, as well as self-triage and care navigation tools for patients themselves.

Delivering seamless, personalized experiences that meet patients where they are will be essential as telemedicine becomes increasingly consumer centric. Carefully integrating AI and other technologies through strategic collaboration will be crucial to shaping the future of healthcare.

The innovations and insights from ATA Nexus paint an exciting picture of what lies ahead for telemedicine, and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s on the horizon at ATA 2025.

Readers Write: Interoperability’s Last Mile – Universal Patient Consent and Access is Holding Us Back

Interoperability’s Last Mile – Universal Patient Consent and Access is Holding Us Back
By Lew Parker

Lew Parker, MSIS, MBA is chief technology officer of Arrive Health of Denver, CO.

As always, the latest round of health technology conferences has inspired us with new ideas for the application and value of interoperability in healthcare. The combination of existing and new technology offers tremendous potential to impact patient outcomes and provider experiences. There’s one last mile we’ve yet to cross, however – our business policies haven’t caught up to our technology, and we’ve fallen short on the key step for how true data sharing will work.

Healthcare interoperability is meant to create transparency, giving providers and patients the information that they need to make decisions about all types of things, including diagnoses, treatments, costs, and more. We’ve made great strides in developing technology to standardize how we share data, such as HL7 and FHIR, at a granular level. There are also shining examples of interoperability at work to tackle specific challenges, such as using real-time prescription benefit (RTPB) data to support patient affordability and adherence.

What’s needed to cover interoperability’s last mile is a federated, decentralized way to authenticate, access, and, most importantly, verify consent to that data.

This isn’t an impossible task or pie-in-the-sky recommendation. Think about when you register a website domain. You purchase the domain from a single registrar, point it to your server, and every DNS instantly knows where to route traffic. The registration isn’t centralized, but it is handled in a way that makes the ownership and access, managed by one registrar, available to all for verification and use.

For another example, look at how SSL certificates facilitate secure communications across the internet through a federated registry system, where trust is decentralized yet universally acknowledged. Over 100 trusted certificate authorities are providing this service. By applying a similar federated model to healthcare, we can enable seamless access to data while respecting the autonomy of individual entities within the network. Imagine what our world, and patient experience and outcomes, would look like if we achieved this same level of trust and access.

In a federated model, the focus shifts from establishing a single centralized governing body to an alliance of healthcare entities that agree on shared policies and standards for data use and access. Much work has been done to create these types of alliances, and we should leverage existing organizations if possible. This would:

• Create a single place for healthcare entities and partners to ping for information once patient consent is given.
• Streamline access to data, removing firewalls that we experience today because of contract or independent business policies.
• Foster innovation by providing an easy way to grant data access to trusted partners.
• Pave the way for patients to access, understand, and plan their healthcare in a single place.

In this future scenario, RTPB data has new potential. RTPB surfaces millions of real-time patient events a day, events like me getting a new prescription or having a prior authorization approved, that others could use to improve care delivery, lower costs, connect me to community resources, and a million things I have not thought of myself.

Without a unified way to provide access to this data, however, these opportunities to make my experience better cannot happen. Instead, to gain access to real-time information, each innovator and partner must establish 1-to-1 relationships and partnerships, each with their own policies, contracts, and requirements. Our systems become complicated and cumbersome as we must codify this variability into our interoperability applications. This ultimately slows down, and in many cases prevents, access to the very data that is needed to drive progress and health outcomes.

I am extremely proud of our industry for our interoperability achievements, and I remain positive about what’s to come. I also believe covering the last mile and achieving true interoperability in healthcare is going to require us to think more broadly and collaboratively about not only how we share data, but how we use it. It remains to be seen if TEFCA can provide the federated model that is required for success.

Readers Write: Unification of Content Will Unlock the Next Phase of Healthcare Innovation

Unification of Content Will Unlock the Next Phase of Healthcare Innovation
By Greg Samios

Greg Samios, MBA is president and CEO of clinical effectiveness of Wolters Kluwer Health. 

