Financial/Revenue Cycle Management

Lisa Burdue, accounts receivable manager with Internal Medicine Specialists, a gastroenterology and nephrology clinic in Central Florida, has seen firsthand how state-of-the-art revenue cycle technologies can boost reimbursement.

Allscripts may have missed revenue projections for Q2, but the EHR company was bullish on bookings, seeming to be coming out of the tailspin that began last year with the falling apart of its board of directors, firing of its chairman and finally the stepping down of then CEO Glen Tullman.

Farzad Mostashari, Dick Foster and Uwe Reinhardt lead a panel discussion at Health Datapalooza IV to discuss whether or not the current surge in public and private sector spending on health IT programs is going to reduce healthcare costs.

It's often said that our society is one steeped in impatience. We want fast Internet, quick news, overnight deliveries. This culture of instant gratification even pervades healthcare, as can be seen in the outcomes of CMS' Pioneer ACO model, which initially boasted 32 member organizations but recently saw nine jump ship -- with two groups washing their hands of the project altogether.

With more than $500 million in HITECH Act startup funding set to run out by the end of the year, too many health information exchanges "haven't figured out how to fund themselves."

While 90 percent of healthcare CIOs view IT innovation as critical to success, the more surprising statistic is that fewer than one-fourth consider their existing infrastructure capable of supporting such technological advancement.

Tenet Healthcare's $4.3 billion acquisition of Vanguard Health Systems is likely to bring more business athenahealth's way, Piper Jaffray analyst Sean Wieland concluded in a note he issued June 24, even as he offered up other possible scenarios, such as a MED3000 business win, or a boon for Cerner.

You'd be forgiven for thinking revenue cycle management technology is a bit, well, boring. You'd also be wrong. The coming years are going to see some big changes in the way hospitals get paid -- and the IT they use to track when and how they get paid is going to have to change as well.

There's a commonly held perception that healthcare is a process in which doctors take care of patients. But increasingly healthcare stakeholders are figuring out that, at times, a more effective way to help patients get healthy is to show them how to take care of themselves.

The Center for Connected Health and the Center for Technology and Aging have launched a new tool to gauge the return on investment for remote patient monitoring technologies for patients with heart disease.