Bill Siwicki

Protecting its patients from COVID-19, the 64-site health center moved from very limited telemedicine capabilities to wide-ranging virtual care supported by an FCC grant.

The health system is using AI to provide COVID-19 risk assessments, virtualize waiting rooms for physician appointments and automate the PCP-to-specialist referral process.

“A big contributing factor to this success was the creation of auto-text templates for common procedures, all pre-verified by coders to meet billing requirements,” said the health system’s CMIO.

Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, DrChrono, Epic, Greenway Health, Meditech and NextGen offer an up-to-the-minute look at how they’re enabling complex immunization recordkeeping for their health system customers.

For the first three quarters of 2020, it has registered a 40% reduction in its patient no-show rate, compared with face-to-face visits.

The hospital is using communication technologies to bring care teams, patients and families together to plan healthcare. The tools have helped enable a 40% reduction in avoidable inpatient visits and a 29% reduction in length of stay.

Will a health system battered by the pandemic emerge stronger in the year ahead? The annual report predicts challenges such as profitably merging virtual and in-person care, capitalizing on new consumer- and clinician-facing digital health tools – and enabling pharma to find its footing in this changing ecosystem.

Neighborhood Family Practice has been reaching out virtually to its underserved patients for primary care, behavioral health, midwifery and more.

In our seventh and final feature on burnout, experts at Epic, Cerner, Allscripts and Mad*Pow discuss health IT usability problems and solutions, and describe where user experience is headed.

University of California, Berkeley, medical scientists use a Bluetooth-enabled tracking watch to study ways the bond between patient and caregiver benefits the patient.