The pressures and challenges in the healthcare environment are numerous, from dealing with financial constraints to coping with severe staffing shortages. The situation is concerning and getting worse: 16.7% of healthcare facilities anticipate critical staffing shortages, one in four nurses plan to exit the profession because of overwork and understaffing, and disruption from cyberattacks has put many healthcare facilities on the brink of closure.

The stark reality is that 60% of physicians’ questions go unanswered daily and more than one in every 20 patients experiences preventable harm, incurring costs that are associated with medication errors of approximately $42 billion USD globally. 

Yet healthcare executives must strive to deliver the best possible patient care amidst continually evolving circumstances. The shape of healthcare has changed with new care delivery models for where and how healthcare is provided, from retail clinics to virtual health. Within this cyclone of change, healthcare enterprises are seeking scalable solutions that can not only improve patient outcomes, but also drive care team efficiencies and reduce care variability.  

Each day, healthcare providers turn to information and technologies to make care decisions and educate patients. Content and data underpin the continual information stream, but too often that content is based on disparate technologies that lack harmony, leading to inconsistent care decisions and inefficiencies that may exacerbate care variability.

In many cases, this disconnect is the result of solutions being added at different times to address different needs while forgetting to consider how they fit into the clinical workflow. For example, as COVID-19 arrived, many healthcare providers pivoted quickly to solutions to support remote and virtual care out of necessity. For many organizations, this resulted in relying on “best for need” vendor solutions to fill in immediate gaps, but not necessarily best address long-term, enterprise level goals. Today, however, like many industries, healthcare is looking for fewer vendors in seeking consistency, efficiency, and cost savings. 

Looking at this issue, the unification of content is a necessary next step for healthcare to facilitate seamless decision-making at the point of care and across the healthcare ecosystem. Harmonized content makes healthcare delivery easier for all members of the healthcare team, who can access the same information for treatment, drug dosing, and patient education to support better care.

Having consistent content also creates a vital underpinning to support and coordinate high quality patient care and eliminate care variability as healthcare adopts innovative technologies such as generative AI. In fact, both physicians and consumers have expressed concerns about the source of the content that is driving GenAI healthcare solutions, making it even more critical that there is a trusted and unified content solution for healthcare.

Unified content and solutions help align care teams and administrators to work together, rather than in disparate workflows, to deliver the best care for patients and position themselves for success in meeting current and emerging health challenges.

Readers Write: It’s Time to Rethink Healthcare’s Reliance on Legacy Tech Amid Cyberattacks

It’s Time to Rethink Healthcare’s Reliance on Legacy Tech Amid Cyberattacks
By Tom Furr

Tom Furr is founder and CEO of PatientPay of Durham, NC.

One of the biggest questions surrounding a large-scale cyberattack in healthcare this spring is one that healthcare is hesitant to confront. Why did it take more than a month to get these systems up and running again?

We would never hear of a financial institution being unable to restore operations for such a long period of time, despite the fact that financial data, just like healthcare data, is an attractive target for cyberattack, with losses totaling more than $12 billion over the past 20 years.

But as financial institutions take a hard look at ways to de-risk technologies to bolster their defense against cyberattack — including by investing in cloud and edge computing and implementing zero-trust architecture to protect legacy tools from threats, partnering with technology hosting companies for their security solutions such as AWS’s Cloud Security, Oracle Cloud Security and Azure Cloud Security —healthcare has been slower to make the move to the cloud.

One study found that while 86% of healthcare organizations have experienced data theft of some type, just 47% of sensitive data in healthcare is stored in the public cloud, compared with 61% across industries, according to research by Skyhigh Security. While 56% of healthcare organizations surveyed by Forrester increased cloud spending between 2022 and 2023, most are focusing on moving electronic medical record (EMR) systems to the cloud. While it makes sense to start with the EMR, leaders shouldn’t overlook the need to move other on-premises systems and applications to the cloud, too, including legacy systems.

A few years ago, a HIMSS survey quantified healthcare’s reliance on legacy systems. It found that 73% of organizations still operate legacy systems even though leaders say that these systems also present the third-biggest security risk to organizations. Insiders refer to these systems as “basement tech.” They have been around so long that few members of the IT team know how to operate them, yet they’re expensive to retire, so they keep chugging along, often in the basement of a facility. I guess now that costs from the most recent breach are starting to become public, it appears retiring old systems might not be that expensive after all.

If a system were hosted in the cloud, it would have access to all the latest security protections as they are released. Even better, there would be multiple layers of security surrounding a system in the cloud. If one layer were penetrated during a cyberattack, there would still be security wrapped around the root code for the system. Even if cyberthieves were to penetrate the root area of the system, the nature of the cloud means access to the system is still possible. The vulnerable system could be shut down, with the same functions spun up in another area of the cloud within minutes, limiting downtime.

We never hear someone say, “I couldn’t access my bank account for a month because of that cyberattack.” So why do we accept that this can happen in healthcare?

The truth is, we shouldn’t. Not when providers’ livelihoods are at stake, with many physicians digging into their personal savings to keep their practices afloat. And let’s not forget the patient impact, with the most recent large-scale cyberattack forcing consumers to pay cash for expensive drugs or endure long waits for needed prescriptions, among other impacts.

The impact of the latest healthcare cyberattack will likely be felt for months, going beyond claim processing and payment to impact functions such as real-time eligibility checks and more. As the industry assesses the damage, providers must also double down on prevention.

Now is the time to take a hard look at what’s holding your organization back from cloud investment, the level of expertise needed to chart a path forward, and the types of investments that will best protect your organization from a breach in an era of increased cyber risk. Your organization’s reputation and its ability to maintain continuity in care depend on these actions.

Readers Write: Healthcare Technology To-Do List: Make Data Valuable for Providers

Healthcare Technology To-Do List: Make Data Valuable for Providers
By Kevin Coloton

Kevin Coloton, MPT, MBA is founder and CEO of Curation Health of Annapolis, MD.

Following my time at HIMSS ’24 and RISE National, I’ve noticed that the healthcare industry considers the maturity of health data exchange as a mission accomplished, when in reality, we are drowning providers in data that’s not usable.

Health plans and other enterprises previously had tons of data that they kept locked away. Now they are touting that they have opened the valve and data is flowing freely to the electronic health record (EHR) for health systems and providers. The problem is that healthcare providers are now drowning in data, making it almost useless. They’ve been given the full clinical encyclopedia when all they need is the CliffsNotes summary of the patient’s priorities.

There’s a huge difference between clinical data exchange and clinical insight delivery. When we step back and look at the problems that we are attempting to solve, it is discerning which data insights are actionable to improve patient care encounters, value-based care (VBC) performance, and health outcomes. The synthesis of the massive data set into actionable priorities is what’s needed. For example, knowing the top three data insights that will be most valuable for each patient during the provider’s 10-minute care encounter.

We need to help healthcare providers contextualize data for each patient. A technology “clinical insight” layer is needed within the EHR to deliver the most relevant and impactful insights from the data set to maximize provider engagement. This efficient use of actionable data can superpower provider workflows by reducing the work load of reviewing a full library of patient data and enhancing the value of time spent with patients.

Managing thousands of patients across an entire calendar year requires an overwhelming amount of data. Other industries, such as retail and ecommerce, have matured faster to accommodate the data than healthcare because we are early on our journey around what’s important for technology integrations. As a healthcare technology industry, we’re still in this era of what is best described as data maximalism, getting so excited about the potential value of a massive data set, which is further complicated by having health plan data being sent to provider EHRs and dumping the data into a giant repositories like data lakes.

From an operational standpoint, healthcare decision makers and information technology leaders are challenged with managing the tsunami of patient data, which is often just pushed directly into provider workflows. However, we must focus our efforts on delivering the highest impact data at the point of care. Those curated data points will be the most important items to focus on during a patient’s care encounter, particularly in a VBC model. When physicians are using great insight and act on it accordingly and compliantly, the patient receives more holistic care, the provider gets an accurate representation of the acuity of their patient, and reimbursement is appropriate based on the clinical risks that are associated with the patient.

To succeed in healthcare’s VBC environment, we must shift gears to a data minimalism approach. This is a strategy with the objective of synthesizing massive amounts of data and ultimately delivering the minimum amount of data required to benefit the frontline healthcare professional in managing a patient’s health. The approach rewards providers with more time for direct patient care, which is the most constrained element of the healthcare equation.

To achieve this result, EHR technology integrations can be deployed that utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and offer relief to clinical and administrative teams for risk-based documentation and coding activities. When looking for the best-fit technology provider, healthcare teams must understand that the goal is not to add more clicks, but to superpower the humans who are already doing their daily jobs.

AI and has made leaps and bounds in healthcare to scale the impact of data analysis. AI-powered technology can transform data into user-friendly formats and then analyze that data against established clinical and quality rules to identify both known and previously undiscovered patient needs. For healthcare provider groups and health insurers that are looking to gain actionable insights from their data sets, they should seek a technology platform that can harmonize patient data into actionable insights so that the information can flow both ways, from a plan to a provider and from a provider to a plan. That way, providers can enhance their partnership with payer organizations to better manage and optimize patient care.

The main takeaway? Using technology to curate data is not intended to replace the human expert in the equation. It should superpower that human expert to achieve scalability and better outcomes. By allowing providers to practice at the top of their license and engage more with the patient because they’re not logging into their records to flip through pages and pages of lab results, medication lists, past visit notes, and specialty referrals, we are succeeding in delivering efficient, effective, and high-quality care. Providers should be able to leverage a curated data set from the EHR to organize information to make it actionable and amplify their true expertise.

Readers Write: Healthcare IT Commercialization Success: Sophisticated Markets Require Sophisticated Strategies

Healthcare IT Commercialization Success: Sophisticated Markets Require Sophisticated Strategies
By Dean Kaufman

Dean Kaufman, MS is founder and CEO of Healthcare Service Consultants of Millburn, NJ.

About 75% of US-based healthcare IT start-up companies fail. That’s a shocking statistic.

Many blame lack of long-term funding. In reality, the failure can often be tied to not providing hard evidence of value and lack of understanding financial drivers. While these companies develop complex, sophisticated products to meet highly specialized needs of healthcare end users, their go-to-market strategy often follows the old “if you build it they will come” approach.

This just doesn’t work. Nor do common B2C and B2B commercialization strategies. Healthcare IT and digital health companies need a well thought out commercialization strategy that is tailored to meet the demands of a complicated and specialized buyer who is risk averse. This becomes even more difficult when a novel solution touches more than one clinical specialty.

The commercialization strategy for a healthcare IT or digital health company must include the following.

Step 1 – set the stage

Before launching the product, many pre-commercial activities need to occur. These activities center around market understanding and developing the proof points that are necessary to establish credibility and interest across clearly defined target audiences. Activities include:

• Establishing pilot sites. Early adopters can provide real use case examples and proof points to support claims. Pilots go beyond clinical trials or validation projects. They exist in live clinical settings that can prove tangible ROI.
• Understanding the sales cycle. In healthcare IT, sales cycles are often longer than expected. It’s important to understand buying cycles and who the decision makers and influencers are.
• Identifying what’s needed to support sales. Healthcare IT often requires a sales support team that can answer complex clinical, workflow or technical questions related to the deployment and use of the product.
• Supporting customers. Ensuring a smooth and timely implementation that results in a delighted customer is critical. but it’s often an underappreciated step in commercialization success. A team with the appropriate skills should be hired as developers typically do not have the people and workflow skills.
• Meeting regulatory requirements. Some healthcare IT solutions need to prove safety and efficacy via a 510(k). In addition, marketing teams need to discern what claims can and cannot be made before and after receiving official clearance.

Step 2 – develop and implement an effective sales strategy

Let’s be honest. No company in this space is selling their products on Amazon or Etsy. With complex healthcare IT products, a direct sales strategy is typically best. It results in complete control over the customer relationship and provides the best opportunity to gain an understanding of customer needs.

In some situations, a channel partnership strategy can be beneficial, especially when the product complements, augments, or can be embedded in another existing system. If pursuing a channel partner strategy, remember that ongoing training and support of the partner sales force is critical.

Step 3 – set realistic sales targets

Sales projections are an important component of a commercialization strategy. Take into account third-party market data as well as soft data such as sales and budget cycles, the prioritization of the challenges addressed by the product, and the complexity of the sale. Many large companies pulled out of the healthcare vertical because they could not realize revenue targets in the projected time frame.

Step 4 – establish a clinically-focused product awareness and demand generation program

A product marketing program that leverages early customer success in the clinical setting is key. These case studies should be leveraged to generate awareness of a solution’s value.

These go-to-market activities should start 12 to 24 months before the planned launch date. This affords enough time to gather proof points, establish a viable sales strategy and forecast, and generate market awareness and demand.

Healthcare IT companies need to have the internal or external talent required to bring these strategies to fruition. When it comes to product marketing in this space, the key to success lies in the ability to authentically connect with target audience. This not only requires content and outbound product marketing strategies that resonate with a sophisticated audience, it also calls for leadership that understands the clinical workflows and problems facing key decision-makers.

To truly connect with a target market, position the company as a thought leader by:

• Keenly focusing on developing messaging and content that reflects the lived experiences of target audiences. Content needs to build the credibility necessary to move prospects beyond awareness and build genuine interest in products and solutions.
• Demonstrating an understanding of clinical and technical challenges  and how the company’s innovation could solve them. Some startups mistakenly prioritize impressive leadership resumes over direct experience to impress potential investors.
• Understanding the unique pain points of healthcare organizations, leaders, and end users. For example, marketing teams need to create campaigns and materials that expressly illustrate how healthcare CIOs are concerned with issues such as cybersecurity, staffing, and systems integration, while radiology directors are fretting over employee burnout, quality of care, collaboration with clinicians across the spectrum, optimal dosing, and patient safety.
• Tapping into clinical knowledge. Such intelligence makes it possible to clearly communicate the value propositions of products and how they fit into clinical workflows or integrate with peripheral systems and devices.

When outsourcing marketing functions, it is important to ensure that potential partners have the needed clinical domain as well as product marketing understanding. For instance, a small company focusing on medical imaging should prioritize hiring a product marketing agency with a deep understanding of this specific clinical domain. This ensures that the messaging is effective and resonates with the target audience.

Healthcare IT marketing leaders and teams need to convey a depth of industry knowledge that resonates with a risk-averse, critical, and educated healthcare audience. This ability is far more important than experience in other industries or jumping on marketing trends that are prevalent in consumer or other commercial circles.

Readers Write: Making the Right Choices for Hospital Virtual Care Technology

Making the Right Choices for Hospital Virtual Care Technology
By Brad Storm

Brad Storm, MS is VP of technology and integrations at Sonifi Health of Sioux Falls, SD.

No healthcare strategy includes adopting a new initiative under duress. But that’s exactly what many hospitals had to do in the face of COVID-19, when clinicians were desperate to communicate safely, quickly, and effectively with patients and their families. Trying to adapt the ideas from at-home telehealth with whatever technology was easy to get — often simply consumer-grade tablets or video monitors — became the hasty foundation for what virtual care in a hospital setting could be.

Those early days of virtual care in inpatient environments brought a lot of good lessons about what’s reliable, what’s scalable, what’s effective, and just as important, what’s not.

In the years since, hospital executives now have a beat to create long-term strategies for virtual care. Here are some critical questions to consider for hospitals to implement the best inpatient telehealth setup.

What do your nurses have to say?

Nurses are frequently the ones tasked with facilitating virtual care calls. Talk with them about how this affects their workflows. Do they feel they’re losing clinical time coordinating calls, or are they being more efficient with their workload?

What kinds of tasks could be shifted to be virtually done from a command center? Examples: admissions interviews, education and medication review, observation rounding, and discharge instructions.

What equipment do they recommend for ease of use and reliability?

Involving your nurses in your virtual care decisions is critical to supporting them and addressing some of the issues that come with staff shortages, burnout, and inefficient processes.

Give them a voice, and listen to their suggestions. They’ll be much more likely to embrace a strategy and adopt initiatives they are part of from the beginning.

What are your patient demographics?

Think about the digital health literacy of the populations you serve, what kinds of technologies they’re familiar with using, and if common physical or mobility issues exist that may affect their ability to interact during a virtual care call.

For many acute care hospitals, more than half of their patients are 60 and older. In children’s hospitals, the pediatric patients’ caregivers tend to be younger and are typically quite tech savvy. Like the staff who will be using your virtual care solution, take the patients who will be using it into consideration, too.

Patient experience professionals will have great insight into the kind of setup that patients, and their families, will be most comfortable with and willing to use.

What equipment and infrastructure are needed?

With input from the people who will be using virtual care, start to narrow down the technology needed to make it successful, sustainable, and within your budget.

If you already have hardware in patient rooms, such as a television, can it be used for your virtual care setup? If you’ve been using tablets, are they working well, or is there a better alternative to think about?

Talk with providers and clinicians about the kind of camera and microphone capabilities they’ll need for the use cases they’ll be part of. Can the camera be controlled to zoom in to specific areas of the room? Is the microphone sensitive enough for ambient listening?

Should there be something permanently mounted in each room, or are mobile carts the best option?

Once the equipment is decided, make sure you have the infrastructure to support it, including access to power and secure network connectivity.

How does the solution integrate with your other systems?

Interoperability is a major part of a successful long-term strategy for virtual care. Like any technology system, virtual care can be most effective if it integrates with workflows your staff already use, especially for EHR, scheduling, education, screenings, and discharge. Integrated systems will make it much easier to scale and standardize enterprise-wide going forward.

For example, if you have an interactive patient engagement system in patient rooms, all the systems can link together on one platform, drastically simplifying where clinicians have to log in for patient care, as well as how patients can access the information, education, and consultations they need.

Virtual care is becoming part of a standard smart hospital room, so creating a cohesive and seamless experience on the user end will vastly improve its value.

How will you track effectiveness and ROI?

Adding technology to a hospital setting is never a small feat. Make sure your virtual care investment is worth it by identifying how you will track its effectiveness, how you plan to roll it out.

Will you have access to data and analytics about virtual care encounters? Professional and anecdotal insights about use cases? Consultations about ongoing optimizations?

Is there a specific unit or use case you will pilot your virtual care technology with first? What’s the go-no go plan for rolling out to other areas? What’s the role of virtual care for both your short-term goals and long-term goals?

Having the right people in the conversations as well as the right technology in the spaces will be key to making sure your virtual care strategy is the most beneficial for your clinicians, patients, and families, both now and in the future.

Readers Write: Reducing Friction in the Healthcare Ecosystem: Why Convenience, Access, and Patient Experience are Key

Reducing Friction in the Healthcare Ecosystem: Why Convenience, Access, and Patient Experience are Key
By Vytas Kisielius

Vytas Kisielius is CEO of ReferWell.

The future of healthcare relies on our ability to adapt and improve how we meet the needs of patients. Despite recent advances in technology, scheduling difficulties, low appointment show rates, siloed information, and obscure reporting continue to hinder access to care, health outcomes, and care quality. To overcome this friction related to getting people to the doctor, it is essential to prioritize convenience, access, and patient experience. Many other industries have made this shift, but healthcare has been a laggard in addressing this friction. Overcoming it is the key to closing care gaps, decreasing visit no-shows, and fostering patient engagement and retention.

Defining Friction and Its Impact on Patient Care

“Friction” in healthcare significantly impacts patient care and satisfaction, manifesting through:

1. Patient expectations versus reality: The gap between high patient expectations and the reality of poor care experiences, scheduling errors, and missed appointments leads to dissatisfaction and revenue losses. In study after study, consumers report that one negative experience trumps several positive ones in their decision-making regarding repeat business (patient retention) and satisfaction with their experience (which affects CAHPS). At the same time, providers complain about patients who no-show for appointments, so rather than risk losing the revenue associated with those visits, many will routinely double-book their schedules and assume it’s okay to make the patients wait if both show up at the appointed time. Lack of understanding and empathy on both sides increases the friction.

2. Access and operational hurdles: Patients often struggle to find providers, schedule appointments, and navigate insurance complexities, leading to a preference for more accessible healthcare options. All too often, once a patient calls three or four offices selected randomly from their health plan’s portal and finds none of them have availability, they declare, “There’s no access from my plan,” when, in fact, there is available capacity spread throughout the provider network. More friction and frustration on the part of both parties – the patient thought there was no availability and the providers with available slots saw the time go to waste. Like an airline seat, once the flight takes off, an unused seat represents revenue that is forever lost.

3. Perception and trust issues: Many patients feel their health history is not fully understood by their providers. This, combined with negative perceptions of support staff (who in most cases don’t view their jobs as providing customer service but rather as providing support to their doctor employer), long wait times, and billing issues, erodes trust and confidence in the healthcare system. For all too many providers who entered medicine “to heal the sick,” the requisite training in bedside manner took a back seat to the study of symptoms and diagnoses and procedures. Another opportunity to create friction.

4. Data hurdles: When a patient is referred to a specialist following a visit to a primary care provider, the onus to find the right provider and schedule the appointment is often on the patient. Simple questions like, “What GI specialists near me take my insurance and have open appointments?” become research projects. And when they finally do find a participating specialist with availability, many a patient’s last thought is to provide a copy of their relevant medical history, including the notes of the PCP visit, in order to aid the specialist in providing the right treatment.

5. Scheduling issues: During an appointment, whether in a provider’s office or a virtual visit, or in a follow-up care call, the patient is commonly ready and willing to schedule their next appointment. Unfortunately, all too often the provider or their staff does not have the necessary information at their fingertips at that critical moment to help. In fact, in many cases the provider doesn’t think it’s their job to get the next appointment (with someone else) scheduled since, historically, the information about who takes what insurance, who performs which specialties/subspecialties/procedures at what locations and who of them has availability hasn’t been easily obtained – hence, the onus is left on the patient.

The Impact of Friction on Patients

As evidenced by these examples, when patients encounter friction, their access to care is impeded, leading to negative consequences for their health, well-being, and satisfaction with the entire process. Remember also that we typically seek care when we’re not feeling our best, shortening patience and empathy further. Have you ever taken an airplane flight when you didn’t feel 100% healthy? Normally acceptable minor inconveniences or delays can become positively irritating.

One of the primary impacts of friction is increased patient dissatisfaction. When patients face long wait times, encounter administrative hurdles, or experience difficulties navigating the healthcare system, their satisfaction levels plummet. This dissatisfaction can result in patients seeking alternative healthcare options or avoiding necessary care altogether, leading to potentially adverse health outcomes.

Friction also affects patient engagement. When patients face obstacles in accessing their healthcare information or participating in their health management, their engagement levels decrease. This lack of engagement hampers the effectiveness of future healthcare interventions and compromises patient outcomes. It’s a vicious cycle.

These challenges underscore the need for payers and providers to streamline processes, improve experiences and foster a more patient-centered approach to care.

Investing in Patient Experience as a Pathway to Improved Healthcare

Investing in the patient experience is not just a moral imperative but a strategic one, which can offer improved healthcare outcomes for patients and financial success for providers. In fact, healthcare organizations that focus on the patient experience as a critical factor in driving economic success can dramatically increase their recurring revenue. With every dollar invested in enhancing patient experience, a significant ROI, ranging from seven to 10 times the initial expenditure, is observed. This dramatic ROI is attributed to repeat visits and retention, positive word of mouth and referrals, better online reviews, and a better reputation and brand loyalty.

As we look ahead, it is important to acknowledge that we are all healthcare consumers who can relate to the struggle of finding and scheduling the care we need at a time and a place that is convenient for us. While it is easy for patients, providers, and healthcare leaders alike to name the usual obstacles – who takes what insurance, overly complicated appointment scheduling processes, and the question of who’s responsible for sharing the information back with the primary care provider – these obstacles are not insurmountable.

To truly deliver on the promise of better healthcare, we must work together to make the process of finding, scheduling, and following through with care appointments as seamless as possible for the patient. That will, in turn, improve provider experience and reimbursement rates while helping to close care gaps – reducing friction for patients and positively impacting HEDIS and CAHPS scores for providers and health plans.